“Like a casino,” Cynthia says, slapping me on the shoulder. “Night time all the time, to keep the fun groove rolling.”
Though I want to, I don’t reply. I don’t tell her the humming of computer fans and whatever liquid cooling they got going in this fridge posing as a control room can’t compare with the buzz of a casino hall. I don’t tell her the strip-lighting that outlines the seams of the boxed ceiling can’t compare in luminescence or mood.
But I do have to say, “I don’t see you bringing me drinks.”
I keep my gaze on the computer screen. Hex dumps and reassembled machine code scroll and flash by.
My slap-back comment doesn’t change the main fact. She’s right. If not for the computer’s clock, I would’ve lost all track of time, like people do in casinos. Like I do. But this rolling nightmare? Big time sensory deprivation, man. Add to that how I have no idea how far we’ve gone, and this is one trippy ride. Racing along God knows what highway, it’s nighttime all the time. By now we could be whooshing through corn fields in Kansas.
Her hand touches my shoulder again. This time it stays there. “Anything interesting, yet?”
“Interesting is not the word I’d use.”
She gives me a gentle squeeze. “What would you call it then?”
“Not quite old school. But square. Very in the box.”
“How so?”
I shrug. Thanks to my swivel chair, I swing around to look up at her. Her face stares back at me, like a half moon lit in blue monitor glow. I could go into all sorts of explanations. I could dissect the specialized firewall code I’ve been peek-poking. I could dis it for how it pretends to calculate every possible outcome and stifle an attack by anticipating every possible next move. I could point out the futility of preparing a countermeasure for each calculated projected outcome branch. But I can tell she’s not with it enough to appreciate all that. She would start yawning inside thirty seconds.
“Let’s just say it’s very Deep Blue, and this ain’t a chess game.”
She grins. “And you’re not Kasparov.”
Hmm. Maybe she does get it. A little, at least. And that would make sense, her having at least some appreciation for the trade. In a gig like this I’d expect a white hat hacker sitting next to me, bird-dogging my every key stroke. But they sent her. Nah, she may look like a stiff suit, but she knows more. Enough to defend herself, anyway.
The truck must be going around a turn, because our world tilts right, then left, like we’re balancing atop a cushy, but somewhat stiff mattress. My stomach churns, and I feel myself flushing green, like I did a few hours ago when I pretended I could stare at a screen in a moving vehicle without wanting to hurl chunks. I run my thumb along the inside of the seatbelt that straps me to my chair and grip the counter to steady myself.
With a swift move, Cynthia drops onto a chair, slides it along its floor rail toward me, and locks it into place. She straps on her own seatbelt.
“You OK?” she says.
I nod. I don’t feel like asking for more Alka Seltzer, and I don’t want another round of Dramamine. The last dose already bonked me enough. The two cans of Red Bull I downed to counter the pill-induced drowsiness now swirls in my stomach.
I pull in a deep breath and let it out. “The world doesn’t run neat and predictable,” I say, as much to bypass her question as to distract myself from the dizziness. “You can’t predict the wave that will give you the best ride. You have to get on the one you get and make the most of it.”
She frowns. “I’m sorry. The wave?”
“Like surfing.”
“Surfing.”
“You’ve never done it, I take it.”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Not even watched a competition.”
“O-for-two, I’m afraid.”
“Too bad. It’s life in a wetsuit.”
“And you’re about to clarify how waves and wetsuits apply to this.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. But man, do they want to do a backflip right now. “You’re out in the water, OK? Out there, beyond where the waves break. You’re straddling your board, looking over your shoulder, out to the ocean.”
She nods. “Go on.”
“All day you’ve been out there, and it’s been quiet. You’ve ridden a few ripples in, but they’ve been hardly worth the effort to stand up on your board. Then you see it. You sense it under you, too. It’s rising. It’s rolling in, so you go horizontal and start paddling to hang with it.”
I stop to make sure I have her attention. She’s looking back at me with narrowed, sharpened eyes. Man, if eyes could cut, this chick would go right through you with those blue diamonds of hers. Not too sure she hasn’t already sliced me and diced me into nice chewable chunks.
“So you line up with it. You get on all fours, and then you stand up. And you know what happens next?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
I point at her, six-shooter style. “Bingo-bongo, man. You never know. Nobody does. No matter how many waves you’ve ridden, how many times you come out to this same slice of surf, you have no idea what’s going to happen next.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s like life, right? You have your experience and your wits, but that’s it. Yeah, you were ready to get on it, but now, you just have to ride it.”
“Life in a wetsuit.” The way she says it sounds less like agreement and more like she’s egging me on.
“Exactly. Wherever it takes you, you gotta shift this way or that. You have to adapt to whatever it throws at you.”
I pause. She’s still fixed on me, nodding a little.
“You get what I’m saying?”
“Every situation is different.”
“Dead on, it’s different. Unexpected, is more like it. Random. That’s the key word. It’s real, and it’s random.” I point at the screen. “This dude, Martin. He thinks it’s all a big clock. A machine. If you crunch enough, throw enough computing power at it, you can predict it. The guy’s ignoring volumes of chaos theory. And you can’t.”
“Especially not with hacking,” she says. “Not when the goal is chaos itself.”
Wham, so she does get it. Maybe not the ones and zeroes behind it, but conceptually, she gets it. Suddenly this cold chick’s turning a little hotter for me. Drop her out of that stiff suit into a bikini top, short-shorts and flip-flops, and we’re rolling.
“You got it,” I say, sounding a tad over-the-top enthusiastic.
She smiles. “So break it, then.”
“Break it?” What little exuberance I’ve pulled up over my little lecture, vanishes. I’m left with the same fluttering in my belly, plus the chill that drills down my back.
“That’s right.”
“I thought you just wanted me to poke around, find the holes.”
“That’s all talk. You know how this game is played. It’s not real until you get all the way in. Until you show the hole can in fact be exploited.”
I give my computer screen a quick look. A map of Phoenix, Arizona stares back at me. “But that’s a piece of the power grid.”
“You’re free to do with it what you can.”
Like that paperwork I signed claims, she doesn’t add. I’m feeling stupid now. Did I really think this would involve a straight-up diagnostic? Nothing more than a vulnerability assessment?
“When you say, break it, how nasty-heavy do you want me to get?”
“Bring it down. All the way down.” She pauses. “If you can.”
For a moment I double-think everything she’s told me. What if all this is one big hoax? What if I’m working for some crew posing as an obscure Cyber US-sanctioned outfit? What if I bring that grid down, and in the process become an accessory to a major hack—the kind that gets you chased down as one bad dog and dropped into some black hole?
“What’s the matter, Julian? You don’t think you’re quite up to riding this wave?”
Something snaps inside me. Yeah, man, I can do this hack. I can bring it down, all the way down. But that’s my pride talking, not my brain. My brain, on the other hand, tells me I got no choice. I’ve been paddling for a while, and it’s time to stand up, see where this mother drops me.
As if to reinforce my thought, the truck rocks again. We swing left, as if in a long, tight turn, before we sway back to the right. This time it doesn’t make me dizzy. I turn to the computer screen.
“Keep it random, keep it real,” I mutter.
Though I don’t see her, I can sense Cynthia grinning next to me.
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