The Fickle Finger of Fate: Chapter VI

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"Privilege mode exception, invalid number of accounts (0), we aporogise," he read. "Well, that isn't very helpful, is it?" He typed some more. "Okay. It looks like your bank account has been marked as deleted, but not actually purged from the computer. That's why it's partially recognising you - if your account had been removed by the normal procedure, your personal data would have gone with it because you only had the one account. But it's only halfway deleted. Somebody's gone into the database on a low level and locked you out."

"Won't the bank catch that?" "Eventually, yes, because it's a constraint violation. It'll show up on any checks they run. But probably when it does get discovered, whoever discovers it will figure another admin did it on purpose, and they'll leave it alone. Because from their point of view it's not obvious whether whoever did it meant to delete you entirely, or if it was an accident, or some kind of deliberate programming trick. These databases are always full of constraint violations because of people manually hacking with the tables, and I don't mean crackers, I mean mostly people who have legitimate access and are doing legit or semi-legit things. Like, the auditors often create phony records to test stuff. At a glance, your account looks like a dummy created for some kind of test. I know you're a real person because you're sitting here, but the bank admins would each think some other admin had created you."

"Okay, well, please change it back, Hideki-san. I'd also like to know who did it, but that's less important." The cracker shook his head. "Sorry, dude, no can do. I don't have the access at this point. I'm getting in at all by pretending to be an ATM and using the key from off of your card - I have the guts of a bank machine in a virtual box on one of my computers here, and I've cloned the certificate and private keys from the machine in the warehouse lobby behind us. I can't touch the account-deleted flag in your bank's database because that's read-only from the ATM's point of view, and I can't even see the administrative access logs which would shed light on who changed your status. Even if I could, if it was a cracker like myself they'd have laundered the connection through a bunch of other places as well."

He pulled my card from the reader and passed it back over the desk. As I accepted it, there was a snapping sound and the blue light of the computer monitor faded away. In the darkness Hideki said, "Aw, God damn it, not again." He pressed a button and the room light came on. "Don't go anywhere, I just gotta fix something." I stayed in my seat as he got up and made his way around the desk, stepping over piles of magazines on the floor. "Just move back a ways, okay?" I tried to roll my chair back, but after a few centimetres it encountered another pile of stuff behind me, and couldn't roll any farther.

The cracker had a screwdriver in his hand, and he squeezed in between me and the desk and bent over the back of the monitor. He undid four screws and carefully separated the plastic cover from it. Turning, he handed it to me and said, "Here, hold this." Inside the monitor, several gleaming copper coils wrapped around the tail of the picture tube. At the back, where it came to a point, something fuzzy and blue quivered. Hideki took a deep breath and darted his hand in, grabbing the blue thing and yanking it away. Squeezing out from in front of me, he held out the thing. It was a fuzzy blue creature, seru type, roughly a sphere with four long flagella that whipped around. "What is it?" I asked, fascinated.

"Electricity vampire," said the cracker. He stepped over to the door, opened it, and threw the creature out into the twilit parking lot. "The latest mutation; they're a pain in the ass for everyone in the Quarter who's using electronic equipment. We think they're actually a sort of giant-size bacteria. Anyway, with CRT monitors they grab onto the tube socket where the voltage is highest. They can suck the static charge without hurting anything at first, but inevitably after a while they get their tongue in there and short it out. By rights I ought to kill 'em, but I just can't bring myself to do it, so that one will probably find its way back in here if it doesn't find somewhere else to feed. Sometime I'll work out a way to repel them nondestructively." He took the back of the monitor case from me and re-attached it.

Hideki sat back down behind his desk. "Sorry about the interruption. Anyway, this is gonna take me a couple days at least, if you want it unlocked and to know who did it. I'm going to have to get at least a couple of operations done with full admin access, and that'll mean social-engineering someone with branch authority. A regular teller won't do. I'm pretty confident I can do it, but I can't absolutely promise results. And of course it will cost you a certain amount of money, but probably not so very much. Could we say two hundred thousand as a maximum estimate, and I'll try to come in under that and will seek approval before incurring more? The usual terms." The usual terms means you pay whether he gets any results or not, and unspecified threats if you don't pay; but it's the same way I bill, and anything else is basically asking the contractor to make a bet with you, for which they'll demand favourable odds. So the usual terms are a better deal in the long run.

"Naturally I can't expect you to pay me right now. Let me see how much cash I have." He pulled a plastic wallet out of his pocket on a chain and poked around inside. "I guess counterfeit isn't good enough because the last thing you need right now is to be picked up on a funny money charge, right?" I just looked at him. "Fine, fine, forget it. Um. Okay, here's a couple hundred thousand in good, clean government notes. That should keep you for a week or two anyway." He handed a wad of bills over to me. "Don't bother paying it back - I'll just deduct it, and my fee, whenever I do manage to get into your account."

Nice customer service. I looked at the money. Didn't bother to tell him that it was about as much as I had in my account anyway, with nothing left over for his fee - no sense worrying the boy. A cracker on Hideki-kun's level doesn't have enough friends to be really dangerous, at least not dangerous to someone who's already flat broke; I intended to find another source of cash in plenty of time to reimburse him.

By the time I left the cracker's shack, night had fallen in earnest. I had to scramble back over the fence in the pitch darkness, and when I jumped down on the other side I landed badly and strained some kind of muscle in my foot. Limping, then, I made my way out of the side streets and onto the main street, the axis that runs down the centre of the Quarter. That's the safest route after dark.

I guess if you didn't know the place as well as I do, you'd think it was a pretty fine sight. The night sky above was velvety black, but down at sidewalk level everything was illuminated almost like day, but with brighter and more variable colours, by the neon and sulfur of the advertising signs. Most of the businesses down here were 24-hour, or open only at night: casinos, bars of different kinds, clubs, brightly lit doorways of no immediately advertised purpose, noodle shops, the whole bit. I passed an SDL mission, and smiled at the contrast - it was completely dark, with steel shutters pulled down over the windows. That's one place with a strictly daytime clientele.

The streets of the Quarter are at least as busy during the night as in the day time, but the crowd is different. During the day the Quarter's business is to sell dreams to humans, and you see humans and seru of every kind you can't imagine; everyone's part of the business in some small way. At night, it's seru only, pursuing strictly seru business and pleasure. Apart from the occasional bum or person of obvious criminal inclination, I was the only three-dimensional character in sight, and I sure felt exposed. I thought that every seru who passed me was watching me out of the corner of one of those huge eyes. That's part of the reason I don't like being down there at night, but the main reason is that I don't like walking past those mysterious doorways. I wish they were a deeper mystery to me.

When I crossed under the train tracks at the edge of the Quarter, it felt like a big heavy blanket being lifted off. I hadn't noticed any trouble before I crossed the tracks, but afterwards I caught myself thinking, Wow, now at last I can breathe. The air felt colder, too, more natural. I don't know if there's actually a measurable temperature difference, some other kind of physical effect, plastic fumes in the air or what. Maybe it's just some natural kind of reaction in my head - the boundary feels important so it has to make me feel different when I cross.

Whatever it was, even if it was just my imagination, it felt good. I kept walking, found my way back home, and settled gratefully into bed. It was almost midnight when I glanced over at the clock for the last time, rolled over, and tried to fall asleep.

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