Chapter 4. Anonymous
I have seen them, dammit! One of them looked astoundingly sleek: moved like a cat, eyes so cold, and over-confident presence. It was like she could look into my own soul! but now I know better: she is actually able look into my system's hard-drive, and I am afraid she can also access my address in the HOD.
Lucy's fiance, Scott, got drunk some days ago at a party; he is not supposed, mind you, because he is a federal agent, but rules don't go with him somehow. He got hammered and talked about something he shouldn't. When he was sobering up, he realized the great mistake he had committed, and that's when he first mentioned the "angels": «Aw crap! They'll come after us, one by one, and will erase that from our memories! Shit, what the fuck did I do? What was I thinking? I'm so sorry, I've put all of you in danger! Stupid fucker!».
At first I thought he was just high, and didn't mind too much his rants and drunken cries. But he was the first one to disappear: Lucy was looking for him for three days. Called his family, also tried at work —they didn't hear from him either since Friday. And finally, on the third day, she decided to contact the local law enforcement office. And then she disappeared too...
I didn't want to make the same mistake, so I decided not to look for trouble. The fact that the rest of us where still around meant clearly that whomever was looking for us didn't know exactly who we were... or at least until Lucy's disappearance. My wild guess is that Scott took his own life, probably destroying the chip at the same time, and now Servers cannot access neither his hard-drive, nor his address in the HOD. But if they had Lucy, then they knew all about us by now.
So I hid; and I did it in the only way they cannot catch me: by staying in crowds all of the time. See, they can put a lock on your GPS, but the GPS is accurate to the equivalent of a building. It is possible to decide in which street you are, but if the place is packed, there is no way to pinpoint you form the rest of the flock.
* * * * *
When I was seventeen Sonya told us about this weird guy in her class, the son of the Security Manager. He had some cock-and-bull story about hacking the palm-system —nobody took him for real, who would?— but certainly his crazy tale ignited the imagination of many people, started some urban legend, and fanzines arose everywhere teaching dubious methods to crack your system open and perform bizarre operations on it. None of those methods worked, believe me. I tried every single of them when I was at my senior year at high-school. But this boy was for real; I learnt he was some eight years later. He didn't trust anybody with the details, after the episode with Sonya, but he certainly made a good use of it. On my second year working at Cress Corp., I coincided with him. He had grown more handsome, and after he started working for his dad in the security corps, you could tell he had developed quite a muscular body. And the most amazing aspect of him: it was like he knew everything about me.
We became friends, then confidents, and somehow he sensed my relationship with what-was-his-name was not too good. I knew I didn't want a new boyfriend at that time, but a shoulder to lean on, and the guy helped me overcome the depressing break as a true friend. He was too good to be true. In a matter of months my awe for him became so intense that I ended up falling deeply in love with him. Unfortunately, one year later his father passed away and he was called by the Consortium. He was not married, had no family, and obviously he lied in the recruiting office when asked if he was involved in a relationship; with his intelligence and his physical condition, he had a chance of becoming a pilot if he had "no chains around his neck". It was his dream, and although it broke my heart, and I tried him to change his mind, I knew deep down there was nothing I could do to bring him back to me.
Every time I reminded him of his story, he would become tense, look me in the eyes for a few seconds, and then sensing more speculation than sarcasm in my approach, relax and change subjects, uncomfortable. But at some point he realized I was for real; he noticed that I was actually secretly desiring the story true, and dreamed of the possibilities of such power. And finally he opened his secret to me.
«If your chip received the right amount of radiation, your file editor would "magically" switch on, and then you'd have access to permissions and locking of properties. So, for instance, you can shut your GPS locator off, or have a look into your HOD page... and even how to use part of your brain to store stuff. Well, of course, this is dangerous. You need to know exactly which part of your brain you can use, and in doing so you will be forfeiting a great deal of your healthy neurons —afterwards, they cannot be used for other purpose other than storage. But according to neurologists all over Lactea, we only use up to 34% of them at a time. The rest "sits" there to be used only when the failures start, and will work as back-up generators from then on.»
We spent some time down in the power-plant, until I got my system cracked, and then he taught me some of his techniques. But soon not only I mastered those techniques, but also found new ones on my own. The student surpassed the master, and he was quite glad to have someone to share, teach and learn from in this our particular secret.
* * * * *
I'm still working on this one...
Lucy's fiance, Scott, got drunk some days ago at a party; he is not supposed, mind you, because he is a federal agent, but rules don't go with him somehow. He got hammered and talked about something he shouldn't. When he was sobering up, he realized the great mistake he had committed, and that's when he first mentioned the "angels": «Aw crap! They'll come after us, one by one, and will erase that from our memories! Shit, what the fuck did I do? What was I thinking? I'm so sorry, I've put all of you in danger! Stupid fucker!».
At first I thought he was just high, and didn't mind too much his rants and drunken cries. But he was the first one to disappear: Lucy was looking for him for three days. Called his family, also tried at work —they didn't hear from him either since Friday. And finally, on the third day, she decided to contact the local law enforcement office. And then she disappeared too...
I didn't want to make the same mistake, so I decided not to look for trouble. The fact that the rest of us where still around meant clearly that whomever was looking for us didn't know exactly who we were... or at least until Lucy's disappearance. My wild guess is that Scott took his own life, probably destroying the chip at the same time, and now Servers cannot access neither his hard-drive, nor his address in the HOD. But if they had Lucy, then they knew all about us by now.
So I hid; and I did it in the only way they cannot catch me: by staying in crowds all of the time. See, they can put a lock on your GPS, but the GPS is accurate to the equivalent of a building. It is possible to decide in which street you are, but if the place is packed, there is no way to pinpoint you form the rest of the flock.
When I was seventeen Sonya told us about this weird guy in her class, the son of the Security Manager. He had some cock-and-bull story about hacking the palm-system —nobody took him for real, who would?— but certainly his crazy tale ignited the imagination of many people, started some urban legend, and fanzines arose everywhere teaching dubious methods to crack your system open and perform bizarre operations on it. None of those methods worked, believe me. I tried every single of them when I was at my senior year at high-school. But this boy was for real; I learnt he was some eight years later. He didn't trust anybody with the details, after the episode with Sonya, but he certainly made a good use of it. On my second year working at Cress Corp., I coincided with him. He had grown more handsome, and after he started working for his dad in the security corps, you could tell he had developed quite a muscular body. And the most amazing aspect of him: it was like he knew everything about me.
We became friends, then confidents, and somehow he sensed my relationship with what-was-his-name was not too good. I knew I didn't want a new boyfriend at that time, but a shoulder to lean on, and the guy helped me overcome the depressing break as a true friend. He was too good to be true. In a matter of months my awe for him became so intense that I ended up falling deeply in love with him. Unfortunately, one year later his father passed away and he was called by the Consortium. He was not married, had no family, and obviously he lied in the recruiting office when asked if he was involved in a relationship; with his intelligence and his physical condition, he had a chance of becoming a pilot if he had "no chains around his neck". It was his dream, and although it broke my heart, and I tried him to change his mind, I knew deep down there was nothing I could do to bring him back to me.
Every time I reminded him of his story, he would become tense, look me in the eyes for a few seconds, and then sensing more speculation than sarcasm in my approach, relax and change subjects, uncomfortable. But at some point he realized I was for real; he noticed that I was actually secretly desiring the story true, and dreamed of the possibilities of such power. And finally he opened his secret to me.
«If your chip received the right amount of radiation, your file editor would "magically" switch on, and then you'd have access to permissions and locking of properties. So, for instance, you can shut your GPS locator off, or have a look into your HOD page... and even how to use part of your brain to store stuff. Well, of course, this is dangerous. You need to know exactly which part of your brain you can use, and in doing so you will be forfeiting a great deal of your healthy neurons —afterwards, they cannot be used for other purpose other than storage. But according to neurologists all over Lactea, we only use up to 34% of them at a time. The rest "sits" there to be used only when the failures start, and will work as back-up generators from then on.»
We spent some time down in the power-plant, until I got my system cracked, and then he taught me some of his techniques. But soon not only I mastered those techniques, but also found new ones on my own. The student surpassed the master, and he was quite glad to have someone to share, teach and learn from in this our particular secret.
I'm still working on this one...
© 2005 by EsePrimo
