Deighton's Code
A Hacker's Interrogation...
Single-Side Transcript 404-D: Glenn Deighton. Sourced from Gyro-Lobe Recorder Implant, Extracted From Subject’s Brain.
Date: March 8th, 2475
Timecode: 18:56:03.22
Geolocation: N/A
“You got this joint locked up airtight, right Steele? Good. Now…let’s kick it from when I got the data in hand.
“What the Board didn’t count on was me being hip-deep in this case. They stripped Miss Damita Jo of every aug, safe for the one I put in her. Tiny sucker right behind the ears, not even a high-end scanner could catch it.
“They thought three agents, a trip downtown, and a tiny headline in the Haven Daily was enough to put her away. Thought they’d finished her off with two seconds in a Comm/Ent newsreel: “Journalist Missing, Whereabouts Unknown.” What’s that, 39 lines of binary? Ace has taken longer pisses than that.
“Then she rolls up: black fur, 5’ 9”, beat up something fierce, but nothing I couldn’t piece back together. Dead to the papers, and standing in my office, letting the smoke from my Cuban wrap her like a Christmas present. And what a prize she came packed with.
“She danced through fire for that code, man. Tangoed with every weak link she could to get it all for me. Wish I could have been there, ‘cept this shit wheelchair don’t take ya where you need to be. Either way, I was there to sew it back to form, and help her sort out the rest.
“We had it all planned, scout’s honor. I made dupes, she gave hers an acid bath, and I handed the dupes off to Mulligan. Mulligan to Lita, then Lita to you. That was how the chain was fixed. And I encrypted them to the nines, only we’d, us in the chain, know how to crack ‘em.
“And then, just like that…it all comes undone. I hand off the hard drives, they get to Mulligan, the chain is set on a course straight to your reader…then, poof, gone. Drives intercepted. Someone blew the whistle on you man, and they let that bastard ring like a bell.
“I hear Mulligan turned up lying face down, no drives. It’s in the fucking feds’ hands now. What was that headline again, “State Defector Dead?” Gave your boy 19 lines, no ambiguity. They got it for sure then.
“I’ll spill what was on them, but you’ll have to take ol’ Glenn Deighton’s word for it. You only got mine to go on. Already sent Damita Splitsville, where the fuzz won’t find her. Besides, she was gathering codes remotely via the implants, she wouldn’t know the numbers if you tried squeezing ‘em out of her.
“What Damita and I dug up was access passes. Little strands of digits to make a cozy pocket in the system. You gotta realize this; you’re digging into a whole world when you climb inside Ace. And I mean a world. It’s like a whole other universe surfing her web. I only got close to jacking in once. Did it with a terminal, when I was stitching the passcodes back together.
“Look, I didn’t see much. She ain’t built for VR…yet. But there’s something, damnit, there is something BREATHING in there. I worked off a real retro rig, like black-and-green days, and even I could feel the pulse of life through the damn cursor. She really is there, something…beyond words. Could almost cry for her if I didn’t know no better.
“How much of the code do I remember? Shit man, that stretches for a mile. The problem is that you have to run it in sequence, stitched ass to elbow…get me a pad, I’ll jot down everything I recall off the top.
“Thanks, here goes nothing. 2357739, 0239403…what’s that knocking?
“Alright, just a gutter or something…whew Glenn, get in the game…1019820, 3284768—alright, the hell that knocking come from? Can’t focus for shit!
“Alright alright, I’ll keep cool. I’ll keep fucking cool. Better be a goddamn drain or something, last thing I need is a hole in the head. Fuck, where was I…ah, I got it. 2348726, 5665657, 27271—”