Chapter 3. Hacker
It was by complete chance. All the signs said it was not safe to touch the wires and the huts where the huge batteries are stored. You know, those signs with some icon of a man struck by an electric ray. But dad has to work often in the plant, and I have seen him helping handle the antennae of the batteries for so many years, that I realized it couldn't be so dangerous. I'm only seventeen, but I'm no fool. So I made a trip or two to the basement of the power plant when Jack, Pete and the girls were away with their families. If nothing else, the place looks so formidable, with all those complex constructions in iron, copper and plastic. It has some aesthetic quality that drives me insane, and I keep coming back again and again to "feel" them; I spend countless hours staring to the wires, the walls with the little windows and airlocks by the hundreds, the antennae of the batteries...
Once I read in a History book about "paper photography" —one of those about life on Earth a couple of centuries ago— They used to have little gizmos made up with lenses and mirrors, and if you put some kind of thin material that reacted to light inside, you would be able to register images on it by poking a hole, allowing some tiny amount of light to go through the lenses and mirrors, and closing the hole after a short while. A further procedure involving projecting the image on some special paper and the use of chemicals would print a "negative image" of the one you took into the paper. The heck of a complicated way to register a vision. Isn't it easier to just "look" at it and ask your palm-system to save it in your hard-drive? Anyhow, I realized how to do a similar one, and after I constructed it, decided to try with the cool constructions down there. It wasn't too hard to find materials that reacted to light, and chemicals that would make the material stop reacting from Tina's store —dad's new girlfriend. I've been taking quite a few of these pictures; Tina likes them a lot.. or so she says... I think she's pretending to be interested in my little hobbies, so dad doesn't feel too uncomfortable when the three of us are together, like yesterday at dinner.
Dad was pretty upset when I surprised them in bed last Saturday morning. That same night he had probably gone trough my hard-drive —yes, they upgraded his palm-system, and now he can access whatever I record— and discovered I took some images of their little private party. The following morning when I woke up they were not there anymore. Crap! He has also erasing capabilities!
Now, most of the guys at school are not aware of it, but I realized you can access the file editor of your system, and change the permissions so that nobody else but you —well, yeah, and the Servers— can manipulate those files. How did I get to learn that? You wouldn't believe it: in another History book of the same century. It said that people those ages needed to set up huge machines to perform the most basic computations. They developed the first operative systems to handle those computing machines, and the file permissions scheme of our palm-systems looks strangely similar to the ones in those primitive machines. I went to the warehouse of the Museum of History, and I borrowed a simulator in which I loaded a module to learn how to use one of those operative systems... UNIX or something like that. It was fairly simple, but with tons of neat applications if you like this sort of backwards programming. I learnt of a command called "chmod", and how they used it to prevent other members in the same network to read or modify other members' data. Then I tried to issue the same command in my palm-system and guess what... it worked! Why didn't they show us how to do it at school? I guess most of the teachers are not aware of it. Even Mr.Zellman, when I asked him about it, admitted there was no way to manipulate those properties, unless you had the upgrade with the lower frequencies and you requested the use of some of those frequencies for at most two hours to the Servers. Of course, the petition had to be very well justified, otherwise there is no way to be granted that privilege. My dad gets such privileges in batches of three months ever since they made him Security Supervisor of our city sector. He can scan anybody's palm-system in the neighborhood provided the other subject is in a range of almost three miles, and apparently he has erasing capabilities too! Did I mention this before? It's driving me nuts! I bet they have granted my dad this privilege in order to test this kind of service and see if it works as planned. The Government and its new ideas of parent supervision to please the most conservative elements of our society. I heard dad telling Tina that if they go forward with this service, they could control our shit until we make it to eighteen.
But it is funny how nobody else in class is able to do it. I explained Sonya how I managed to "hide" some pictures to my dad using this method; I even walked her through it, but she wasn't able to issue the chmod commands. That's odd; we had exactly the same model, since we are not allowed to upgrade until we are twenty-one. She thought I was pulling her leg, got pissed off, and she hasn't spoken to me ever since. I miss her a lot lately, especially since Jack and Pet are with their dads in Moon. Sometimes I wish dad were a pilot for the Consortium too; we never get the chance to travel anywhere.
Anyhow, that is how I got to think that maybe being close to those batteries and wires for so long periods of time did actually affect me somehow; more concretely, it affected to the performance of my palm-system. I bet that's the reason: something has gone wrong and that's why I can manipulate and access stuff I didn't even know it was there. Now, should I communicate with Server and request maintenance? or should I keep it and see what I can accomplish? No brainer.
Once I read in a History book about "paper photography" —one of those about life on Earth a couple of centuries ago— They used to have little gizmos made up with lenses and mirrors, and if you put some kind of thin material that reacted to light inside, you would be able to register images on it by poking a hole, allowing some tiny amount of light to go through the lenses and mirrors, and closing the hole after a short while. A further procedure involving projecting the image on some special paper and the use of chemicals would print a "negative image" of the one you took into the paper. The heck of a complicated way to register a vision. Isn't it easier to just "look" at it and ask your palm-system to save it in your hard-drive? Anyhow, I realized how to do a similar one, and after I constructed it, decided to try with the cool constructions down there. It wasn't too hard to find materials that reacted to light, and chemicals that would make the material stop reacting from Tina's store —dad's new girlfriend. I've been taking quite a few of these pictures; Tina likes them a lot.. or so she says... I think she's pretending to be interested in my little hobbies, so dad doesn't feel too uncomfortable when the three of us are together, like yesterday at dinner.
Dad was pretty upset when I surprised them in bed last Saturday morning. That same night he had probably gone trough my hard-drive —yes, they upgraded his palm-system, and now he can access whatever I record— and discovered I took some images of their little private party. The following morning when I woke up they were not there anymore. Crap! He has also erasing capabilities!
Now, most of the guys at school are not aware of it, but I realized you can access the file editor of your system, and change the permissions so that nobody else but you —well, yeah, and the Servers— can manipulate those files. How did I get to learn that? You wouldn't believe it: in another History book of the same century. It said that people those ages needed to set up huge machines to perform the most basic computations. They developed the first operative systems to handle those computing machines, and the file permissions scheme of our palm-systems looks strangely similar to the ones in those primitive machines. I went to the warehouse of the Museum of History, and I borrowed a simulator in which I loaded a module to learn how to use one of those operative systems... UNIX or something like that. It was fairly simple, but with tons of neat applications if you like this sort of backwards programming. I learnt of a command called "chmod", and how they used it to prevent other members in the same network to read or modify other members' data. Then I tried to issue the same command in my palm-system and guess what... it worked! Why didn't they show us how to do it at school? I guess most of the teachers are not aware of it. Even Mr.Zellman, when I asked him about it, admitted there was no way to manipulate those properties, unless you had the upgrade with the lower frequencies and you requested the use of some of those frequencies for at most two hours to the Servers. Of course, the petition had to be very well justified, otherwise there is no way to be granted that privilege. My dad gets such privileges in batches of three months ever since they made him Security Supervisor of our city sector. He can scan anybody's palm-system in the neighborhood provided the other subject is in a range of almost three miles, and apparently he has erasing capabilities too! Did I mention this before? It's driving me nuts! I bet they have granted my dad this privilege in order to test this kind of service and see if it works as planned. The Government and its new ideas of parent supervision to please the most conservative elements of our society. I heard dad telling Tina that if they go forward with this service, they could control our shit until we make it to eighteen.
But it is funny how nobody else in class is able to do it. I explained Sonya how I managed to "hide" some pictures to my dad using this method; I even walked her through it, but she wasn't able to issue the chmod commands. That's odd; we had exactly the same model, since we are not allowed to upgrade until we are twenty-one. She thought I was pulling her leg, got pissed off, and she hasn't spoken to me ever since. I miss her a lot lately, especially since Jack and Pet are with their dads in Moon. Sometimes I wish dad were a pilot for the Consortium too; we never get the chance to travel anywhere.
Anyhow, that is how I got to think that maybe being close to those batteries and wires for so long periods of time did actually affect me somehow; more concretely, it affected to the performance of my palm-system. I bet that's the reason: something has gone wrong and that's why I can manipulate and access stuff I didn't even know it was there. Now, should I communicate with Server and request maintenance? or should I keep it and see what I can accomplish? No brainer.
© 2005 by EsePrimo
