Very little time still remained… Just a few more days — and a long-deserved rest will finally welcome him. Already soon… so soon myriads of sleepless nights will come to an end along with mugs of coffee and measured, the delightful-lulling noise of the computer. Will come to its end a knock of fingers on a keyboard, blowing up silence from time to time, as well as a passing of program’s text through a compiler, and a joy, filling soul at the sight of a working code. All this was going to end at the long last.
And then — oh! — these long anticipated and fostered in half-delirious sleepless nights dreams will be given a chance to come true — they must become a reality, obliged to. After all, what is a single year? Such a few time. It’s too little for what is going to be accomplished. Only a year…
They will finally pay for it all. For all the harm they managed to bring to those people — such young ones… spiritually childish, irresponsible… taken unaware by this monstrous machine. They are going to be annihilated at last. Wiped out from the face of the earth, erased like a killing virus, a cure for which has finally been found. Has been found in some pitiful year.
Very few steps still remained. Everything has been calculated and thought over a long time ago — almost a half year ago when a possibility of penetration into the System has been found at last. He used half a year to, like a blind puppy, having stuck in every direction, finally find a way out. A vulnerability, a hole, a bug — a thread which, once being pulled, was capable to make a System become your puppet, a doll in the hands of a master. Yet it was possible to pull it only once, there was no chance for an error, for a second attempt — a security service disliked it so much when someone decided to play with it. This thread had to be found by him, having only the possibility to study the System by its indirect reactions to external influences, having and knowing no access to its core.
Half a year — infinitely long and endless short, all as one night, — was required to find an Achilles’ heel. Maybe the only one of its kind, possibly not. And then another half a year, living day by day with tiny earnings of a freelancer, writing code in the semi-delirium night by night, coding and praying each and every new day to the God, known only to you, so that architects of the System haven’t found this hole in the meantime.
They haven’t discovered it. And that’s the reason they are going to die today. A disease will be destroyed once and for all. Very few steps still remained — to unleash it into the network. A virus should be battled with similar means.
No one could possibly assume how fast this giant will stretch its killing tentacles, how quickly everything would be under its feet. How incredibly soon little men, representing the brain of this corporation, will understand what is given by such a power, how quickly they will use it in a full potential.
And then everything was like a single flash of time — terrible and unrepeatable. All industrial, in-house, personal computing systems have been switched to the Corporation’s products — there was no country, no home, no man, no device, which has not been connected to and integrated with a System with no possibility for a retreat. There is was no turning back after the integration’s final procedures. And when first “alternatives seekers” found it out — it was too late already.
Tomorrow there will be that day when the long-term Corporation’s control comes to its awaited end. Otherwise… otherwise, everything was in vain.
* * *
It was such a strange day — a winter one, yet at the same time both bright and warm. The sun blinded the eyes as if looking at all the human fuss below and smiling. It always smiled that way — warming up both right and both wrong ones.
I accurately took out a brand new anonymous smartphone, acquired through the Net earlier, and turned it around. Looked at the screen, which has reflected a vicinity behind my back. Everything was clear, I wasn’t observed. The time has come.
I habitually typed thirty-letters identification code, habitually connected through a retransmission station of one of the local operators with a little-known host-server, which was moved out from traditional areas of the capital and served as one of the entry points of logon, — and logged into a System with a guest access. This was thought of — wasn’t considered a hard infringement. And now we are going to cross the limits of our permissions.
Half a year was spent in order to find a combination of values for the registers of System’s processors, allowing one to cross the borders to never return back again. So banal, so simple — a possibility to alter the contents of processor’s cache. Now a code, which has been fostered during that half a year, is going to become cache’s new owner.
And everything is going be simple from that on.
Then this gateway will broadcast a message through radio channel about “internal system failure coded 5SNGD#1” to next hosts, serving all phones, household appliances, all mobile devices — or shortly everything that formed the Net of this megacity — messages, practically indistinguishable from correct ones except for a small block of additional parameters code in the end of each of them.
And everything is going be simple from that on.
Then a malfunction in the processing of this data will lead to so banal, so desirable dynamic memory buffers overflow, then a code to dispatch a new sequence of bytes through these “relay stations” of the System to all controlled mobile devices will be executed, exploiting similar vulnerability of processing a certain sequence of values in the registers of their processors.
And a moment after that all those millions and billions of devices will come alive in a single instant — will be awakened to fulfill their duty and to destroy the one who has been their only master for quite too long. Packages will flow from all corners of the capital and after several tens of minutes network “border posts” of the System will fall under a massive traffic pressure — and the access to its heart will become possible. After the fall of the metropolis, the epidemic will extend further, sparing no machine in its wake, and he will be left with no other choice but to observe. Sometimes it’s such an incomparable pleasure — simply to observe.
It all will take approximately ten minutes. Only ten minutes which, probably, will become eternity. Almost like all those, three hundred sixty-five days have become.
Fingers flipped on a phone’s keyboard.
Pom, pom, pom. And once again — pom, pom, pom. A final step comes — unleashing a virus into the network. Ten… five seconds… done. Have I made it?
I turned around, this time myself — no one was still watching me. Or at least I greatly desired to believe so. And then I ran. Never know why — but for the first time in my entire life I desired to run there, where you really want it… to feel oneself free of the chains. A phone, which has successfully performed its duty, was thrown into the winter snow.
Some sort of indescribable void, a kind of emptiness suddenly overflowed me, having pressed down and squashed. Everything was done, for now, the last step has been made. A year of work — whether it’s much or little? Probably, it’s incomparably much to write some five thousand lines of code. Possibly, it’s incredibly little to become free at long last.
* * *
That was a wonderful winter — both warm and bright. Almost like the one several years before.
I was hailed. And the time I looked back I saw him — my familiar and close institute friend, a colleague by a way of life.
“Kostya, well met! Is that really you? I almost thought that would probably never see you again.”
“Hi, Pavel, I am glad to see you are well!”
“Well, how’s your life going, how are you doing? Tell me something. Still professing a principle ‘the free coder chooses future projects himself?’ Aye? Still freelancing?”
“Well, both yes and no. Started to work in a large corporation recently.”
“H—m… whether it’s not that former Corporation, which… do you remember?”
“Oh… now you are going to remind me that each second day, aye?”
“Nay, what’s the reason now? Now everything is developing as we once dreamed of, right? All software is developed by free groups, while the corporation lives by marking it, along with technical support and distribution and… how do they call it… consulting activity? No, everything is right now. Probably the way it should be.”
“Well, I hope that you are no more engaged with an illegal activity, huh? Departed from dirty affairs, yeah?”
“Pavel, listen, how do they say… ‘who remembers the old, who remembers the cheap, he shall never dig gold, will be stripped of the chip?’ Ya? I am, you know, still capable of… infecting you with something. Here it’s for example, listen closely. Recently I was sent such a great joke over the GRC channel…”