Caped (Book 1): The Burdens of Fate (19 page)

It's only been a few days but it still feels
like a ghostly out of body experience. So much to take in, to admire, and all
the efforts of two men.

Really?

The mind rejects such a possibility, and could
you blame it? So grand, so fantastical. Its existence dares the creation of
great things, and I was pleasantly surprised to find I wouldn't have long to
wait for them to start.

I like surprises, so I wasn't too nosy when it
came to getting a sneak peak at this place. But the grand reveal is over, all
bets are off. I couldn't help but check what was coming down the pipe. And when
I saw it, well, let's just say a blind man could have seen it coming.

Carter's curiosity, mixed with futuristic
technology, that's a volatile mix I couldn't wait to see the outcome of.

He was already watching files coming out of the
Pentagon, the CIA, NSA, and FBI. But his next target was a little more off the
books. And I enjoyed every moment.

He'd done it. It was in the unmistakable look
on his face, in the way he sauntered up to us. You could tell he'd found what
he was looking for and it unnerved him. The only good thing that could come
from this is reaffirmation that we can't trust the government.

Carter sat at the computer for hours, near
motionless, creating one program after another, smart viruses that could trick,
shut-down, or at least stall, even the most powerful and complex computers on
earth; ones that could learn how to be more efficient as they scoured the web,
jumping from one server to the next. I knew what he was after, and I knew how
it would end. But he didn't come to me for the answer, and he knew he could. He
decided to do this on his own. Perhaps as a test, or a personal goal he'd set
for himself. I don't know. But it consumed him. Deep into the night and well
into the morning, the sun came shining though the massive windows, Thomas and
Ivan still walking about the island adding one minor improvement at a time.

He was exhausted, that was beyond evident. He
drank cans of Red Bull as if they were the last springs in an endless desert.
He'd already been awake for eighteen hours when he started; I guess he wasn't
expecting to be so consumed by it. But he was, and although little was
happening on the outside, watching him sit there, eyes glued to a screen that
manifested dozens of lines of code at a time was mesmerizing. I caught brief
glimpses of web pages, nothing too concrete. He was mulling through information
at an increasing rate, as if he was becoming a computer.

And then he stopped.

His head bobbled up and down, ferociously
fighting the pull of gravity; and he won. Managing to recline back, already
lost in a deep slumber and sinking further into the comfort of the well padded
captain’s chair.

It was a... unique experience, but I knew it
wasn't over. There was no cheering, no grand finale to signal success. It was
just the deceivingly calm eye of the storm. All the pieces were in place, the
soldiers poised to attack. I walked in and draped a soft cover over him, he
deserved that much.

When I returned from making dinner little had
changed. I walked out to talk with Thomas and Ivan, who were relaxing by the
islands edge, only to see that Alvin
had stopped by. It's comforting to see we're no longer straddling the awkward
line of speaking as semi-colleagues and can converse as actual friends.

The sun slowly sank behind the tranquil
horizon, the warm salty breeze pairing nicely with the countless shimmering
stars that pierced through the scattered cloud cover.

"You think days like this will last?"
asked Ivan, with Alvin
quickly shutting down that line of questions.

"Don't know. Don't care," Alvin said. "Just
enjoy the view now. I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to miss it later."

Carter woke up seventeen hours later to an
empty island. I was back home, almost an hour deep into a conversation with my
mother about going to visit for a week or so, while Thomas and Ivan tended to
their own lives. I knew the time-off Thomas requested from his job was coming
to an end, and Ivan has a family he's always checking on. He doesn't have a
job, but with his ability, he doesn't really need one anymore.

Carter jumped back to business. The location
data was the first thing that stopped flowing, and any info in the cache was
tucked away offline, followed by all personal and structural information, as
well as information about our defensive capabilities. He was about to pull off
the mother of all information heists and he couldn't risk anyone back-hacking
him and pilfering any of our information; a wise move.

Layer by layer the base operations were
stripped down to the bare essentials. He had the craziest customized version of
the Linux Operating System, a command terminal, a shit-ton of memory, and
enough holographic storage space to store a high-definition video biography of
every person that's ever walked the planet. Firewall: Online. He was maxed out
and plugged in.

One line of seemingly random code went to a
mega-server hub in south China,
a question to a small program hidden there: "FredReady?" Followed by
an almost instantaneous response, "Yes," and then another almost
instantaneous wall of text. The programs he'd created had changed his plans; he
smiled.

For the previous seventeen hours his A.I.
programs combed through information on millions of servers, websites, and home
PC's connected to the internet, trying to find the perfect means to infiltrate
Area 51. The legendary site so shrouded in mystery that its name is synonymous
with secrecy. Carter left all the hard work to his programs, when he plugged
back in he was expecting a plan formulated and ready to be executed. Instead,
he was treated to an even wilder surprise; the programs had already buried
themselves within the scattered disjointed servers of the government base. This
action, however, caused the site to go into a lockdown mode, while every line
of code was checked for the infection. But this didn't catch them off guard,
and in fact was what the programs were expecting. Better still, approx.
forty-five minutes remained until server system reboot.

Carter had plugged in towards the ass-end of
the blackout cycle, but the hard work was not yet behind him. His programs
managed to hack the site once, but it was still necessary to do such again;
once for the plant, and another for the retrieval. And that was only if the
programs managed to embed themselves in the code in such a way they were
indistinguishable from the source material.

The programs expressed doubt, citing only a 53%
probability of success. On the second hack attempt the goal was simply to locate
the security shut-down code and stall it long enough to retrieve the
information. The main problem was knowing exactly how much information it was
going to be, with a slight secondary concern of them tracing it back to the
source of the hack. But with each packet of data weaving through an average of
sixteen hundred servers before restructuring, that outcome was unlikely.

Crunches for the first twenty minutes, push-ups
for the next fifteen, and topped off with a brief shower.

To ping the bases server would only alert them
that the attack hadn't ended. For this reason an inconspicuous e-mail was sent
from the home computer of an employee's mother who regularly sends brief
messages, while playing simple browser based MMO's, to a Gmail account he regularly
checks from his work computer. When Gmail has confirmed the e-mail's been
received the program is alerted and the operation begins.

It's 10:42am when the go-ahead is sent. Carter
dives in as fast as he can but the moment he touches the firewall the system
goes into shutdown mode, too fast for the programs to react, far too fast or
Carter.

Three seconds later and the system opens again,
and with the firewalls destroyed a steady stream of information floods out.
Attack viruses begin dismantling anything that resembles a program or a file,
and Carter's elite programs, attack back. Deeper inside the base, simple codes
forced their way to the manual systems of the base. A security breach alarm
sounds for a second in one location, a warning button flashes for a second in
another. The scattered servers remain online with information bursting through,
and every line of code, design to warn of such an attack, is rendered useless.

The notification rings as the data transfer
from the first server is completed. Two seconds later, the notification chimes
again with a different server address. First one then another, until dozens of
lines of server designations start appearing per second.

But glitches don't happen at the Groom Lake
facility. They haven't for a long time. All it took was one person to notice,
followed by a phone call to the IT department. And after 20 seconds of
searching, and a staggered and bewildered, "Holy fuck!" He slammed
his fist down on the manual kill-switch and the line went dark.

Automated machines cranked and churned through
a series of levers and pulley's which severed connections across the whole
facility.

"Server Offline." Simultaneously
across the board, and then the inevitable, "Connection lost."

Carter jolted back as if kicked from his cyber
daze and forced back into his physical being. "Whoa!" he shouted,
with a quick intense shiver that shot up his spine, and quickly followed by a
query on how much data was retrieved.

A number popped up on the screen
"71,938,248 Peta-bytes equaling approx. 78% of available
information."

"Okay, scan and sort the available
information. Look for any details that resemble or may relate to the solar
event on Mach 8th. Let me know when you're done."

A couple seconds later and, "
Done
."

He smirked because he'd forgotten how fast
quantum computing could be, "Give it to me straight, doc."

And bam, he found it. A cluster of incomplete
information, speaking of an event almost a hundred years ago of a young man
claiming to be from another universe, warning of ageless and violent
individuals. That young man spoke of the coming technological advancements and
warned they may try to use them to return home. This file was coupled with
projects dealing with altering the vibrational frequencies of atoms and various
cases of extraordinary human feats.

Further along was a project proposed in the mid
50's called "Rhythm" which never took off due to safety concerns, and
another which did, in from the late 70's called "Entrapment." The
latter project dealt with locating and containing the mysterious individuals
and interrogating them for information concerning the technology used to bring
them here. Little relevant information was gathered except their testimony of
what to expect when breaching the walls of a parallel universe which accurately
described the world wide "solar event" on March 8th. Studies of their
physiology proved a remarkable similarity to ours, but rather possessing a
denser soft tissue, muscle, and bone structure, as well as far less wasteful
digestive and respiratory systems. At the time nothing could determine the
cause of their agelessness, but mentions of further testing of the tissue later
in the 90's leads me believe that said testing led to the discovery of the
aging gene.

This, of course, wasn't all the available
information; there were countless files and videos on Black Budget military
proposals, projects, and their final project reports. Ranging from weather and
geological manipulation, occult sciences, aerospace designs, many mentions of
various D.U.M.B.'s (Deep Underground Military Bases), and the
creme-De-la-creme, and Thomas' favorite: Extra-terrestrials.

Just kidding. But I'll be the first to admit
surprise when that didn't pop up. I mean,
really?
...Maybe it's in the
other 22%.

You'd think that, to Carter, all of it
mattered. He'd just pulled off the greatest cyber heist of all time. And that
did come with a great sense of accomplishment, but what he found created an
unnerving tension that grew within him, unsure of what it meant or what to do.
As I stated earlier, he'd found enough of what he was looking for to know that
he'd found what he was looking for.

Alvin, Prisca, and I, were small-talking in the
common room over a game of dominoes and lunch when Carter walked in.

"Hey, Otep," he said, hanging on the
door frame with a half-fake smile. "I did it!"

"Did what?" asked Prisca.

He gave a slight glance to Alvin, then focused
on Prisca in a confused daze as if he'd heard her question but wasn't sure if
she'd actually said something. He shook himself out of it before continuing,
"We need to have a meeting… soon. I'm headed home. If you need me,
call."

There was a short pause broken by Prisca,
"Okay, what the fuck was that?"

–
4/24
–

Dennis Shaeffer
-

I'm not really a fan of people being in my
house, especially strangers. My house is where I come to rest my boots and
escape the unpleasant realities of life. Here I get to comfort myself with the
false reality that I control everything within these walls, that this is my
kingdom. And I've been invaded, first by that devilishly attractive yet
infuriatingly anti-social hermit of a woman, and now by these people.