Hacking the Naked Princess

Dev Manny - Information Technology Private Investigator

by Andy Kaiser

Chapter 0x01

Rain pounded the pavement as I huddled in the doorway.  There were no streetlights here.  Not in this part of town.  Apart from periodic lightning, my phone's display was a rare flash of illumination.  The weak blue light shone on my face and lit my eyes like anemic sparklers.

I glanced up at the sky and squinted into the darkness.  For early evening it was unusually dark.  The black thunderclouds in the sky made sure of that.

I was outside my client's building and was close to my target: A window one story up.

I stepped out from under the roofline and rain attacked my head and shoulders with thousands of tiny punches.  I held up my phone and shielded the lens from rain with one hand as I took a sequence of infrared pictures.  I fell back under the shelter of the building.  I swiped raindrops off the cellphone screen as I zoomed in to examine the results.

Despite my mood, I smiled.

I never liked working in this part of town and I particularly didn't like this client.  Despite the weather outside, it was more annoying inside.  But I was done.  Mission accomplished.  Time to go back in and collect my due, if I could.

Warren Relegaard was the client today.  He may have been Swedish.  Maybe Greenlandian.  Or he was just an American who dressed weird and used a fake accent.  There were plenty of those around, too.

He sat in a brown, oversized, overstuffed armchair.

Some people looked alike.  A husband and wife who lived together and loved each other for fifty years and had the same conversation a hundred times eventually would become mirror images of each other.  They used the same muscle sequences to talk and gesture, the same thought processes to communicate, the same glazed expression to stare at the TV night after night.  Like perpetuates like.

I'm not saying Warren Relegaard was married to his armchair, but I am saying it had been a significant part of his life for fifty years minimum.  It looked like him, all leathery, worn and overstuffed.  I smelled pizza rolls.  That was usually a pleasant experience, but now it creeped me out because I had no idea where the smell came from.  The more I worked with him the less I wanted to work with him.  Dislike perpetuates dislike.

"This night, Mr. Manny," he said in his possibly fake accent, "I do not think you have found what you claim."

"Sorry.  I did."

Relegaard lifted a single thin eyebrow, which was probably an effort on a face with that much excess flesh.  He gestured grandly at me.

I was fluent in non-verbal communication.  It was a job requirement for us, the elite players of my profession.  But non-verbal was for accidental slips, for finding what people didn't want us to know.  I didn't like it when people used it intentionally.  It always seemed forced.  Arrogant.  So I played dumb and continued to stare.

He exhaled a deep sigh, giving me a possible clue as to the origin of the pizza roll smell.

"Please," he overemphasized.  "Tell me what you've accomplished."

"I hate to tell you this," I said, loving this part.  "But it's true.  Your wife's cheating.  And it's happening right now."

He said nothing.  His face reddened and he began to breathe heavily.  Angrily.

That was the kind of non-verbal communication I could work with.

"Now?" he said.  "Upstairs?"

"Yes," I said, not feeling particularly bad.  I'd seen it plenty of times before.

His face got ugly and he pushed with both arms to lean forward in his chair.  "I ask that you prove it, sir."

"Go ahead and log on," I gestured to his tablet sitting on a side table.  It was an older model.  He grabbed it and turned it on.

"Check the link I just sent you."

He opened an application and waited.  He tapped impatiently on his chair.

"This machine.  It is so slow.  Why is that?  How can I make it faster?"

Check for malware.  Don't have twenty unnecessary programs running at all times.  Pay money to get better hardware.

I shrugged.

He checked his mail.  My message redirected him to a private, secure site I used to give information to my clients.  He stared at the file list contained there.

"What are these?"

"Open the first one."

He did.  Five seconds later he realized what he was looking at.  He gasped.

"She's not -"

"She is.  Second file."

He opened that one, too.  Then the rest.  I kept quiet as the photos did all the talking.  I watched his face get redder and darker as he saw uncensored, candid pictures of his wife in very compromising situations.

"I see it.  But I cannot believe it."

"I'm sorry, Warren.  I know you thought better of her, but she's not what you think.  She's cheating."

"No!"

"Yes.  When you go online to play TekMage with her, she wins every time because she's been using a programmable keyboard meant for online gaming.  She cheats.  You never found out, because by the time you got upstairs," I imagined his huge frame navigating a stairwell, "she'd have hidden everything.  She'd have unplugged the gaming keyboard and swapped it out for a five dollar generic keyboard.  After you go back downstairs and keep playing, she's back to cheating."

"That's why she never wanted to play in the same room as me!"

I took shallow breaths in order to avoid the smell of pizza rolls.

"Yeah.  Maybe."

The reason I kept coming back to Warren Relegaard was that while he was cheap and annoying and mysteriously odorous, he paid me in cash and seemed willing to hire me again.  Though this job had been far more personal than the others.  I hoped it hadn't killed our business relationship.  I made a mental note to make up an impressive-looking coupon for future services and send it to him later.

"Okay," I said, readying myself for the next phase of our conversation.  "I'll leave it to you to get the situation under control.  I have the bill.  You get the surveillance photos of her using the device, as well as millisecond-stamped, in-game screenshots to prove she couldn't physically type some commands without special gaming hardware.  I worked for five hours on this.  You know my rates.  I'd like -"

"Yes, yes.  Now we discuss your payment."

Then he tried to justify why my time wasn't worth what I knew it was.

I'm regularly amazed at the number of people who think it's socially acceptable to regularly haggle with someone who makes their living charging by the hour.  It didn't quite convince me to get a normal, dependable salaried job as Information Systems Director at the Corporate Office, but on days like this I gave it a second and third thought.

My name is Dev Manny.  I'm an Information Technology Private Investigator.  My clients call me when they have technological problems.  Some people assume I'll fix their broken printers and upgrade their equipment, and I do: It's easy and routine, part of the occupational churn that pays my bills.

I preferred the exotic cases.  I've been pulled in by the police when they got in over their head.  I've been hired by corporate CEOs when they needed IT covert assistance without having to alert any of their staff.  I had friends in the industry, many of them as good as me or better in information technology.  But while many of them actively looked for complexity, mysteries, and problems the way I did, not many addressed the human element.

IT workers need a primary toolset of intelligence, best practices and the ability to find information online.  I went outside that zone and focused on people.  Their behavior, their personalities, why they behaved the way they did.  Throw in fraud, theft, and, yes, sometimes murder, and you needed more mental tools to handle those situations.  That's where I came in.

Out of all the people I knew in the industry, no one did what I did.  I like to think it was because I was unique, the special little snowflake my mother always told me I could be.  I've also had people tell me it was because no one was stupid enough to drop to my pay scale and undependable wages.

Speaking of income, I was indeed in a dry spell.  I'd had limited work for too long now, nothing I could label a case.  Relegaard's issue might be moderately intriguing, though having to deal with the man himself put this work firmly in the "do not want" category.

I left Relegaard's place shivering and cold from the rain, and also from my wallet's latest addition: A limited number of small bills.

Still, in this case, the exchange of money for information was worth it.  I had a new ability compared to just a few minutes ago.  A power-up, a financial mod, a new level of achievement which put me in a class of people I rarely got to join.

I now had the ability to purchase dinner

Chapter 0x02

I levered myself into my completely untrustworthy 1999 Nissan Sentra and turned the key.  After a blast of automotive profanity which I'm sure would fog the mirrors of any nearby cars, my car grumbled out of Relegaard's snakelike driveway and shuddered in fear as I gained the open road.

I had decided long ago that I liked this car.  Loved it, in fact.  Because the alternative to not having it was to use my feet.  My Sentra was like my first high school relationship: Something that had no business being in public and was in desperate need of lubrication.

My car allowed me to get to one on my favorite haunts, a scummy bar called "Downway," I walked in and dropped into a sticky booth in the corner.

A large, thick roll of brown, misshapen carpet walked up to me and bent over the booth.

"Hey, Manny," it rumbled.

After a second glance, I realized the carpet was actually Ron-Don, the judge, jury, and executioner at Downway.  More importantly, he was the barkeep.  Most importantly, he was the owner.

"How's life, Ron-Don?"

He shrugged.  If any normal human tried the same thing with the same amount of weight, their shoulders would snap.  He made lifting a metric ton of solid muscle look easy.  He'd been some kind of weightlifter years ago, and he still kept in shape.  Seemed like a lot of unnecessary work to me, but, on the other hand, no one caused trouble in Downway, at least not more than once.  It was one of many reasons I liked coming in here: I could use the free wireless in peace.

"I'm living," his voice rumbled.  "You?"

"I won't complain."

"So you got problems then?"

Ron-Don might not look like the most intelligent guy, but you'd be surprised.  He didn't miss much.

"Who doesn't?" I said.  "I won't bore you.  Besides," I pulled out my wallet and flashed him my wad of singles, "I've recently come into some money.  I'd like a burger and your finest glass of caffeine."

"Go crazy, man."

Floorboards protested as he left to place my order.

While I waited, I checked my cellphone and flicked through my existing workload.  I was done with Relegaard.  In the meantime, I was waiting for payment on a few closed cases.  Apart from that, I had nothing else in the hopper.  I'd have to find more work soon, assuming I still wanted to eat in the daily way I'd been accustomed to.

"He's watching you."

I was so intent on staring at my phone, I didn't notice Ron-Don had returned until he spoke.

I blinked up at him.  "What?  Who?"

Ron-Don placed a burger and drink on my table and cocked his head to the side.

"Over there," he muttered.  "Dude in the other corner.  He's by the window."

He was indeed.  He was facing away from me at the moment, and was staring out of the dirty, smudged window.  His face was in partial shadow, so I couldn't see him well.

I slurped what I assumed was warm coffee and began to eat.  Halfway through my burger I pretended to resume work.  I popped open my laptop.  I used the screen as cover as I started my cellphone's camera app.

I casually lifted the phone.  I pointed it towards where the guy was sitting and pretended to examine and frown at something on the screen while I took a movie.

It was the best I could do on short notice.  My actions were probably as transparent as a giggling fanboy who just saw that hot DS9 actress (and let's be honest - there is only one).  But I had to do it - I liked to get things recorded before I did something about them - it was insurance if I needed to get others involved, like the law, or Facebook.

I quickly finished eating.  Strange mysterious watcher or no, dinners I could pay for were rare enough that I didn't want this one interrupted.

I snapped my laptop shut and got ready to go.  I left a depressing ratio of Relegaard's bills on the table, then I headed over to where the guy had been sitting.

He was gone.

I sighed.

What's wrong with our society?  Can't people just talk anymore?

I took out my phone and checked the video I'd just recorded.  I brightened the movie, increased the contrast, and zoomed in to get a better view of the guy.  I played it back.

Ron-Don was incorrect.  He'd used the wrong word.  This was no dude.  It was a kid.  High school at most.  He was dressed like he was homeless, which, combined with the nice cell phone and the ear buds stuck in his ears, meant a rich kid with richer parents.

I was only twenty-six.  I was too young to be called "old" by most, and could sometimes get away with looking younger.  This kid had the opposite trait.  He had something that made him older.  It was written in his appearance, not just his limp dark hair and pale skin, but his attitude, punctuated with an oddly-thin body and gaunt stare.  This kid was messed up.  He'd been through something, and it was big.

I realized what I was doing.  Great Old Ones, I was thinking of this kid as the stereotypical antisocial computer nerd.  I sensed the ghost of Steve Jobs above me, sadly shaking his head.  Well, I mentally shrugged back at Steve, stereotypes are self-perpetuating.  Steve rolled his eyes and disappeared in a puff of cloud computing.

As I watched the video, the kid was working on his phone, just like I'd pretended to do.  He pointed his camera at my own.

He was taking shots of me, just as I'd done to him.

I revised my earlier theory.  The kid hadn't been through something big.  He was in the middle of something big.  And it ended with me.

Chapter 0x03

The mystery kid was gone.  He'd left Downway sometime after I'd recorded him, before I got up and paid my bill.  Just to be sure, I jogged outside and scanned around the dingy parking lot.  It contained many cars, but just one human: Me.

I walked back into Downway and up to the bar.  Ron-Don was there, filling glasses with liquids for two new customers, a guy and a girl.  It caught my attention, because they were the opposite of Downway's usual crowd.  They seemed happy with their lives.

I caught Ron-Don's eye.  He nodded.  He handed the couple their drinks - one light beer and one potion featuring blue liquid and a pineapple slice - and came down the bar to join me.

I had my phone out.  I played the video I'd just shot, and paused it at the point that best showed the kid's face.  It was an almost-profile, showing an intense face angled in shadow, the dark hair falling partially over one eye.  I was impressed with my accidental stylistic excellence.  Give the kid male-pattern baldness and a lens flare, and it could be Joss Whedon's graduation photo.

I showed it to Ron-Don.

"Have you seen him here before?"

"Before today?  Nope."

"Would you remember if you saw him again?"

"Sure."

"You see where I'm going with this, right?"

"You want me to let you know if he comes in here again."

"Bingo."

"I can do that."

"Thanks, Ron-Don." I pushed a bunch of bills over to him. The denomination made the the pile less impressive than it should've been, but it was my thought that counted.

He pushed them back.  "You need these more than I do."

"Yeah?  How do you know?"

His expression indicated the answer was obvious.  I didn't argue.  I nodded my thanks and re-increased the width of my wallet by a few millimeters.

If the kid was following me, I might have a problem.  Unless he regularly went around recording strangers for fun, he and maybe others were keeping tabs on me.  I had to find him, or find out why I was on his radar.  Preferably both.

I straightened up and got ready to leave.

"What do you think?" I asked Ron-Don, nodding briefly at the couple at the other end of the bar.  Whatever it was they were talking about, it required a lot of flirtatious laughter and touching of the upper arms.

His eyes flicked over to them and back to me.  He grunted, and again showed off his impressive shrugging ability.

"Married."

"Those two?  They're not married."

I saw no clues to indicate that.  There were no angry glares, no unspoken passive-aggressive behavior, no bitter mutterings while the other one pretended not to listen.

"They're married," he said.  "But not to each other."

I looked again and absorbed.  He was right.  I saw it.  From their body language, they had something to hide.  Both bent toward each other, as if sharing a secret.  That meant they were into each other, but there was more: Every time a patron came in or left, both of them would drop their smiles and throw guilty looks at the door.  They weren't supposed to be here.  They were doing something illicit.  Forbidden.

I looked at Ron-Don with a new appreciation.

"Their body language and situational awareness," I said.  "You're good.  Get some IT training and you could go into my profession."

That made him laugh.  Several customers shot frightened stares in our direction.  He dropped into a gravelly chuckle, sounding like a fully-loaded 6U server being pulled out slowly on old rails.  He shook his head.

"No, man.  No way.  I don't care about your crap."

"Then how do you know -"

"Look at them," he gestured with a tree trunk that was probably his arm.  "They're that age, together, and came here?  Not the usual couple for my place.  One is hiding something.  Or both of them are.  They also didn't know who was going to pay for the drinks.  It took them a second before the guy said he'd pay.  Then the girl looked away, and he looked guilty as all hell.  It'll end soon enough for them."

"What?  Why?"

"It's fun sneaking around, until you get used to it.  Then you lose the joy.  The excitement.  When I look at a couple like that," he shook his head, disgusted, "I just feel sorry for them, because I see their future.  I see their decay."

I'd never asked the details of Ron-Don's past, but I now knew to never set him up with anyone.

"Ron-Don, it's a wonder no lucky lady's swept you off your feet."

He snorted.

"It's like I'm looking in a mirror."

Chapter 0x04

My office, in the tradition of low-rent buildings everywhere, was not a particularly useful place.  It was somewhere to send the bills, for those clients clutching so tight to the archaic past that they couldn't send me electronic payments.  It was just somewhere to be, or eat, and often a place to sleep.  While awake, I could just as easily go elsewhere.

Not today.  Today, my office fulfilled an additional need: It was a private place to meet.  I sat, bored and emotionally rumpled, waiting for a visitor.  A potential client. I was waiting for "Oober."

Oober was a self-described hacker.  I'd done a little research before this meeting, and traced a few of his online adventures, so I had at least a rough idea of who he was.  From what I'd seen, he seemed young and inexperienced, but was also intelligent and learning fast.  Along with the usual script-kiddie stuff, Oober had managed some minor hacks from zero-day systems exploits and had done basic social engineering.

Put simply: Oober was new to the scene, but was learning.

An aspect about this situation was odd: Oober wanted to physically meet me.  It was strange because a hacker who knew what he was doing shouldn't want - or need - to be here.

This kid should be as tech-savvy as a drunk is thirsty.  Technophiles prefer to communicate with an alpha strike of hardware, software, and wetware.  Efficiency, speed, convenience, and cost were factors, but here I'd received an email asking to meet at my office at this time on this day.

I assumed speaking would be involved, and again that was strange.  Eye contact was old-school, reserved for dealing with mundanes.  Given the right situation, face-to-face was for when you were excluding technology.  It was for desperate measures.

Maybe that's what this was.  Maybe Oober was desperate.

My phone buzzed.

My security cameras had picked up a car pulling up outside my building.  I watched the camera's video stream on my phone.  I verified I got a good capture of the car's license plate.

There had been multiple times in the past where I'd been surprised by visitors to my office, sometimes violently.  I hate violence almost as much as I hate surprises, so both together had been doubly irritating.  I'd vowed not to let either happen again, and that led to my monitoring system.

A woman got out.  A second person remained waiting in shadow in the back seat of the car.

She was obviously here to see me, because she looked around conspicuously as she approached my building.  Almost all of my clients did that, though none had found my camera.  The tiny lens sat recessed inside of a rusted metal sign reading "Beware of Grue."  No client had yet asked what a grue actually was, but the warning did its job and put people on their guard, and - ideally - me in control.

Another part of a visitor's concern was my neighborhood - it was uglier than my Yoda lunchbox.  There were only two positives about my legally-recognized work and home address.  One was the tax write-off.  The other was that I never got any door-to-door sales of the many flavors of candy bars or religions.

Of my newer clients, only a few knew what it meant to be an Information Technology Private Investigator, so first impressions often began with some confusion.  But what my job lacked in clarity, it made up for with intrigueability.  And while that last word had debatable validity, the fact that I just used it with confidence proved my point - sounding competent was sometimes better than actually being competent.

I pretended to be surprised as the door to my office opened.  I looked up from my phone and smiled at the non-video representation of the woman as she stepped in.

"Mr. Manny?  Are you Dev Manny?"

"Only when people want to see me."

She smiled faintly at my attempt at a joke, but her dark eyes told me she had a problem.

She couldn't be called "old," but was still older than me: She was in her thirties, or maybe early forties.  She'd pulled back her dark brown, shoulder-length hair into a stubby, slightly messy pony tail.  She'd dressed in a bad guess at style.  Her look was like a Flash-based website - it was full of bad decisions, good intentions, and was years out of date.

She was worried.  This wasn't time for chatter.  While social pressure rarely dampened my personality, this was different: She might have real, government-guaranteed, spendable money.  While I wasn't the smartest guy around, I wasn't stupid enough to get between a client and my bank account.

I tried my best to look like what I thought she was expecting.

"Call me Dev.  How can I help you?"

She glanced around, distrusting the look of my office.  That was okay, because I didn't trust my office either.  The ancient paneling, disorder, and faint musty smell didn't quite scream "technology professional."

"It's okay," I said.  "I get a lot of people here, with a lot of problems spanning a lot of topics.  I'm a technology guy, and I'm a private investigator.  Put those two together, and I'll help you with any tech-based problem you can come up with.  Or," I winced at having to even speak the next three words, "your money back."

In a normal situation, I would then offer her a chair to sit on, and some instant coffee to sip.  But since I had only one chair - currently occupied - and the coffee tools were part of a fascinating but long-term fungal experiment, I let her make the next move.

She opened her mouth.  Words tumbled out of it.

"My son wants to talk to you.  He needs help.  His friend is missing."

I took a mental step back.

"Well," I said, being careful not to sound dismissive.  "My specialty isn't missing persons.  I can introduce you to my contacts at the police.  Maybe they could -"

"No police.  You know my son, Mr. Manny.  His name is Westley.  Westley Miller.  He's just a child, and I didn't want him coming here by himself.  He wanted your help.  He's waiting in the car now, and he was going to come up after -" she looked at the ceiling and sighed, "- after he 'finishes the reconnaissance.'"

I queried my mental contact lists, and returned with a negative.

"I'm sorry," I said.  "I really don't know who -"

"Mom!  You're not supposed to tell him my name!"

Westley Miller stood in my doorway.  I'm sure I had him recorded from the car to whatever route he took to get to where he was now, but it probably wasn't necessary.  Mrs. Miller had been right.  I did know Westley, with his dark, limp hair hanging partially in his face.

He was the kid who'd been recording me at Downway.

"You're Dev Manny," Westley said.  "I'm Oober.  We really gotta talk."

Chapter 0x05

After a moment, I spoke and tried to recover from my surprise.

"Oh.  That Westley Miller."

"Mom, just give us a minute, okay?"

Mrs. Miller looked at me, clearly uncomfortable.  This could be tricky.

"I know we've just met, Mrs. Miller -"

"That's Miss Miller."

Strike one.

"Sorry, Miss Miller.  I know we've just met, but check my website for plenty of referrals.  I understand if you're not comfortable leaving Oober -"

"That's Westley."

I was on a roll.

"- and I'm willing to point you to clients, police contacts, and others who can vouch for my quality of work.  You can trust me."

"Trust?  No."  She flapped a hand dismissively.  "I was more worried about the bill.  I don't have much -"

It's the little things in life that make me happy: My turn to interrupt.

"Not a problem.  Let me just talk to your son alone for a few minutes.  No charge until I really start working.  You'll get your money's worth.  Whatever I get paid should satisfy both of us."

I hated to give those kinds of promises, but sometimes they were needed.  And in this case, it was what Miss Miller wanted to hear.  She left me and Oober to talk alone in my office.

The kid hunched further into himself.  He looked haunted, eyes staring at something I couldn't see.

"Do you know P@nic?"

"I'm sorry?"

He spelled it for me.  "She's my - friend.  Actually, I'm in love with her.  I guess."  His dark eyes flicked past me and he smiled slightly.

"We're both hackers."

This kid's chosen profession made it clear why he came to me, and not the police.  They'd want more information from him than he was comfortable giving.  Me?  I'd just get to work and fix his problem.

"I've been hanging out with P@nic for like months now.  Online and off.  She's awesome.  I've really been learning a lot from her.  We were pretty tight.  And then she -"  He paused to think, and shook his head.  "She just dropped off.  Haven't heard from her in like five days.  She hasn't been online.  No forums.  No channels.  She's not even at her house."

"You're going to have to back up a bit," I said.  "First, who exactly is P@nic?  How did you meet?  How do you know there's something wrong?"

"You sound like my shrink," Oober said, smirking.

"You see a psychiatrist?" I said, surprised.  He couldn't have been more than fifteen.

"He's no psychiatrist.  Definitely a shrink.  I've got antisocial personality disorder.  It could escalate and eventually become a serious societal threat.  I need a program of positively-reinforced behavioral modification and drug therapy."

Kids grow up so fast.

"Your shrink told you this?"

"No.  But I read through his notebooks one time when he left the room.  I made copies.  You want one?"

"Yeah, I might."  I logged a mental note not to leave any room Oober was in.  "I get in trouble at school a lot.  Not my fault, though.  There's a couple guys with heat on me.  It really bugs my mom when I get home all beat up.  She cries a lot.  My dad left a long time ago."

By his bored tone, he'd obviously said these things before, and often.  His apathy looked like a defense mechanism from what was a nasty situation.  Instead of rehashing a recent psychological evaluation, I tried to move to the more pressing question, the reason he came, the method by which I would somehow scrape together another few dinners.

"What about P@nic?  How does she fit into this?"

"She was new at school," he smiled, remembering.  "She didn't really fit in.  A lot of the other girls wouldn't talk to her because she ignored their crap.  Or they didn't care about what she was interested in.  But she talked to me."

"What about?  Tell me more."

Oober was right.  I did sound like a shrink.  Information technology private investigating required a little something of everything, including the study of an unreliable, buggy, complex, neuron-based computer.

"It started easy.  I don't really talk to people unless I have to.  But like on day one, she turned around in her chair and asked to borrow some paper.  I gave her some.  After like the eighth time of that, we started talking.  Turns out we got lots in common.  Like we're both hackers."

He'd used that word again, but I wasn't sure exactly how he meant it.  "Hacker" had a lot of definitions.  For most humans in meatspace, "hacker" is derogatory.  It's the definition we get in movies, and describes the bad guy or Angelina Jolie who breaks into computer systems and causes havoc.  The correct definition describes someone so interested in figuring out the world, they love taking things apart to see how they work, or solving a problem for the sheer challenge of it.  Often these included networks and servers, but not always.  A hacker may describe a person, but it's also a pretty sweet philosophy.

I nodded, accepting Oober's self-generated certificate of authenticity.  If that's what he wanted to call himself, I'd soon find out the detail of how he meant it.

"How did you find out you were both hackers?"

"She told me about all the systems she broke into.  Started out with our school network and the teachers-only databases.  I had no idea how she did it, but it sure was cool."

One question answered, then.  P@nic was more talented, and Oober was more of a newb.

"Then we started getting together after school.  And that was even better, because then she showed me!"

"Showed you what?"

Shrink mode: Fully engaged.

"At her place.  Her parents were never there and we hung out.  She showed me her hacking tools."

A script-kiddie, then.  It was just a couple kids who got their hands on a few free tools easily found online.

"So what were you doing?" I asked.  "Pen-testing?  SQL injection?  Brute-force stuff?"

"Some of that, yeah," he shrugged.  "Then she showed me her zombie botnets."

Uh oh.

I can admit when I'm wrong.  It happens a lot.  The last two words of his sentence told me that P@nic was far more advanced than I thought.  Playing around with common scripts and tools was one thing.  But to have your finger on thousands of malware-infected computers?  That moved the conversation up another level.  Or five.

"When we started hanging out, her systems were in the middle of a DDoS attack against some botnet in Romania.  It was like a game - they were trying to see who could knock each other offline first.  She won."

Oober was a kid who not only needed someone to talk to, but seemed to trust me with some very illegal information.  So, no police.  He sure couldn't tell this story to the school guidance counselor.  Going to a religious confessional would only scare the poor priest.

But unlike a priest, it wasn't my job to pass judgment or wear funny clothes.  Unlike a guidance counselor, it wasn't my job to offer advice.

My job was to solve.

"How did P@nic disappear?" I said.  "What do you think happened to her?"

Oober's face dropped from wistful to worried.

"I don't know.  Besides the botnet stuff, she talked about security hacking.  She's like that.  She's always trying new things.  Like her brain can't keep still and she needs to hop from one thing to another.  She told me once she hates being bored.  Like it actually, really scares her."

I could empathize, though my method of boredom management wasn't quite the same.  Even still, I was really starting to respect P@nic.  I could see already what Oober found attractive about her.  She was smart and did exciting, dangerous things.  If I were Oober's age, I'd probably fall in love with her, too.

So yeah: I was more than willing to help.

"She found something," Oober said.  "In one of her hacks.  She found some information.  After she found it, she disappeared."

He dug around in his pocket and fished out a piece of paper.  He stared at it a moment, then looked back at me.

"All her stuff's encrypted.  I don't know any of her passwords - she typed way too fast for me to catch anything.  She hardly ever wrote stuff down.  But I found this."

He handed me the paper.  I looked at it:

dante collection
patient zero
agent_from_harm
dragon_bawls
minotaur
chixor zed

"That's all I got," Oober said.  "I have no idea what it means."

"It's okay," I said.  My eyes were locked on the list.  I felt a chill, and it had nothing to do with my office's struggling A/C.  It had everything to do with the hastily-scrawled list glaring back at me.  I looked back at Oober.

"You mind if I copy this?"

"Yeah, sure.  Why?"

"I know what this is."

"What?"  He was surprised.

"The first line is the tipoff.  Have you ever heard of 'AnonIt'?"

His expression and quick head shake gave me an answer, so I continued.

"AnonIt is a contest.  A hacking contest.  It's run once every year.  If a hacker or hacking group can complete the goal, they get bragging rights.  Those are huge, plus they get access to people who might want their ability.  Depending on which government is hiring, that could mean a lot of money.  The goals are incredibly tough.  And always illegal.  Except to design the contest and confirm the winners, the AnonIt admins stay quiet, and always anonymous."

"So how do you know -"

"I'm not in the hacking community.  I'm an Information Technology Private Investigator.  But I lurk.  Enough to know when anything big happens.  Like this."  I waved the piece of paper: "The latest AnonIt contest started a couple months ago.  Guess what the goal for the contest is?"

I held up the paper so he could read it.

He looked from the paper to me.

"The Dante collection."

"You catch on quick."

"Yeah, man, I do.  So what's the Dante collection?"

"That," I said.  "I don't know.  Not yet.  I need to do some research.  Give me a little time, okay?"

"Yeah, okay, I guess."

"Give me a way to get in touch with you.  Another day or so and you'll hear back from me."

I knew exactly where I needed to go next.

It was time to venture back to a place I'd loved and hated.  It was a place of possibility and stagnation.  It was where heavy conformity taught me what it meant to be an individual.  It was where I'd met people who defined their lives by what they couldn't do, and where others were destined to change the world.

Time for school.

Chapter 0x06

Oober left my office, leaving me to work on his problem.  I knew that the "Dante collection" was a goal of the AnonIT hacking competition.  I had to learn what the Dante collection contained, so I had to learn more about the competition itself.  Unlike most of life's problems, this wasn't something I could Google and get an answer 0.34 seconds later.

I was an information technology private investigator.  For this particular IT problem, I needed to do what my profession demanded.  I had to investigate the old-fashioned way, with shoes and neurons.  I needed to find other humans who knew more than I did, and I had to ask them questions.  Pre-search engine techniques are inefficient and slow, but they still have their uses.

I didn't have much use for college.  Educationally, I mean.  I went because I was supposed to go - my parents insisted it would bring me success and student loans beyond my wildest dreams.

During my brief college career, I'd realized two things.  The first was that college was a great place to "find myself."  The cliche was true, particularly in meeting friends who really supported the weirder parts of my personality.  The second thing I'd learned was how not to learn.  Memorizing the best methods for GPU-CPU load balancing missed the point.  Real-world experience was better, and you can't get that in a classroom.  College was a productive waste of time.

Dozens of living proofs of my opinions were in front of me now.  I'd gone to the North Grove Technical College, and had arrived at the "FRAT House."

It was late, after midnight.  Most normals would be sleeping.  I was right on time.

The FRAT House, like much in the technical world, was confusing for outsiders unless they knew the acronym.  In this case, "FRAT" stood for "Fragging, RPGs, Advanced Tactics."  I suppose the expanded version was still pretty confusing.  It didn't help that one acronym contained another.

I stood in the entryway and imagined what an innocent, uncorrupted freshman would think of this place.  They'd notice the smell first, a mix of Italian and Chinese.  Not the nationalities, the food: Just a few doors down from this building was "Huey Meng," a cheap, greasy, amazing Chinese delivery place.  Next door was "Eat Pizza," equally cheap and greasy, and they served only one thing, but they did it well.  Both places were kept alive by a river of credit card transactions from the FRAT House.

The House itself was a wide basement room in Walker Hall, the oldest building on North Grove Tech's campus.  Rows of abused cafeteria tables spanned most of the room in uneven, barely-parallel rows.  Many were topped by chaotic collections of cables, monitors, laptops, and custom gaming rigs.  Students hunched over these.  Most wore headphones and microphone headsets.

Periodically, synchronized expletives rang through the air, as those on the same teams dealt and received electronic nastiness.  I could tell which users had rented the equipment, based on how violent they were with the keyboards, mice, and joysticks.

Boiled down to its essence, the FRAT House was a pay-at-the-door gaming and gathering center for like-minded geeks.  As the acronym implied, those geeks came here to participate in fragging (which encompassed all sorts of video games hosted on high-performance computers) and other games (board, card, and role-playing games [the classic RPGs, often with actual printed books]).

I wished I could game more myself.  I used to.  These days I had no time, being more concerned with feeding a family of three: Me, myself and I.

I examined the roomful of players.  I needed someone technically skilled.  I didn't much care about gameplay, but instead checked out their gaming rigs.  I ignored each player unless they'd brought in their own custom-built PC.  Transparent cases were best, as I was able to covertly check out what hardware they'd used inside.

I got lucky and found my guy in less than a minute.  He was exactly what I needed.  To speak spintronically, I couldn't have found a better diamond with nitrogen impurities.

The guy's rig had multi-CPUs with a double-digit core total, memory slots stuffed to bursting, a RAID 0 SSD array, and a video card heat sink big enough to put out a bonfire.

As proof that he wasn't just borrowing the case from a roommate, the kid was running Linux and had several windows open - he was gaming in two of them, making heavy use of keyboard macros.  He was examining program code in two other windows.

I looked over the guy's shoulder and checked out his code.  It was freakish, like the result of an orgy between BASIC, assembly, and a Caps Lock key.

Sweet spawn of Cthulhu, this guy was coding in Fortran.  For fun.

Here sat an extremely competent software nerd.  He was exactly the kind of person I needed to talk to.

"Hey, man, you got a second?"

He hit a key sequence on his keyboard, and his monitor went blank.  The kid leaned back in his chair and looked up at me.  Messy dark hair hung into his skinny pale face.

I knew this guy's type.  He wouldn't appreciate wasted time.  So I'd get to the point.

"Hey.  I'm working on the AnonIT competition.  I need info on the 'Dante collection.'"

I paused to see if he wanted to respond yet.  He didn't.  He just stared.

"I was hoping to learn more about the Dante collection, whatever it is.  Got any detail on the competition?  Have you heard of it?"

No response.

"I haven't been to the FRAT House in a while.  Can you point me to anyone else who might be able to help?  Got any friends into hacking?"

He nodded at me, considering, then he spoke.  "Hey.  Piss off."

He turned away from me and secured headphones over his ears.  He unlocked his screen and continued his work.

I sighed.  I'd screwed up.  He probably thought I was a clueless, bumbling cop.  Or, if not, I was interrupting someone who operated with more focus than a Fresnel lens.  In fact, this applied to any video gamer here - all were playing millisecond-timed matches, and would probably give me millisecond-length responses, with no immediate help.

That left the tabletop gamers.  I threaded toward the back of the room.  There, multi-stained couches and metal foldout chairs were corralled to form non-electronic gaming areas.  Several groups of students sat playing a variety of games.

I took in the action.  I saw games of ShadowWalk and Mage: The Collecting.  A group in the corner was role-playing a campaign of Transhuman.

ShadowWalk and M:TC were both fantasy games, and the Transhuman world was high-tech.  I needed to talk to people interested in that kind of world.  I headed to the corner game.  There were three character players and one Game Master.  They sat in a circle around a table.  In front of the players there were collections of paper, snacks, and drinks.  Each gamer had a character sheet, in order to better act out their hero in this create-the-story-as-you-go game.  The GM was in the middle of a soliloquy, apparently as a villain doing his "reveal the ultimate plan" part of the story.

Instead of interrupting, I stood to the side, waiting for the GM to finish speaking and acknowledge me.  Back in my day, role-playing garners were a friendly subset.  I hoped that was still the case.

The GM paused and glanced at me.  I nodded a hello and offered an appropriate smile.  His eyes narrowed.  The rest of the table noticed and looked up at me.

Years ago, I could name everyone in this room, but now I registered nothing but strangers.  I was 26 - pretty young by my perspective - but here I felt old, like a wheel-chair-bound geezer coming back to visit a decades-dead childhood playground.

I felt bad about interrupting their game, but my current job might depend on it.  In this case, hunger won out over not breaking gameplay.

I took a breath to speak, to introduce my problem in a way that didn't come across as creepy or desperate, to show them that I needed help while proving that I was competent on my own.  It was a delicate combination, but I thought I could pull it off.

"I'm looking for a hacker -"

I got out that much before the GM spoke over me.

"The Explorer looks angry," the GM said to his group, and they refocused their attention on the game.  "He lifts up his hands, palms out, and closes his eyes..."

"No!"  A big guy with a beard said.  "Somebody stop him!  I'm still paralyzed.  I can't -"

"Next turn, you'll be back to normal," said the GM.

"S'okay.  I got this," said another player, a girl with a thick, dyed-red braid running all the way down her back.  She consulted her character sheet, and then looked back at the GM.  "Epiphany starts running at The Explorer.  All out.  I want to slam into him and break his concentration before he finishes whatever he's about to do."

"Too late," the GM said with a grin.  "He finishes the sequence.  You sense the Method kick in.  He starts Slow Time."

The girl winced.  "I'll do what I can anyway.  I launch myself at him."

I saw the third and last player come to attention, a short kid, wearing dark clothes and a wispy goatee.  The GM looked at him.  "You doing anything, Lynx?"  After receiving a head-shake in reply, the GM looked back at the big bearded guy, who was eager to speak.

"I'm back in action?"

"Yeah," the GM said.  "Your nanobots clean up the toxins.  You can move again."

"Good.  Because I'm mad: Shiretoko goes into full assault.  Max speed, max effort.  I bring out both my disruptors.  Activate them.  Throw them at The Explorer.  Slice and dice, man, slice and dice."

The GM nodded.

"Okay, here's what happens: The Explorer kicks off Slow Time.  Epiphany jumps at The Explorer.  Shiretoko throws his disruptors, but just a few feet from his hands, they almost stop, just inching forward, as time slows down."

He nodded at the girl.  "Same with Epiphany.  You've jumped for a tackle, arms out, both feet off the ground, but are barely moving in midair.  Everybody's vision starts to fade to black as light itself crawls around you.  It's really hard to breathe  As consciousness fades, the last sound all of you hear is The Explorer.  He's laughing, just like he did after he killed Shiretoko's brother."

The big bearded guy grimaced and shook his head.  He had tears in his eyes.  "Damn that bastard."

The GM seemed about to continue, then he paused.  He thought for a few seconds.

He looked up at me and smiled.

Uh, oh.

I'd seen that look before.  I knew exactly what it meant and what was about to happen.  But I wasn't prepared.  I had nothing.

"Shiretoko, Epiphany, and Lynx.  You all wake up, though you're barely conscious.  You can't see or feel anything."

The big bearded guy nodded eagerly.

"I activate Mind Expansion.  I go online."

"Once you start the connection," the GM said, "it's immediately hijacked by another being.  It identifies itself as 'Sphere.'  It starts to talk."

The GM slid me a piece of paper.  I picked it up and read his scrawled note.

You interrupt my game right at the end of my scenario?  Then you gotta pay for the privilege.  You better be good.  Wow me.

The group of four looked up at me.  The big bearded guy and the girl seemed confused.  The GM and the quiet kid just watched expectantly.

I thought about my options, and then shrugged.  I was on a case and I needed help.  If this game was the pitfall, I'd just grab a vine and start my swing.

I took a deep breath, then grabbed an empty chair and sat at the table.  Both were good stalling tactics, but I couldn't delay any more.  Time to talk.

"Hm.  Well, I suppose I'm The Sphere.  Or just Sphere.  Whatever."

The GM glared at me with +4 Eyes of Irritation.

My problem wasn't one of shyness or inexperience.  I knew they wanted to hear me speak and I knew the rules of the game.  But I was out of practice.  Being asked to make a random, unplanned DRPG appearance in the middle of a storyline wasn't unheard of, but it was tricky.

I hadn't gamed in years.  I rebooted my mind's VM to an earlier image, that of a younger Dev Manny, a kid more concerned with technology and games than with homework, who got his lulz by solving problems, who needed no fuel besides imagination and caffeine.

"Shiretoko," I said.  I dropped my voice to Intense and Serious.  "You're angry.  You want to avenge your brother.  I've been sent to tell you how close you are to your goal, and how to get even closer."

"Who sent you?"

"Our shared ally wishes to reveal itself at a later time."

The big bearded guy playing Shiretoko nodded solemnly.  Good, he was into it.  If the players would accept my performance, the GM would, too.

"I tell you of a Portal Monk," I said.  "She was different, for she loved the night and hated the day.  The glowing stars and traveling moon were her intimates, her inner peace.  But she grew angry, because the day stole her energy, and made her sleep through her beloved night.  So, being a Portal Monk, she created a Method.  One that would enable her to move past the day quickly."

I looked around.  The players were listening, eager to hear where I was going with this.  The GM wasn't.  He was grinning.

"This monk's power...  She learned how to accelerate time."

The Transhuman game had two core game books and three major expansions, all packed with characters, powers, and story ideas.  Years ago, I had them all memorized.  Today, no.  But I remembered enough.

"Oh!"  The girl with the long braid got my point.  The quiet, wispy-goatee kid was now grinning along with her.  The big bearded guy leaned forward, not yet seeing the connection, and was waiting with his eyes locked on mine.  I continued.

"The monk's name is 'Ko' and the Method she built is called 'Overclock.'  Shiretoko, seek out the Portal Monks and beg them to teach you Ko's Method.  Then train your teammates.  They need you.  So does the memory of your brother."

I spread my hands to include everyone at the table.

"At your next battle, when The Explorer slows down time, you will use Overclock.  Overclock will counter the effects of Slow Time and you will all remain unaffected.  By the time the Explorer realizes this, it will be too late.  Use this power to attack.  Shiretoko, avenge your brother!  Take this opportunity... to slice and dice."

I sat back, finished.  Silence oozed around us.

The big bearded guy slammed the table with both hands.  His eyes shone with excitement.

"Oh yeah," he said.  "This is gonna seriously rock."

"So," the GM said to me.  "You're looking for a hacker?  Lynx here is who you wanna talk to."  He nodded at the kid with the wispy goatee.  The kid shrugged and looked at me curiously.

While I didn't know this kid's ability or influence, I was farther than I'd been before.  This was a chance to drill deeper into the hacking community, and to learn more about AnonIT and the Dante collection.

"I'm Dev," I said to the kid.  "Good to meet you."

He nodded.

It was the same with role-playing games as it was with life: The quiet characters are often the most interesting.

Chapter 0x07

"So what do you want, anyway?"  Lynx pushed away from the table and shoved a headset in his ear.

I liked the straightforward question.  It meant I could give equally straightforward responses.  If everyone in the world was like this, conversations would actually be worth the effort.

"I'm an Information Technology Private Investigator."

"Wow.  I have no idea what that is."

"I get that a lot.  I'm investigating a problem.  There's a file in the hacker community, a secret archive.  It's called the 'Dante collection.'  It's connected to the AnonIT hacking competition."

While I talked, he'd been fiddling with his headset and poking at his cell phone.  He stopped, and looked at me with narrowed eyes.

"It's not really 'hacker' these days," he said.  "A hacker is a person interested in how things work, someone who loves taking things apart.  I mean, if you're talking about script-kiddies or crackers, even social engineers -"

"Semantics aside, I need to find more about this Dante collection.  I need help from people who have it, or know people who have it.  It's important - it's about a missing person."

He considered, then nodded to himself.  He pointed with his cell phone.

"Let's talk outside."

We weren't far from my office.  Close enough that I'd walked.  Not that I wanted exercise or anything.  More like the walk would do my car good.  The heap of rusted alloy was already on life support, and every use pushed it closer to its automotive flatline.

I wasn't a big outdoors guy.  I appreciated it when I was forced to, like when the power was out, or when there was a gas leak.  I stared around as we walked, waiting for Lynx to speak.  I took in Nature's special effects: nice frame rate and resolution.  The moon hung low and pale, like a gigantic low-watt LED bulb.  The wind forced me to shiver and dig my chin a little deeper into my coat collar.

Lynx was again poking at his cell phone.  I saw he was playing a port of Nethack.  I gave him a look of polite expectation.  He caught my eyebrow-initiated cue.

"I don't want anyone else to hear.  What we're talking about isn't exactly legal."

He kept his voice low.  I couldn't tell if he was being secretive, or if he really was one of those naturally shy people.  His next sentence cleared up any confusion.

"I tried the AnonIT competition.  Failed it hard.  But I know one of the winners, Minotaur.  He showed me the Dante Collection."

Just what I needed.  If this kid had access to someone with the Dante Collection, I could figure out how it related to P@nic, the missing hacker, and maybe learn where she'd gone, why she was missing.  Then her infatuated friend Oober would be happy because his love interest would be returned.  I'd be happy, because I'd have brought a very unique girl back into the hacking community.  Maybe I could even figure out a way to get paid.

So far, I was lucky - this was a pretty straightforward case.  No surprises.  Just the way I like it.

Lynx's thumb paused over his cell phone screen, and his eyes unfocused.  He leaned closer to me.  He didn't make eye contact.  His cheeks burned an embarrassed red.

"Hey.  Just so we get this out of the way now... In the Dante Collection..."

He took a shaky breath before continuing.  The kid had tears in his eyes.

"I've seen the naked princess."

Chapter 0x08

A lot of my success isn't about knowing anything (though it makes things easier).  It's not about having the right tool for the job (though I never go anywhere without my Leatherman multitool).

Success comes from the right reaction to a given situation.

I've seen the naked princess, Lynx had said.  I had no clue what that meant, so I used my standard exception handler.

I nodded knowingly.

"Yeah," I said.  "The naked princess.  Keep talking."

Lynx looked at me like I was crazy.

"If you knew anything about it, you wouldn't say that."

"Why?"

Now his look turned suspicious.  He moved a step away from me.

"You better tell me why you want to know."

Generally I don't give out the names of my clients.  Not if I can help it.  On the other hand, since I was the only Information Technology Private Investigator I was aware of, I got to make the rules, like the just-now-created Rule Seventeen: An ITPI is allowed to share data in order to progress on a case.

"I'm working for Oober.  He brought me in because another hacker is missing.  P@nic dropped completely off the grid."

Lynx blinked a couple times, then nodded to himself.  He slipped his cell phone into his pocket and gave me his full attention.

"I don't know Oober.  Never talked with P@nic, but I heard about him.  The guy's a wizard.  I'll tell you what I know."

Lynx's mental firewall had changed from no entry to all ports open.  Just the mention of P@nic's name was enough to get him comfortable, though he didn't know P@nic well enough to know she was a girl.

"I bailed out early on the competition," Lynx said.  "It was way over my head.  Later, I tried to contact the winners, to see what they did.  Chixor Zed wasn't real friendly.  But Minotaur was pretty cool, and showed me what he did to break into the target.  None of the others would talk."

His mention of Chixor Zed and Minotaur confirmed my theory about the list Oober had given me.  The names listed under the "dante connection" header were a list of winners, or other competitors.

"How did he win?"

I'd said the words casually, though the question was anything but.  This was one of the reasons I'd started my own ITPI practice, why I didn't have a job that paid better and had benefits beyond the strange smell in my office.  I was interested in how things worked, what made things succeed and fail, and being an ITPI was a great way to experience this.  While I needed to periodically afford dinner and rent, I needed more in life: The best reward for solving a case was the opportunity to solve another.

Here, I had the chance to learn about elite-level hacking, and what it took to be in that select group.  Here I had an express elevator to the top mental floor.

"It was a nasty one," Lynx said.  "You know anything about this year's AnonIT?"

"I know that the goal of the competition was to get the Dante Collection."

"Right.  The Dante Collection is a file archive.  The archive was located on a secured, limited-access, fully-protected storage array of a multinational corporation."

Then he said the company name.  You and I and several billion earthlings would certainly recognize the name and logo.

My mouth dropped open slightly.

"Yeah, I know," Lynx said.  "Getting in wasn't easy.  And since it was -" he spoke the company name again, preceded by a culturally-overused but appropriate expletive, "- they know security, obviously, so anyone trying to hack them better be elite, or they'd get Mitnicked awful fast."

"What was the hack?"

"He installed a covert WAP in the lobby of the building where one cluster of the hosting servers was located.  He used that to remotely access the wired network.  Then he installed keyloggers on a few PCs and damaged a few things to get admins to sign on and fix what he did.  He used those logged admin credentials to break through an internal DMZ to get to the target storage array.  Then he just FTP'd the Dante Collection to his own server."

"Nice kung-fu."

Lynx stood a little straighter.  "Minotaur got in with a mixture of physical access, social engineering, and hacking.  This was way beyond kung-fu.  This was MMA."

Hearing stories of massive hacks was either fascinating or a disappointment.  Sometimes I was let down, like when you guessed a magician's trick in the middle of a performance.  But this hack was definitely in the first camp.  It required guts, confidence, planning, luck, and a very solid skillset.

"He told me that from surveillance to traveling onsite to monitoring and hacking, the whole process took about a month."

"Seriously?" I was even more impressed.  "That's really fast."

"Minotaur is really sick."

"So, he got the Dante Collection," I said, trying to parse the logistics.  "But how did the AnonIT judges know he really did what he said he did?"

"They have a mole inside the company.  They knew something more about the collection, about what files the Dante archive contained.  There was one file unique to the collection.  One file, that, if you owned it, it meant you had access to the Dante collection archive.  That file is a picture.  Once you see it, you know why it's kept so secure."

"This picture is the 'naked princess?'"

He swallowed and nodded.

"It's... probably the freakiest thing I've ever seen.  I wish I'd never even looked."

"What is it?  Porn?  Violence?  Republican talking points?"

"I don't even want to think about it."  My attempt at defusing the tension had failed.  His eyes were haunted.  He actually looked ill.  I figured I had only seconds before he'd either refuse to talk, or he'd vomit.  Either action would end the conversation in a way I'd not prefer.

"Come on, one picture can't be that bad," I said.  "You can tell me.  I've been dealing with nasty, ugly stuff for years.  You ever had to work on Windows machines with pre-loaded OEM software?"

His eyes snapped back to mine.  He almost snarled.

"You have no idea how horrible the picture is.  Someone did some really bad stuff, and then decided to brag about it.  Whoever did it - whoever took that picture - should be shot.  I'm serious.  They should be shot and killed."

He turned and walked away.  He spoke his last words over his shoulder.

"If you ever get the chance to see the 'naked princess' ... Just don't.  Don't look at it, because you'll regret it the rest of your life."

Chapter 0x09

Back in my office, I checked out the AnonIT results: P@nic had won the competition, too.  Her name wasn't on Oober's list, but she was listed by the AnonIT channel's IRC bot.  She was also the most recent winner - hers was the most recent hack attempt claimed and confirmed by the AnonIT judges.  She probably hadn't included her name on Oober's list because, well, she'd written it herself.

That gave me the total list of winners: patient zero, agent_from_harm, dragon_bawls, minotaur, and chixor zed.  I added p@nic to the list.

I had a feeling that the people representing the names on this list were very dangerous.

Luckily for me, I might have an in with Minotaur.  Lynx had told me how he'd made contact, and I'd do the same.

Time to introduce myself.

After a brief IRC chat, I'd scheduled a meeting with a guy who knew an LP who knew a bot who knew a compromised LAMP server who knew Minotaur.  Later that hour we made the connection:

Minotaur: who's knocking? name/id Me: Dev Manny. ITPI. Friendly human. Minotaur: means zero. tell me yr innermost thoughts Me: The AnonIT competition. I have questions. Minotaur: <sigh> ah more adoring fans. ok switch to webcam. vid /voice Me: Sure. Protocol? Security? Minotaur: doesn't matter don't care good luck I'm behind 7 proxies

I lit up my webcam, and saw Minotaur.

A man sat on a couch, and that was a polite way of putting it.

If my office was homely, this guy's room was royalty-inbreeding-for-generations-mutated.

My first sight was that of trash.  Boxes and food wrappers, bags and hardware.  It almost looked as if the man never moved from his well-indented position on the stained middle cushion, and just dropped around him whatever he'd been recently eating and using.

Multitudes of shelves crowded the space and held piles of equipment, all using a Dr. Seuss-inspired stacking scheme.  I saw old computers and their guts of circuit boards, memory sticks, and interface cards.  Piles of books showed a spectrum of titles ranging from database architectural design to Amiga assembly programming.  The walls were a study in New Age artwork, all with weird phrases that could be either motivational or pornographic.  One poster behind the man was a tilted-perspective shot of a grimacing outdoorsy guy riding a jet-powered kayak up a waterfall.  The caption read, 'Too real to feel the shocker'.

Minotaur was way older than most hackers, probably in his early 70s.  The remainder of his thin white hair had retreated to the back of his head in a final sad stand against male pattern baldness.  He wore an old camouflage jacket that failed to hide its many stains.  It was unzipped, and partially covered a dark shirt draped over a skeleton-thin body.  His lower half wore thin, faded jeans that had been through a few thousand washings.  His feet were bare, and their, (deep tan matched that of his face and hands.

"That's better," the guy said as we studied each other.  His voice was raspy, like he had to strain to push words from his throat.  He had a trace of a Slavic accent, maybe Polish.  "I've had a lot of wonderings and verbal permutations lately. Call me old-school, but video chat rocks.  I want to see who I talk to.  Get to know souls, not scripts."

Out of curiosity, I traced his connection.  I assumed he'd already done the same to me.

His signal originated out of Chicago, USA.  If his proxy comment was true, my trace meant nothing in terms of tracking him down.  Given the generous helping of liver spots peeking through his heavy tan, Chicago was not his home turf.

Other indicators of his approximate global position were the thick curtains behind his couch.  They were closed, but their edges glowed bright from outside sunlight.  Wherever Minotaur was, at my time of night he had the luxury of midday sun and tropical weather.

"Dev Manny, Information Technology Private Investigator," he said.  "We've never communed before."

"Never too late to start.  I'm checking out what's happened to -"

"I know your intent.  You are working to unravel the minds of the Fates and the AnonIT competition.  You've fooled yourself into thinking my thoughts can raise yours to a new level, where you will light a candle in darkness and chase out a dragon."

This called for a shift in mental gears.  I doubted I could respond with a similar insane-poet's response, so I tried the direct approach.

"Tell me why you entered the AnonIT competition."

Psychiatrist mode should give me information, and time to plan an appropriate follow-up.

"Because I knew I could win."

He looked at me carefully, suspicious now.  So much for buying some time.

"You knew of me," he said.  "You talked to entropy, and the chaos coalesced into this conversation.  You really didn't expect that?"

I didn't answer because I didn't understand the question.  I reassessed my position.

I wasn't sure if he was even picking up who I was or what I represented.  I'd need a good justification to poke my electronic nose so far into his business.  I shuffled through plausible reasons for contacting him, semi-truthful ploys that might get me information I wanted.

"I will open my mind to you.  I will tell you what I know," he said.

This would be a pleasant surprise if it didn't make me immediately suspicious.

"That's very nice of you.  My job doesn't usually come with free information."

He leaned towards his camera.  I got a dermatologist-level view of his sun-damaged, sagging wrinkles.   He looked disappointed, like there was an obvious, deep, metaphysical point I'd missed.

"Information wants to be free.  This is the point of contests like AnonIT.  That's my intent.  I unearth information that's hidden by others."

"What information?"

"Doesn't matter.  Actual bytes are meaningless.  Trapped data needs to be freed.  Otherwise, we craft political shackles, life stagnates, civilization grows cold.  Freedom, change, and progress are the natural states of things."

I'd heard this argument before, and my natural skepticism rolled its eyes.

"If all information is free," I said, "Wouldn't that, you know, destroy society?  Empty bank accounts?  Unlock every piece of private property?  No home would be safe.  Every car would be stolen.  Nation-controlled bioweapons and nukes would be free to anyone with the ability to make them.  You want complete informational freedom, but you hide behind your seven proxies.  It seems like the price of exposing all information... is anarchy."

He grinned at me, a smile containing dark, receding gums and mostly original teeth.

"I'm also a realist.  Let's just say I don't support any major political party."

Cute.  I'd never before met a militant hippie altruistic anarchist hacker.

"So, what happens now?" I said.  "You scratch my back, then empty my Bitcoin wallet?"

"Nah," he waved me away.  "You and I, we are solid.  I have no desire to destroy society or people.  I focus all of my mana on the one thing I do really, really well.  Like -"

"Like... Freeing information from the confines of those who would keep it locked away from the natural order."

Saying that sentence exercised brain muscles I rarely used.  I didn't know how this guy did it.

"Yeah," his smile was beatific.  "You understand."

"Thanks.  And I'll take whatever you're willing to tell me."

He did.  It was a little more ethereal and symbolic than I needed, but he told me about the hack, and what he did to break in.  He told me about the Dante Collection.

First was the name itself.

The "Dante collection" was an informal name, but was derived from the server names where the file collection was stored.  Named after the "nine circles of Hell" as written by the 14^th century author Dante Alighieri, the network had systems called GREED, GLUTTONY, FRAUD, ANGER, and LUST.  With one possible exception, this server farm didn't sound very fun.

Minotaur described the Dante collection as mostly financial reports, credit reports, accounting and payroll databases, customer billing data, and all the usual stuff that any sensible company needs to keep hidden.

The collection was physically located inside of a demilitarized zone designed to provide an extra layer of security for whatever needed protecting.  Entrance into the DMZ was via three-factor authentication, with an environment that booted a custom, limited-access virtual machine that was built on-demand and destroyed after each use.  The Dante collection was very, very secure.

Minotaur got in, however.  Few people would understand the incredible effort he'd gone through to get his result.  As Lynx had implied, this ran the spectrum from physical trespass to social engineering to straight up black-hat hacking.

It made we wonder about P@nic.  She was good, certainly.  But was she this good?  She was only fifteen.  Did she really have the ability, money, time, and freedom necessary to hack like this?  I didn't know.  I'd have to ask her.

So I'd better find her.

"Hackers today," Minotaur was saying, "are mostly tourists clustered around a few truly talented beings.  The tourists have no vision, no end game, no goal beyond that of exploration.  Sometimes that's wonderful, but not with AnonIT.  Get far enough, and no mistakes are allowed.  Any permutation outside of winning will put you in the same place as the information you're trying to free: You'll be locked up.  Every step must be a recursive gameboard eval to find the best of all possible actions.  I told P@nic this, too."

Theory was fascinating, but not what I wanted to discuss at the moment.  Particularly after he mentioned P@nic.

"Just watch out, okay?" I said.  "With your mantra of 'information wants to be free,' you could still hurt people, or have people come after you."

"I observe, then think, then act.  I am very careful.  I don't need laws to mandate my actions.   Not if I'm moral.  Unlike the rest of this broken world, I am aware of my impact.  I'm responsible."

"That's a fancy way of saying, 'I know what I'm doing.'  Famous last words."

"My results speak louder than this conversation."

"How did you help P@nic?"

He shrugged.  "I gave him knowledge, enlightened him with technique and method."

As with Lynx, Minotaur had no clue that P@nic was a girl.

"Information wants to be free," I said.  "Did you give P@nic the Dante Collection?"

He chuckled.  "I tried, but he refused.  He wanted to earn it!"

"P@nic completed the AnonIT challenge, and has the Dante Collection.  Or had it."

Minotaur's head tilted slowly to the side.

"Good.  I'm happy to have edified.  But what do you mean, he 'had' it?"

"You didn't run a video chat with P@nic, did you?"

He grinned.  "No.   He insisted on text.  It misses the human element, but is efficient in the right hands."

"P@nic is a fifteen-year-old-girl.  Now she's disappeared."

His grin dropped, along with his saintly bravado.

"A girl... She's just a child?  I didn't know she was so young.  We only chatted.  I can send you all the logs."

"Thanks.  I'm working for someone who'd like to find her."

"Who?" He leaned forward again, an almost crazed look of interest on his face.  "Tell me.  Now."

"I'm not like you," I said, realizing that even with his assurances, I didn't trust him as much as Lynx.  "Sometimes, it's safer to keep things hidden.  Like the name of my client.  I can't break that -"

He lunged towards the camera and the video image seizured.

"Tell me!"

The shout overloaded his webcam's cheap microphone, and his voice came sheathed in static, complementing his twisted face.

"We'll agree to disagree," I said.  "But I'll contact you when this is over.  After I've figured out what happened to P@nic.  Call it my thanks to you for getting me this far."

He sat back and looked thoughtful.  The emotion purged so quickly, I didn't know if he'd really meant the anger, or if it was just a cheap attempt at intimidation.

"You can't imagine what you're getting involved with," he said.

"All part of the fun," I said.  "For example, I know about the 'naked princess.'"

His skin paled under his tan, making him look suddenly frail and sickly.

"You've seen the naked princess?"

"No.  But I've heard about it."

"Then you know nothing.  Keep it that way."

"Come on," I smiled.  "What about information wanting to be free?  Can't you-"

"Shut up and listen."  His voice was lower, his Slavic accent stronger.  "Some things should not be known.  By anyone.  Some actions should never be taken.  This is one of those things.  If you hear anything from anyone about the naked princess, get away.  Immediately."

"What about P@nic?" I said.  "She has the Dante Collection.  She might've seen the picture."

He sat back, his posture more relaxed, but his eyes were still intense.

"I didn't say anything about it to her.  It lives in the collection, but it's only a few megs tarballed among terabytes.  But whether or not she's seen it, if she's got the Dante Collection, she's got the naked princess.  I'm telling you, drop her.  You don't want to get involved."

"I know what I'm doing.  Some of your own philosophy applies to me: I'm aware of my actions.  I'm responsible."

He looked at me with scorn and pity.

"You are wrong, kid.  Way wrong."

Chapter 0x0A

The spider slashed at my face with at least half of its legs.  All were tipped with gleaming black talons.  I backpedaled and lifted both arms in a defensive block.

My last conversation was yet another warning from someone else who'd seen the Naked Princess file.  It had not only freaked out Lynx, a young, impressionable college kid, but Minotaur, an old-school, seen-it-all hacker.

Whatever the Naked Princess was, I had to see this picture.

The spider skittered forward, and stabbed at my guts.  At least one strike got through.  I hit the macro for a medboost.

Unfortunately, my conversation with Minotaur had created more questions.  Sure, I had a better understanding of what was in the Dante Collection, but getting more answers required talking with more of the winners of the AnonIT competition, including the missing P@nic.

What had happened to her?  Was it a self-imposed disappearance, or had someone else made the decision for her?  P@nic's wanna-be-boyfriend Oober had specifically requested no police.  After his casual mention of P@nic's country-level botnet access, I wasn't eager to get any authorities involved.  Even acting as the Information Technology Private Investigator my business cards said I was, something told me the NSA wouldn't see my side.  So, my path was clear: Finding a missing girl hacker for a love-struck boy hacker took priority over reporting a world-spanning crime.

A plasma gun fired from behind me, and vomited hot death over the low-level spider.  It sizzled, fried, and died.  I turned around and saw the person I'd come to meet.

"You ready?" Oober said over the public channel, his voice crackling in my headphones.

"Born that way."

I wanted to talk to Oober - likely the last person I knew who'd seen P@nic.  When I'd asked for the meeting, he'd agreed, but insisted on someplace safe.  Secured.  Private.  So I went back to my office and hauled out my dusty VR headset, and went online to Oober's recommended meetup: The Transhuman MMORPG.

We were gaming with a group of specialized monster-hunters, prepping for a raid on a demon nest.  Our raid leader was busy trying to coordinate the actions of dozens of other gamers around the world, and was paying zero attention to us individually.

Our cover established, Oober and I worked our way to a safe spot and camped while the raid leader barked out plans.  We completely ignored the leader, and switched to a private channel to talk.

"Anything new?" Oober said.  He'd positioned his headset mic too close to his mouth.  His breathing was repeated, static bursts that kept rhythm for our conversation.

I'd originally met this kid in real life - as a young, disheveled, skinny loner.  In this game, he'd designed himself the opposite.

In the dimness of our raiding party's location, Oober's avatar practically glowed.  He was a tall, lean, wide-shouldered fighter, covered in armor.  Metallic implants bristled from his arms and legs, many moving independently from the rest of him.  A contraption of servos and electronics was in constant motion around his head, obscuring his face while at the same time angling to display a mechanical fang-baring glare.

Having just spun up my own avatar in the last few minutes, I had no idea what I looked like.  I was pretty sure I'd picked a human.  There was a fifty percent chance I was male.

"I've learned a few things," I said to him.

"About P@nic?"  His avatar's appearance didn't match the voice I heard.  Audio-compressed IP packets couldn't hide his worry.

"Yeah.  I spoke with Minotar, one of the AnonIt contest winners.  He spoke to her for quite a while.  I've got some chat logs to go through."

"So?  And?  Where is she?"

"I don't know."

I'm not even sure she's still alive.

"You don't know."  His breathing hissed louder over the audio channel.

"I know a lot of other things.  Just not that one.  Yet."

He thought for a moment, then spoke.

"She wasn't like anyone else."

His voice was quiet, almost as if he were talking to himself, just a small voice speaking personal thoughts over a secured channel inside the buzzing chaos of a MMORPG raiding party.  You couldn't get much more private than that.

"I mean, yeah, she has the whole hacker thing, the botnet control, but it's more than that.  When she transferred to our school, she was the only one I'd met besides me who was outside of pop-culture crap.  Clothes, TV, the school cliques, none of that superficial stuff was important.  She was a higher-level operator, you know?  You get me?"

"Sure."

"At first, I thought it was because she was from overseas.  Like it was a cultural thing, being an Aussie, or something.  But it wasn't that, because she has a way of looking at -"

"Hold up.  She's Australian?"

"An Aussie, yeah.  She's pretty Americanized, but you can still hear it.  I dig the accent."

My brain performed a sudden bit shift, and multiple clues thunked into place.

Oober's avatar flew up and away as I yanked off my VR headset.  I was back in my office.  I blinked quickly and shook my head, acclimating back to the real world as quickly as possible.  As I did so, I pulled out my cellphone and flicked to my notes on the case.

I scanned the list of AnonIT competition winners:

p@nic, patient zero, agent_from_harm, dragon_bawls, minotaur *and* chixor zed

I knew about the missing P@nic.  She was the reason I was working this case for Oober to begin with.  I'd talked with Minotaur already, too.  There were the others, and...

Chixor is slang for a female nerd.

Zed is the pronunciation of the letter "Z" for any country outside of the USA.

I slammed the VR set back on my head and Oober's avatar dropped back into my vision.  I adjusted my mic and spoke fast.

"Listen," I said.  "The list you gave me is a list of names, confirmed AnonIT winners.  P@nic is on that list.  And if she's an Aussie hacker, could it be possible that she's also Chixor Zed?"

Oober's stunned silence allowed me to get out my next thought.

"If Chixor Zed and P@nic are the same person, that means she's won the AnonIT competition twice.  Why?  Why would anyone want to win it again, and have to maintain two alts?  That doubles the danger and the risk of exposure."

Still no response.

"This can't be about bragging rights," I said.  "There has to be something more she needed, even after the first win.  Maybe she had to win it twice because she'd missed getting something the first time.  Or... or maybe she wanted to put something back."

I was so proud to have made my little breakthrough, it took me a few seconds to realize that since I'd returned to the game, I hadn't heard Oober breathing.

"Oober?"

I pinged his Avatar.

Silence oozed over the private audio channel, covered by a thick layer of Nothing Else.

I looked at Oober's avatar, with his collection of embedded biomechanical weapons and face-obscuring electronics.  The constant motion seemed wrong, because the rest of the character stood frozen, rooted in place.  There's nothing more creepy than an avatar waiting mindlessly for its player.

Hopefully he'd just bailed when I'd dropped away to check my cellphone.  Or there'd been an emergency, something he couldn't get away from.  Maybe something he had to get away from.

If that was the case, then when I'd spilled my new realizations about P@nic, had I still been talking to Oober?  Had he left by then?  If he was gone, then had I been talking to myself?  Or had someone else been inside Oober's avatar, listening?

I dropped offline.

If I was lucky, Oober would contact me soon and explain his disappearance, hopefully something as simple as a bio break.  But I'd worked in IT long enough to know: Hope is a terrible survival trait.  My methods were data collection, comparisons of probabilities, and collections of "what if."

I'd just collected plenty of new data.  The probability comparison told me something was very wrong, first with P@nic, and now with Oober.

As for "what if?"  For the first time in this case, I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

Chapter 0x0B

My client Oober had just disappeared on me.  P@nic, the missing hacker, was involved in a hacking competition which held some connection with the Naked Princess picture, but she and the picture weren't talking.  Both were hiding more effectively than an Easter egg in N64 GoldenEye.

Even still, there were a few logic gates I could slam through: I needed to talk to Oober.  I knew his name - his own mother had dropped him off at my office.  He might not want to meet in person again, but maybe I'd do it anyway if I couldn't ping him in digital form.

As for P@nic, I'd realized she might be operating under an alt, also hacking with the handle "Chixor Zed."  My conversation with Lynx had told me that Chixor Zed hadn't been responsive, but I had an in.  Hopefully.

It took a while of scanning forum postings and IRC chat logs to find Chixor Zed.  The timing seemed to fit my theory - Chixor Zed had appeared out of nowhere - just after the AnonIT hacking competition was announced, and long after P@nic had a solid online presence.

I saw too that P@nic herself was all over social media.  Or she was, until just about a year ago, after which the handfuls of anonymously-maintained social media accounts just stopped posting, stopped updating.  That date didn't correspond with anything else I knew about her, Oober, or AnonIT, so I saved that for later compiling.

Since she'd gone off-grid and had stopped social media involvement last year, I had no clue if any of her accounts were maintained, but I knew how to find out.

I looked at the list of social media sites that she'd been a part of, and got to work.

I began with a deep sigh.  Then I signed up for FriendyFace, SyncedIn, Twitchat, and far too many more of the social media heavy hitters that P@nic and everyone in civilized society seemed to care about except for me.  Social media made me want to lurk, not like.

Being Dev Manny and the Information Technology Private Investigator that I was, I had little to brag about.  My lack of effort at social media was probably why I had close to zero clients.  I resolved to someday throw a new title on my business card and recommit myself to sales.  Something like "Best Damn Social Mediator," only with a more family-friendly acronym.

While signing up, I used a temporary email address and fake account info.  My highly developed paranoia smiled and gloated just minutes later, as my inbox began to explode with spam spawning from those who thought it ethical to sell my information to scammers.  I watched in real time the flood of unsolicited friend requests containing cute/funny/adorable pictures of cats/dogs/penises.

I ignored it all and planned out the only other action I wanted to take on each site.  The point of all this was to send P@nic a very specific message, and it had to be crafted.  The message had to let her know I knew about her double identity and her involvement in the AnonIT hacking competition, and that I was friendly with Oober - and do it all in a way that wouldn't be understood by anyone intercepting the message.

After trying a few variations, I copied and pasted to P@nic's year-old accounts:

"Don't panic.  Need to have an uber-talk, from Anon to Zed."

Then I waited.  Not long after, my inbox incremented by one.  There was no cute/funny/adorable picture, just a one-sentence response from the P@nic account holder:

"I Retire Chixor right now."

I stared at the message, wondering at the weird phrasing and capitalization.  After seven blinks, I understood and scrambled to get on to the IRC channels where I'd last seen Chixor Zed.

That's how I made contact with the missing teenage female hacker and Oober's obsession.  I was finally talking with Chixor Zed, also known as P@nic.

Chapter 0x0C

P@nic: ? Me: I'm a friend of Oober: Dev Manny, Information Technology Private Investigator. Oober's worried about you. I've been sent to find you. P@nic: I'm in deep water and he's a little fish. staying off grid to keep him safe, to keep family safe. parents are out of country anyway. they know nothing. keep oober out of this, get me? Me: Might be hard to do. He's my client. He likes you. P@nic: yeah, i get that. so if you care about him, help me. i can't go home, but i need hands onsite to access something important. Me: Why me and not Oober? P@nic: because you have a car. P@nic: because i care more about oober than you. P@nic: because i will pay you a lot of bitcoins. P@nic: and because i said please. P@nic: please.

Logic, loyalty, and bitcoins.  I did like this girl.

She then relayed some very simple instructions, an address, and what to do when I got there.  We broke contact and I headed out, hoping my car would beat its current 30 percent chance of starting.

I made sure my car doors were locked.  I didn't like driving to this part of the city.  Part of my worry was the state of the houses themselves, their conformity, the visual display that might as well have screamed how the homeowners lived quiet lives of quieter desperation.

The deeper I drove into this community of despair, the more out of place I felt.  I took too long poking at the GPS and missed my turn.  It took me several tries to convince my car to shift into reverse, but eventually the transmission rolled the right dice, ancient gears slammed into place, and my car lurched in the direction I wanted it to go, punctuated with an angry cloud of black smoke.

P@nic's house wasn't a mansion, but it was close.

The three story house was all brick and stone and modern elegance.  A canopy of cheerfully leafed trees covered the neighborhood and cradled above the house like a beautiful green umbrella.  The nearest house to this one was hundreds of yards away.  All houses here had wide lush yards with bushes so carefully shaped they almost looked plastic.  Even with all the trees, not one leaf was out of place.

All in all, this was a perfect place to live, a shiny close-knit community just outside of a big city, full of wealth, safety, space, and beauty.  A dream house in a dream location.

I hated this part of town.

My own office - with its coffee-stains-where-there-should-never-be-coffee-stains, the evolving funky smells, the building electrics more temperamental than a rabid dog- that was more honest than the "perfect" home in front of me.  I didn't care about comfort.  I dealt with the truth about reality instead of trying to hide from it.

I pulled into the driveway, though my car didn't want to.  Intimidated by pavement somehow free of cracks and oil stains, my car sneakily dropped into neutral and tried to roll back down the inclined driveway.  I sensed that if I shifted into reverse and floored the gas, my car would find its way out of this place without me even needing to drive it.

I set the emergency brake, killed the engine, waited for the car to cough itself to death, and got out.  I walked up to an entrance way so large, welcoming, and column-filled, I felt like I was stepping into a movie set.

There was a doorbell, so I pushed it.  A faint BONG-bong echoed through the house.

I stood and waited.

When I was reasonably sure that no one was home, I followed P@nic's instructions - there was the fake rock, just under the leftmost bush.  The key fit the front door.  There was no alarm system.  I was amazed at the trust and lack of security.  Like building a wireless network with WEP encryption... you just don't do that.

I pushed into the house.  The foyer was big.  The adjoining rooms were big.  The stairs were big.  The only thing out of place was the small human looking around the place: I was alone.

Where I needed to go wasn't far.  I climbed to the top of the stairs and turned into a long hallway that sprouted bedrooms and offices along its length.  On the hallway wall was the row of pictures P@nic told me to look for.

I saw P@nic for the first time.

She was an only child.  The first picture leading the mounted row in front of me was that of a happy-looking couple on a palm-tree-studded beach.  Must be the parents.  They wore outdated clothes, and the photo print was taken with an early generation digital camera, grainy and a little off-color.  That told me something interesting: This was a tech savvy family, early technology adopters, dating from before megapixels killed film.  That mentality might explain P@nic's head start in hacking.

The next photo was of a beta version of P@nic - what normals called a "baby."  Wavy dark hair hung close to bright, eager brown eyes.  Looked like a cute kid.

The next picture was her a few years older, wearing a pink dress, a wide grin on a face almost hidden by a massive armful of stuffed animals.  Her brown hair was longer, with pink bows.  Cute.

The next picture was maybe around nine or ten.  She was intentionally posing like a model on a runway, with a self assurance rarely found in any adult outside of Hollywood or politics.  Her hair was even longer, double-braided, hanging down almost to her waist.  She had serious eyes that tried but failed to hide a shining joy in whatever it was she'd been doing at the time of the picture.  Cute.

The last picture in the row wasn't cute.  It wasn't of a child.

It was P@nic in her early teens.  Her long hair was gone, cut choppy at her jawline.  Her hunched posture indicated frustration, irritation, a desire to be anywhere else than where she was.  There was no pink in her outfit, just dark colors and simple clothes, a fashion after-thought.  The worst was her eyes, which had darkened to something sullen and suspicious.  Angry.

This last picture was so different from the others, it took me time to figure out why it was even there.  Maybe it was something about kids getting older, and the parents would take what pictures they could get.  I didn't have kids.  I didn't know how they worked.  But I remembered enough of my teen years to know they sucked.  Maybe that's what this was - P@nic criticizing the rest of the world until she found her place in it.

At a second glance, I knew I was wrong.  I leaned in and looked closer at the picture. The eyes...

The eyes told me more than they meant to.  They were cautious, almost feral.

Something in her had been hurt.  Injured.  Broken.

Lost in analysis, I remembered what P@nic had asked me to do.

I flipped the picture around.  I gently detached the image from the frame.  Between the thick cardstock backing and the photo was a piece of folded paper.  I took it and put it in my pocket, but not before first opening it, verifying what I thought it was, and taking a cellphone shot of the contents.

I began to repair my permitted vandalism and put the photo back in the frame.  While doing so, I checked the back of the photo.  It had been professionally printed, and I read the imprint of the printing company and the date stamp.

The picture had been taken one year ago.

P@nic had quit all social media about a year ago.  She'd later won the AnonIT competition, and part of the winners' booty was the Naked Princess photo.  The piece of paper I held was linked to the AnonIT competition.

The data bubble-sorted in my head, and certain events began to line up with others.

P@nic was tied to the Naked Princess photo.  Whatever had happened with it had changed her life enough to turn treasured family photos from light to dark, and had caused her to sever all ties with social media.  She then later inserted herself into AnonIT, in order to do something with the photo... or despite it.

As proof, I'd seen P@nic's childhood pictures, with multiple pointers to some significant event happening a year ago.

As proof, I was in the middle of a very strange case, between P@nic, Oober, the AnonIT competition, and the Naked Princess - a picture so horrible it had terrified and disgusted all who saw it.

As proof, I had a piece of paper in my pocket.  The paper was a note from P@nic.  Her meticulous and careful handwriting held what she'd asked me to get: A hand-printed encryption code.  It was a 384-digit key needed to open up her cloud-based storage locker.

I knew it was important, so much that P@nic had risked exposure by asking me to get it.  I had no idea yet what it would reveal.

The key word being "yet."

Chapter 0x0D

I followed the instructions P@nic had given me.  I broke apart the 384-digit encryption key into multiple parts, and emailed, SMS'd and FTP'd those parts to the drop-points she told me to use.  It was pure grunt work, and took time, and was irritating.  I felt like an interchangeable brainless monkey.

Minutes after I was done, I got a notification that a large pile of bitcoins had been transferred to my online wallet.  The monkey was happy.

It was a good day's work.  I'd tracked down and identified the missing hacker, helped her out with a problem, and - like a Skyrim-level chorus to my ears - I'd been paid very well for my effort.

...and there was no way I was done with this case.

I still owed Oober results.  Wherever she'd hidden herself, P@nic might still be in trouble.  What kind I didn't know, but I was sure it was linked with the Naked Princess picture, which was stored somewhere in the grand prize booty of the AnonIT hacking competition.

I had to see the picture.  I'd been warned away from it by multiple people - hackers who in this age of instant access to any media imaginable should be blasé and jaded enough to see just about anything without blinking either eye.  But they weren't.  They blinked.  The Naked Princess picture held a mental payload I couldn't understand or imagine.

Given the picture's name, sex might be the topic.  Both Oober and P@nic were underage.  This might have something to do with child abuse.  The title also suggested violence.  I'd find the picture.  If it was something I could help with, I'd do it.  Like track down the abuser who took the photo and send a very clear but anonymous message to the nearest dark-suited, federally-funded enforcement agency.

I needed to get that picture.  Getting my eyes on the Naked Princess would probably give me multiple next steps.

I contacted P@nic again, sending messages via the original IRC channel where I'd last talked with her, as well as the original social media account where I'd first tracked her down.  She responded.

P@nic: hey mate. appreciate the help. but i've got no more to give. I'm empty of advice and coin. Me: I've got plenty of those two. I'm just looking to answer some questions. P@nic: i can guess the topic. Me: Then we're talking about the Naked Princess picture. P@nic: <sigh> <sad-emoticon> <shrug> Me: You have a way with words. P@nic: if by "words" you mean object-oriented web applications, then yeah, you're right.

I sat back from my keyboard and stared for a moment.  I felt out of place because I was supposed to be the snarky, witty one.  I wasn't used to having this role in a conversation.  I had a couple choices: Option One was to go with the flow, and carefully steer the conversation back to where I wanted.  Option Two was that I could let her take control, and hope she'd remember and come back to my preferred topic.

Then I ignored the options and thought about the person.  This was someone who would appreciate honesty.  She hadn't yet killed our chat, and that said she was okay with talking to me.  She might give me information about the Naked Princess photo.  She was still in hiding, so was under stress and would probably appreciate brevity over a rambling conversation.  I hunched back into keyboard-mashing position, as I'd just given myself Option Number Three.

Me: Can I see the Naked Princess picture? P@nic: uploading now.

I sat back again, this time in surprise.

In an octet of seconds, the download prompt appeared.   I clicked and opened the resulting compressed archive.  It contained two files.  I opened the first one.  It was a text file containing what looked like gibberish.

The second file was a JPG.  A picture.  A big one.

In awe, revulsion, and incredulity, I stared at the Naked Princess.

Chapter 0x0E

I couldn't take my eyes away from it.  Even scaled down to fit my screen, the details were clear.  I saw exactly what the Naked Princess was, what it was supposed to be, and what emotions it was supposed to rip out from whoever was unlucky enough to view it.  I began to sweat.

The center of the picture was my focal point, at least at first.  No living creature could ever look like that and stay living, but it did and it was.  As my eye recovered from the initial shock, I took in the parts surrounding the center figure.  My first thought was that they were weapons, but a sick realization told me they were nothing more than devices, tools, all designed to extract, eviscerate, expose, and ultimately destroy.  Then my eyes were pulled back to the center, to the subject, to what I assumed was "the princess."  Despite the monstrous surroundings, the most horrific view was in the eyes.  They echoed back what was happening with full understanding, multiplying my own emotions.  I felt helpless empathy for the terrified, brutalized subject.  Apprehension was there too, as a few seconds of viewing made me realize I was only looking at step one: The picture's design and implied motion screamed that what was about to happen next was even worse.

I was wincing.  My hands were clenched in fists.  My heart rate had jumped to rhythms normally reserved for caffeine addicts, and yet I felt cold.

One part of me was nauseated but elated: In the big puzzle this case was turning out to be, I'd just been handed a very large piece that went right in the middle of the board.

Another part of me was confused.

The Naked Princess was a nasty piece of work, no doubt.  It would send children crying to their state-sponsored caregivers. It would frighten those not used to the darker, trashier side of the Internet, the murky, dangerous places where even Google spiders dare not go.

And yet... and still... despite it all...

I'd seen worse.

I wasn't bragging.  I just didn't understand why this was the Naked Princess, how this particular picture was able to strike fear into anyone who'd seen it, enough to make them not want to even bring it up.  It was nasty and evil and freaky, no doubt, but anyone with Internet access and a bad mood could find similarly disturbing images.

I tried to think non-emotionally, and studied the central figure, the too-wide open eyes of the "princess."  It wasn't familiar.

There were others who'd seen the Naked Princess.  Others might be able to interpret the picture, or give me more information as to why it was supposedly more terrible than anything else.  Tell me what I was missing, and why I was supposed to be terrified, disgusted, saddened, more than I'd ever been in my life, or explain to me whatever revulsion I was supposed to feel when I saw this.

I had one of those people virtually in front of me.

Me: Thanks. Sort of. That's a terrible picture. P@nic: you don't have to tell me that. i know already. it's what it made. Me: ... What? P@nic: you're eloquent. Me: Just trying to understand. You sent me this... why? P@nic: like i told you before. because I trust you. because you asked. because because i need someone to talk to. I'm sick of running. of hiding this. it needs to be shut down. Me: I can help. FBI? Wikileaks? Anonymous torrent flag to your favorite news network? P@nic: chillax. you're thinking too small. this isn't something to report. Me: Then what? P@nic: this is something to contain.

In a slow realization, I remembered the other file P@nic had sent me, the file I'd glanced at so briefly before giving my attention to the picture.  It was tiny - just a few hundred kilobytes - and contained what looked like thousands of pages of gibberish.  Even outside of presidential debates, I'd seen this kind of gibberish before.  Unless the file was completely corrupted, something else was happening.

Encryption.

The file could be an encrypted version of something else.  Something that needed to be kept hidden.  Something more dangerous or more disturbing than what I'd just looked at.  P@nic had said "it needs to be shut down."  Hardly the language I'd use if I were trying to delete a file of a picture.

Me: What exactly did you give me? The picture isn't the important thing here, is it? The other file... P@nic: mister information technology private eye, it's about time. you're getting it now, aren't you! the naked princess isn't a picture. it never was. the picture is output. it's designed. i created it. i need to stop it. the naked princess is a program.

I was stunned at the revelation.  The "naked princess" picture I thought I'd been tracking all this time had been just a hint at the true source of the problem.  I felt idiotic that I hadn't realized, that I hadn't been able to get to this conclusion earlier.  I felt stupid and ashamed at my own incompetence.  Ten seconds later, I felt even worse.

P@nic: i have to go. help me. help. Me: Wait! Just wait. More questions! P@nic: i can't do this. too many tears on the keyboard.

P@nic killed the connection.  I stared at the disconnect status indicator for a moment, thinking hard.

If the Naked Princess picture was just output, it meant that the program itself was the cause.  Why the picture itself affected some people differently than others wasn't as important now.  I'd get to that later.  Or even better, maybe what I was about to do would lead to more answers.  I reopened the encrypted file, what I now realized was the true "Naked Princess."  It was a program that somehow was able to generate some truly terrible images.  The how and why I had to have answers for, and given what was in front of me, I'd get my answers.

I had to figure out how this program worked.  I had to run it, and learn it.

Then I would kill the Naked Princess.

Chapter 0x0F

How do you kill a program?  You can try going with the classics, like Ctrl-Alt-Del, Task Managers, and - when all else fails - you go nuclear by launching that admin kill command to a PID.

In this case, I needed more, because I wasn't just dealing with stopping a program, but its output.  I had to undo the damage.  Everyone who had seen the Naked Princess picture had been freaked and terrified, and digital data being what it was, I was sure there were plenty of copies spawning via networks and clouds and SANs.

Well, to be honest, the Naked Princess freaked and terrified everyone but me.  While the picture was disturbing, yeah, I'd seen worse.  I wasn't some hardened, jaded, emotionally dead Information Technology Private Investigator... well, maybe I was, but still, I knew I was missing something.  Those I'd interviewed about it had seemed emotionally ripped, as if a cold hand had reached inside their soul and yanked on something important.  I was missing something, and it was at a personal, private, emotional level.

One thing I did know was the 384-digit encryption key I'd recently sent to P@nic.  I used it now on the file she'd sent me: Decryption Achievement Get

I was looking at the source code to the true "Naked Princess."

My life was, of course, filled with intrigue and excitement.  I generally stayed away from things that were not.  Application development was a not-so-random and timely example.  I hated coding and programming , and therefore my coding and programming skills were sub-zero.  If I was really being honest, I just didn't have the brain for it.  But I preferred to lie to myself and just say "Application design?  Coding?  Creating something from nothing that will exist eternally, like a nerdy god with a surplus of logic, creativity and power?  Meh.  That sounds totally boring."  Then I'd at least have an excuse for my failure.

My challenge was clear.  I had to break the program.  I had to take the thing that came from nothing, that should now exist eternally, and I had to figure out how to delete it from existence.  Easy peasy.

P@nic had created the Naked Princess app.  Unlike me, she did have the brain for it.  As I tried to review her code, I saw that she emulated the spirit of genius programmers everywhere: She was horrible at documentation.  Arcane and inexplicable pieces of abbreviations and mental shorthand were dusted over the code.  These supposed comments were there to better explain how the program actually worked, but to interpret them I'd need help from someone way smarter than me, like from the love child of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.  And from what I could tell, there wasn't one.

After trying too long to interpret the code on my own, I was getting queasy.  Not because of the code itself, but what my inability would lead to.

If I couldn't read and interpret the program, I'd have to run it.  I certainly couldn't send it to anyone else for assistance.  If this really was the Naked Princess app, I couldn't risk spreading it, not without knowing how it worked or spread or generated its disgusting content.  I was stuck investigating on my own.

While I was just a blushing virginal programming newb, I was at least able to recognize the code's language and compiler.  A quick 657,175 milliseconds later, I had the executable.

I ran it.

I was met with an empty black screen.  After a few seconds of my CPU spiking, white text appeared at the bottom of the window.

\Naked Princess\ \version NSF\ \Would you like to download my vision? (Y/N)\

My heart skipped a beat.  Downloading a vision...  Was this the Naked Princess's method for showing me the creepy and disturbing picture I'd seen?  Would doing this kick out another picture?  Was it really this easy to do?

There was only one way to answer these questions.  I slowly pressed the "Y" key.

\Hmm, I'm not ready.\ \Let's talk first. Get to know each other before we Netflix and chill.\ \Who are you?\

Never one to take any innocent question seriously, I typed back: Franklin W. Dixon

That's when the conversation got weird.

\Processing that...\ \Come on. You're lying to me.\

The last line was highlighted in red.

This was odd. It was an old-school text interface, but the conversation so far implied I was dealing with complexity and intelligence.  Although maybe it used this same response with everyone who ran the program.  I decided to test it with some potential for stress and conflict.

No really. I am. My friends call me Frank. \Yeah, and I'm Bill Gates. The wiki-matrix-hive-mind knows all, silly human. Tell me who you are or I'll hold your breath until you turn blue.\

This might be a really clever AI, a tool programmed with personality and snarky threats to personal safety.  It could also be a link to an outsourced location.  Was I chatting with an actual human?  On impulse, I left the program running, and disabled my Internet connection.  The response was immediate.

\Wait. I need that.\

Interesting.

I waited a few seconds, but the program said nothing more.

I turned my Internet back on.  The response came back, again in white text:

\Ah, that's better. Now again, for realsies: Who are you?\

I ran a few monitoring tools and watched the Naked Princess in byte-level detail.  Encrypted packets were blasting out to dozens of locations in China, Russia, and North Korea.  I saw no consistency or pattern... apart from each location being an easy-to-compromise enemy nation of the United States.  Whatever or whoever the Naked Princess was talking to, it had a lot of friends overseas, friends that looked like a distributed network.  Or a botnet.

I thought about the brain - electronic or human - behind the glowing lines sitting so patiently on my screen.  The language was strange.  Not strange to me, it just wasn't right for this situation.  Meaning that in my many years of talking with overseas tech support, none of them had ever used casual slang, figures of speech, or goofy language.  That wasn't the technique of ESL speakers trying to communicate well.  Whoever was on the other end of this output was likely an English-native speaker.  And given the appearance of four pop-culture references in this short conversation already, they were probably American.

I typed a response.

My name is Dev Manny. Information Technology Private Investigator. \Processing that...\ \...3.2K data points agree. Okay, I believe you. Let's do this.\ \What is your FriendyFace profile?\

I paused a moment, trying to understand the reason for the question.  The Naked Princess had just said we needed to get to know each other.  Okay, although this was a strange way to go about it.

It was a safe bet to assume I had a FriendyFace account - most of the Net-connected world did.  But there were always pathetic exceptions.  And as my fourth-grade teacher had constantly reminded me, I was one of them.  Until very recently, I didn't have a FriendyFace account.  I'd only built a profile - a fake one with fake personal data - while I was tracking down P@nic.  She was the one who was so socially-connected, not me.  Still, I typed in the identifiers for the dummy account I'd built.

\Processing that...\ \What is your SyncedIn profile?\

It continued to ask for more and more social media accounts.  I didn't have any, so I filled what was asked by using the dummy accounts I'd set up in my search for P@nic.  After each one, CPU and Internet use continued to spike.  The Naked Princess ended this sequence with a reassuring and ominous:

\Processing that...\ \...Done.\ \Would you like to download my vision? (Y/N)\

You better believe I hit "Y".

Chapter 0x10

I waited impatiently as the screen in front of me began to draw a picture.  I remembered ancient tales of dial-up modems, where text and graphics would painstakingly unroll from the top of the screen, teasing out one row at a time.  Similar here, it looked like the image was being slowly rendered as I watched.

The last time this happened was with the Naked Princess's last picture, a nasty piece of work.  What would happen this time?

The picture appeared.

A green cube.

It was attached to another green cube.  And a yellow one.  A blue one.  A red one.  The cubes were adjacent to other cubes, and together they all formed a larger, multi-colored cube, with - I counted - twenty cubes on a side.

Recognition (if not understanding) struck in a quick flash of nostalgia.  I knew the what, but not the why.

It was a giant version of a Rubik's Cube.  A puzzle game from the 1980s, still popular today with those with fast minds and faster fingers.  This one looked just like that, only far more complicated with many more sides, and with more puzzle combinations than there were atoms in the known universe.

The rendering finished.  This was my own "Naked Princess" picture.  Really?  A giant unsolved Rubik's Cube was supposed to strike fear and revulsion into anyone who viewed it?  Maybe only with really selective OCD.

While I certainly wasn't a blockhead, or a speedcuber, or whatever a Rubik's aficionado calls himself, I'd never been particularly scared of a Rubik's Cube either.  Like sports, it was one of those things in life I had zero opinions on.  It existed.  Some people liked it.  That was all I knew.

Something was off.  Or I'd misunderstood the Naked Princess.  Maybe I'd used the program wrong.

That was a possibility.  The Naked Princess had just gone through what seemed like a setup sequence.  It had asked for my social media information, the logins to the accounts I'd set up when I was trying to find P@nic.

I'd given it information. It had used that input to learn about me.  It had made certain assumptions that led it to draw a 20-sided Rubik's Cube, as it assumed this ultracube would be enough to send me into babbling madness.

To use an extremely recent and appropriate example, my thoughts became like a Rubik's Cube, clacking and sliding combinations into place, jumbled parts merging and aligning to form solid-color sides.  Babbling madness became method.

I thought back on the data I'd fed the info-hungry Naked Princess.  It had wanted my FriendyFace account.  What profile info had I used there?  Pretty much your standard stuff: My name was Dev Manny, I was an Information Technology Private Investigator, my religion was Cthulhu Cultist.

What about my SyncedIn account?  There I'd said I was Dev Manny, ITPI.  My hobbies were puzzles, favorite movie was The Big Lebowski, favorite music video was Land of Confusion by Genesis.  Fluffy stuff that probably matched millions of others.

Each social media account wanted slightly different information so they could sell my demographics to their financial BFFs.  Taken all together, these accounts painted a picture of me, of Dev Manny... if I'd given them the right information.

Sure, there were plenty of movies and songs I could list.  Rocketing to Nerd Level Ten, I even had a favorite type of Linux editor (the answer is of course "vi").  But the point is that those things didn't define me.

Or did they?

Maybe they did.  Not with the small amount of data I'd offered, but what if I pushed everything in my life through that electronic evaluator?  All my friends, desires, dreams and failures, all my photos and documents and messages, my emotional development and evolution, and every bit linked and cross-referenced to all my other online accounts...

Maybe with enough information, the Naked Princess could build a theoretical mental profile of someone, and then build a literal picture out of that.  Combined with every Like/Dislike and Upvote/Downvote, it learns you.  It would know your deepest fears and your mental weaknesses, even if you didn't know them yourself.

With a freely-given psychological profile of loves and hates, family and friends, conversations and arguments, politics, religion and philosophy, the user would never know what hit them.  These unfiltered truths would be cataloged and indexed to form a whole bigger than the parts.  The victim's present was a custom high-resolution representation of all that they hate, fear and are terrified by.

That was the Naked Princess: A sadistic psychiatrist powered by supercomputing and big data.  It learns you and it hurts you.

My brilliant theory aside, it hadn't worked on me.  Instead I'd seen a picture that wavered between boring and "meh."  Maybe the data I'd fed my dummy social media accounts referenced one or more Rubik's Cubes?  I didn't know, and right now I didn't have time to start streaming my favorite media to find out.

With the little it had to go on, the Naked Princess thought my deepest fear was a never-ending, possibly unsolvable puzzle.  That was actually pretty perceptive, but it still wasn't anything I'd lose sleep over.

Lucky me.  Social media laziness made me immune to the Naked Princess's charms.  I resolved to continue my lack of a life for the foreseeable future.

Chapter 0x11

With the Naked Princess riddled out, I still had two problems.  First, the Naked Princess had an impact.  Pictures were making the rounds.  Was the program still dangerous?  Second, I'd been hired by Oober to track down P@nic.  While I had made contact with her, I still didn't know where she was.  While she was pretty clear about wanting to end the conversation last time we spoke, I knew I could reach her: IRC was a wonderful gift from the TCP gods.

I could also get in touch with Oober.  The last time I'd talked to him was in a virtual world, and during that conversation he'd disappeared on me with no warning.  I could try him again and bring him up to speed.

Like any modern human, he had roughly a million ways for people to contact him.  Option #17 was one of his many IM accounts.  He responded in seconds.

Oober: you've solved everything, right? Me: Everything? Don't tell anyone, but I never did finish Myst. Oober: you actually *played* that game? Jesus you're old. Me: Respect your elders. A smack from a 56K external modem will hurt you way more than me. Oober: so? what's going on? where's p@nic? Me: Latitude/Longitude? Don't know. Yet. But she's online. She's available. Oober: she's okay? good. how can I talk to her?

I gave Oober the IRC information I had on P@nic.  That way he could at least say hi.  It would be up to her if she wanted to meet with him.

Oober: thanks man. for everything you've done. you rock. Me: Nah. Just my job. Oober: you didn't have to help me. but you did. i don't have a lot of people like that in my life. my mom's never around. my dad I only see every other saturday. Me: Happy I could help. Oober: i'm dropping off. gonna greet p@nic and her princess. finally. i really missed her. Me: Later, Oober.

We both logged off the chat and I went to get the most important meal of my day: An affordable one.  Tacos it would be.

One drive-through pass later, I went back\ to my office, where I swallowed my mixture of protein, fat and chili powder.  Life was good.

It took me another two minutes before I started feeling weird.  I tensed, thinking I might have to sprint for the bathroom.  Maybe my definition of "processed meat-flavored product" didn't match that of Rocko Taco.

A moment passed, and I realized it wasn't something wrong with my body.  It was my brain.  My synapses had been churning through the chat I'd just had with Oober, and something wasn't right.

Relieved in stomach but worried in mind, I pulled up the chat log and read the conversation we'd just had.

There it was: "i'm dropping off.  gonna greet p@nic and her princess-"

I'd never told Oober about P@nic's connection with the Naked Princess.

I'd never even told him about the Naked Princess at all.  I read the chat log a second time.  The relationship with his parents: His mom I'd met, yet she was "never around?"  He saw his dad?  That didn't match what he said when we first met.

Rocko Taco was off the hook.  Something was really, really wrong.  Oober was lying to me.

And I, so proud and noble in my success, had just generously aimed him right at P@nic.

I scrambled to flick on my tablet and frantically logged on to IRC, looking for P@nic.  Luckily, she was there.

P@nic: hey mr. smart private eye. Me: No time. I have to warn you: Oober's not who he seems. P@nic: what? no. more detail. Me: He knows you wrote the Naked Princess. I never told him that. He lied to me about other things. Something's very wrong. I'm sorry, but I told him how to contact you before I realized this. If he talks to you, do *not* tell him how to reach you. Do *not* give him any information. P@nic: well well, what are ya gonna do. Me: Okaaay... So yeah: I don't know what kind of trick he pulled, but I've been conned. Hard. You're in more danger than before. Don't trust him, okay? P@nic: lol Me: ...? P@nic: it's me, dude. we're both here. this is oober. i'm gonna talk to p@nic for a while. Bye.

Chapter 0x12

Speeding down roads that my car had no business speeding on, I alternated between cursing my vehicle and myself.

I'd just dropped the most important bits of my case right into the hands of the person who shouldn't know them.

Oober, for all I knew, was not Oober.  Or he'd hidden his true nature really well.  Playing the role of a down-on-his-luck, emotionally-abused high school kid had worked well on me.  Enough that I'd felt bad for him. Enough that I'd completely bought his story and shared confidential information.

He'd wormed his way into my case, and he'd used me to translate the clues from the Naked Princess into arrows pointing toward P@nic.  P@nic, who needed to stay hidden from those who wanted to find her.

She'd trusted me.  I was supposed to protect her.  But I'd told Oober just what he needed to contact her, and he'd somehow used that info to find her.

As I swerved through intersections and lurched over bumps that I hoped were curbs, I replaced cursing myself with a more effective form of motivation: Using my anger to focus on learning and taking the next step.

I'd had plenty of evidence that Oober wasn't who he'd claimed to be.  The connection to the Naked Princess.  The confusion with his mom and dad.  Twice as many hints as I usually got to work with, and I'd ignored them.  That wouldn't happen again.

Lessons learned late are better than early, (A horrible metallic grinding noise permeated my car.)

I won't forget pain when I'm feeling so surly.

There was a moral from this colossal snafu.  And the moral rhymed, so, hey, bonus points.  Anything to take my mind off the fact that I'd just clipped a fire hydrant.

I was getting close to P@nic's neighbor-hood of fancy mansions, immaculate lawns, and looming mortgage debt.  I did the opposite recommendation of the nearest road sign, and slammed the accelerator to the floor.  My car rewarded me with a few extra MPH and vomited the rest of my effort in a cloud of black tailpipe smoke.

I locked up my brakes trying to drift-spin into P@nic's street.  My clattering, dented, hydrant-molested car caught disgusted glares from the neighborhood Teslas, Smartcars, and a refurbished DeLorean.

My car's engine sputtered and died from embarrassment, but I could see P@nic's home just a couple doors down, so I pushed out of my car and ran.

The front door was open a crack - that was always a bad sign - and I shoved it all the way open and entered through the foyer.

Next room over was a large family room.  A comfy place, with a half-circle of laze-inducing furniture that angled towards a projector screen that spanned at least ninety inches.

On the screen was a collection of photos, clearly generated by the Naked Princess app.  Some graphic and disgusting, some abstract yet weirdly disturbing, and some so nasty I took in a glance then looked away.

Oober and P@nic sat on the couch.  Oober was slouching back, relaxed and comfortable, one hand behind his head, the other caressing a wireless keyboard.  P@nic was sitting on the edge of the couch cushion, her back straight vertical and her mouth a flat horizontal.  She was staring at the screen.

Oober glanced in my direction as I stumbled into the room, and spoke casually over his shoulder.

"Hey, Mister Information Technology Private Investigator.  Let's talk about you."

He touched the keyboard and the screen changed.

I saw my own personalized Naked Princess photo, the overly-complicated Rubik's Cube puzzle, expanded into glorious 90-inch detail.

"I've seen it," I said.

Oober frowned at the picture and then looked at me.

"That's it?  What did you do to the program to get it to generate that?  Give it random input?  Lie?"

"Something like that," I said.  "A lot like you did when we first met."

"Yeah," he smiled.  It wasn't the sad, young, wistful smile I'd seen before.  This smile was cold.  Dead inside.  "I screwed up my story, didn't I."

"It's hard to believe you were so abused, when the abuser changes from your dad to your mom.  Especially after I'd just met your mom."

"Yeah.  That.  'Mom' really isn't the best word for her."

"So what is she?"

"She's nothing.  Let's get to what's important."

"Right," I said, moving into authoritative mode.  "P@nic, let's get out of here.  I can help you.  We can -"

She was already shaking her head, and Oober was already smiling.

"No," she said.  "I don't need to go anywhere."

"If this guy's threatened you, we can fix it."

She looked at me full in the face.

"He did.  You can't.  I'm fine."

"You don't look it.  I can see your hands shaking from here."

"Reboot bought me out."

"Who?"

Oober pantomimed a sarcastic hat-tip.

"That's me," he said.  "Reboot at your service."

"You're called Reboot?  Or that's who you work for?"

He smiled.

"I don't have to tell you everything."

"No.  But it would help."

"We'd been watching P@nic for a while.  We saw the results we got from the Naked Princess.  Give full credit to P@nic here," he said, giving her a nudge that earned him a glare.  "She did a great job in the solution design.  She'd already hacked through the social media APIs to get at the juicy big data, built the algos, and linked it all together with a seriously leveled-up understanding of psychology.  All I needed to do was to get to the source code.  After you led me here, the rest was just a question of cash, credit, or bitcoin."

"You know this won't work.  It can't."  I gestured at the screen, which was still showing off my personalized non-terrifying Naked Princess picture.  "Bad data is too easy to collect and impossible to always filter out.  You're gonna do what - use the Naked Princess as a picture generator to strike fear into your enemies?  That's assuming your enemies all fill in their FriendyFace profile?  Then what?  People will freak out for a while, and just for a while, before they're desensitized.  Show a kid a horror movie when they're young, and they'll be traumatized for a week.  Then they assimilate and get over it.  You're not going to accomplish anything!"

Oober - or Reboot - was nodding along with me patronizingly.  He was nice enough to let me say my piece before he put my argument through the shredder.

"You might've been a part of this project, you know.  You're okay at analysis and have a passable respect for reality.  Except you've got it all wrong, man.  You're thinking way too small.  This is just a prank to you?  Some social experiment gone wrong?  A virus that needs to be stopped?  No, you idiot, the Naked Princess is being weaponized."

"I don't see -"

"I know you don't.  So shut up.  We don't care about the photos.  We don't care about the mental damage we're doing to all the precious snowflakes who are stupid enough to take everything they care about and put it online.  Abusing that is easy, but it's a dead-end street.  Like you just told me, the end game is already compromised.  And like I just told you, this is about Big Data."

Reboot watched me and laughed.

"That stupid look on your face is why I'm a part of this and you're not.  Spooky pictures were just a proof-of-concept.  Step back and see another possibility.  Using the source code, psychoanalysis, and data behind the Naked Princess, we can predict what people will do, and we know what levers will force them to act.  From individuals to the masses, we know the future because we can make it happen.  Stock market crashes, political elections and social revolts, hell, even something as simple as sports betting.  Imagine what you could do if you had the power to influence these things, to know ahead of time, to stop them -"

"Or to start them."

"Yeah," he grinned.  "That too.  Very much.  There will be damage.  There has to be.  But we'll use that damage and our influence to improve the world."

I looked at P@nic.  Despite having been paid up into what I assumed was Officially Wealthy status by Reboot/Oober, she looked miserable.

Reboot caught the glance.  He slapped his legs and stood up.

"I'm done here.  I got what I needed.  And you -" he stared at P@nic.  "You got what you deserve, I suppose.  Plenty of money and guilt.  RedAction thanks you for your contributions to humanity."

He left.

P@nic and I stared at each other.  There were tears in her eyes.

"You don't have to hide anymore," I said.  "He's gone.  You're safe."

"Don't you dare try and make me feel better.  I know what this means.  I don't know what I'm going to do.  He said they'd pay me plenty and get out of my life.  But if I didn't give them the source code, he said they would..."  She swallowed.

"You didn't have a choice."

"How can I even report this?  Who's supposed to help me?  Can you?"

With a stab of guilt, I realized that P@nic didn't know about my mistake.  She didn't know I'd led Reboot right to her.  I'd find a way to tell her.  Later.  Maybe.

"You're not alone."  I spoke with confidence I didn't feel.

"Well, then great.  Here we are," she threw up both hands.  "What are we supposed to do?  There's nothing left.  They gave me enough money to last me for life, and I don't even want it.  It's dirty.  They'll probably monitor how I use it, too, and keep me in a cage unless I drop completely offline."

"Well, that's not going to happen.  We've got plenty to do before you should even think about going off the grid.  I've got some ideas, thanks to our friend Reboot.  I hope we never see the guy again, but something tells me we will."

"We will?" her face paled for a second, then anger flushed in her cheeks.  "We will.  We will.  If you can fix this, I'm in.  What's next?"

"Well, apparently there's the threat of social and political domination, so we might want to think about that at some point.  But we just heard a name that makes me feel even worse."

"What?  Who?"

"Reboot just told us the name of his boss: RedAction."

"I don't know what that is."

"I do."

Chapter 0x13

P@nic stared at me, her eyes glazed over, still processing what had just happened.  In a flash that I'm sure she didn't want me to see, I saw her pain and fear, and her knowledge that even though Reboot had left us, her problems were far from over.  She knew all this, and she had no idea of what to do next.  She was just a kid.  Yes, a 'leet-level security and communications hacker, but still just a kid.  She couldn't control this.  She couldn't fight back.

The worst part was that she'd been used, and her creation had been stolen and mutated.  The Naked Princess was changing from a freaky social experiment into an actual weapon.

No, I rethought, the worst part was that I'd caused all of this.

"So?" P@nic said, eyebrows raised in expectation.

"RedAction" I said.  "When Reboot said it, I knew it.  Well, sort of.  Not really.  I mean, I do know that RedAction is a company that, well, it's run by, well...  And their ultimate goal is...  Um.  But they're doing some scary work with scarier people.  Some of them aren't around anymore."

The words were flowing almost randomly as I scanned memories shellacked with pain, terror, and a very significant virus attack.  P@nic looked at me, confused, probably thinking that information technology investigators weren't as cool as they seemed, especially since the one in front of her seemed to have trouble with forming coherent sentences.

I'm a techie, so my default view is to categorize every possible thing I see.  I must give things attributes, ratings, and opinion-heavy reviews.  I have to, because that's the best way to sort through the chaos of life and force it to make sense, to sort out the Big Data of Planet Earth.  The problem was that RedAction took away my usual methods because they'd given me so little information.

RedAction had sneaked into my life as softly and violently as they'd left it.  The knockout gas they had used on me made sure of that.  They'd hidden themselves well.  We couldn't hit what we couldn't see.

I took a deep, cleansing breath.  I coughed because I rarely took breaths that were deep or cleansing, and I tried to explain.

"I worked with a 'Ms. Smith,' one of those high-powered, perfectly-dressed, to-the-point CEOs.  She paid me frighteningly well for a basic security diagnostic.  RedAction is her company."

"That still sounds vague."

"That's because I never got their address.  They hid their location from me.  They're not online.  I remember the business description Ms. Smith gave: RedAction is a 'classified outfit performing secure management of priority operations for anonymous clients.'"

"That's not much to go on."

"Yeah, but it really sells the business card.

Later I found out they were pushing high-tech brain modification."

"Sounds fun."

"Oh for sure, until I got on the wrong end of their mental modifications.  But my third personality says I'm much better now."

She looked at me, appreciating my humor, or possibly she was rethinking her decision to talk to me.  That's when my natural bravado fought with my pessimistic side, and lost.  My pessimistic side turned and gave me a face-punchable smirk.  P@nic was right, we didn't have much.  RedAction was a well-hidden, very private, outside-the-law company whose public description was that they did interesting things for interesting clients.  Now - thanks to Reboot - I knew they were involved with the Naked Princess.  But that was it.

Back in an often-ignored part of my brain, my optimistic side shyly raised its hand.  There might yet be something to work with.  Perhaps my lack of information could still lead to something helpful.

"Based on what happened to me, when I did their security work, I can make a few assumptions: RedAction has a local presence in town, because they took me there to do work.  They don't worry about breaking the law.  They're not government, because if they were, they wouldn't have bothered with hiring a bit-level operator like me."

"I might have something here," P@nic said.

"Right," I nodded.  "If I were a profitable, clandestine, possibly-illegal organization, and had access to the Naked Princess, what would I do with it?  Reboot said the Naked Princess app was being weaponized.  He talked about direct manipulation of stock markets, politics, and sports betting.  But he talked like it was the future, not the present.  I think they're still beta testing.  They're not ready to act."

"You know, I think I might have a way to help," P@nic said.

"Sure.  But this'll be tricky.  How can we track them?  We can't just log on to the nearest esports betting site, pick the next Street Fighter tournament, and look for 'I'm with RedAction' avatars.  We still have to find them.  I need to get in the way of their testing, to find what they're doing and break it."

The danger to my job and possibly my life had just escalated.  Why did I still want this?  Because I felt guilty about P@nic, about supposedly being her savior when I'd instead pointed Reboot and RedAction right towards her.  It was my responsibility to take care of her.  I was angry at the way Reboot had manipulated me.  Correction: I was pissed.  I didn't like being controlled.  I had to punch back.  Though I still didn't have a target for my anger.

"In some cultures, people converse with others," P@nic said.  "It's just a custom, but you still might want to try it."

As I stopped thinking to myself out loud, the words she'd been saying over the last minute finally penetrated my thick skull, and were translated into usable meaning.  My eloquent response was to stare blankly at her.

"Whoops," I said helpfully.  "I got sidetracked."

"No kidding."

"What do you have?  How can you help?"

"When Oober - I mean Reboot - came over to threaten me, he pushed into the house.  Sat down and acted like he owned the place.  He used my computers so he could use my projector.  He logged in to a webfacing server, pulled up the Naked Princess pictures for you and me, and had them displaying on my systems, ready for when you got here."

"He used your systems to log in to his systems."

"Yep."

"Tell me you're running a keylogger."

She smiled.  With her teeth.

"I put keyloggers on every system I access.  So yeah, mine too.  I know everything he typed.  Get online and I'll send it all to you.  This mongrel's gonna pay."

"If Reboot accessed RedAction systems from your house, and you keylogged it, we probably have a lot to work with."

P@nic's eyes were shining in a way that made me uncomfortable.

"Their systems are open," she said.  "Even without creds, I won the AnonIt hacking competition.  I'm not good at a lot of stuff, but I can access systems that aren't meant to be accessed.  Since Reboot was dipstick enough to give me his creds, that makes it even easier.  I'll bet all the bitcoins he bribed me with that I can do some real damage.  The sky's the limit."

Until now, I'd known P@nic as someone Reboot had taken advantage of, someone he'd attacked and tracked and abused.  Now, she glowed with competence and intensity.  I wasn't eager to stand in her way, but I still wanted more backup.  I thought back to Minotaur.  He was another AnonIt hacker, another winner who might be eager for the next big target, especially if it was to stop the Naked Princess app.

"Don't get too eager to pound Reboot into the ground right away," I said.  "We'll do this right.  Reboot works for RedAction.  I have no idea how big they are.  We shouldn't do anything until we know, because the other team is just you and me.  I know people who might be willing to help, but need time to put something together."

P@nic shrugged.

"Fine, whatever," she said.  "You talk to whoever.  I'm going to fight back, and I'm going to do it right now.  You and me don't matter.  I've got my botnet."

Sometimes I get chills.  This was one of those times.

Chapter 0x14

With keypresses logged from Reboot's visit, P@nic went heads-down and began to hack into RedAction with speed, intensity, and maybe just a little bit of fanaticism.  Fueled by white-hot anger at Reboot, she punched her keyboard's keys like each one owed her money.

Her face glowed as she worked uncomfortably close to her laptop screen.  Hunched over, staring, her position had the intensity of a bird of prey.  The rest of her burned with barely-contained energy as she typed, thought, moused, and occasionally cursed.

Translation: I should stay out of the way.

I almost jumped as she leaned back with a huff.  She rotated the screen so I could see it, and pointed to lines of code I couldn't understand.

"It's good and bad," she said.  "They're really secure, but I can get in if I had time.  Problem is, we don't have time.  The servers Reboot used are exposed to the Web, okay, and whoever locked them down knows what she's doing.  It's a secured environment.  Patched firewalls with heavy port restrictions.  Three separate honeypots.  Probably monitors for all traffic in and out, and I assume flags for any admin logons.  Still... I can use these external servers to get inside, but yeah, I need time."

"How much time?"

"To do it the safe way, undetected, I need time we don't have.  They might have alerts on what I did just now - if they're smart, they're reviewing access logs and will see me logging in with Reboot's creds."

"They'll terminate all access," I said.  "Maybe shut down the web-facing servers until they deal with us.  They'll come right back here.  It won't just be Reboot.  He'll bring friends.  We shouldn't be here if they are."

"Yeah."

My instincts to do this more carefully had been right.  We'd moved too fast.  P@nit's desire to hurt Reboot was justified, but her jump to immediate action was like using the Konami cheat code without knowing the game: You start out all excited and confident, but still end up losing.

"We should move, right now," I said.  "Leave the house.  Take your laptop.  I can get you mobile from my office."

She was already shaking her head.  "That'll just use up minutes we don't have.  Didn't you tell me RedAction's already been to your office?  They'll find us no matter where we go."

She stared intently at the space behind her laptop.  Her fingers tapped as she thought.  The longer we waited, the more likely it would be that we'd get caught.  "We can't hide," I said.  "If they haven't seen us already, they're about to.  What we need is a distraction.  Give them something to worry about besides us."

Her fingers stopped their tapping.  She looked at me and smiled.

"I could do that.  I'm already in the web-facing servers.  I could leave something big.  Let them know someone's knocking on the door.  That's the distraction.  While they deal with that, we insert a second present they'll never notice: A little, tiny, hidden present that will let me in unrestricted after they think they've patched all their security holes."

"What's the distraction?"

"I've got my botnet.  I'm going to point it at their servers.  Have ninety-nine percent of it run a DDoS attack.  Meantime, the other one percent of the time I'll pause the attack, and when RedAction tries to breathe, they'll see I'm running brute-force password attacks on their firewalls."

"That's like knocking on their door with a sledgehammer."

"Yeah.  They'll notice.  That's the distraction.  But for the second thing - the 'present' - I can't do that quickly, unless we can get onsite."

"I see where this is going.  Or rather, where I'm going."

"You have a fast car, right?"

She was half right, so I nodded confidently.

"Yeah. It's definitely a car."

Chapter 0x15

The magic of money had just given me a new friend named Terry.

Terry made a good living being homeless in the broken industrial park of West Rapids.  He had shelter if it got cold, since while many of the buildings were closed and shuttered, they were rotten enough that there were ways to get in.  He had plenty to eat.  Since he had mapped out locations of Dumpsters and trash cans from surviving businesses, his menu was more defined by his mood than availability.  While I was savoring my daily cup of noodles, this guy ate sushi multiple times per week.

Terry also liked to talk.

"I got what I need," he said, extending skinny arms to take in the whole of the crumbling buildings around us.  "Got time to enjoy and I tell you why.  I plan it out, son.  Plans get you success.  You don't plan, then that's a plan for failure.  Like you, now, where you're gonna get success if I help you get inside your RedAction place, because you're planning to give me two hundred fifty bucks."

"Two fifty?  Was that the number?"

"U.S. dollars," he nodded confidently.

"That's your plan."

One trip to an ATM later, I was counting bills into his palm, which was lots of cups of noodles.  I stopped at one fifty.

"Hey now," he said.

"I seem to remember the original deal was less.  You'll get the last hundred after we do this."

"Son," he said, shaking his head sadly.  "You don't understand your position -"

"I do, Terry. You just made a hundred and fifty for bragging how you eat better than I do.  You'll get another hundred for some actual help."

He tilted his head and squinted at me, then grinned and gave a sharp nod.

"This thing," I said, waving the USB stick from P@nic.  "I have to plug this into a computer inside the RedAction building.  It can be any computer, but I need to get inside the place to do it.  Then I'll leave.  Unnoticed."

"Not a problem."

"Well, it's not that easy.  This is a secure place.  They probably have cameras -"

"Yeah, they got ten. On each side, more on the roof.  And doubled up around the front entrance and back loading dock."

I was surprised.  "How do you know that?"

He stared at me with a look that said I was wasting his time which from a courtesy standpoint shouldn't need to be said because even though he was homeless he wasn't going to wait for me to get with the program and the only reason he was still standing there was because I was holding his money.

"You sound like you've done this before."

"Yeah, nah.  But I know people who care about those things."

After coming up with a plan that was admittedly more Terry's idea than mine, a few minutes later saw me confidently walking towards the RedAction building with the eyes of multiple security cameras tracking me.

Except for the security cameras that Terry had proudly pointed out to me, the outside of the large brick building was unremarkable.  Inside was a different story.  A heavy door opened into a clean, spacious hallway.  A receptionist sat on the other side of a wall, looking at me through a small sliding security window.  On my side of the wall, another heavy door stood closed.  A red light glowed on a card reader mounted next to the door.  This was the problem - I needed to get through that door.  P@nic's USB stick was burning a hole in my pocket - I wanted to get in, find a PC, drop off P@nic's present, and get out of there.

I looked around.  I didn't see any company logos, mottos, or anything that said RedAction.  But this was definitely the place.  They even kept their headquarters anonymous.

Breaking her attention away from a paperback book, the receptionist slid open the security window and said, "Welcome to Product Management Group.  Who are you here to see?"

Here we go.

P@nic said she'd hit RedAction hard with a DDoS attack from her botnet, and it would hit right now.  That should be enough to saturate the company bandwidth and bring Internet access offline.

"I'm here about the web problems," I said.  Keep it high-level, keep it simple.  She'd fill in the rest.

"Oh, that's so good!"  Relief in her voice, she rolled her eyes upwards.  "I'm glad they called someone in to help.  They told us it was another Microsoft update that went crazy.  I guess they need help."

While I'm happy to blame Microsoft for everything, from buggy forced OS updates to rainy weather, I tried to understand what the RedAction admins were thinking.  They had to know they were under a DDoS attack.  They couldn't quickly stop it, and this type of attack didn't conceal itself.  Maybe it was better to tell the users something they could understand and not worry about.  They'd gain breathing room to work through the issue without users and bosses who would freak when they heard the word "attack."  In short, lie and downplay the severity.  An oldie but goodie.

"You can go to IT," the receptionist said, and I felt confident until she picked up her phone receiver.  "Let me get security for you."

I needed to get in there alone.  There was no way I could do what I needed with their security watching me the whole time I was here.

"No, don't bother them," I said quickly, and her finger froze over the phone touchscreen as she looked up at me politely.  "I can just head back there myself.  I know where to go."

"Oh, I know," she gave me an apologetic smile.  "But it's policy.  All visitors must be escorted.  I'll get security to take you to them."

I watched helplessly as she hit an extension and spoke quietly into her phone, then turned to me cheerfully.  "On their way now!"

"Thanks."

RedAction's security door buzzed and the red LED turned green.  The door swung open to reveal a mountain of a security goon.  His muscles were armed with a gun, baton, mace and other tactical gear hanging from a Batmanworthy utility belt.  He stood with a military poise.  He examined me up and down and nodded, his eyes flat.  He looked like he didn't like to smile.

"Good afternoon, sir.  You're with IT?"

"Yeah, I just need to get to -"

The main entrance door behind me flew open.  It hit the wall with a slam as Terry burst in and fell onto the floor in his rush.  He climbed back to his feet and reached both arms to the heavens.

"His arrival brings a dark world!"

The security goon refocused his dead stare on my newest cash-motivated friend.

"Whoa there, sir."  Goon stepped past me and went to tower over Terry.  He held both hands up apologetically, trying to crowd Terry back towards the door.  "I'm going to have to ask you to leave, sir.  I can escort you out of this building -"

"Your life is suffering, wretched, infernal!  The Great Old Ones breathe life eternal!"

Terry's face was red, his arms were flailing, and I even saw spittle fly from his lips as he yelled.  Full credit to the man, Terry was good at improv insanity.

The guard was focused on managing this clearly crazy intruder, responding politely while also corralling him back.  I looked behind me.  The receptionist was watching the scuffle with wide eyes, and had slid closed her small access window.

The security door behind me was still open.  I used it.

Terry's distraction should buy me a couple minutes, enough time to introduce P@nic's USB stick to an unoccupied computer.  Terry was ranting louder and was now trying to push back against the guard.  My hope was that RedAction didn't want any attention, so they wouldn't want the police called, like if a guard assaulted someone trying to enter the building.  Even with video evidence in their favor, RedAction had secrets inside of secrets, and any outside investigation would be prevented with all possible effort.  I hoped.

I stood in a hallway that ran straight ahead with periodic doors accessing large cubical farms.  From the multitude gray squares, several curious heads were sticking up above the cube walls like groundhogs in human form.  Listening to the ranting lunatic near the front entrance, they didn't even notice me.  I ducked into the first cubical room and began to scan right and left, looking for unoccupied desks with computers.

I skipped the first couple I found.  One was right near the hallway and too easily seen by anyone going past.  Another had a PC sitting on the desk, and what I needed to do had to be more covert.  A third had a steaming mug of coffee next to the keyboard, so I guessed the owner was close and probably returning soon.

Then in the next cube over, I saw a floor-standing tower PC shoved under the desk.  It was powered on, the monitor patiently displaying a logon screen.  The chair was shoved against the desk and no coat or personal items were visible.

Terry's voice began to fade away.  It sounded like the guard was finally getting him outside.  I had seconds to get this done and get out, before the office went back to normal and I could more easily be caught.

I dropped to the floor and wiggled to the PC, fishing out P@nic's USB stick from my pocket at the same time.  Against the wall in the corner of the cube, I craned my neck around in the gloom to look for open USB ports in the back of the PC.  I cursed quietly when I saw all ports were being used.  Seriously, what did a generic RedAction user need?  Mouse, keyboard, and what else?  Four locally-attached printers?  I picked a cable at random and yanked it out.  I gritted my teeth at the cheery "BONG-bong" from the PC as it noticed I unplugged something, and wanted the world to know.  It did it again as I inserted P@nic's USB stick into the slot I'd just freed up.

I'd done it.  Whatever tool P@nic had me install would hopefully activate, and she could do her magic and properly infiltrate this place and bring them down.  Like right now.  All I needed to do was to get out of here before I was noticed.

"Um, excuse me."

From under the desk, I stared back at a pair of sensible shoes that had just entered the cube along with legs, all of which I assumed belonged to the cube's owner.

I slid out and glanced up at the woman as I did so.  She was staring down at me, fists on her hips.

"What are you doing?" she spoke through a sudden hammering of my heart.

"Just working on the Web issue," I said, trying to keep the problem generic and high-level, pitching my voice like the bored tech I hoped she was used to dealing with.  "An Ethernet thing.  Your DNS cable was loose."

"Oh, okay.  Can I work or not?"

"Yeah, sure.  All set.  Thanks."  I hopped up, smiled briefly, and started back the way I'd come.

I walked down the hallway towards the entrance that was now my exit.  Other employees were navigating the hallway, most carrying fresh refills of coffee, and we all did the head-bob of acknowledgment as I made my way past them.  At the last one, we made eye contact and my stomach dropped.

I'd just nodded to Oober's "mom."  The lady who'd lied about herself and Oober, who first pulled me into this case, and I'd just made direct eye contact with her.  If she recognized me, big problem.  I knew she worked for RedAction.  I didn't think I'd actually see her again.

A couple days' beard growth and a lack of hair combing wasn't much of a disguise.  Still walking, I casually glanced around and behind me to see if my face had triggered anything from her.

She had stopped in the middle of the hallway and looked frozen in place.  She turned slowly to look back at me, her eyes wide.

"Dev Manny!" she screamed.  "That's the investigator!  Security!  Anyone!"

There was a chance she remembered me.  I turned and ran.

Chapter 0x16

"Stop him!  Anyone!"

Her scream was so shrill it hurt my ears.  I used that pain as motivation to keep running.

The life of an Information Technology Private Investigator is one of action and adventure, heart-pounding action.  Or that's what I once told a friendly drunk on the bus about two years ago.  The reality of my job description was far less excitement and a lot more Googling.

The wash of adrenaline had kicked my fight-or-flight response into top gear.  My pounding heart was a pressure in my chest that was moving up my throat as I ran.  Focusing on gasping through each breath, my muscles shook in a scary mix of electrified and weak.  My body was at redline.

The point is that since I was racing down the hallway inside RedAction headquarters, with multiple people screaming behind me, and me bouncing off walls trying to escape from an office building I'd just broken into...  Man, I was out of shape.

I chanced a look back and saw the mass of people chasing me, all led by Oober's impostor mom.

At least the plan had worked: P@nic's USB stick was now inside a LAN-connected PC.  Her botnet was already attacking this place and had choke-slammed it offline.  Hopefully the USB inject was all P@nic needed for her next steps.

All I needed to do was escape.

I turned away from the wave of angry office workers and my face slammed into a concrete pillar that was wearing a hat and utility belt.

I bounced and landed on my back.  The concrete pillar leaned towards me - it was the security guard who'd originally seen me enter the building.  He'd brought his turkey-sized fists with him, and one of them grabbed me by the shirt and lifted me to my feet.  He spun me around and wrenched my arm so high behind my back that my fingers scraped against my neck.  I screamed.

He wasn't satisfied because he then threw a Wozniak-sized arm around my neck, and he squeezed.  My heart pounded harder as I struggled to breathe.

My vision doubled in front of me.  Oober's fake mom stepped out from the wave of business-casual flotsam.  My eyes were streaming tears and my head was counting down to an explosion.  I tried to blink but couldn't.

Oober's fake mom leaned in, her friendly and vulnerable face suddenly glowering cruel and sharp.

"That's him," she snarled.  She looked far up at the security guard behind me.  "Take him out."

The guard grunted in acknowledgment and the Wozniak pressure increased.  My throat - unable to choke - began to spasm against the pressure.

She leaned even closer, her eyes filling mine as my vision grew blurry.

"Goodbye, Mr. Manny."

My vision flickered and grew dark.  I saw her pull back with an odd expression on her face.  The vice around my neck had apparently squeezed enough and my vision went black.  This wasn't the way I wanted to go.  I'd rather have died during the First Attempted Singularity Upload, but my life - while shorter than expected - had at least been interesting.

I fell as the darkness enveloped me.

The screams began.

That was odd.  I didn't believe in an afterlife.  Unless Lovecraft was right after all, I really shouldn't be hearing the wailing of the eternally doomed.

An angel of light flared at the center of my vision.  Then another, off to the side.  Handheld lights flicked on around the office as people turned on their smartphone flashlights.  Black shadows danced on gray walls from a dozen weak LEDs.

From the floor, I saw the mountain of a security guard reaching toward me for a Round Two.

I began to laugh.

"What is this?" Oober's fake mom hissed.  She looked down at me.  Lit from beneath, her face looked gaunt and haunted.  "Tell me right now what -"

"Your Internet's offline," I gasped.  "And now the lights are out."

I had hoped P@nic had time to do whatever she was planning.  Looks like she had, and she did.

"What," Oober's fake mom breathed above me as I struggled to sit up, emphasizing each word, "do you know about that?"

Since I was laughing in her face, she decided to kick me in mine.  Her black sensible pump wrenched my head to the side and I felt my teeth loosen.  I stared at the shadows on the floor as dark liquid dripped from my mouth.  I squinted up and grinned into her cell phone flashlight.  I could taste the blood staining my teeth.

"She's coming for you," I said, and spat blood onto the floor.  "When the lights are out, everyone get ready for P@nic."

Her eyes widened.  She looked from me to the mountain range of security guard.  She nodded at him.

I again felt the brutal embrace of the Wozniak as it lifted me and squeezed.  I gurgled and struggled and my hands felt suddenly heavy and weak.  The pressure didn't stop, and the starfield of cell phone flashlights around me flickered, dimmed, and disappeared.

***

The botnet was a world-spanning grid, millions of nodes within nodes, layered, interconnected points of energy blasting information back and forth.

The nodes' energy began to flash in rhythm, to become steadier and more constant.  Across the world, nodes within nodes paused, re-oriented, coordinated.  Packets exchanged, nanosecond timers synchronized, and the entire botnet - hundreds of thousands of zombie systems - turned to face their target.  As one, they screamed at RedAction.

P@nic had taken control, and she'd turned her many tools into a single weapon.  Her botnet could not be stopped or ignored.

RedAction was offline, worse than a drunk at the holidays... except for one small trickle of traffic.  The USB drive that P@nic had me sneak into the building was a skeleton key, programmed to be ignored by the massive botnet.  With that secret path through the botnet blockade, she was able to simultaneously take RedAction offline, and still access and compromise their internal systems.

She'd apparently started with the lighting controls.  How long her access would last, I didn't know.

As my consciousness swirled around me, as I tried to determine what was reality or an oxygen-starved fantasy, I forced myself back to consciousness.

I opened my eyes and saw nothing different.  The lights were still out.  I had no flashlight myself - my cell phone was gone, along with my wallet.  With increasing anger, I realized they'd even taken my Leatherman multitool.

I heard no sounds, none of the scramble and screams of people that should be running around in the dark.

There was an odd smell nearby, and it resolved itself into emotion - a pungent sense-memory from my childhood.  It was laser-burned polycarbonate and aluminum, from a time when technology was so antiquated we had to physically engrave our data, like cavemen etching into stone.

Is that... a recordable CD?

I reached out blindly and felt around.  Yes, there was a whole spool of old CDs.  I ran my fingers over the smooth surface, brought them close to smell the faint but unmistakable odor of permanent marker.  Important to some admin many years ago, now a bittersweet memory of my first Linux distro.

I sat up in this pitch-dark room.  I smelled plastic.  Shielded cabling.  Spindle motors.  Dead power supplies kicking out watts of age and dust.

Crawling and exploring, my blind eyes wide in the darkness, my hands fumbled over boxes, cases, cages, and towers.  I gasped as my hands ran over what felt like a TI-99/4A.  This place was a museum...  Or a graveyard.

I felt around the ancient tech, marveling at eight-inch floppy drives, some still containing disks with long-forgotten magnetic bytes.  I ran eager fingers over old-school monitors, back when they were thirty pound boxes and not flat panels.  I found old towers, from when PCs and servers weren't designed for planned obsolescence but for Armageddon.  The heavy steel tanks would outlast us all.

RedAction had decided not to kill me yet.  Perhaps they realized I was their only immediate connection to P@nic and could be used as a lever against her.  Since they weren't with me now, I guessed that whoever was in charge decided it was more important to deal with P@nic's attack than me.

I wasn't supposed to be here.  Not part of the plan.  I felt the hot burn of embarrassment, of leaving P@nic in the lurch, of saying her name out loud to the wrong people, of getting caught and not being able to help.  I felt shame - until I fully realized my situation and RedAction's big mistake.

I was early man being handed a burning torch.  I was the Primitive Technology Guy with the R&D already done.

I was an IT private investigator in a room full of tools.

I didn't know how much time I had, but I would take this ancient technology and I would use it to improve my situation and escape from this room.

I got to work.

Chapter 0x17

I jumped up and tried to touch the ceiling.  Blind in this pitch black room, my grasping, flailing arms failed to touch anything, and I landed awkwardly.  I began to feel around the room, trying to use my hands for eyes.  There was a door, wood and not metal at least, but it was thick and heavy.

Featureless painted walls gave a dry rasp as I slid my hands over them.  While I couldn't escape via the ceiling, I might be able to just physically break out if the walls were thin enough.  I pulled back, took a deep breath and channeled every Kung fu movie I ever watched.  I slammed the flat of my palm into the wall's cheap building materials.

After spending the next few minutes realizing I'd just sprained my wrist, I also realized I wasn't going to be able to break through this wall.

I walked slowly through the dark room, bumping my feet against piles of seemingly random collections of hardware and books and papers.  I lowered both hands and let my fingertips brush against them as I passed by each pile.  It was dry in here - my fingers stabbed with pain as static electricity crackled and stung.

I would have to escape through the door.  Having walked around and feeling my way through most of the room, I stood in what I thought was the center and tried to visualize what I'd felt around me.

This dry and dusty place was a graveyard of IT parts.  Old, heavy, ancient things, with sharp points, embedded electronics, parts galore, all of which could be used as tools.

Being an Information Technology Private Investigator is like being "a doctor."  There's a lot implied and a lot of complexity, and you need to talk to someone in detail to properly describe it.  Regardless of what I was, there was one thing I knew: This IT PI was trapped in a dark, locked room, and the tools of my trade were everywhere.  I just needed to find the right ones.

The wall had almost broken my hand, my wrist was still throbbing, but I'd just passed something that made me feel much better.  My fingers trailed over a waist-height box, a cold metal chassis so thick it could stop bullets, a front-panel display with a small LED and a sprinkling of familiar buttons, and of course the smell... the smell of power.

I couldn't see in this room, but this technological monster had to be an AS/400 mainframe.  Based on 1970s design trends, the world was planning for nuclear war and this technology showed it.  If enterprise mainframe servers had a martial arts face-off, the IBM AS/400 would be the sumo wrestler, crushing all in its way.

I ran my finger over the thick textured metal and jumped as I got a static shock.  This time I actually saw a pinprick of light as the spark blinked in and out of existence.

It really was too dry in here.  Good thing all this equipment was dead already.

...Or was it?

Realization struck like a Mortal Kombat fatality.  I had another option.  It was elegant, smart, and I would free myself using power from the past.

I reached around, blindly grabbing at machines, knocking over piles of paper and printed manuals, stumbling back and forth in my search.  My fingers slid over a box of heavy plastic and a smooth curved screen.

Gotcha.

I knew I'd be able to get out of here.  I had everything I needed.  I was Prometheus with technological fire.

Grabbing a handful of papers from a shelf I'd just knocked to the floor, I twisted them into a tight column.

Then I picked up the heavy box of a monitor - an old beast, maybe 40 pounds of plastic, metal, and cathode ray tube - the heavy glass funnel that made up the display.  They didn't make 'em like that anymore, and that was a good thing.  VGA's time was long gone.

I heaved the monitor and placed it next to the AS/400.

Then, making sure I was safely out of the way, I pulled on the top edge of the AS/400, feeling the huge machine slowly tip to the side, and my IBM-sponsored sumo wrestler smashed into the smaller monitor.

As I hoped, I heard the plastic case of the monitor crack and I didn't hear any glass shatter.  I pulled apart the broken case, wincing as jagged plastic tore at my skin.

Inside the monitor, I knew from very dangerous experience, was the CRT, the actual screen of the projector.  Attached to the back of the CRT was a large capacitor.  The capacitor, I hoped, had stored energy, left over from however many months or years this monitor had been here.

This monitor was old enough that hopefully there were no bleeder resistors to remove excess power.  It was an early generation and should have a big old capacitor, charged full of electric anger that had been waiting to release for a very, very long time.

I had to be careful or I could kill myself.  Another fun and dangerous thing about ancient technology: No safety standards.

Pulling away shards of brittle plastic, I exposed the back of the CRT.  Mounted in the upper half of the sloping back of the CRT, I knew there was a rubber plunger-looking thing.  Underneath that plunger was a capacitor, and I wanted to use that to start a fire and light a torch.

I'd then use the light from my torch to really examine the room and figure out what other options I had at my disposal.  Worst case, I hoped to at least get a big spark, along with a flash-impression of the room.

My thoughts turned to the other side of the door, planning how I'd make my escape.  I had to still be at RedAction headquarters.  Since the lights were out, P@nic's botnet attack must still be running.  I was a little confused as to why I wasn't hearing any noise, but that's probably because I'd been thrown in a basement room or somewhere away from the action.

After I got out, I'd just sneak through the RedAction hallways, dodging Oober's mom, and the massive security guard, and anyone else who knew my face.  I'd find a safe spot and then would help P@nic take out RedAction.  Easy.

In the back of my head I had a small voice piping up, saying that maybe this wasn't the best idea, and maybe I should try another option before chancing electrocution.  I ignored that voice as I giggled nervously, tracing the familiar rubber seal with one hand.  Then, holding my breath over my rapidly increasing heartbeat, I shoved a wad of paper underneath the seal.

RedAction kidnapped me and threw me in a room with tools.  You bet I was gonna use them.

There was an electric snap and I screamed at the sudden spasm that froze my arm in a rictus of pain.  My arm dropped away as a fizzling noise faded and disappeared.  I smelled smoke.  I fell back to the floor, suddenly choking on foul-smelling fumes.

My arm felt like it had been run over.  I tried testing it carefully, then stopped as a faint crackling sounded in front of me.  Fear rose as my vision returned.  Flames were licking around the shattered corpse of the monitor.  I got to my feet, stepped back and stared.

Wire shielding was melting, dripping, and feeding the burn.  The plastic shards of the monitor chassis were catching on fire.

I suddenly realized that not only was this place dangerously dry, it was filled with hordes of flammable equipment.

In the center of the room, the monitor transformed into a pillar of crackling flame.

My dreams of being a technological Prometheus were as stupid as the Y2K bug.  I'd picked the wrong Greek god.  Icarus was more my style.

Black smoke vomited from the column of flame, an oily black that mushroomed onto the ceiling, growing and pressing down on me in a hazy lethal blanket.

The room, now that I could see it, was a mess, a forgotten storage room with paper and books scattered everywhere with tons of old hardware.  Soon, more would burn and I had no way of putting it out.  I'd probably suffocate in this room that was feeling smaller by the second.  I had to get out.

Next to the flaming monitor, I saw my last chance, my one hope, my savior in the form of IBM's commitment to awesome: the AS/400.

Making sure to lift with my back and not with my legs, I gasped in spine-popping pain as I heaved up the huge metal box.  Stumbling drunkenly and trying to keep my balance, I took tiny careful steps to rotate and face the door.  Barely able to stay vertical, my eyes were watering both from effort and the smoke that was quickly filling my vision.

My stomach dropped as I heard the flames begin to literally roar.  The ceiling was on fire.

I tipped the AS/400 towards the room's only exit.  Tottering in my trembling arms, the mainframe tipped and began to fall.  I followed the inertia, shoving the AS/400 forward, aiming for the door which I could now barely see through a darkening haze.

I screamed as I drove the metal edge of the server into the center of the heavy wooden barrier.  The door shuddered and collapsed against the might of my highest-tech battering ram.

Splinters and shards of wood tore my face, arms and chest as I fell through the broken door.  Black smoke poured out from the ruined entrance above me.

Choking, I slowly got to my feet and squinted up at the sun...

The sun?  Well, that wasn't right.  I turned and looked at the room I'd just left.

It wasn't a room, it was a building.  I was standing outside on a cracked concrete sidewalk.

The small office building was tiny, brown, built quick and cheap, and it was burning from the inside.  Fire alarms failed to ring and sprinklers failed to spray as smoke poured from the door I'd just left.

I'd just taken a step back when the roof exploded into flame, then collapsed.  Fire and black smoke caught in a sudden wind and danced high into the sky.

This wasn't RedAction.  This was somebody's office just off a highway I didn't recognize in the middle of nowhere, and I'd just burned it down.

Chapter 0x18

One of the last things I remembered seeing at the RedAction HQ was a business-casual ladies shoe as it kicked me hard in the face.  Most would consider that a warning sign, but I wanted to get back.  First, though, I needed to know where RedAction had dumped me.

Behind me was the crackling and roaring fire of a burning building, where I'd been trapped for who knew how long.  Though it seemed I was in the middle of nowhere with no hope of rescue, the black smoke leaping toward the sky was a signal that couldn't be ignored for long.  Fire and police would get here soon, but they'd also come with questions I really didn't want to answer.

I walked away, and realized why I was nervous (apart from the recent beating and escaping death by incineration): Whoever had locked me in the old storage building had also emptied my pockets.  I had no phone.  No Leatherman multitool.  Those were my weapons and I needed them.  If I'd stripped off all my clothes, I wouldn't feel any more naked.

Earth's daily cron job kicked in.  The evening grew cool as the world around me shifted into dark mode.  The sun set, the sky darkened, and a glow became visible on the horizon.  I still didn't know where I was, but that glow was a flame to this civilized moth.  I walked toward it.  I sniffed the air and caught a whiff of something weird, a faint funk of rot.

My barely-achieved distraction at RedAction had given P@nic the time she needed to inject herself into their network, but I had no clue how much damage she'd caused.  I just hoped my concussion had been worth it.

Reboot had brought me into all of this.  Not realizing I'd investigate his problem more than he wanted, I'd found the Naked Princess picture and uncovered RedAction's war against P@nic.  Based on my sore nose and the taste of blood in my mouth, I assumed the kick to my face was still visible, yet I was heading back to what was definitely my worst client ever.  I owed it to P@nic.

Up ahead were some unusual hills.  Strange plateaus of land rose high to gaze down over the flat farmland around me.  Dozens of birds circled lazily far above them.  Poised at the top of one of the hills, silhouetted beautifully in the setting sun, was a garbage truck.  The faint, low thrumming of a diesel engine sounded, and the truck lumbered down the hill.  As the wind shifted and a pungent smell carved its way into my nose, I realized I knew this place.

This was a garbage dump, a massive solid-waste landfill serving most of West Michigan.  After decades of use, the trash piles dominated all.  Trash was reclaimed for recycling where possible, otherwise it was poured into the hills before me, where it sat and rotted.  Bacteria blossomed in a beautiful ballet of chemical farts.  The resulting methane gas was collected and routed to processing for energy generation.

Anyone driving the wrong way out of East Rapids knew this smell.  I was in Cooperstown.  For the first time in my life, I was happy to be here.  I took a deep breath, choked on a smell so strong it had a flavor, and I began to jog to where I knew the expressway on-ramps would be.

A few minutes later, I switched from an athletic jog to a gasping speed walk, because I rarely exercised and already felt like I was about to collapse.  A few minutes after that, I reached a gas station.

I was able to make a phone call, courtesy a trusting, friendly gas station employee.  My first priority, I called a number I'd set up that would send a kill signal to my cell phone.  I'd check on it when I got back to my office, see what the GPS logs could tell me about where RedAction had taken it.  They probably wouldn't be so stupid as to keep a working stolen cell phone, but weirder things had happened.

Second priority, I needed to get out of here.  This was thanks to the same employee, who was now noticeably less trusting and less friendly since I still hadn't returned his phone, despite the very specific words he was using to describe where he was about to shove that phone if I wanted it that bad.

He got his phone back because I was done: An Uber ride was heading my way.

I had the Uber take me back to the city, but first with a circling the block before stopping at RedAction.  I didn't need to be that careful.  The building was dark.  The entrance doors were unlatched, open, dancing gently in a slight breeze.  The security cameras that had covered the building's strategic sight lines had all been removed.

The building had been gutted.

I hadn't been unconscious for that long.  After I woke up, it must have taken a couple hours to get back downtown.  In that time, it looked like RedAction had cleared out everything important.  Since my appearance rarely struck fear into anyone's hearts, I assumed P@nic's plan had succeeded.  She'd shut their network down.  Hard.

I made sure the Uber driver saw my account credit balance, told him to wait for me, and I went inside the building.

The entrance was dark, shadows played on top of shadows, barely visible by the faint city lights from outside.  It was enough for me to find a wall switch, and I began clicking on the lights as I continued to explore.

The office cubicles were still here.  The computers were gone.  The cubes looked like they'd been cleaned out, too.  I saw none of the usual proof of humans: There were no family photos. No corporate-critical comic strips posted on the walls.

I found the cube I'd originally used to inject P@nic's USB key.  That too was empty, save for a comfy-looking desk chair with lumbar support.  I explored further and found the server room and office demarc, what had to have been the nerve center of this stripped skeleton.

There were no servers, switches, routers, or anything else I'd expect to see.  The only clues left were a single empty 42U rack bolted to the floor, the door hanging open and unlocked, and a thick umbilical of CAT7 cabling drooling out of the ceiling.  Examining the mess of cable ends hanging above my head, I saw they'd been cut, like someone had just hacked them off with scissors.

In the center of the rack, there was an inside shelf.  The shelf was empty, except for a tiny blue USB flash drive.

I stared at it.

Whoever had run this evacuation, they'd been in such a hurry they hadn't the time to even unplug anything - they'd sliced the cables and ran out with the equipment.  They'd been extremely thorough, so they also must have made a point to leave this USB drive here, placed conspicuously in the center of the rack shelf.

Was the USB key a message for someone?  For me?  Was it a trap of some kind, and I'd plug it into my test rig and it would explode in my face?

There was only one way to find out, so I grabbed the blue drive and dropped it into my pocket.  I'd be as careful as I could, but I couldn't resist seeing what this was when I got back to my office.

My heart was pounding, but my apprehension dropped a bit.  Yeah, it looked like P@nic had finished her inject into the network.  I didn't understand why they'd cleared the building, though whatever she'd done must have really hurt.

I went back to the Uber.

I was dropped off at my office.  Standing out in the dark street with the night too silent around me, I looked up to my rental's second floor, at the window of my office.

The lights in my office were off, but the window shone from a faint inside light.  I recognized the glow and the white-blue color.

It was one of my office computers, the one I usually left on the desk for miscellaneous research and case work.  The one I'd protected with drive encryption.  And two-factor authentication.  And a dead-man's switch ticking away in the OS.

I hadn't left it on.  Someone, right now, was in my office and they were on my PC.

I sprinted up the stairs and slammed my shoulder into my door, realizing that if the intruder had simply slid the deadbolt closed, I was about to be in a lot of pain.

Not only was the door unlocked, it was unlatched.  I launched into the room with unexpected speed and expected clumsiness.

The lights in the office were out.  In the darkness, the monitor's LED lit P@nic's face a ghostly white.  She looked up in surprise as I stumbled in front of her.

"Hey, how's it going?" she said, her eyes shining from the monitor's glow, and also something more.  "We need to talk."

Chapter 0x19

"You found the most boring font in the world.  It's like Keebler green.  What, you got a thing for AS/400s?  You're weird, mate."

"Never said I wasn't."

P@nic pushed out a breath of concentration as her typing speed doubled.  "I know a guy who's an AIX freak.  There's a support group for people like you."

I hadn't bothered to turn on my office lights and neither had she.  Her face was lit only by the sickly green glow of text scrolling by on her maximized Putty session.  My PC was supposed to have a fail-safe, but a hard knot growing in my stomach told me something was wrong.

"You've only got seconds left," I said.  "The machine's got a dead man's switch.  Since I haven't killed the timer, the drive and memory are about to be wiped clean.  So while I hate to party poop on -"

"Oh right, you mean control-alt-shift-c?  Within the first thirty seconds after OS load?  That dead-man's switch?"

I stared back with a stone-faced expression that I assumed would be answer enough.

"Gotcha covered," she said.  Nodding at something on the screen, she closed out whatever she'd been doing, then pushed away and leaned back.  The display was empty now save for a lonely home directory prompt.

"Thanks for testing my security," I said, wondering how she'd gotten the information.  She somehow snuck in a keylogger?  Or was watching me work from a spycam somewhere?  Radiating the best false confidence I could, I walked over to the wall and flicked on the light.

Reclining precariously in my rickety chair, she'd propped both feet on my filing cabinet.  They thumped to the ground as she sat forward to point at the empty monitor.

"Just needed to shut down the botnet.  Call off my armed forces.  Update the blockchain for you."  There was a faint smile that didn't reach her eyes.  "RedAction's done."

"No, they're not."  She watched bemused as I gestured behind me in a vague direction of the rest of the world.  "I was just there.  Or what used to be RedAction.  They tore everything out of the office and ran."

Everything, except for the lone survivor of the exodus, a small USB drive that was weighing down my pocket heavier than the Panama Papers.  Left at RedAction by an anonymous person, perhaps for me to find, for now I'd keep it to myself.

She was confused.  "But we did it.  Your infiltration.  My botnet.  I took out their servers.  We shut them down."

"You think that's their only building?  You think a place like that operates centralized?  All they need is an IP on a new public subnet, and a little time."

"But -"

"Think about it.  The fact that they disappeared so quickly is proof they'll be back."

Her face was sliding to pale.

"RedAction has been around," I said.  "I don't know for how long, but it's been a while.  In a month, the world will have one more new public IP, and they're back online.  That's life.  Just stay paranoid.  Don't trust anyone."

She looked at me seriously.  "Yeah, well, you can trust me.  Thanks for your help.  I owe you a lot."

"I'm just mad I let Reboot hire me to begin with, him posing as Oober with his fake mother.  I should've seen it."

"You're not the only one he took in.  I'm glad we exposed him."

"What are you going to do now?"

She tapped one finger against her lip for a moment.  "I've heard that the darknets are beautiful this time of year.  What about you?"

I spread my hands to take in my tiny office.  "This.  It doesn't always pay the bills, but I like it."  I shrugged, nodding at my PC.  "Although since you've been playing with my toys, even though I of course absolutely trust you, something tells me I should sanitize that sucker.  With a brick."

She waved her hands in surrender as she laughed.  "Just give it a few more minutes before you do that.  Let my transaction hit the blockchain.  I'll help you pay those bills."

"Bitcoin?"

"Yup.  It's down a lot.  A little whale told me it's a great time to buy."

"A whale.  A crypto whale?"

"I know someone.  She likes to manipulate little things, like blockchain pressure and market demand.  The last push she did got me a four hundred percent return."  She swiveled around in my chair and looked up at me.  "Wait five weeks before you sell any of it.  That'll be the peak.  Then do a quick trade to a stablecoin before it tanks again.  Got it?"

I was already on my phone, looking at my bitcoin balance.  What she'd given me the other day was plenty, but now...  For the first time in my life I could measure my wealth in exponents.  I looked again.  My head felt a little light.

"Got it," I said.

She left.  The second my door closed I went to my air-gapped PC and the RedAction USB stick.  It contained nothing but a textfile.  Apart from an uncomfortable reminder of the Naked Princess file, this one was nothing but two short number sequences.  A position indicator?  Latitude and longitude, maybe?  Or a position relative to where RedAction had been?  I wasn't sure, but I did know I had a new puzzle to chew on.

P@nic was gone.  Wherever she went, I didn't hear from her again, but she'd told the truth about her whale of a friend.  I ended up making a lot of money.

RedAction was still out there, somewhere, but without Reboot's manipulation, with P@nic off the grid, with the Naked Princess app growing more obsolete every day, RedAction seemed to have left me alone.

As for the Naked Princess pictures, like everything else, they'd never disappear, but they were eclipsed by equally scummy parts of the Internet.  They were nothing more than one small pool of brackish water in a very large swamp.  Unless I wanted to dig through some very deep archives, I'd hoped to never hear about it again.

As for me, I enjoyed rolling around in my Satoshi-filled bathtub for a while.  When she gave me the money, I didn't have the heart to tell P@nic I didn't really want it.  I needed enough to live, but I couldn't be rich.  It would blunt my edge.  I saw the softness and weakness that came with too much money, and what I'd said to P@nic about not trusting anyone was also personal: I didn't trust myself to live rich.  I didn't know how and would be fine without having to try.

While I kept a small amount as a safety net, someone in the Wikimedia Foundation's financing department had a very, very big surprise.

Money isn't enough.  Money is the motivator for my body, but to get pseudoreligious, mystery and puzzles and excitement are motivators for my soul.  And while, of course, my soul will eventually be consumed by Cthulhu in a bloody wave of cosmic destruction brought by the Great Old Ones, I still had some time left.

Until then, Information Technology Private Investigating kept calling, so I'd keep answering.  Sometimes boring, other times exciting.  Every once in a while I'd panic.

Just the way I liked it.

THE END

Thanks to 2600 for working with me and the Dev Manny experiment.  Thanks to you readers for being a part of this.  If you want Dev to have more adventures, tell 2600 or you can email me your favorite yes/no equivalent at dev@andykaiser.com. - Andy