COPYRIGHT 1994 Joshua Lellis             [email protected]

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright Information
E-Published Information
Prologue - "Harry's Vice"
Chapter One - "Alaskan Scripts"
Chapter Two - "Alaskan Angels"
Chapter Three - "Alaskan Games"
Chapter Four - "TraceRoute"
Chapter Five - "Patience, Patience Said The Man"
Chapter Six - "Without a Safety Net"
Chapter Seven - "Angst"
Chapter Eight - "Power Modems"
Chapter Nine - "Cheap Surprise"
Chapter Ten - "The Midnight Curfew"
Chapter Eleven - "The Infiltration"
Chapter Twelve - "Big Empty"
Chapter Thirteen - "Phony Bone"
Chapter Fourteen - "OCFNYC"
Epilogue - "Max's Dilemma"
Fin - "Operation Sundevil"
Author's Notes


Pardon all of the quotes.... I just have a lot of influences...


"It doesn't matter how you hide, find you if they wanted to."
                                -- The Cure, Burn

"Truth, covered in security.... like to know the code word... don't
regret a thing, I got this friend you see he makes me feel.. I wanted
more than I could steal... don't tell me what I wanna hear, fraid I'll
never know fear, occupied and jealousy, jealousy fucking gone....."
                                -- Nirvana, Lounge Act

"I used to be so big and strong, I used to know my right from wrong, I
used to never be afraid, I used to be somebody."
                                -- Nine Inch Nails, Down In It

"I wanna break it up, I wanna smash it up, I wanna fuck it up."
                                -- Nine Inch Nails, March Of The Pigs

"I am the voice inside your head, and I control you."
                                -- Nine Inch Nails, Mr. Self Destruct

"What the fuck is this world coming to, you didn't leave a message, at
least I could've heard your voice one last time... would you hit me,
would you hit me...." -- Pearl Jam, Porch


Dedicated To:

Karen Goins, I swore I was going to put you in a book, here it is.


Special Thanks To:

Bruce Sterling, good influence on my writing,
William Gibson, I'm still working on memorizing _Neuromancer_ :-),
Cliff Stoll, for chasing the wily hacker,
Patrick Hurh, for criticizing,
Alison in Seattle, <-- Got a back issue,
Mike Acar, mental support (and a good chat for cpunk),
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne, who I forgot to thank before,
MPC, for having nice words,
Torben Bjerregaard, for helping me out mentally,
Mike Acar, AGAIN, for not getting mentioned twice before,
Taran King, helped me envision the phreak/hack world better,
Knight Lightning, for editing Phrack,
The Mentor, for his Hitler-like speech in Phrack,
Prophet, for showing what NOT to do as a hacker,
Chris Campbell, for being a goon during school,
Harry Parrish, for being a bigger goon than Chris, but not quite a
             big enough goon to be mentioned first, and for also
             allowing me to use his name,
Daniel Fackrel, for mental support,
Dad, for helping bring me into this world and give me life,
Mom, ditto,
Amy, for getting herself mentioned in a book,
Andrew, for picking on me for no good reason,
Max Campos, for letting me use his name.... and running a good BBS,
Willie, for helping Max (on that BBS part, you know),
Brandon "Raistlin" MacDonald, for telling me that I'd never get here,
Lee and Rhonda, for running a great BBS,
Reginald, for running a great BBS,
Billy Biggs, for editing Line Noiz,
Kipp, for editing KNOTTED,
Tad "Wanderer" Hoddick, for just being really wierd for no apparent reason,
Vampiress, uhh.... dunno,
Matrix, for just being plain wierd,
Rave, for being Rave,
Kell, for being Kell,
Monalisa, for being a good sister,
Zoom, introducing Wired to me,
Marshall Motley, aka The Heretic, for helping out here and there (and, NO,
     darn you, I will not say that Alaska is bleak with only thirty foot
     trees... :-)),
Mr. Christopher, my computer lab teacher (who always complained
                about my programming instead of playing solitaire),
Ms. Wieler, my English teacher (who's using b&w Macs (hehe),
Ms. Peatross, for saying that I would write a book someday,
Mr. Eberts, my newest English teacher,
Ms. Crowley, for teaching me unnecessary history,
Ms. Burke, for making me do a science fair project about ciphers and
          codes, but denied it, and made me do a different project
          on genetics, which expanded my mind in two areas unfairly,
Steve Jackson, for inventing GURPS and helping creative juices,
Jon Nave, for being the little idiot he is,
the many people that sent feedback to me,
and all the other influences on my life.
Thanks, I finally did it!

This book may be copied in it's entirety without any changes in the
manuscript. Acknowledgement of the author must be given to Joshua Lellis.
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis


This story is PURELY fictional. It has nothing to do with anyone
in real life.
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis


E-Publishing Information

First Electronic Publishing > September 1994


PROLOGUE
Harry's Vice
By Joshua Lellis

  Most of the kids hung out around the liquor store, occasionally stealing
booze behind the owner's back, most of the time just smoking, smoking
anything they could get their hands on, and sometimes, things they
couldn't get their hands on. This included a wide variety of spices,
papers, and women's tee shirts. They would smoke anything, and everything.
  But Harry was a nerd. Harry was worse than a nerd. He knew he was
a nerd, and never did anything about it. The kids laughed at him during
class. The class bully, Herman, had pulled Harry's underwear over his head,
and down from there, to the floor. Harry had to put up with it too. Harry
couldn't do anything about it. One time they had stolen Harry's lunch
money, and he had missed the bus. He had to walk home. He passed the
liquor store where the cool kids hung out. One of them stole his glasses,
the other kneed him in the groin. When Harry began to spit up blood, many
of them called him a wussy, and words worse than that. Harry made a mistake.
He fought back. He stood up, brushed off his clothes with his hands. Next
thing he knew, he was rolling around on the floor with a gangster. The
people stood around him, yelling, screaming, hoping for the cool one
to win out of the battle. A girl in a short tee shirt that revealed her
stomach and a tight pair of leather pants which took her rear and lifted
it centimeters higher, was yelling for the cool kid, yelling loud.
Harry knew her from classes, he had stared at
her in gym. He had even taken a shower with her, when some of the cool
kids pushed him into the girls' locker room naked. She had laughed at him.
He had seen his dreams in real life though, and after that his nights
were easier. But the kid on the ground fighting him was something else.
He punched Harry, knocking a hole into his face. Taking Harry by the
neck and beating the nerd out of him. Harry fought back, kicked the
other in the stomach, kneed him in the face, and took his hair in fist.
He stepped on the stomach, raised himself up, and yanked the hair up. The
scalp burned with a terrible sensation. Harry watched as another kid
pulled a knife. The kid jumped at Harry, but Harry sidestepped, and the
kid hit the wall face forward. Harry was now standing next to his woman.
He was flung towards her by another gangster kick. Harry was on the ground
with her. She looked into his eyes for the first time, ever, and knew
what she had believed before. Harry wasn't a nerd. Last thing Harry
remembered before blacking out was her lips against his. He went to sleep
happy that night.
  The next morning on the bus to school, Harry was looked at strangly
by the people in the back of the bus. The back always kept the cooler
kids. The very front seat was the worst, many thought, because of
the big fat bus driver that sat there. Harry looked behind him and saw
his woman. That's when he realized what he would do for her.
  Harry had a vice. A bad vice. Not that there were any such thing
as a good vice. There wasn't. But Harry had a vice just the same.
His vice, however, was peculiar. He spent his time at a computer terminal,
talking, as it seemed, to invisible friends. Harry had made many
invisible friends. But he had never met any of them. One of them in
Alaska had given Harry something he did not need, but thought  might
come in handy. It was a sequencer. For breaking into systems.
  This was Harry's vice. He was a hacker. An amateur in the world of
hackers. Harry was not respected among his peers. Even in the world of
nerds, Harry was depicted as a nerd. The entire thought of actually
using the sequencer never entered his mind. Not even remotely. He
had tried to use it once, but it failed him. He had to ask the Alaskan
once more how to use it. The Alaskan explained it all to the amateur.
There must be a master race, the Alaskan had thought, a master race
of hackers. This can only be acheived by recruition. But deep in the
back of the Alaskan's mind he knew, and realized that for every
amateur that came through the board, five were caught. The rate of
caught hackers was going up, and the rate of recruited hackers dropped
per minute. The Alaskan knew he was going to have to do something about
it.
  Harry spent the day writing. Taking notes. Notes on what he was going
to do. During Computer Lab, he took a call to his board, logged in,
and there, idling, was his hacker pal from Alaska. Harry asked for numbers,
for banks in his area.
  He got them.
  When school let out, he ran home, past the liquor store, past the gang,
and to his house. He opened the door, ran up to his computer, and turned it
on. The familiar log on screen blared out at him as he entered his board
one more time. Maybe his last time.
  As it turns out, there was a board in his area. A big bank, lots of money.
They could transfer money between two different accounts. This was Harry's
chance to become cool. To become famous.
  He whipped out the sequencer, put it in the drive, and ran the program.
The bank let him in. He cruised around for an hour, trying to get a hang
of the bank. Trying to get a feel for this hacking stuff. He had done it
all before, at least claimed he did. Hackers did it all the time,
stretching true tales into legends.
  But the experience was different. It wasn't the same when you just
sat there and lied. There needed to be an actual explanation for all
this.
  Then a pain hit his stomach and he grabbed his abdominals, trying to
ease the pain, even though he knew for a fact it was impossible. It was
the feeling as though he might get caught. Put in for ten to twenty.
But then he remembered the feel of her lips against his, and he didn't
stop the hack.
   He made it out of the bank with over eight thousand dollars. He
would get up early tommorrow and get the money, then, he'd get his
woman out of school, take her to the mall, and do a shopping spree.
  He dreamed the dreams he normally dreamt, only this time the pain
in his stomach did not die down. It stayed there. He got up early,
the pain gone, and went to the bank. There he took out eight thousand
dollars under a different name, and left the bank. Easy as pie.
  He went into homeroom feeling great. Nothing could harm him. Nothing.
He saw his woman in the back of class, wearing a dress that he
loved.
  The day meandered by, untill at lunch time, he went up to his woman,
sat down at her table, and began a conversation. But then the conversation
turned, and he pulled out of his wallet a hundred dollar bill. The bill
seemed special. The first bill he'd ever ripped off. He gave it to her.
  The next period he walked in from lunch, feeling as though nothing could
happen to him. He felt good. As he entered the restroom, he felt
invincible.
  Then the gangster he beat up was standing in front of him, gun in hand,
pointed straight in the center of Harry's head, ready to blow it off
in seconds. Any sudden moves.
  Harry looked at the gangster. The gangster cussed at Harry, and Harry
took from his wallet a bill, he didn't bother to look at it. He gave
it to the gangster, and in exchange the gangster handed over the gun.
  Harry fired at the gangster six times. The bullets hit the gangster hard,
and he fell into a toilet, dead.
  Harry left the restroom with the gun in his pocket, and he made his way
to the next class, gym.
  He began to chat with his woman on the way to gym, and, when she entered
the girls' locker room, so did he.
  He wanted so much to take her away from all of this school work. All of
this living Hell he called school.
  He watched her undress in front of him. He lifted up her head and gave
her a kiss, a meaningful kiss. One she would never forget. She stood there
in her underwear, looking at Harry. He looked into her eyes. She kissed
him.
  They sat there in the locker room, kissing each other. The period passed,
and the final class of the day was approaching. He walked her to her locker,
to her class. He sat in her class, answered to another name, the name of
the boy he had killed.
  The class period passed with Harry sending her love notes, juicy ones.
She looked at him the entire period, wondering how he made the money.
  The final bell rang and he walked her to the front of the school. They
sat on a bench, kissing, sometimes talking. Then he walked her home. He
gave her a final kiss. One would call it a French kiss. To put it
plainly, he slipped her the tongue.
  She gave him her number, and muttered those words. Call me. He watched
her go up to her window on the second floor, and from there, she waved
to him. He waved back.
  The sprinklers came on and he laughed. He laughed because he knew
now that he wasn't a nerd. Now, he was cool.
  When he walked home, he had remembered the gun in his pocket. He
stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, took out the gun, and looked
at it. He had forgotten something important. Bullets.
  He got to the sidewalk and looked at his house. Cops. Harry ran
around the corner to hide, and looked around at the five vehicles
parked outside  the curb.
  He ran, ran down the street. Ran towards her house. Her. He needed
her. She could go with him, leave the world behind. When he got to
her front door, he pounded on it. The door opened, and her father stood
there.
  "She's gone." were the only words he could mutter.
  "Bullshit." was Harry's response. He took the gun and slapped the
old man across the face. He ran up the stairs, opened the door, and
there, on the bed, was his woman, dead.
  There was a note, and a gun. The note was unpleasant to read. It
came slowly to his mind, the words coming like punches.
  He collapsed to his knees and looked at the gun. He picked it up,
raised it to his head, and pulled the trigger.



  It was very messy when the police arrived.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Harry's Vice
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis


CHAPTER ONE

Alaskan Scripts
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
(notice the cool new internet address)
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis

  Line noise buzzed the ear of his sister.
  "Shit!" she yelled. "Goddammit Max, you motherfucker!"
  Max opened his window and jumped out onto the roof. Just in time
to see his sister enter the room. "Sonovabitch! Max, you get your ass
back in here. What I tell you about using that line?"
  Max scaled down the side of the roof and towards the edge. "I
get my hands on your neck Max! I get my hands on your neck and
you'll be dead!"
  Max jumped from the roof to the ground, took a short roll, adjusted
his clothes, and took the one mile run back to the small Alaskan town
he called home. Sure, his sister would be pissed at him for awhile,
but that was all just a fact of life.
  There was a new computer store opening up in the downtown area
and if Max was right, he could swipe a few things in his flannel
shirt, and make it back to his house by night.
  Max stuffed his hands into the sides of his pants and pushed the
door open with his shoulder.
  The store owner wore an apron, for some odd reason or another, and
spoke calmly. "Can I help you?" he asked.
  "Uh.. nah, nah.. Just looking." Max answered, as he walked towards
the modems and looked at them. They were making modems smaller these
days, and, they looked almost.. Well.... truly... pocket sized.
  Max turned around and looked at the store owner. He had been staring
at Max ever since he had entered the store. Seeing Max's look, the
owner looked back down at his records. The owner pretended to be busy
as Max looked around.
  Max picked up a modem, nice hefty one, and wondered, in the back
of his mind, if he could convert it. "Nice piece of machinery,
easily configurable, you know, kid?" the owner said from behind the
counter.
  "Yeah... I got one at home...." Max said.
  "Oh, kid, you run your own board or something?"
  "Nah. Nah. I hang out..." Max said, but then remembered he
didn't want anyone to know about what he did at that board over in
NYC. "I hang out on the InterNet. Nice place there."
  "Oh, American Online, or Delphi?"
  "Nah, I just dial up the University."
  The owner laughed. "Never knew why the University'd be here in
this town. Less than four hundred people here, huh kid?"
  Max was getting rather mad. He didn't want to talk shop with this
owner. He wanted, well, this modem that he held in his hands. He looked
down at it now and pondered the idea of stealing from such a nice
fellow.
  But then Max remembered what he was, what he had always been,
a hacker. No need to give this dude the wrong impression, right?
But then again.....
  "Yeah. Last census, less than 450."
  The owner sighed. "Wow. Man, I had come up here from Anchorage.
Nice place, Anchorage. You ever seen it?"
  "Nah. Never seen it."
  "You gotta.. Big place Anchorage. Well, compared to this little
no-name town on the edge of the Pacific."
 Max put the modem back. He needed to give the dude the wrong impression.
He'd have to be friends with this dude, the only person in this
town that had computer equipment, literally, at his fingertips.
  "Yeah. First chance I get I'm getting out of here." That was a
lie. He couldn't go back to Seattle, the place where he had gotten
all the computer equipment he had right now.
  "You don't fool me kid." the owner said.
  WHAT? Max thought. Fool him? Does he know I'm a hacker?
  "I can see that you're not from around here. Already had enough
natives of this town to see what the average person looks like.
You're too tan to be from here. Where you from kid? Don't pull
my leg again?"
  Max sighed. "Seattle."
  The owner laughed. "Geeze, I didn't mean that truthfully.
Boy you so pale, you ain't got one tan piece of flesh on ya."
His cackle echoed through the store. "Well, now I know you
didn't grow up here."
  Max was standing next to a pair of speakers.
  "Milbone, Richard." said the owner, holding out his hand.
  "Max. Name's Max." Max said, taking the hand and shaking it.
Max let go quickly, and walked over to the game section of the store.
"What brings you to this neck of the ice?" Max asked, picking up
a copy of SimCity and looking at the price.
  "Ahh, had some trouble back home. Brother killed himself. Really
messy stuff."
  "Huh.... too bad..."
  "He was messed up from the beginning man. Dude went around acting
like a hacker. He hung out on this board, talked to some dude
from Alaska. Hell, I don't know why."
  Max nodded, putting down a copy of The Seventh Guest.
  "He went psycho and stuff dude. You know what. Little fucker went
out and got himself a copy of a sequencer. He broke into a bank,
transfered a shitload of cash. Thousand dollars and stuff. Man.
Was he so messed up."
  Max nodded, not really listening. He looked at a karoake machine
that sat in the corner.
  "Karoake kills, you know that, Rich?"
  Richard laughed. "Maybe that's why I got it here, man."
  "So why you coming up to Alaska, hoping to find your bro's
hacker friend?"
  Richard laughed. "No. Just, well, gotta get away from the trouble
back home. Mom's gone freakoid on us, and dad's hitting the bottle.
Sister cries in her room daily. Gotta escape that house while I'm
still sane."
  Max laughed. "So you came to Alaska?"
  Richard smirked. "Hey, white boy, there still is sanity. Just that
it's fifty degrees colder."
  Max nodded as he walked out of the store and down the street.

  Max was rather cold when he logged into the NYC board and
got ready to idle. "Idling, my favorite thing!" he said, as
he pulled a blanket up around his neck.
  Then he checked a list of users, looking for anyone suspicious.

>who

List Of Users For Open Computer Facility at NYC Hackers
-------------------------------------------------------
user      login     status      from

cracker   10:35    dl phile(s)  node 1
maximillion 8:30   idle         node 2
phonebone 10:30    email        node 6
lebeau    10:37    chat         node 3
king      6:25     chat         node 4
lellis    3:30     chat         node 8
optical   14:23    dl phile(s)  node 5
gable     1:30     chat         node 7
sysop     13:00    maintenance  local
sysop     12:56    watching you local

  The usual people that sat around there. Except, he'd never seen
phone bone before. Drat. He was using email. No chance of intercepting
him and chatting.
  So Max joined the chat line, and listened to the conversation.

lellis: I know. The sequencer had a few bugs last time we tested it.
king: Tested it? You test stuff?
lellis: Haha. Very funny.
king: I thought so.
lebeau: Me too.
lellis: grumble grumble.
maximillion: Hi guys.
lellis: Hi Max.
king: 'Lo Max.
lebeau: Max.
maximillion: What's the topic today, guys?
lebeau: Remember that old kid. The one who killed himself?
maximillion: Sort of, yeah, I gave him a sequencer.
lebeau: Well, if phone bone --
lellis: I ain't seen Phone Bone before. Except the comics, that is.
king: You always switch the topic to comics, don't you.
lellis: Only when needed. :-)
king: God, I hate you Lellis!
lellis: Thanks.
lebeau: Anyhow, if Phone Bone's email I caught is correct, he wants
lebeau: to find you, Max.
maximillion: What'd I do? I ain't never seen Phone Bone before.
lebeau: Damned if I know.
lellis: 'sides that, we found bugs in your sequencer.
king: Big bugs, too, Max. You still using that old Turbo Pascal?
lellis: *laugh*
maximillion: Yeah. Still using Turbo. No money in hacking, man.
gable: I could beg to differ.
lellis: Gable! Glad you could show up, Clarkie.
gable: Had to read some mail, you know how it is, Lellis.
lellis: Not really. :-)
king: You always have to make jokes, don't you, Lellis?
lellis: Chill out, King. I'm just... what's the word...
lebeau: Annoying?
king: *laugh*
lellis: Humourous.
king: playing British again, Lellis?
lellis: Mumble mumble... grumble grumble...
king: Hey, Lellis, go read some Spider-Man comics or something.
lebeau: Yeah, only real hackers allowed here.
maximillion: Now what's all this about PhoneBone and me?
phonebone: Maximillion, thought I'd find you here.
maximillion: Yeah, so?
phonebone: Just a reporter, all I am, Max.
maximillion: How am I supposed to believe that?
phonebone: You're not. ;-)
lellis: Smileys!
king: Oh, god, not again.
lellis: Smileys smileys smileys!
phonebone: Just wanna ask you some questions. It's all in the email
phonebone: I sent you. So chill, bud.

  Max sighed. Chill. Yeah, he was chilling right about now.

  Max woke up to a gun pointed at his head.

  "HOLY SHIT!" he screamed in terror.
  His little brother squirted him with water, and his face seemed
to cool off, for a moment. "Little brat!" Max yelled as he took a
swipe at his bro. The brother, really good at this sort of thing,
ran away quickly.
  Max got up and wiped his face on a towel that rested on the floor.
He put on his flannel, rather odd if he thought about it. It was
the middle of summer. No school anymore. And still wearing that
flannel. It was up to a heat-wavy sixty-seven degrees. Yeah.
It was cold outside. Good idea to wear the flannel. He walked down the
stairs and out the door towards downtown. His mother yelled after
him, "Don't forget to pick up lunch!"
  Max made his way to the computer store and through the door.
"Hi, Rich."
  Richard was helping a lady customer near the modems. "See, you dial
the phone. Well, you dial the phone through the modem and can
connect to another person's computer." Richard nodded for Max to
wait next to the cash register. "After you connect you can exchange
information about certain things. I believe there's a university
near here that you can dialup and get an InterNet account."
  The lady customer smiled. "The InterNet, oh my Charles will
be so proud." Max rolled his eyes. "What does the InterNet have?"
Max rolled his eyes again. God, please don't make Richard explain it
all.
  "Well, for one thing there's.... uh... newsgroups."
  The lady seemed to bounce when she spoke. "Newsgroups? My, dear,
what are those?" The lady was rather fat, and her son pulled on
her dress next to her.
  "I want candy! I want candy!" he whined.
  Max jumped up onto the counter and sat, waiting.
  "They're what they mean. People around the world. International
people write articles and post them to specific newsgroups.
Cryptologists write to cryptology newsgroups, cyberpunk writers
write to cyberpunk newsgroups, animal lovers write to animal
lovers newsgroups. There are political newsgroups that keep you
up to date about current events. And newsgroups grow daily,
with over four thousand at last count. And there are lists
of the favorite newsgroups of people. And they take up many
megs of space. At least 3500 megs per group. And there are some
strange people out there that are really funny. There are people
of every race, culture, religion, and brain-size out there."
  The lady thought a minute. "Why would I want to talk to them?"
  The little boy drooled on the mother's dress. "Candy! Gimme
candy, come on! Come on, ma. Give me candy!"
  "SHUT UP JUNIOR!"
  "There would be a lot of good out of knowing and understanding
others cultures."
  "Why?"
  Max sighed and lied down on the counter. He slapped his hand
against his forehead and waited for the ordeal to end.
  "Listen lady, you want the modem or not? It's been three hours
since I've first started serving you, and you've looked at every piece
of equipment we have in here, and have already bought a Pentium.
If you don't want the modem, tell me, and we'll package up the
Pentium and you can play with it at home!"
  The lady shook her head. "No, I don't want any of it. Leave
it all here. I don't want some sad Pentium if you won't serve
the likes of me. Come on Junior, let's go get some candy for
you. Growing boys need candy." The lady took the child by the
hand and walked out of the store with him.
  Richard screamed. "My god, I thought she'd never leave!"
  Max responded with, "You got Pentiums?"
  Richard laughed. "What brings you here today, Max?"
  "Just coming to look at the games is all." Max said, as he
hopped off the counter and looked at SimEarth.
  "Hey, Max, you seem like a nice guy. You know your way around
computers, and I assume, the InterNet. You wanna work for me?"
  Max shruged. "What's it pay?"
  Richard laughed. "I'll give you a Pentium at the end of the
first month of work, and one game with the Pentium. Every month
after that you can have whatever you please in the store."
  Max's eyes lit up. "You've got yourself an employee."

  Max  walked out of the store and went to the deli across the street.
"Hi Marty. Got the cold cuts my family needs to survive?" Max said
as he entered the store. Max was kidding, of course, and Marty
smiled at him.
  "Sorry kid, just ran out with that Mrs. Wingleburger and
her son. Kid eats too much candy, you know."
  "Darn, Marty, guess we ain't gonna live till tommorrow. That'll
throw off your plans for that BBQ next month."
  Marty laughed. "You got one smart ass attitude on you, Max. You
do, you know that!"
  Max nodded. "Just give me the cold cuts, Marty."
  Marty handed Max the cold cuts, and Max stuffed them into the bags
available. "Thanks Marty."
  Marty asked Max, "What's up with that store across the street,
Max? Computer Electronics, Inc?"
  "Just a computer store."
  "Just a computer store? They're booming in this little town of ours."
  "People just curious is all, Marty."
  "Whatever. Whatever."
  Max left the Deli, and the old man known as Marty, behind as he
walked back home. The sun was in the middle of the sky, and as far
as Max knew it was soon to be noon.

  Max checked the logs at @ocf.nychack.com.

>who

List Of Users at Open Computer Facility at NYC Hackers
------------------------------------------------------
(sorry, folks, but lots of People have been complaining
about the setup of the OCF. We've allowed people to
know other's handles. Most of y'all are y'all
handles. -- SysOp
Oh, yeah, and some people complained about not under-
standing the times. It's now in military time. Yeah,
chew on that one for awhile!)
user         login     status          handle
maximillion  19:30     idle            Maximillion Forte
phonebone    20:10     email           Phone Bone
lellis       16:56     chat            Joshua Lellis
optical      20:30     chat            Optical Overkill
king         21:14     email           Lion King
lebeau       21:15     chat            Mario LeBeau
gable        17:30     dl phile(s)     Clark Gable
cracker      15:20     dl phile(s)     The Cracker
jimi         18:00     ul phile(s)     Jimi Nohandle
sysop      1:01:00     maintenance     SysOp


  Max joined the chat channel once again.

lellis: What do you mean you don't believe it? Listen to the song!
lellis: It's plain and simple.... It goes...
lellis: She said she'd be my woman. She said she'd be my man.
lellis: and I can't live this way, please refill my soul.
optical: No. No. No. No. d00d, he goes....
optical: She said she'd be my woman. I said I'd be my man.
lellis: Come on, that doesn't make any sense.
maximillion: What doesn't?
lellis: Oh, good day, senior Forte. I see you got your ass in trouble.
maximillion: ?
lellis: Go look at the philes.

  Max left the channel and looked at the files.

> ls

box/     rumors/      tabulatures/
phracks/ cuds/        games/


> cd rumors

Ok.

> ls

phonebone/
harry/
maximillion/
lellis/
king/
box/

> cd harry

Ok.

> ls

harry's.vice

> cd ..

Ok.

> cd lellis

Ok.

> ls

phile#1-19/
phile#20-29/
phile#30-39/
phile#40-49/
phile#50-59/
phile#60-600/
misc/

> cd ..

Ok.

> join chat channel

lellis: No. No. No. She specifically said she'd be a man.
optical: That doesn't make her gay.
king: That didn't make sense.
optical: Not really.
maximillion: Guys, what's Harry's Vice?
optical: *laugh* Don't you know, Forte? It's hacking.
king: Yeah.. d00d shot himself.
lellis: Big time suicide. Lots of people know about it.
lellis: It's been in the news for some time now.
king: I saw an article on it in USA Today.
lellis: You read USA Today?
king: Well, yeah.
lellis: Answer me one thing....
king: What? You want to know how to crack banks again?
lellis: Nah, nah.... just... WHY?
king: See, according to crack.banks you're supposed to transfer.
optical: Idiots!
maximillion: So this phile is something special?
optical: Not unless you care about Halloween Harry, the hacker.
maximillion: Halloween Harry?
optical: that's what he called himself.
maximillion: What a silly name.

  Max woke up the next morning to sunshine on his face. Nothing in
the world is better than sunshine on your face. Max yawned
and looked at the clock next to his bed.
  "Ahhh... fuck...." he mumbled. He got out of bed, pulled the flannel
over his body, and ran out the door towards the store.
  "You forgot your lunch, Max!"
  He made it to the store at half past three. Richard was helping
some kids look at some games. "Y'all wanna play 'em?" The kids looked
surprised. "I've got an open version of every game, and each game is
logged into old Beast over there." Richard pointed to a Pentium that sat on
a table across the store. "Try then buy, boys. Try then buy."
  Each kid yelled a yahoo and went over to the computer to try out the
games.
  Richard noticed Max entering the door, and approached him.
  "What the FUCK do you think you're doing here? We open at six a.m.
We don't have time to sit on our asses when there's money to be made."
Max nodded. "You get your ass behind that counter and stay there. I
ain't about to fuck up my business because of some flannel wearing
faggot. Next customer that comes in, you better get to buy something,
or your ass is sitting out on the street!" he yelled.

  Max sat behind the counter flicking pencils off his nose. He caught
one in his mouth, but most fell against the floor and KABOOM made a
rather loud sound. In the background he could KABOOM hear the sounds
of children playing X-Wing.
  Max had a computer sitting right next to him under the counter.
There was a modem and plenty of lines to dial through.
  But Max wasn't going to be caught behind the counter playing
around on the InterNet. Max was too smart for that.

  The day ended at nine o'clock, with Richard shoving a tired Max
out the door. "You better get yourself down here by six a.m. tommorrow,
or we ain't going to be seeing each other much anymore."
  Max pulled the flannel up tight against him. He looked around
at this city of four hundred and sighed. He walked past an alley,
and breathed into his cupped hands, trying to warm himself up.
  "Hey, faggot!" yelled a voice from the alley. "We'll warm
you up."
  Two teenagers jumped Max from behind, and another held a switchblade
in his hand. The third teenager looked at Max from in front of him.
  "Whas the matter, little baby? You sleep in a bit much?"
  The third kicked Max in his mouth. Blood mixed with saliva, and
Max struggled to kick this guy's ass. "You don't got an alarm
clock, baby? Maybe you should think about getting one." He kicked
him again in the mouth. The two teenagers holding him stood him
up on his feet. "What's the matter baby?" He got kicked in the nuts,
and doubled over onto the ground, coughing up blood. "What's the matter?"
He got kicked from behind. "How come you don't feel like a man now?"
He got kicked in the nose. Then he realized that the two holding him
weren't holding him anymore. Max reached into his flannel and
pulled out the gun. He shot the one in front of him in the leg. The knife
he was carrying dropped to the ground. Max jumped over the guy
in front of him, made a 180 turn and fired at the teenagers now in
front of him. He hit one in the leg, and another in the butt. They
fell to the ground and the ordeal was over.
  Max rubbed his mouth as he stood above the leader. "What's the
matter, baby?" he asked as he kicked the goon in the face. "What's
the matter?" he said again as he bashed his front teeth with
the handle of the gun. "How come you don't feel like a man now?"
He knocked him silly when he hit him across the forehead with the
gun.
  Max spat on the boy. "Next time you decided to jump someone,"
Max said, even though he knew the jumper was knocked so silly
he couldn't hear anything. "make sure the bastard ain't got a gun
on him."


------------------------------------
That's about all I can write for
this segment of The Alaskan, a
nice big novel. This is the first
chapter of The Alaskan, if you
were wondering.
Please send me your responses
to this, cause without responses,
this won't turn out to be such
a good novel. I'll keep back issues.
Look for the second chapter,
later. :-)





CHAPTER TWO
Alaskan Angels
(aka _The_Alaskan_ Chapter Two)
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK!

  Max looked into the Deli, clutching the gun in his flannel pocket.
He tried pushing the door open, but it was locked. How am I gonna
get rid of this gun? he thought, trying the door again. He could still
see the gang's wounded bodies limping back into the alley. They didn't
want to get caught as much as the next guy. Similar to hackers, Max
thought as he made his way to the Deli's side door. Max tried turning it,
but remembered that wasn't such a good idea, his fingerprints would
rub off onto it.
  Holding his ears, Max pulled the trigger of the gun, firing into the
door handle. It deflected off the handle. Max fired again. Small
indention. Fired again. Clearly defined hole. Fired again. Again.
Again. Click. He grabbed the knob, and, using all his strength,
twisted the knob off the door. Great, he thought to himself,
now I've got to find a way to get rid of the knob.
  Angered at himself, he kicked the door in. He walked into the deli,
and moved towards the chickens. He had an idea. Wiping the knob and the
gun clean of prints with a towel, he put the two items into the rear
of a chicken, and shoved it up. Someone would have a great surprise
whenever they bit into this Shake N Baker.

  Max ran up the stairs and made it into the bathroom before his
mother could say another word about it. Washing his face, he looked
into the mirror at the bruises he had been given by the town gangsters.
He had really got his ass kicked out of that battle, and even though
he won, he didn't really feel any better about everything.
  Max wiped his face in a towel, and blood splattered over the
white of the towel. God, out of all the towels I could have picked,
I pick a white one.
  Max took a run to his computer, closed the door of his room, dropped
the towel on the floor, and got ready to log in.


List Of Users at Open Computer Facity NYC Hackers
-------------------------------------------------
(Would someone please tell that asshole
Joshua to stop complaining about the latest
Phracks. It'll get here when it gets here.
-- Your Loving SysOp)
user        login         status          handle
lellis      16:30         chat            Joshua Lellis
king        20:21         dl phile(s)     Lion King
optical     19:56         chat            Optical Overkill
maximillion 23:40         idle            Maximillion Forte
sysop       21:11         chat            SysOp


  Max rubbed his head. It hurt more now, the adreniline leaving him.

> join chat

Ok.

sysop: Shut up, Lellis! We don't want your kind here!
lellis: Listen, buddy, I didn't ask for others to read the email.
lellis: I just wanted the new Phracks.
sysop: Listen up, Lellis. You be quiet, or I'll .kill ya.
lellis: I don't see what the problem is. This is a BBS, you know.
sysop: That's it. You're gone.
lellis: Why you -- 352656116jhnujsgnd9aUgaa =CLICK=
maximillion: Hi all.
optical: Hi Max.
maximillion: What, no Phone Bone?
optical: Nah. He had some "family business" to take care of.
sysop: Next person snooping round here for the New Phracks'll be
sysop: killed.
maximillion: Bad day at the office?
optical: Don't we wish.

  Max went to bed early that night, trying not to anger any
sysops that might be dangerous to him.
  He woke up early, well before four.
  He got in the shower and freshened himself up, singing old
Violent Femmes. "People worry, what are they worrying about
today?"


  Paul woke up to a racket beside his bed. His computer beeped,
and he turned on a light on his bedside table. The light hit
the family dog, and the dog leapt up onto his mattress. Paul
let out a breath, relaxed and looked at the time. Only two thirty.
He could work on the BBS some more. It wasn't too late. He had
gone to sleep early. He wanted to get back into normal sleeping
habits by the time school started in about a week. He was going into
his third year of high school, and it would only be another year
before he got out of that place. He despised school and all of
the things that surronded it.
  Course, he enjoyed the computer lab enough. The computer lab
would be the only place he could escape the teachers. Except for
the few computer lab "whizes" that watched over the lab. The
lab managers that preferred for users to play solitare, and stay
away from that word processor. Don't mess with that printer.
You think all this stuff is a toy.
  Paul thought a minute.
  The beep came again from the computer. "What?" he asked it,
expecting an answer. He climbed out of his sleeping den and walked over to
the metallic being. Sure enough, the trap Paul had set for it
had worked. Phonebone was logged in.
  Paul, being a hacker himself, realized what went on in the
mind when one entered the "forbidden" realm. But this Phonebone,
the one spreading all this stuff about Harry's vice.
  Harry's vice!
  Paul reached around beside the computer searching for the
printout. Where's that stupid printout? There it was, sitting right
in front of him on the keyboard. How stupid of him. How could
he make such a slip up when it was so plainly in view?
  Paul read through it again. He'd read it eight times before
falling asleep.

  NEW YORK TIMES
April -- New York City Hacker Commits Suicide

  All very clear to Paul.
  But what was this annoying beep for?
  PAGING SYSOP........|<.....|<.....|<.....
  No answer.
  Paul answered it.

phonebone: Hi, Sysop.
sysop: What you need, Phonebone, I'm up late. It's 2:30.
phonebone: Well, SysOp, it's 12:30 here in the Mountain zone.
sysop: Yeah, so?
phonebone: Well, when I logged in, it said I logged in at 00:30,
phonebone: military time. So whenever someone logs in, it calls
phonebone: up there own area time. Big time bug, you gonna
phonebone: fix it, since I hear that this is a homemade board.
sysop: Adds mystery to it. It's a bug that I intentianally put.
phonebone: oh, why?
sysop: USSS.
phonebone: The Servicers?
sysop: NSA, FBI, CIA. All of them.
phonebone: Ok. I'm from Colorado, you know.
sysop: yeah, mountain zone, right?
phonebone: Yeah.
sysop: Anything else I can do you for?
phonebone: Uh.... yeah.... I found another bug in your system.
sysop: What's that?
phonebone: The paging sysop doesn't appear on my screen.
sysop: It's not supposed to.
phonebone: You designed the wierdest philes.
sysop: It's my hobby. ;-)
phonebone: Sure.

  Paul sat down in his chair and monitored what happened to Phonebone
as he prodded the system. Phonebone searched through the Phracks,
eventually coming up on number thirty-one. He downloaded it. There
was no significance to it, Phonebone replied in email. I just needed
to get the Phrack.
  Paul sighed as he monitored Phonebone's activity from there. Phonebone
emailed some mail off. One to a fellow in Texas. Another to someone
in New York. Then a third one to someone at Berkeley, in California.
Berkeley? Paul checked the address. No, it wasn't the legendary
Cuckoo's Egg writer. Some student perhaps. Paul logged into the computer
and fingered the email addresses. Nothing special with any of them.
No handles. No phreak/hack talk. Just plain ordinary people that had
email addresses in Berkeley, Texas, and New York. Why had Paul
freaked over this? There are people with email addresses everywhere.
Over one thousand users of his OCFNYC had email addresses. Had Paul
gotten paranoid again?
  He had been paranoid for sometime. Whenever the teacher asked him
for his number to call his parents, he gave the teacher an encrypted
number, which was easily decryptable to anyone with the key.
He had neglected to give the teacher the key.
  Paul rubbed his eyes. Maybe he'd been up too long.
  He had.

  "Truth, covered in security!... like to know the code word....
take turns.... don't regret a thing, I GOT THIS FRIEND YOU SEE,
he MAKES me feel..." sang Max, in his shower. His hair was covered
in shampoo, and he sometimes had nightmares that the shampoo was
blood, his own. He shook off the thought as he sang songs.
He sounded rather good in the shower, as does everyone.


  Paul yawned, and rubbed his forehead. His legs ached, and begged
for him to go back to sleep. He told them in a moment as he prodded
around his own system. No open holes from what he could tell.
Security was tight. Everyone's account was checked and double checked
to make sure nobody had more than one user. The encryption key
he used for protecting the user file was running perfectly well.
There was plenty room for uploads, and the InterNet gateway through
OCFNYC was working. The board was in the best condition it had
been in years. Why was he so worried?
  Paul couldn't figure that out for the life of him. He went back
to his bed and lied down, reading the article on Harry once more.
Infamous hacker Halloween Harry. He'd never met Harry. He came
to his board once or twice, but that was it. Halloween Harry,
newly dawned hacker, steals a big load of cash from the bank,
using a sequencer. He got off free, too; wouldn't have been
caught if not for him killing the gangster. Paul sighed.
What did he care about Harry? That's basically a different universe.
Paul was in the here and now, and Harry's a big blob lying someone
in a wooden casket.
  Paul was still reading the story when he fell asleep.

  Max tossed the towel on top of his monitor, and got dressed.
He blinked at the clock. 5:30. Great, half an hour to work.
He ran to the bathroom. It was locked. He pounded on the door.
"Hey, I got to get my stuff to go to work." he yelled at the
door.
  The muffled voice of his sister came out from behind the door.
"I... can't. I'm not feeling good..."
  "Well, unlock the door, I'll close my eyes and get the stuff."
  His sister moaned. "The door's too far away."
  Max sighed, and went back into his room. He wasn't going to
be late again. Not for Richard Milbone at work. He swung open
a desk drawer and searched threw it for the lockpick. Something
he'd picked up in Seattle, when he himself got picked up by
some police officers for an offense he couldn't remember now.
It had been some time ago.
  He walked back to the door and played with the lock some before
he heard the unfamiliar click of the lock opening. He opened the
door, put a hand over his eyes, and turned towards the sink. "You're
not looking are you?" asked his sister.
  "WHY WOULD I WANT TO?" he answered, looking into the sink. He
looked for the vital equipment that would help his overall
appearance. He grabbed his toothbrush, the toothpaste, a comb,
some mouthwash, and some floss. He carried them out the door
of the bathroom, and closed the door. He took the pick from
the lock and walked to the next bathroom. Using the sink,
he got ready for work.


  Richard was sleeping in the chair behind the counter when
Max knocked on the door. Rich jumped in surprise. "Max." Rich
said, almost acknowledging the other's prescence.
  Richard jumped over the counter athletically, and walked to
the door. He unlocked it. "Max, you actually showed up for
work. That's a good boy." Max grinned sarcastically, and
walked in. "Devolped an attitude, Max? I'd think that Pentium
behind the counter would cheer you up. You can play with it
while you're not serving."
  Max hopped up onto the counter, then over. He wondered
how many years of practice it took Richard to learn how to
do that. He booted up the computer, and listened to what
Richard had to say.
  "Marty's got broken into last night. Damn vandalist
kids. They had a little gang fight right after we closed,
right down the street. You know anything about it?"
  Max ran his tongue along the back of his teeth. He rubbed
his chin, trying to remember if he washed off all the blood;
trying to hide the scars he knew Rich would notice. "Nah,
Rich," Max said, yawning. "I went home and got plenty of sleep."
  "You know anything about the break in?" Rich asked, moving
the boxes of games around, trying to look neat.
  "Why would I, Rich? I just learned of it via you."
  Rich nodded. "True."
  They didn't say anything else to each other the rest of the morning,
except for helping customers. When Max had free time off, he'd
play at his computer.
  The ritual went on for the rest of the month. Max would play at
the computer. Rich would help customers out. Every now and then
Rich would go out and run an errand. Max would watch the
store. He became better at selling computers. He could already
sell his story, and people would believe him. That was one of
his better skills.
  Max never heard of what happened to the chicken with
the gun and the door knob in it. He assumed that it had been
bought, or thrown out by Marty. It had been sometime since
Max had fought the local gang, and the school would be opening
again in a week.
  Max received the Pentium at the end of the month, and chose
a game to play on the Pentium. He had to get his mother to come
and pick up the Pentium, but when he installed it at home, it became
his new special baby.
  Max petted the Pentium when it hummed to him. He copied the
boot up sequence from his old computer to the new one. The old
ascii-art of a "d00d flipin da boird" appeared during the bootup,
and the Pentium was online.

  Max logged in at ten o'clock, his time. The board was filled.
OCFNYC was a happening place during the last part of the summer.

> who

List Of Users At Open Computer Facility of NYC Hackers
------------------------------------------------------
user             login        status         handle
maximillion      22:00        chat           Maximillion Forte

ERROR: 042 NOTIFY SYSOP -- LIST UNREADABLE

  The OCFNYC was overloaded with users. The chat line was buzzing
with conversation and all very confusing.
  Max decided to do something sneaky. He fingered Phonebone.
It traced Phonebone back to where he was calling from, or it
should have. It traced him back to New Jersey. So Phonebone was
in New Jersey, but Halloween Harry was in New York. Max cursed.


  Email is probably the most powerful weapon on Earth. Imagine being
able to reach out and give someone an entire guide, within seconds.
Imagine sending information to another family within minutes.
  It's a very powerful weapon. Imagine the front lines of a
battle in the future, with information needed in enemy territory,
to capture the enemy by surprise. Ciphered text sent by radio
waves to a friendly computer, to take the code, uncipher it,
and capture that bridge which would make or break democracy as
we know it today.
  That's scary. Just the thought of having an entire battle, an
entire war riding on a few bytes worth of memory, ciphered memory.
  Ciphers were created to protect information. Since the beginning
of time when man first bellowed, "My rock good." others have tried to
see why. Jealous runs high when people argue over who came up with
what first. Imagine what would happen if fire was first discovered,
and there was someone there to copyright it. Imagine that.
Fire, copyright 10000000 BC Ugh Ugh. So people didn't want
their ideas stolen away. They'd write to there friends far away,
and keep their ideas secret. How? Ciphers.
  Max's thoughts seemed to him like a science report. Why was
he thinking about this when Phonebone was paging him for a talk?
Maybe because he believed Phonebone was using email as a
weapon. No, that couldn't be it. He didn't even know Phonebone.
Or did he?
  Max shivered. No, he never knew Halloween Harry. He never
met him. Any trouble this dude's bringing up is not his fault.
Especially not anything having to do with some idiot kid
killing himself.

maximillion: What the phuck do you want?
phonebone: Chill out d00d, just wanted to ask you, how's the weather?
maximillion: What kind of phreaker are you? How's the weather?
phonebone: A cool phreaker d00d. I'm in Jersey, you know.
maximillion: Nah. Didn't know.
phonebone: It's nice in Jersey. Lots of scenary. We even got a few --
maximillion: I know you'd really like to be talking about your little
maximillion: scenary and how you love it so god damn much, but
maximillion: I've got some philes I need to check on. So you and
maximillion: your scenary can just shove off for the time being.

  Max was rather rude. Here was this guy, Phonebone, asking him
for a nice chat. Nothing he shouldn't have pounced on.
  Max petted his Pentium one last time before going to bed.
School was starting soon. School was starting.
  Max repeated this to himself as he went to bed. He was urged
to make a little jingle out of it, but gave up when he turned
out the lights, and let the night take him away.


  Max had a little place when he was younger. It was a nice place
where angels would dance and sing, run and play. This place, as
he knew it at the time, was Heaven. He only visited it when he knew
someone who had died.
  He visited it now.
  Harry stood in a brilliant white clothing, that radiated a friendly
light off of it. He was tall, having grown since he came to Heaven.
He had the beginnings of a beard growing, and he stood with his arms
folding, in a scolding/angry matter.
  Max approached him carefully, not wanting to start up any
emotions in the old fellow. Harry was the first to speak.
"How you doing?" When he spoke, it didn't seem as though he moved.
In fact, had Max not heard Harry speak, he could have sworn he hadn't
said a word.
  "Good, I guess." Max responded, not knowing what else to say.
  Harry smiled. "You're surprised I found you, considering I've
only ran into you a few times, aren't you, Max?"
  "Still remember my handle, Harry? I remember yours, Halloween.
It was a good handle, Harry. You could have done a lot more, had
you --" Max stopped, realizing what he was saying here. He was saying
that had Harry not died, he would have done a lot more in the hacker
world. Correction, Max thought in his mind, had Harry not killed
himself.
  "I always knew your real name, Max. I've followed you around
for sometime now, Maximillion. We can see everything in Heaven,
you know.
  "I saw the fight. Damn good one, too. I was in fight, a while
back, Max. It was scary. These gangsters, all of them at
least a good one or two feet taller than me, they just come up
and attacked me. No reason whatsoever. Scares the shit out of me.
Did it scare the shit out of you, Max?"
  Max nodded. "It scared me, Harry. Scared me for a few seconds."
  "But then the adrenaline hit you, Max? Yeah, I know the feeling."
Harry grinned, his perfect white teeth combined with his perfect
face. Max thought it was almost disgusting in Heaven. Everyone had
their own perfect bodies. "I know the feeling. I was walking home,
if I remember correctly. And they just kicked the SHIT out of me
for no good fucking reason. My ass was on the ground. My face
was getting its shit kicked in, and I couldn't tell what the
fuck was going on inside of me. My stomach's got this thing pumping
in it --" Harry seemed to be getting a lot more emotional. "And I
could feel it. I could tell what it was telling me. It was telling
me that I could win. It looked me right in my eyes and told me,
Harry you can do it. Harry you can do it." He seemed to laugh.
"Worst part was, I did.
  "Had I gotten my ass kicked that day, I wouldn't be here now.
Had that son of a bitch just taken me by the head and pounded
the pavement with me, I'd be alive today. What's the moral
of this story, Max? Can you tell me?"
  "Nope. If it didn't happen that day it would have happened
another day." Max responded, keeping his cool.
  Harry smirked. "Strong believer in faith, are you, Max?"
He didn't let Max respond, but continued talking. "I see everything
that's happening right now with Phone Bone, Max. Is that a topic
you'd like to talk about?"
  "I wouldn't really care, Harry. You're dead. I'm alive. I've got
school tommorrow. I don't really care."
  And with that his view of Heaven changed into dancing fish,
and there was a voice that told him that he'd be back. Max
ignored the voice, for now, and watched the dancing fish. Max always
enjoyed watching dancing fish.


  The first day of school was a painstakingly long process that,
to Max, had no signifagance whatsoever. Had teachers wanted to explain
what was needed for class, they would have sent out letters during
the summer. This was a small town, after all. There were about four
hundred fifty of them in the town, and about one fourth were children.
One hundred kids packed themselves into five rooms, each one a
different grade level. Now Max was just beginning High School, and
his group of twenty were beginning High Schoolers to end of
Middle School. He was still treated like he was in the Eighth,
but he was taking ninth grade material.
  He flipped his pencil off his nose. Whoop-te-do. He didn't
see much difference in the classes, from what the teacher,
the same one he'd had last year, told him. He sighed and
waited the day out.

  Paul sat in his computer lab early that morning. He had programmed
a nice file to beep whenever it hears the word computer spoken
aloud in the room. So when the idiot computer instructor came into
the room and asked him, "Hey, boy, what you doing here again
with my computer?", the computer shot off an alarm that echoed down
the halls. Paul had to interrupt the process. "Impressive
program, son. But can you change the color of the letters
each time it beeps?" Paul rolled his eyes. He wasn't sitting in this
lab to impress someone who, deep down inside, really didn't care
what happened to his computers as long as they were still here when the
day ended, and he got paid.
  Paul changed the program to change letters, nice bright ones,
each time it beeped. That satisfied the lab adminstrator, and
Paul played with the program to make the letters dance. The letters
in the word "computer" danced whenever the word was said. Paul
played around with it some more, making it a TSR. Terminate and
Still Remain. This program would piss off the instructor during the
day.
  The rest of the day, tap dancing letters crawled across the
machine whenever anyone said the word computer. The letters
changed colors each time it beeped, and the instructor sure was
pissed.
  Paul had computer lab as his last class, and he found his
program living happily in a hidden directory. He edited the file
to play Mary Had A Little Lamb instead of beeping. And so,
whenever the word computer was said, an electronic version
of Mary Had A Little Lamb played, and tap dancing letters changed
colors in the background.
  Paul hid the file carefully back where he had hidden it before,
and prayed to dear god that the lab master wouldn't find it.
He quickly jumped over to the boot up sequence, and set it up
so that his file would be executed automatically. Paul smiled as
the bell rang. His first day of hell was over. He turned off the computer,
and walked out of the class room, grinning the whole time.


  Max's day ended with the announcement of the freshman prom, which
would be held later that year. Great, he'd have to ask someone out.
He combed the room to look for anyone that he could ask, and his
eyes landed on a girl, Diana (was that her name?). She was looking
for someone to ask out, as well, and her eyes had landed on him.
She winked at him and smiled.


  Max went directly from the school to work, without that sidetrack
to home. Rich was talking to someone who was obviously out of town.
He wore a trench coat, sunglasses, and stood showing off his muscles.
The first thing to pop in Max's mind was: CIA.
  Rich nodded for Max to wait behind the counter. Max, using the
jumping skill that he had earned practicing the jump many times, hopped
over the counter and into the seat. Perfect landing. The trenchcoat
didn't even notice Max. Very observant little fed.
  The trenchcoat left without any trouble, and Rich leaned on the
counter with his elbow. "Know who that was?" he asked.
  "Your mother?" Max responded, booting up the computer.
  "Nope. That was Special Agent Travis Brantsone. He's telling me
about a jail break southwest of here. Murderer skipped out on
his term. Guess he didn't like the food, huh?" Rich chuckled,
going towards his inventory. "So how was school, Max?"
  Max shruged. "Same as always, I guess. That guy CIA?"
  Rich shook his head. "Yeah. That make sense to you. Local
jailbreak, bigwig CIA." Rich adjusted his games. "All the way
from Washington."
  "Makes no sense to me. None whatsoever."
  "Definately not in this town."
  Max played with the computer untill nine, when he walked home.
He walked past the alley and was content when he looked in it, and
no gangsters looked back at him.

  OCFNYC was packed. When Paul looked at the current users,
there were over one hundred and seventy users. Each doing their
own thing. Some were scanning the files, some were chatting, others
were playing with email.

  Optical Overkill was just playing around on the InterNet when he
came across a chatline of, as he explained it, bigwig military
staff.
  Acting in his most formal manner, he started what would become
a big relationship with military personel. He setup his own personality,
added some quirks. He began to play a character in a role-playing
game.
  Optical Overkill relaxed and began to chat with the bigwigs,
asking them various military questions. He published his
own zine, and he wanted to get an interview with a General. It
seemed possible now as he held a private conversation with a
General.
  He asked him all sorts of military questions about secret
hidden bases, American missiles aimed at Russia, and all sorts
of governmental conspiracies. It took him a good five hours worth
of questioning, all recorded, untill the General finally got loosened
up enough to begin to leak some information about superhuman
projects taking place in remote Montana. Well, thought Optical,
this is something special. He asked more about this superhuman
project. He published it all in his zine.
  He gathered all five hours of conversation, edited it into
his computer, and released it to all of his subscribed readers.
Max received the file at three a.m. Alaskan time, and did not
get a chance to read it until he got home from school the next
day. Paul got the zine, and did not get a chance to read it
until he got home from school. This school thing was ruining
the hacker's world. Life without school is like Hacker Heaven.
It is Hacker Heaven.


  Paul sat through the class, whispering "Computer." towards
the machine he installed it on. The teacher sighed again
as the tune Mary Had A Little Lamb came out of the machine's
speakers. The tap dancing letters appeared again and they
changed color with each note. It had gotten rather annoying,
and the teacher was ready to burst out at the top of his
voice, "God dammit, who the hell put that program on this
machine?"
  Paul whispered it again when the machine had stopped, and
once again, the tune came out of the machine. "GOD DAMMIT,
WHO THE HELL PUT THAT PROGRAM ON THAT MACHINE?" yelled the
instructor. The class laughed as the last of the tap dancing
letters ended.
  Paul chuckled to himself. This was almost better than
hacking. Almost.

  Max felt like he was sitting in class, dressed in only
his underwear. He had been staring at Diana, daydreaming (as
he often did) about asking her out to the prom. He might
as well be sitting there in his underwear, the teacher had
asked him a pop question about algebra. He hated algebra.
So it was now him against the teacher. The teacher. He scolded
at her. She asked him the question again, and, running it
through his head real quick, answered it correctly.

  Max flipped through the electronic zine half-heartedly, not
really caring about it. Then he saw a nice article by the editor,
Optical Overkill. He knew Optical, never met him in real life,
but knew him well enough. He was a big time hacker. So what's this
article about?
  Max read it. Some stuff about the United States government
working on superhuman artificial intelligence in Montana. Max
encrypted the zine and saved it to OCFNYC, which had plenty of
room. He'd read it all later. He was tired, and after a hard
day at work, and school, he wanted to sleep. First time in a
long time that he actually wanted to sleep.


  Paul sighed as he closed his locker (neatly decorated with GIFs
of females), and walked with his backpack towards the front of the
school. He'd walk home after a nice day of school. He passed the
computer lab, where the instructor came out and began to chase after
Paul.
  "Paul!" he yelled, coming up behind him.
  Paul turned.
  "I've found this file sitting on my email address." he said, holding
up a printout. "Some file about Halloween Harry. I've got an InterNet
link at those computers in the lab. Someone sent it from OCFNYC. You
know what that is?"
  Paul rolled his eyes. "Why you asking me?"
  "Come on, Paul. I know that you know about computers. I don't know
if you're a hacker, but I know you know your way around the InterNet.
Nobody's that stupid not to notice."
  "I've heard of Halloween Harry, but I have no idea what OCFNYC
is."
  The lab master nodded. "No idea what OCFNYC is, huh. Ok. Do you
know Phonebone?"
  Phonebone? Yeah. He knew Phonebone. He's a good friend, Paul
wanted to say. Why don't you just go take your pick of fingers and
sit on it?
  "Never heard of Phonebone." Paul said, turning back to his walk.
He stopped and turned around. "Unless you mean the comic character,
Phone Bone. Two words." He turned back and walked away.
  The lab manager fingered the address, but the connection was
refused. There was only one way to find out who this Phonebone
was. Reply to the article and ask him. Ask the Phonebone.
He laughed to himself. More like Phoneybone.


  Max turned the page of _The_Hacker_Crackdown_, by Bruce Sterling,
and chewed his gum in the lightly lit room. He'd wondered sometimes
whether or not he should take up smoking, like in Cliff Stoll's
_The_Cuckoo's_Egg_. He'd read an interview in a Phrack somewhere
with the star hacker in the latter book. He denied everything.
Max wondered what it would be like, waking to a gun to the head.
Gasping and trying to hide all the information that could be hidden
in time.
  Max put the book down, and turned off the bed side lamp. He
sometimes wondered what it would be like to meet Taran King, or
maybe Knight Lightning. That was impossible, Max knew. He'd never
get enough money, or enough attention, to get out of this
frozen pit of hell.

-----------------------
Wow... That one was
a long story..... I'll
start writing chapter
3, and throw that one
at y'all soon. Please
give me some response
about this book. I'm
putting _The_Alaskan_
together, so I will
have back issues
available if you want
them. So far, posted
stories:
Harry's Vice
Alaskan Scripts
*NEW* Alaskan Angels
Till next time.



CHAPTER THREE
Alaskan Games
(aka Chapter 3 _The_Alaskan_)
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK


  "You wanted a master race, Max." said a voice from the light. Max
recognized it immediately as Harry's voice. "Remember that?"
  Max saw Harry in a few moments. It took a few seconds to focus,
and when Max saw Harry in the same bright cloak, he squinted. The
light seemed to pierce throw his dream and hit him. But people couldn't
feel things in dreams, could they?
  "I remember the idea. Passing thought, such a long time ago." Max
responded. "You really should get some chairs around here, Harry. It
would only be polite. This is Heaven, after all."
  Harry nodded for a second, and a chair appeared behind Max. "Sit,
it's your idea after all." Max sat down in the ugly-looking chair,
which, surprisingly enough, was rather comfortable. "Master race
of hackers, you wanted."
  Max shrugged it off. "I was younger then. Little bit more stupid."
  Harry seemed to laugh. "Younger then? It was last April. Have
you matured incredibly in the short time it's been, Max? You still
hack, and daily, too. That OCFNYC is big stuff I hear. Paul's doing
a good job of running the board, considering --"
  "Paul?" Max interrupted.
  "The sysop. Good god, Max, are you so dense that you don't know
the sysop's name. And you say you've been there how long? Hello?"
Harry was sitting now, and his voice seemed insulting, as though
he were slinging his knowledge of the sysop as Max's fault.
  "I don't exchange real names, Harry." Max said.
  Their conversation lasted a few lines until Max asked about
Phonebone. Harry grinned, and Max could tell. "Phonebone. Yeah,
I know him. You want his real name?"
  Those damn dancing fish interrupted the dream, and Max never
got to know who Phonebone was, at least, not from Harry.

  The OCFNYC is just like any other InterNet access system. It's
got a whole shitload of users, and thousands of email addresses
to watch over. Paul didn't scan every message that didn't come in.
He read the subject lines to each message and, had the subject been
an odd one, he'd read it. He wasn't honest. If you wanted your
mail safe, you'd deliver it first hand. Or encrypt it. Encrypted messages
sometimes screwed over Paul's screen for a few minutes, and beeped loudly.
Paul didn't hate encrypted messages, he just hated having to read the
fuzz that decided to come with it.
  So when there appeared a message in Phonebone's mailbox with the
subject "RE: Harry's Vice", Paul's eyes lit up. This would be interesting.

RE: Harry's Vice

Phonebone,

  I've received a file from you. It appears you must have mistaken
me for someone else. I have no idea who Halloween Harry is, or what
his importance is to you. But I do have some questions for you.

1) What is OCFNYC?
2) Who/what is Phonebone?

                                 Thanks
                                 Mr. Mendelson

  Paul reacted by forwarding the message back to Mr. Mendelson. He'd
say there was no such user at OCFNYC, and that would be that.
Mr. Mendelson wouldn't bother asking the root account manager
what OCFNYC is, or who Phonebone was. He couldn't. The letters
OCFNYC stood for Open Computer Facility of New York City. Plain and
simple. The fact that they had over one thousand users from outside
New York was going to be a hard one to swallow down Mendelson's throat.
After all, this was just a lab with a few computers, maybe a line
or two. Nothing special.
  Yet when Mendelson logged into the OCFNYC under the handle
Gene Splicer, Paul began to worry. Gene Splicer immediately paged
the sysop for a chat. Paul fingered the address to make sure it
was Mendelson. It was. Paul rolled his eyes, and answered the chat.


gene: Yo, d00d.
sysop: What you want?
gene: Just wanted to know about OCFNYC, what's it about?
sysop: Open Computer Facility for New York City.
gene: Oh.
sysop: Anything else?
gene: Who's Phonebone?
sysop: Probably a user. Why?
gene: I got mail from him at my work address.
sysop: Yeah, so?
gene: It's about this article in the paper about Halloween Harry.
sysop: I heard of it. We got it in our phile system.
gene: You know Halloween Harry?
sysop: Nope.
gene: Never met him?
sysop: Nope.
gene: He ever come here?
sysop: Once or twice, right before he killed himself, I think.
gene: You know why he killed himself?
sysop: Nope.
gene: Ok. Thanks.
sysop: No problem.


  Paul went to bed earlier and earlier as the school year went
on. Gene Splicer began to show up more, and, he eventually subscribed
to Optical Overkill's zine. He began to show more knowledge of
computers during Paul's lab, and he found Paul's tap dancing computer
letters program. He edited the program so it would play silently. So
now only the tap dancing letters remained.

  Max began to hang out on OCFNYC a little less, having his homework
collide with his hobby. The Pentium was holding up good, and, if
needed, the old computer was still plugged in. Max read _The_Hacker_
Crackdown_ and began to put it to memory.
  He began to believe once again in the idea of having a master
race of hackers. The omnipotents that watch from behind a keyboard.
He liked the idea, and dreamt of it often.
  That was only when he was not having the same reoccurring nightmare.
He played Harry in this nightmare and could not change anything
that happened. He got beat up, then asked himself for the sequencer,
and hacked the bank. It always ended the same with Max killing himself.
  And if he wasn't fortunate enough to get the dream about Harry,
he received the Heaven dream, and had many conversations with Harry.
Harry brought up the subject of Diana, a few days before the prom.
  "So," Harry said out of nowhere. "you going to ask that sweet
girl in the back of your class to your prom?"
  Max smirked. "You know about her?" He seemed to emphasize "her"
for some strange reason.
  "Damn, boy, you forgetting already that I can see all? I see all,
I hear all, I remember all. I remember everything that went through
her mind about you, Maxie baby. Oh, how I remember it all so clearly.
Would you like to know anything *personal* about her, Maxie? That's what
she calls you, by the way." His tone of voice mocked that of a girl.
"Oh, when will my Maxie ask me to the prom." His voice changed back
to normal. "Odd habits she has, too. You know she'll wash her hair,
sit down in the shower, and just hum? Not that I'm prone to watching
her shower, Max. I've only seen it a few times, maybe eight or nine."
  Max, to put it simply, was pissed. "WHAT THE *FUCK* ARE YOU DOING
WATCHING HER SHOWER?" Max was up against Harry's face. "YOU MOTHERFUCKING
SONUVABITCH!" Max punched Harry, and, reacting like a human, stumbled
backwards a bit. Harry showed no anger in his eyes, but looked calmly
back at Max.
  "Can't really feel anything anymore, Max. You know that's true don't
you?"
  Was it just the pain of his response, or was it Max? He was crying
now, but hoped it wasn't really visible.
  "I can't feel anything. Emotions. *poof* They're gone. Now, we
wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would we my dear
'Maxie'?"
  "Sonavabitch. SONUVABITCH!" Max kneed the fucker in the nuts.
  Harry just smiled.
  "Can't you tell I can't feel anything, dipshit? Nothing. I can't
feel anything. I can't feel emotions. I'm FUCKED. I can't do jack shit
up here in Heaven. Heaven ain't for humans. You ain't going to find one
human in Heaven. We're just dead souls that can talk, walk, and shit. If
that doesn't knock your socks off, let's look at this in a different way.
I can no longer enjoy any food, any drinks, any activities that I might
have enjoyed before. Might have enjoyed back when I was human."
  "So what's all this have to do with me?" he yelled, ready to attack
Harry again.
  "YOU KILLED ME!" Harry yelled back.
  At exactly the wrong time, the dancing fish returned to Max. Harry's
last line had been implanted in his brain.

  Paul twiddled his thumbs. He was sitting outside the principal's
office and was being quiet. The secretaries, the one's that were supposed
to be doing their "work", sat and stared at Paul.
  He quietly recounted what he had been doing. Oh, yeah, it was those
damn tap dancing letters. Must be Mendelson's idea of getting back at him
for not saying who Phonebone was. But that was his own personal business,
it was protected in his own first ammendment rights. Yeah, that was what
he'd respond to any questions. His own first ammendment right! They
couldn't stop him from not telling irrelavent information to a teacher
after hours.
  But then again, Mendelson had no idea that Paul knew Phonebone, or had
any connection to Phonebone. Paul didn't. That was truth, wasn't it?
Phonebone was just a user on a BBS, a BBS that was privately run by Paul,
and had nothing to do with school or Mendelson. Just because a certain
user writes email to a school teacher didn't mean that Paul was
responsible for it. It was the act of the user.
  Although users that upload pirated software do not get in as much
trouble as the sysops that run the board. The sysops are responsible for
the user's actions. But up to what point? Where does it stop?
  Paul thought he was going to wet his pants when he first stepped into
the room and saw the corporal punishment paddle. Paul dug deep down and
remembered where he was. He was in high school. Anyone wetting pants in
high school was out of place. He stood as still as he could and listened
to what the teacher had to say.
  "Sit down, son." the principal said, leaning back in his chair.
Principal's always did that, to try to make you feel at home.  Paul
resisted the urge to tell the principal that he was not his son.
  Paul sat down anyways, and continued to listen to the bigwig.
  "You know, we take our computers very seriously here." Paul shrugged.
"We don't really enjoy having some teenager come in and ruin the
computers. We've got better things to do than fix computers. We're all at
this school to learn. Learning does not require 'tap dancing letters that
play Mary Had A Little Lamb'."
  Paul tried a lame attempt at a joke. "Does it help if she had some
veggies on the side?"
  "No. And you know that. It's taken Mr. Mendelson many valuable man
hours to find out more about this little program of yours and even more
hours to disassemble it. What do you have to say for yourself?"
  Paul twisted his head, popping the bones in his neck. "Maybe I should
build a better program next time, include some encrypted code and some
dummy code, too."
  "You should be kneeling on the floor sucking shoe. You should be
worshipping the ground I walk on and pleading with me. 'Please don't send
me home. Please don't suspend me. Please let me continue my high school
career.' At the very least you should be asking for your punishment. You
should be asking to be kept off the computers so that a thing like this
doesn't happen anymore. You should be asking to do bookwork on computers
for the rest of your school year in that lab. You should be asking if you
could go apologize to Mr. Mendelson for all the trouble and pain in the
ass that you've given him. You should be kissing ass, son!"
  Paul lifted his eyebrows. "Oh?"
  The other's voice raised higher, and Paul wondered if people outside
the room could hear it. "Your puny acts of defiance have no relevance
here in this room. You're going to be punished and punished severely.
Mendelson's already given me your work for the rest of the year. All I
have to do is give it to you and tell you to get to work." He pointed to
a stack of computer manuals, nice thick ones, and continued. "Those are
the manuals for DOS, Windows, some programming languages, and CD-Rom
help. That's your homework. You're going to go home, read them all over,
and have a nice big test over all of them. You're going to put them to
memory and hope to dear God that you don't get a question you don't know."
  Paul smirked. "You want me to read manuals?"
  "YES, YOU'RE GOING TO READ EVERY MANUAL! YOU'RE GOING TO PUT THEM ALL
TO MEMORY! YOU'RE GOING TO WRITE THEM ALL BACK FROM MEMORY, WORD FOR
WORD! YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GIVE THE COPYRIGHT PAGE ALL THE WAY TO THE
INDEX, AND IF THEIR ARE ANY MISTAKES, YOU --" He paused, obviously for
dramatic purposes. "ARE GOING TO FAIL."
  What an unexpected twist, Paul thought, still keeping his smile in tip
top condition. "Fail the class, or fail the entire year?"
  The ruler continued. "We've had a conference about that, including all
your teachers. That includes the ones from your freshman year to your
present year. And considering that you've came into this room so often,
we've decided that the punishment would be fit for you to be held back
another year, to teach you a bit more about your life, your being, and
your personal state of mind."
  "Hold me back an entire year if I don't work on this manual reading
exercise? What the fuck kind of punishment is that?"
  The principal seemed shocked. "You don't question punishment, and you
sure as hell don't talk to me with that language. You're not to talk to
any adults with that word, or any other words that you know are
inappropriate for school!"
  Paul remained quiet for the rest of the "trial" and walked out after a
comment from the other about cutting that hair of his.

  Gene Splicer had quite a relationship with Optical Overkill. He'd read
every issue of Optical's zine, and was flattered (is that the right word
for it? maybe it was surprised) when Optical asked Gene to write an
article for the zine.
  Gene was really surprised when Optical mentioned flying to Montana to
write it. Sure enough, though, a letter arrived in Mendelson's P.O. Box
with the return address: Optical.
  Rather wierd he'd put just Optical. Opening the letter he found a
thousand dollar bill, neatly folded, and a note.
  It read:

Hi, Gene. Found your PO Box. There's money for the round-trip to Montana.
You know the place to look at. (smiley)

  Optical

  Mendelson walked into the principal's office that Monday. He wanted
the time off to fly to Montana and write that article. But why? This was
a free zine, published by some hacker named Optical. How did he know that
this thousand dollar bill was real? Why did he want to write this article
for this hacker mag? He was just a computer lab teacher. He never thought
he'd be asking for some time off. "Family emergency." He was even more
surprised when the other allowed him the time off.

  Mendelson read the note again on the plane to Montana, but put it away,
having not seen anything different in the note. He arrived in Montana late
Monday night, and was able to find a nice hotel. He figured he'd rent a car
tommorrow and drive up to the site. It was only a few miles. He'd get there
pretty quick, sneak in, take a look around, sneak out. Easy as pie. No
problem.
  He did rent the car the next day, and did drive up to the site. He
stopped the car a few hundred feet from the gates, where two mean looking
guards with big guns stood. The guards were talking to each other, having
nothing else to do. The site was so remote, it was hard to believe
there'd be any guards there. But, taking a look at the building,
Mendelson realized why guards where there. The building was enormous.
There were many small buildings, about the size of mansions, huddled
around what looked like the main building. There were gun towers every
five yards along the gate. The guns looked like they'd tear a hole out of
the earth if fired at the ground.
  Mendelson immediately wished he'd come prepared. He didn't even have a
gun on him. Checking his pockets, he found he had a pair of binoculars,
the note from Optical Overkill, and his wallet. Taking out the small pair
of binoculars, he looked towards the windows of the main building. He
focused them a bit, and his eyes widened at what he saw.
  From what he could see, the room was packed with supercomputers and
scientists, a deadly combination. He tried to focus the binoculars on the
supercomputers, but that failed. He could only see the blur of the
screen. No real text visible.
  He heard some rustling towards the left of his car. He decided to
ditch the car there and take a run to the right, into the woods. Sliding
over to the right side of the car, he opened the door and took off.
Behind him he could hear barking.
  He started running through the forest and uphill. He had dropped the
binoculars on his way out of the car, but when he did a quick inventory
check of his pockets, his money and his note was still there. He wondered
a bit about the note. It made no sense to be kept. He didn't have time to
think about that right now. He sprinted as fast as he could uphill. He
came to the top of the hill and looked to the left. Sure enough, there
were the gun towers lining the gate. A guard shouted something about the
hill, and began to fire from the tower. Bullets whizzed past Mendelson as
he stood there, shocked out of his wits.
  "What the hell am I doing here?" he thought, as he jumped over the
side of the hill and began to roll down the side of it. "Well, this is
going well." he thought, as he tried to gain control of the roll. But the
hill was so steep that he couldn't. Any attempts he would make were
useless. He came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, right on top of a
rock. He moaned in pain as his back hit the rock. He could see dogs on
the top of the hill, with their masters standing above them.
  "Stop him," one guard said to the other. "he must not be allowed to
escape. Shoot him in the leg, we will interrogate him."
  Moving with all his might, he began to run away. Bullets hit the rock
and racketed off. The first guard began to fire, too, but no bullets hit
Mendelson.
  Mendelson ran towards the next stretch of forest, a few hundred feet
away. The guards let go of the leashes of the dogs. The dogs ran down the
hill fast enough not to roll. They chased after Mendelson, who was close
to the trees now. A few more feet and he'd be there. A few more feet.
  The two guards leapt sideways down the hill, anchoring their feet into
the ground, and jumping again. They made it down the hill quicker than
Mendelson had, obviously trained for this type of exercise. When the
first guard had landed on the plain between the trees and the hill, he
began to fire at Mendelson. A few bullets teared into the trees, but
nothing hit Mendelson.
  He was into the forest now and was running towards the middle of it.
The dogs barked at him from the edge of the woods. He made it to the
middle of the forest without any trouble. Gaining some good footing, and
trying with the remaining strength he had, he made it to the top of a
tall tree, and rested on a branch. He began to sleep and would leave the
worries he had behind.


  Paul sat in class that Tuesday reading manuals. The substitute was
dragging on and on about computer security. Paul smirked and rolled his
eyes. The rest of the class, heck, the rest of the school had heard all
about Paul's punishment, and most of them laughed at Paul. Paul was going
downhill for the first time in a long time.
  He read the rest of the manual that day, and was on his way home when
the sub caught him in the hall. "Paul! I've got something I want for you
to do for me." the sub said, taking Paul into the lab. "Can you fix me up
with an account on Mendelson's Net link?"
  Paul shrugged. "Sure, you want root privs?" The other nodded, and Paul
worked the computer over so the sub would have all the power he needed on
this one link.
  "There's dial-in access, right?" the sub asked, looking around the
room. The time had passed quite a bit since the time Paul had come into
the room.
  Paul pointed towards a stack of eight modems. "Yup. 24-hour access.
Access to user records, for root. Access to the school's accounts, only
for special people. Even access for students to dial in and have a look
at what homework they're missing. Normal INet access too."
  The other nodded. "Gotta be fun playing around on those computers, eh,
Paul?"
  Paul shook his head. "Everything's recorded. Every keypress, every
telnet, every ftp, every archie, every Mosaic, everything. All recorded.
Email is scanned regularly by Mendelson, excuse me, Mr. Mendelson. No
privacy whatsoever."
  "Then how are you setting up this account, if everything is recorded?"
  Paul grinned the grin of a tiger that had just eaten. "Because I know
what the file is for the records."
  The sub slapped Paul on the back. "You're a pretty cool dude, Paul."
  "But I get into way too much trouble." Paul finished.  He went home
that day and played around on his board a bit, but gave up and read the
manuals.

  Max looked at Rich in the back room. He was doing something with the
new sattelite dish they'd gotten. Rich was tweaking the thing up so the
town could have access to a few hundred cable channels. He did it all out
of his own pocket, too. Strange. Really strange that Rich would pay for
all this stuff. Even stranger that he'd come to this town to setup his
own store.
  Max turned the key to the cash register, and opened the sucker up. He
looked dazed for a second. The drawer was full of money. There were rolls
and rolls of money. Packs of fifty dollars in ones. Packs of five hundred
dollars in twenties. He lifted the top of the bin to look in the bottom
compartment. Staring back at him in the face were hundreds of Ben
Franklins. There were rows and rows of money, sitting right here in this
little register. This little register in this four hundred fifty person town.
  Rich stood behind Max's back. "Something wrong?"
  Max shut the drawer quickly. "No, no. Nothing. Just.. just..."
  "Checking to see if you could still some money?" Rich asked, lifting
an eyebrow.
  "NO. No.. Just I wanted to look in the register. I've never seen it
before."
  Rich locked the drawer and took the key. "Now you've seen it."


---------------------------------------------
And so ends Chapter 3 of _The_Alaskan_.......
Moving right along.... The list of chapters
is below. If you missed a few chapters,
or one, write me and I'll fix you up with
a copy of the chapter(s) that you need.
Please send feedback. Thanks.
LIST:
Prologue-Harry's Vice
Chapter 1-Alaskan Scripts
Chapter 2-Alaskan Angels
NEW Chapter 3-Alaskan Games


CHAPTER 4
TraceRoute
(aka _The_Alaskan_ Chapter 4)
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
[email protected]

  If you trace the route of a certain system, say, MIT, you'll see a
good thirty sites, more or less. If you can understand these sites, or at
least a few of them, you can get to the place you want to get. It's a
sort of chain reaction system.
  Robert Morris, Jr. showed off the system, and its faults, when he
created the Internet worm that screwed over the InterNet, a community
built on trust and honesty. When that trust and honesty is invaded,
something must be done about it.
  This is the part that gets undertaken by the unlucky "net police".
This is the story that includes these net police, and their enemies.

  Mendelson woke up a good thirty feet above the ground. Startled, he
moved from his place on the sturdy branch.  He dropped a bit, and
clutched the branch with both hands. His feet dangled below him, and
looking down, he saw what he thought was his left shoe. Night was falling
around him, and he tried pulling himself up onto the branch.
  His left arm slipped and he was offbalance. His right arm strained to
keep him up. He swung wildly with his left arm to reach the branch again.
It slipped a bit at first, but he got a good grip on it. Relaxing a bit,
he sighed.
  He stayed that way for awhile, his biceps straining, telling him to
stop it and just fall. He contemplated falling for a second, but then
decided it wasn't worth it. He began to pull himself up onto the branch.
He was all the way up when he heard something on the ground below.
  A dog was chewing on his shoe, and the other was barking up the tree.
The masters were coming, and from what Mendelson could see, they were
well armed.
  They'd see him sitting up here. He needed to get away. He needed to
escape. But how?
  They were down there, and wouldn't just let him go. He couldn't fight
his way out of it, they had guns.
  He put his head in his hands and tried to think.
  Tried.

  "I've got this friend you see." Max sang in the shower, getting ready
for school.
  OCFNYC had been down when he tried calling the night before. Technical
troubles, maybe? Max shrugged it off and got dressed.
  The day passed rather smoothly for Max. No trouble. Well, not much
trouble. No one has "no trouble" at school. Oxy-moron.

  Paul read manuals in class. He wanted to get to a computer,
preferrably one with a modem, and call OCFNYC. Darn board had dropped out
on him last night. Thousands of hackers all over the world were mad at
him. He sighed and read on.

  Mendelson put pressure on the right thigh, trying to let the blood
flow. The bullet had hit him unexpectedly, and now he was on the ground,
crying like a baby.
  The guards stood above him, trying to keep the dogs from chewing
Mendelson's head off. They had had a twelve hour stand off. Mendelson
sitting in the tree, the guards radioing in what happened. It all ended
when the superior officer demanded Mendelson be caught. "Use force if
neccessary." Well, they'd used force and now Mendelson was bleeding all
over the ground.
  Mendelson passed out.

  Optical Overkill, aka Laura, walked down the street. The town was
peaceful at about this time. She lived in a small town in the Dakotas,
two thousand, close to three. Everyone didn't know everyone, but that
didn't matter much. They were all peaceful, and didn't care much about
the others actions.
  Laura brushed her brown hair out of her eyes and stuffed her hands
back in her pockets. She wanted to whistle, but that would make it look
too much like one of those homely movie scenes about children in small
towns. All that was needed were a few kids in suspenders running through
the street to the candy store.
  She wondered whether or not it was wise to send Mendelson to Montana.
She had went through alot to get that thousand dollar bill, and would
have rather had Mendelson spend his own money to get there. If he was
such a good hacker, he'd find a way to get the money.
  Course, she was an expert. Sixteen years of age, with five years
experience in this sort of thing. She could have gone to Montana herself.
Could have had school not stopped her. School stopped lots of thing,
mainly fun.

  Mendelson came to inside a pitch black room. At least, he thought he
came to. He couldn't see anything in this room. His right thigh, he saw,
had been bandaged up by medics. His hands were tied behind the chair in
which he sat. He tried to look at his pockets, to see if the inventory
he'd had was still there. It wasn't.
  There came a voice from the darkness. A crackly voice of someone who
didn't have the time to deal with someone like Mendelson. Someone like
Mendelson. He was beginning to think he actually was a hacker.
  "What are you doing here?" said the voice.
  He'd expected this question, but didn't quite know how to answer it.
Using his "acting" skills, he tried to talk like a native Montanan. "Why,
I just came out here to look for deer. I got me car back dere so I could
drive around. Couldn't find any deer though."
  "You don't have a gun."

  "Don't tell me wanna hear, 'fraid I'll never know fear." Harry said,
taking a seat. Max was already seated, and had prepared himself for this
dream. "Truth covered in security, like to know the code word, don't
regret a thing. I got this friend you see, makes me feel, rest my self.
Go outta my way. Rather interesting song, if you think about it for
awhile, Max. In a way it has to do with hacking, doesn't it? But in
another way it has nothing to do with hacking, more about.. ahh.. What's
the word?"
  "Dunno, Harry, you never tell me anything. By the way, isn't it
'truth covered in obscurity'?"
  Harry grinned. "Maybe. I'll give you one good reason why I don't
have to tell you anything. Mendelson."
  "Who?"
  "Mendelson. He's being interrogated in Montana this instant. I could
let you see it through this dream, but that wouldn't be all too nice."
  "Since when have you been nice, Harry?"
  "Anyhow, he's being interrogated right now up there in Montana. Or
should I say down there in Montana. Some not very nice bigwigs. American
government agents sworn to protect the secret of their.. project.
  "Something, if I remember correctly, about an artificial
intelligence. Very interesting stuff. Bigwigs got every scientist from
the States up there, working their butts off.
  "Biotechnology, very dangerous weapon, Max. They succeed with working
this little AI into life, the human race may be next to disappear. This
AI is going to be pumped full of information. Geography, political views,
warfare. This thing could be the perfect president. So what do people do,
vote for the AI. The AI gets into office, first thing it does, takes over
the States. Very easy. No resistance from the people, considering they
like the idea of having this AI in power. Landslide vote.
  "AI begins to take over Earth, country by country. Mass production of
other AIs begin. Human foot soldiers are replaced by artificial foot
soldiers. No life is lost, and so the people begin to think this is a
great idea.
  "Only they realize too late their mistake of letting the created
become the creator. Very messy war happens after that, Max. Very messy.
The earth becomes a very big battlefield for humans and computers.
  "You think that Optical Overkill knew what she was doing when she sent
Mendelson over there? Heck yeah! She thought he'd find a few secrets
about the AI, and sabotage the sucker before he could be completed.
  "Only problem is, this AI isn't going to be completed. There's a
twenty five percent chance of it succeeding, but that won't work, because
you can't put human life into a machine. All the scientists in the world
won't agree with you on that, but every philospher from here to China
will.
  "Really quite interesting, eh, Max? But you realize what will happen,
won't you? They're going to trace the chain. They're going to see the
link between Mendelson and Optical Overkill. They're going to find
Overkill, and trace the link. It's going to spread all over the hacker
community, and no one, not even you, will be safe.
  "You know what I'm glad about, Max? I won't be around when that happens."

  It was Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. Not many people had much to be
thankful for. At least not in the hacker community. Word had spread
quickly about Mendelson being caught, but the word stopped there. They
didn't know where Mendelson had been caught, and believed that he was a
good hacker, one that wouldn't give out too much info.
  Max himself was thankful, for he finally got to go to the prom. He was
sharply dressed. Nice formal occassion for the high schoolers. Everyone
had sent away to Anchorage for their clothes. Six weeks it had taken for
the clothes to get here. Max was dressed in a tux, with a nice polka dot
bow tie (which complemented the rest of the outfit).
  Diana was dressed in a green dress (one Max's sister said looked
dreadfully ugly). Max liked the dress, and it didn't matter what the
others thought about it.
  The dance went by quickly, and without any trouble. Max and Diana
danced together most of the night, stopping only for punch (luckily, not
spiked) and rest.
  Max finally felt good without the aid of a computer. It had been a
long time since that had happened. He was, for once, happy with life.

  Paul received mixed emotions when he heard about Mendelson. He was
happy that the bugger finally got what he deserved, but he was worried
whether or not Mendelson would tell about the board. Mendelson probably
would, and Paul would get raided. That would suck.
  Paul didn't worry about that when he sat down for the Thanksgiving
turkey, and, like he did every Thanksgiving, gave thanks that he was
alive, and hadn't been raided.

  Laura sat down at her own Thanksgiving meal and gave thanks that she
hadn't gone instead of Mendelson. It was selfish, she knew, but she
didn't want to get caught. Plain and simple in the hacker world, don't
get caught. But then again, there was no honor among thieves.

  Mendelson's Thanksgiving dinner was less than satisfactory. "Prison
slop," as one scientist called it.
  Mendelson was grilled with thousands of questions. Many about how he
was able to find this government installation. A few even asking if he
knew this was a government installation. Of course, they had Optical's
note. Mendelson wasn't going to get out of here alive unless he gave all
his information and prayed to high Heaven that God would help him.


----------------------------------------
Kinda being pressed for time on this
chapter. I just spent a little holiday
up in Seattle (got myself an Alaska hat
in Port Angeles). Anyhow, this was
written before the trip, and since I
don't want to keep anyone waiting too
long. Anyhow, I'll be starting on
chapter 5, promise it will be full
length. All comments, critiques, thanks,
requests for back issues should be sent
email to moi. Thanks a bundle.
List of stories:
PROLOGUE - Harry's Vice
CHAPTER 1 - Alaskan Scripts
CHAPTER 2 - Alaskan Angels
CHAPTER 3 - Alaskan Games
CHAPTER 4 - TraceRoute



CHAPTER 5
Patience, Patience Said The Man
(aka _The_Alaskan_ Chapter 5)
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK

  They're very thorough in the FBI. Had the artificial intelligence
laboratory not been scouted by Mendelson, they wouldn't have to be on
this case. He wouldn't have to be on this case. But, as he flicked the
toothpick away from him, this was his job. He was a field agent for a
long, number filled name of a computer agency. He did his job good,
considering the factors that had entered into it, ie. he'd never gotten
into a gunfight before. Well, never a real gunfight. He'd never been a
part of a crackdown. He'd never busted any computers. He'd never really
even worked in his specific field. Before today.


List of Users At Open Computer Facility NYC Hackers
---------------------------------------------------
user             action            handle
phonebone        email             Phone Bone
king             chat              Lion King
|<|<             chat              King Kong
nevermind        email             Nirvana
sysop            maintenence       SysOp
maximillion      chat              Maximillion Forte
latter           chat              Jacob S. Latter

  Max did the usual routine, jumping into the chatline write in the
middle of a fight.

|<|<: It was all Prophet's fault. He kept six copies of the phile.
king: But HE didn't know he was gonna get caught!
latter: Didn't matter. No one keeps six copies.
latter: Imagine someone with six copies of the same sequencer.
latter: what's going to happen with six copies?
king: But HE wanted to have backups. Every good hacker keeps backups.
latter: Backups yes, extra copies, no.
|<|<: Remember that time when they were right at my door.
|<|<: Door's caving in on me, and I'm rumbling round to find the extras,
|<|<: and kill dem.
king: And they busted you for destroying evidence, too.
|<|<: Got out, didn't I?
phonebone: First time offender.
latter: like that really makes the punishment any less.
king: Sure, why not?
latter: Didn't work on KL. He got grilled for $75,000 on the E911.
king: But it was a $13 book. He got off.
maximillion: Got off's a harsh term. Use escaped.
latter: Been a long time since I seen you, Max.
phonebone: Same here.
maximillion: I heard SysOp's got some probs with da board.
sysop: Just some technical troubles, Max.
sysop: Trying to make sure I don't get caught running this sucker.
sysop: The chain reaction of raiding me would be huge.
maximillion: *shrug* Just the risk you take.
phonebone: Actually, there are precautions you can use, Sys.
sysop: Yeah, but finding them are terribly hard.
sysop: I've got everything encrypted, three keys, really hard codes.
sysop: Then I've got the directories encrypted, the phile names encrypted.
sysop: Everything. There's no way they coud get into this place and
sysop: find anything. coud - could.
phonebone: Unless they stick you up on the stand and make you.
maximillion: What are the odds of that happening?
king: Perty good odds against you, Sys.
|<|<: Don't keep backups!
sysop: *sigh* This works killing me.
optical: Hi all.
maximillion: Hi Opt.
king: Yo Opt.
|<|<: *wave*
optical: Hot topic of discussion, Gene Splicer is gonna spill his guts.
optical: Y'all know that, don't y'all?
sysop: That's what I'm worried about.
|<|<: They ain't gonna find you, Sys. You're in NYC, everyone else
|<|<: is spread out, hard to trace the ppl.
sysop: Doesn't make me feel much better.
gene: Hi guys.
sysop: Gene?
gene: It's me. Got away from those feds.

  Mendelson shivered as the cold end of the gun tapped him in the back
of the neck. "Continue." the man at the opposite end of the gun said.

gene: Just need to know where to go from here.
gene: Optical, you sent me on this....

  "Optical is..."
  Mendelson responded quickly, not wanting this Cray to have his brains
all over it. "Optical Overkill. He sent me a letter telling me to come to
Montana."
  "Get her in a private chat, immediately."

gene: I'd like to chat with you privately, Optical.
optical: Ok....

LINK ESTABLISHED: PRIVATE CHAT - GENE & OPTICAL

  "Ask her where she got the money."

gene: Where did you get the $1000?
optical: Hacked.
gene: Hacked what?
optical: Oh, come on, Gene, how stupid ARE you?
optical: I've known you for some time now, you know I know you're a
optical: die hard hacker.

  Was it just Mendelson, or did the words die hard mean that he was
supposed to die in this mission? Ha. Using the word Mission didn't make
much sense.

gene: Tell me anyways, I want to know. I got on this mission! I should
gene: KNOW!
optical: Uh... it's a bank... The bank in my town. Didn't even know
optical: they missed it, I pushed $1000 into my account, and added
optical: $1000 back into the account I stole from. Very tricky work,
optical: that.
gene: It's stolen. You robbed a bank?
optical: Dirty job, someone had to do it.

  Job? He's acting like he has nothing to do with Mendelson's problem.
He sent him into this, after all!

optical: Patience, patience said the man. Patience, patience I can't
optical: understand.
optical: It's a good song, Gene. If you ever wake up, I'd like you
optical: to listen to it. It would be, what's the word, enlightening.

  Enlightenment. Suddenly Mendelson felt as though he was stuck in a
Buddha convention, if there was such a thing.

optical: Sounds like I went to a Buddha convention, eh, Gene?
optical: Gene???

  Mendelson was splattered across the screen. No use for him anymore.
He'd wandered into this top secret building, broken into the lab, and
logged into the Cray. From there he entered this OCFNYC, a hacker
computer den. He was tresapessing on a top secret military area. He got
what he deserved. The government had acted like they should have. No
problem. And for the FBI agent, he'd gotten to do his first gunfight. Too
bad there was no return fire.

  The bigwigs chatted with optical for hours, tracing him with a
patience unmatched in history. They'd finally traced his route. All the
way back to his email address. Small place in the Dakotas. They had him!
  They made there way back to the landing strip on the opposite side of
the compound. An agent stayed behind and helped the scientists look
through this OCFNYC. They set up a Trojan horse, to capture the others
passwords. They were going to search thoroughly through everyone's email.
  The others took a plane and started the long flight to Dakota. They
arrived in Dakota before dawn, and from there started the trek to
Optical's town. It was a little past seven when they got to the town,
and found Optical.

  The clock said seven fifteen. She'd overslept a bit, but could make up
for that along the way, not doing certain things. She took a shower
first, and, over the sound of water, heard the doorbell ring. She ignored it.
  After she'd finished her shower and gotten dressed, she went to the
door to see who the idiot was that had ringed it. She didn't open the
door, but looked through it quietly. She was amazed and frightened.

  "Enjoying this, Max?" Harry asked, chewing on some popcorn. Max had
entered this dream as he'd normally did. Harry would bug him for a bit,
remind him that he killed him, and let Max sit down. This was Harry's
little punishment, but it also let Max see what was happening in the world.
Right now, Mendelson was typing, that much Max could see. Suddenly, there
was a loud pop.
  Blood. Brains. Death. Violence.
  "I seem to remember that from my days." Harry said, reminding Max
again that he'd killed him. "Blood, brains, death, violence. She killed
herself first. She said I'd 'ruined her life'. You read the article, Max.
You tell me, did I ruin her life? I killed her ex-boyfriend. No trouble.
I gave him a few hundred, he gave me his gun. I blew his brains out."
Harry paused for a moment, thinking. "I didn't take the money back, that
should count for something."
  "What happened there, Harry?" Max wondered aloud.
  Harry pushed the hair away from his eyes. "You see, when the trigger
is pulled, it makes the hammer do something, then a bullet flies from the
gun, or pistol. When the bullet impacts, Mendelson died." Harry sighed.
"I think you'd know by now what happens in the world. Saw you at your
prom, by the way. Looked nice in the suit. Good enough to kill." Harry
smiled.
  "You're a freak, Harry."
  Harry shrugged it off. "You want me to tell you all about your lovely
Diana? She's having a nightmare right now."
  "Really?"
  Harry nodded. "She's seeing your face everywhere." He cackled, and the
dream ended.

  Paul was banging his head against his locker. Rather violently, too.
He had known Mendelson would lead back to him. He shouldn't have let
Mendelson get on the board. Outlawed him. Outlaw the hacker.
  Paul banged his head a few more times before he scurried off to class.

  Laura played with her thumbs. She lied on her bed and played with her
thumbs. The FBI was at her door. Just as long as she didn't do anything
-- oh my! -- the computers were still hooked up! She tiptoed over to the
computer, and muffled the beeps and whizzes as best she could. Then,
finding the e-zine she edited, deleted the entire directory. The doorbell
rang again. She had company.
  Walking over to the shredding machine she'd asked for on her twelfth
birthday, she took all the printouts she had and shreded them. Neat
little 1/4" carvings about how to crack banks. The disks where hidden
well away.
  She'd found the "secret panel" when she was six. She hid from her
mother there such a long time ago. She'd started hacking six years ago,
at age ten, and she hid every disk she had there. It was cleverly
disguised, and no one could possibly find it, except her.
  The doorbell rang again.

  The dream had never happened before in the same night. This was odd.
So when Max came back to his Heaven, he wondered what was up. He couldn't
see much. Fog rolled across the floor (was it a floor?). The sky changed
colors rapidly.
  He heard gunshots, saw fire. Something was wrong.
  The sky lit up in a blast. It followed by a mushroom cloud. Laser
(unsure about that one, as well) fire pounded into something. Explosions.
Fire. Did he smell something odd?
  Harry didn't appear when the dream ended. He'd never even appeared.
What had happened here? This was his dream of Heaven. This should've been
Harry insulting him. Or was something wrong? Was Harry's prophecy of
artificial war coming true? Or was something else involved?
  Could it have been Max's vice catching up with him?

  Optical lifted up the panel and dropped through the floor. She closed
the panel behind her, and crawled up next to an old pillow. The disks
were hidden in the opposite corner.
  It was hot in the panel room. There were no windows. She didn't even
know if there was anything opposite the walls. There probably wasn't,
except maybe the basement. Rats appeared here and there, but she had been
used to them, hiding in here for hours at a time.
  But how long could she hide now?

  Max caught up with Diana at lunch. He sat with her. He chatted the
"usual" small talk for a bit, then tried popping up the question.
  "Sleep well?" What? It sounded better in his head then it did coming
out of his mouth.
  She didn't seem to notice. "I guess." Phew. Thank god she ended that
quick. "Course, then again, I keep having these odd dreams."
  Max's mouth dropped open. Diana must have noticed it.
  "Something wrong?" she asked, chewing a green bean.
  Max shook his head. "No." There was a short pause. "Yes. What are
these -- your dreams about?"
  Diana shrugged. "Don't really remember much... Oh, except for maybe...
Well, yeah. I remember. This cute boy, name's -- what was it -- Harry,
that's it, he keeps coming to me from Heaven or someplace. Really wierd.
Last night, he showed me a really wierd 'movie'. Some guy getting his
brains blown out in front of a monitor." She changed the subject. "How
come I haven't seen you around the computer store anymore, Max? Hanging
around at the antique place, I presume?"
  He laughed. "Nah, just having some problems." Bad choice of words. She
jumped on them.
  "Problems? Can I help?" No, you can't!
  "I guess... But I wouldn't think you want to." No, you don't really
want to. You *don't* really want to.
  "Sure. Nothing I wouldn't do, just as long as it's not time consuming."
  I said you didn't want to. Why aren't you listening to me! "Just a
problem I'm having in the computer world. Nothing you would know about."
Slap. Bad choice of words. Please don't attack. Please don't attack.
  She shrugged. "Guess not. Never understood computers."
  Thank goodness! "It's rather simple, really." Why did I just say that?
That was dumb. The conversation was over.
  "An entire system focusing on the numbers zero and one? Max, that's
not simple."
  "Guess not."
  "And then all the operating systems and modems and hookups. All these
little gadgets guarenteeing time and product satisfaction."
  He had to ask. "You hanging out around the comp store?"
  She giggled. "Of course, you dumby."

  Rich was snoring behind the counter. The store was dirty. Beer cans
(empty ones) lined the counter. Max knocked on the door. Rich stumbled,
fell out of the chair, and hit the floor hard.
  Rich got up and let Max in. "Why you here, little buddy?" Rich asked,
the alchol apparent in his breath.
  "I work here, Rich."
  Rich rolled his eyes. "Almost forgooooot." He stumbled backwards.
  "You drunk, Rich?"
  Rich shook his head. "Never."
  "Can I ask you a question, Rich?" Max was going to ask. He was going
to find out, for the first time ever since the little bugger showed up,
he was gonna ask!
  "Who's Phonebone?"

  Laura wanted to whistle. It was odd, the feeling of wanting to
whistle. People want many things. People want to drive, but you have to
wait for it. People want to open the Christmas presents one day early,
but you have to wait for it. You don't have to wait for whistling. You
can whistle wherever you want. It's the one freedom given to everyone who
knows how. But Laura, cooped up in this secret room, wasn't going to give
away her posistion.
  She began to remember the 1990 raids. All those computers, being taken
from their rightful place in the walls. All those disks, those illegal
disks with information that could get everyone in trouble. She was
sitting opposite those disks. Disks that could get hundreds of thousands
of people in trouble. If the FBI found there way back to OCFNYC, Laura
was to blame.
  But they'd let her off. First time offender. No problem. She could get
someone else in trouble. Maximillion, for instance. She knew all about
ol' Max. She could be a witness in his trial. She could watch him go down
in flames!
  Although, Mendelson was also a first time offender, and he'd spill his
guts quick (course, she didn't know he'd already spilled his brains).
He'd come to her trial and tell all about the way she got money from the
bank. She sent him there with illegal money. She had talken a General
into spilling the beans about this artificial intelligence place in
Montana. She'd be in jail. Racking up the offenses.
  No one had entered the house since she'd hidden in this room. Had they
gone away? No chance to push her luck. She sat there, waited, wanting to
whistle. She'd whistle loudly when she got her first chance. She would.
She swore this down there in that little room. Was it just her, or was it
getting hotter in here? The air might be getting used up quicker. That
wouldn't be good. The body can survive without food or water for a day or
so, but air is necessary. She could whistle now, give her posistion away,
and just wait it out in some slime filled jail cell. She regretted
getting caught at this age of sixteen, when she could be tried legally as
an adult.


------------------------------------
Next Chapter........................
Who's Phonebone?
Laura on the Run
Paul's Problem
List:
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
Requests for back issues sent to my
email address......................
PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK.


CHAPTER 6
Without A Safety Net
(aka _The_Alaskan_ chapter 6)
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK

  The first agent leaned back in the chair. He lit up a cigar, puffed
lightly, and waited to see what the second was going to say. The second,
an aging man, typed Unix command after Unix command, searching for some
flaw in the OCFNYC computer. They'd set up the Trojan horse already, and
the passwords were flowing in. The other agents were hacking other
accounts with the passwords that had been stolen. They read backlogs of
email, copied every piece of new information down.
  The second agent rubbed a wrinkle under his chin, and thought for a
moment. "Well, it's obvious that the operator there's paranoid." he said,
searching for a cigarette in his pockets. "He's got every file on the
system encrypted. Not standard encryption, homemade encryption, obviously
has more than one key. I can't find anything that would point us to those
keys, so we're screwed unless we can --" He found a cigarette. He
searched for his lighter. "-- find a way to capture the operator's
keystrokes. But that would mean a few more hours of programming."
  The second found his lighter and lit the cigarette. "So, you're
telling me we can't get into this guy's personal files?"
  "Affirmative. Unless we capture the operator's password in the horse,
in which case we've got access to everything he owns. Hopefully that
includes the keys."
  The first agent nodded, and scratched his beer belly. "Ok. Keep
working on it." He turned towards the agents working with the stolen
passwords. "Found any places we can trace to, guys?"
  An agent responded. "Yeah, we've found a few email addresses of a few
users. Real email addresses, not the OCFNYC address. We're sending mail
to the roots, gonna try to get the real name, address, etc. Then we --
you -- can send a strike team down to each one and bash down the door."
  "How are we doing in the Dakotas?"
  "We haven't been able to take down the door, no one's at home."
  "Stand off a bit more, but if no one shows up in the next forty eight
hours, break the door down. You've set up movement detectors around the
house, right?"
  "Yeah, but they keep detecting cockroaches. Sensitive little fuckers."
  "Break the door down now, we ain't gonna get another chance."

  It was dawn when the phone call reached the USSS at Optical Overkill's
house. She was asleep in her "bunker". Two agents stalked up to the front
door, two went to the back. Another agent checked his camera to make sure
there was enough film to capture evidence. A sixth agent opened the back
of a "Move-It, Inc." rent-a-truck.
  The two agents at the front door drew there guns. The first agent
stepped in front of the door. The second dropped back behind the first.
He kicked the door. It flew off it's hinges.
  The back door went down next. The two agents there stormed in. The
photographer made his way towards the computers. He began to take picture
after picture of the evidence.
  The agents told the photographer to fall back a bit. The first agent
thought he saw something move in the closet, close to the computer. A
bullet launched from the gun and hit the closet door. Nothing happened.
He ran over to the door and kicked it down. No one there.
  "Craps. Where is that stupid hacker..."
  "He's gotta be here somewhere."
  "Alright, just take the computer equipment for now. Call for back up.
We're going to search this entire house for this guy, even if it takes
all day."

  "There were two cots. The first being elevated higher then the second.
He shared the cell with no one but the mice. This would work out for the
better in the long run.
  "He was let out of the cell once or twice a day. He would make his
way down to the courtyard of the prison. He would work it out in his mind
daily, remembering how he would take down the guards. He would plot this
in his mind and remember.
  "Two years passed, and every day he would plot the escape again. And
again. And again. So eventually he decided it was time to do the dirty
deed.
  "The sun was bright in the sky. The yellow on blue shone down on the
prisoners. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the hot sand seemed to
seep through their boots and attacked their feet.
  "He leaned quietly against the wall. A few people walked by, here and
there, and eventually the time had passed by quickly. There was no more
free time inside the courtyard.
  "At this point, he was approached by a guard. The guard had a shotgun
slung across his back.
  "'What are you still doing here? Your time today has ended.' said the
guard.
  "The plan raced through his mind once more, and he took the makeshift
blade from a hidden spot in his clothes. He slashed down with the blade
quickly. The time had come to escape.
  "Time passed like lightning at this point. He wanted to escape
quickly. The guard put up quite a struggle. He slashed the guard forty
eight times.
  "The gun towers were aiming directly at him. The guard worked well as
a human shield. The gunmen opened fire anyways. The guard was as good as
dead anyways.
  "Bullets rammed into the guard's dead body and out the opposite side.
The living one was hit. He pulled the shotgun from the guard's body and
jumped up onto the wall. Using the blade of his knife and his upper body
strength, he began to scale the wall to the top.
  "He was gunned down quickly by the guard towers, and his sad planning
left him dead." The teacher closed the book, dropped it on the desk, and
looked up at the class.
  Max was nudged by Diana, who whispered, "Wake up, it's over." Max woke
up, and looked towards the front of the class.
  "Poor planning. Everyone should have a good plan."

  Paul cursed. This wasn't right. This wasn't happening. He had logged
in, and listed the users. That one user that wasn't supposed to be
there, was. The user was himself.
  He couldn't just chat with himself, could he? The hacker at the other
end of this strip wouldn't talk with Paul. He booted the hacker off with
his favorite kill command, and looked at the other users.

URGENT SYSTEM MESSAGE
---------------------
Shutting down for maintenance. Thanks. --Sysop

  OCFNYC was offline for the first time in two years.

  Max sat quietly on the roof of his house. He was tired, and it was
past his usual commencement of rest. He was worried. He got this feeling
all the time. Harry had gotten this feeling.
  Harry got the feeling when he just started out. Just started out,
shit. He had been an amateur. Max was the hacker, Harry was the
apprentice. It was a simple relationship with no twists or turns.
  But now there was a twist. Harry was still able to communicate with
Max. He'd already told Max about Mendelson. Right now agents would be
flying towards his house, breaking down the door, and ending it quickly.
  Max sighed, tilted his head back, and went to sleep.

  He woke up in pain. He was on the ground, in front of his house. His
sense of time decided it was early morning. His leg was what hurt. He
remembered quickly the events of the night before. Oh my. He'd fallen off
the roof and onto the ground.
  Was his leg broken?
  He tried to stand up, but the pain was too much. He fell back down, a
bit harder.
  He let out an involuntary screech. Appearing from the door came his
mother. "Oh my." she mumbled, jogging over to Max. "What hurts?"
  "My leg." Max responded, grasping the leg.
  He was put into the back of the pick up truck, and told to bite down
on a stick. The truck made the long trip to Anchorage. There a doctor
looked at the leg, set it, and put the cast on. At the end of the day,
Max was in an Anchorage hotel, watching MTV.
  "I've got an idea, Max." she said from a chair across the room.
"You're good for a vacation. I'll phone the school back home and tell
them you're ill at a hospital in Anchorage. They'll give you some time
off for sick leave. We'll head down to Seattle, have some fun there.
Don't you think that would be fun?"
  "Catch a flight to Seattle, mum?" Max asked, taking his mind away from
the tube.
  "Sure... Dad's still going to be home. He'll understand. Or better
yet, you're old enough to hold your own, aren't you? How would you like a
chance at the big city?" she was looking directly at him. He turned away.
  "I don't know. I think I'd enjoy it more without the cast." He knocked
on the cast.
  "Four to six weeks with the cast on. You'd have to wait untill after
Christmas. Four weeks at least. I hear the doc thinks you're gonna make
it out in four. That would be going to Seattle during Christmas. I think
you'd like to wait till after the holidays to have your little trip. We
better get back to home tommorrow. We'll set out at six or so, make good
travel time, probably be back early enough for you to get into school.
With a note of course."

----------------------------------
Requests for back issues should be
sent to [email protected].
Please send any and all feedback.
Please don't complain about
spelling or grammar. I don't have
a spell checker or a grammar
checker, even though I dreadfully
need one. :-)


CHAPTER SEVEN
Angst
(aka _The_Alaskan_ chapter 7)
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
[email protected]

  Christmas day.
  It was freezing when Max woke up. He stumbled a bit, grabbed his
crutch, and made his way down the stairs. The family was already
gathered, waiting for him. "All here, go ahead, open the gifts."
  There was a fire burning in the fireplace, and the family slowly
opened the gifts, one by one, person by person. Max hadn't really wanted
much this Christmas, nothing that the family could buy for him.

  Paul woke up before the rest of his family, making his way to the
computer before he went down to open the gifts. He had put OCFNYC back on
line, erased the user files, and destroyed someone's password grabber.
Phonebone was there, even at this time of morning. He was sending the
usual email rounds, but eventually he wound up surfing the newsgroups for
fun. Paul monitored Phonebone for two hours, finally realizing it was
seven o'clock. He sat next to the Christmas tree and waited it out.

  The agents connected once again to OCFNYC. OCFNYC was becoming their
favorite hang-out. They had a four meg file of information about OCFNYC,
from the regular users to the email. They'd waited it out in the
Dakotas, monitoring the house for any movements that might be the hacker.
They hadn't found any. They'd screwed up on this one, making the hacker
know they were there before they could get in. They had the hacker's
computers and electronics, but those proved worthless. He didn't have any
disks visible, so they were probably hidden in another area. They had
searched the house for days not finding anything. But even on Christmas
day, the house was being monitored for signs of life. There were none.
  And the sysop of OCFNYC had closed his doors in the face of the FBI.
Obviously, the Trojan horse was destroyed, and there was no way of
setting up a second one. The NSA had poked it's nose in on this one. They
sent a few of their best to Montana to help out the FBI in their time of
need. The United States Secret Service had joined the party, sending
three of their agents down to Montana to join the festivities.
  So, spread out around fifteen computers were the best agents of their
fields, trying to catch the hackers involved in this OCFNYC. This was big
news. It wasn't everyday that thirty thousand hackers populated in one
place. Sure, there were the normal conventions of hackers held in big
hotels, but these are active hackers. Hackers that have been caught in
the act. Two megs of email has been stored away about these hackers. All
that email showed their traits, their favorite hang outs, other boards,
more sites, more places to go, and (here and there) clues to their real
IDs. Interesting stuff for America's best to work on. And it was quite a
lot of work. The file on OCFNYC was growing daily. The agents were "hot
on the trail" of these damned hackers. It was four weeks of
investigating. Now they were ready to trace some more of the hackers.
  They'd already found one in San Diego. The Secret Service broke down
the door to the kid's house, took the computers, took the electronics,
took the disks. Parents, as usual, were terrified. Not my son. Not my
son. It happens. It happened to them. And now they were going to have to
wait untill the rest of the OCFNYCers were rounded up. There was going to
be one big trial, and in the end, the sysop of OCFNYC was going to be
sent to the slammer, for a nice long time. With all these witnesses,
thirty thousand witnesses, there was no way that this sysop was going to
get off. There were the prime witnesses, the ones that might be sent to
jail for longer periods than others. The list was quite long. Phonebone,
Halloween Harry (oh, wait, he was dead.... why hadn't he been erased from
the all time user file then?), Maximillion Forte, Lion King, Optical
Overkill (they'd already taken down his door, but hadn't found him). The
list was long.
  And they were going to get everyone of them.

  Max had met with Diana at the diner, where they ate a bit of Christmas
dinner in a romantic setting. The topics were varied, but then it focused
on Max's past. Max tried to divert it into his future.
  "I'm going back to Seattle after Christmas break." he said, munching
down some fries. "Going to Anchorage first, to let them take the cast off."
  "I'd been meaning to ask you about that. I heard the story and all
about you falling off the roof, but what were you doing up there?" she
pondered aloud.
  "Sleeping."
  She laughed.
  "Seriously, I was asleep. I like it up on the roof. You ought to try
it at --" Wait, was he giving an invitation for another date? "Uh.. Your
house some time."
  She shrugged. "'fraid of heights, couldn't dare."
  He grinned. "What did you get for Christmas?"
  "Headache mainly, parents are being terrible again. Sibling rivalry's
high as ever. Just no escaping them."
  "C'est la vie."
  "Yeah. Wish I could go to Seattle with you, Max. It would be fun down
there." Was she giving an invite? "We could go dancing in one of those
grunge clubs. It would be fun. We could go mosh." He grinned. "What, you
don't think I could hold my own? You don't know me too well then, Max.
I've got a black belt in karate."
  "Yeah, but how well will that work in the mosh pit?"
  "Don't know, never had to bother to use it."

  Rich was tired when Max came into the store to say hi to the fellow.
Rich didn't have a family, from what Max knew of him. Well, no family
that was still alive. Rich enjoyed the company, but from what Max could
tell, Rich was drunk.
  "Merry Christmas." Rich mumbled, looking up from behind the counter.
"Wanna beer?"
  "No thanks, Rich." Max said, walking over to the counter. "How's life?"
  Rich shook his head. "Don't like it much, Max. I've got this store
here, and nothing much is selling. Sure, small town, but I've got some of
the best equipment around. Stuff should be selling like hot cakes. My
funds are dwindling. Downward spiral. I ain't gonna be alive long enough
to enjoy the funds. And believe me, they are some seven digit funds. But
the dish, and the --" Rich stopped short. "the problems I've been having
with the parents and the FBI. Some big wig wanna come here from D. C. and
talk to me about computer piracy and hacking. Why would I want to pirate
somet'ing? I run a computer store for crying out loud. I ain't gonna
pirate software. 'specially not when my funds depend on this store
working. They don't depend on it, really. The parents have enough stored
away that I could live well for the rest of my life, my brothers could
live well for the rest of their lives, too. Millionaire parents. Wanna
know how they made the dough, Max?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Lots
of nasty stuff to do with arms dealing. Sending military high class
weapons to the Middle East in exchange for US dollars, untaxed of course.
Then they'd send it to the Swiss account they have, and, they had
planned, move back to Switzerland. Pretty simple idea, huh? With all
these trades embargos and crap, they could smuggle this stuff overseas
faster than the US could wait out the embargo." Rich rolled his eyes.
"Nine digits. All stored away. Truly insane, ain't it? And what do they
care if wars break out in my era? They're rich. They've got money. They
really don't care what happens to my era if some war breaks out. Nuke
versus nuke, gun versus gun. Problem is, by the time they sold the guns
out, the manufacturers had already upgraded the guns. Like sixty rounds a
second isn't ok to fight in a war with. It's all very scary. Worst of
all, I fear for you, Max. By the time a war breaks out, you're gonna be
old enough to fight in it, and you're gonna be standing in front of
someone's hand-me-down automatic machine gun. You'll enjoy that for me,
won't you, Max? You'll be standing there, right in front of someone's
hand-me-down, and you've got the top of the line weapon.
State-of-the-art." Rich smirked. "Know what they say about
state-of-the-art, don't work worth a damn. Course, you'll fire off a
clip, he'll fire off a clip, hell, let's not be sexist, she'll fire off a
clip. And then you'll both be dead, because these weapons can kill by
themselves, they just need some human armor to back them up. Course, the
folks'll be sipping a sparkling white wine in Paris, laughing at the
newspaper. Ha, someone got killed today. Is that not funny? Yes, and do
you remember that we smuggled the weapons out to them? They even got the
weapons illegally, hiring a band of two-bit thieves to steal them from an
army base. Army didn't miss 'em. They got considered 'lost' and they
shipped more in for them. From there, ah, crap, I don't want to tell you
everything they did about these weapons. They just screwed my life over,
didn't give me a chance to work for a living? So where am I? I'm in
Alaska! Some small town in Alaska! And I CAN'T GET OUT OF HERE UNTILL I
EARN SOME MONEY!" He punched the monitor in front of him, and shards of
glass cut into his hands. "Ah.... Shit. Broke my hand. Sure you don't
want a beer, Max?" He walked over to a drawer and opened it. He began to
take the glass out of his hand and roll his hand up in a bandage.
"Monitor will cost me, won't it? Great, I got more stuff to worry about.
How am I gonna make money like this, Max? How am I gonna make money like
this?"
  "Don't know, Rich. Don't know."

  Someone had leaked it out to the press and now everyone was wondering
what OCFNYC was, and who was running it. Security leaks were not good for
catching criminals, especially the criminals that are paranoid beyond
belief. Paul was paranoid before the CNN report, now he was even more
paranoid. The BBC got the news from the CNN, and reports spread through
Europe.
  Usenet began to make posts describing what they knew of OCFNYC. It was
a normal place. Their have been posts made to certain newsgroups by
OCFNYCers. Except it wasn't known that they were hackers. The posts had
been made with funny aliases. No real names involved. It all made a sort
of odd sense now.
  The blunder grew when it became public that some of the top computer
experts were working on the case. The FBI was relieved. The press still
knew nothing about the Montana database of artificial intelligence (the
study had been postponed a bit due to the events unfolding around them).
The press then grabbed the information about this mysterious hacker named
Optical Overkill. Where was he? Was he around? Why had the arrest been
blundered? Suddenly the government was thrown into a spiral of questions
about this raid. The San Diego raid was made public as well. 20/20 sent a
correspondent down to the prison in San Diego to interview the hacker.
  Responding to the question "what do you think hackers will do now that
they know that the OCFNYC has been made public?", he responded, "Oh, they
don't care about that. There are thirty thousand users on that board,
they're going to be around for a long time. No way the government can
pick them all up."
  Hopes dwindled. This might turn out to be true. The entire operation
could be foiled. All because of an information leak. Suddenly the agents
were pressed for time. They were going to have to make the raids quickly.
The Secret Service sent out agents to Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, St.
Louis, Dallas, Boston, and New York. Raids were made. These raids became
known as the Santa Claus raids. The perfect Christmas day for some
hackers had been ruined. Four in Seattle, seven in Los Angeles, twelve in
Chicago, one in St. Louis, three in Dallas, one in Boston, and a stunning
twenty four in New York. Fifty one hackers in custody at the end of
Christmas day. The overall tally in this operation had jumped from one to
fifty two. This made the agents happy, and their hopes shot back up.
  Unfortunately, the sysop of OCFNYC had not been captured. Santa Claus
had not left him a present. The agents knew they were going to have to
find the hacker soon, and make sure that he was the OCFNYC sysop. Any
more blunders in this case and any and all hackers are going to laugh at
the agencies.

  Paul was scared. Hackers he knew had been picked up in minutes. No
major casualties as of yet. Only users that had made the mistake of
logging in during the Trojan horse era. Mail was read, backlogs scanned.
But the major users, the ones that put their faces up daily. The big
names, Lion King, Optical Overkill, Maximillion Forte, Phonebone. None of
them have been caught yet. Optical was gone though. That Paul knew. He
wouldn't come back to OCFNYC, he wouldn't even show his face again. He
got raided, but made it out in time not to get caught. Paul wished he was
only fast enough to get out before they came for him. Paul hoped they
didn't come for him, but he knew it was inevitable. He ran OCFNYC, and it
was just a matter of time untill they traced the route back to him.

  Max learned of the raids when the report first came in at one in the
morning. Special news update report. Fifty one hackers arrested. Max
thanked god that he hadn't been raided, but they wouldn't trace him back
to Alaska. He hoped they wouldn't.

  Phonebone himself was pretty shaken up with the news. All these
hackers arrested so quickly. He shook it off though, and still logged
into OCFNYC daily.

  The media began to log into the board, and Paul had the problem of
keeping them off. Reports came out that "illegally stored information"
had been found on the machine. "Pirated software" was found. "Illegal
Phrack" magazines had been found. "Phreak/hacker newsgroups" were all
over the place. Being in the news was fine, but being the center of the
news wasn't.

  Paul found himself monitoring the board more. He was getting paranoid
(not a good feature in a person like himself). He began to interupt new
users to ask them questions. Some time it would be the media, other times
just new hackers. This should be Maximillion's job, worrying about
getting caught, raided. Max always seemed to want a hacker race. Why
weren't they chasing after him?

  Max was driven to Anchorage the day after Christmas. There the
cast was taken off. Flannel in hand, he got on a plane to Seattle. Flight
took a bit, but by the end of the day he was resting comfortably in his
own hotel room.
  SeaTac, as the airport is commonly known, was rather empty. He walked
down to the newsstand. Nothing new and interesting there. The newest
Wired magazine was out, so Max picked up a copy. He flipped through it,
rather uninterested. Untill he came across an article that caught his eye.
Another article on what's happening in the InterNet. Something Max never
did. Max wasn't on the InterNet, he was never on the InterNet. He was
always on OCFNYC.
  He went down to the Market. He walked down to the souveneir/you need
this shops to look around. More old Pearl Jam tee-shirts mixed in with
Nirvana tee-shirts.
  Nine out of ten kids prefer crayons to guns.
  Then he found this comic store there, that had pile upon pile of neat
stuff. Including....
  The cover of the book was a big head, a giant head that had
electricity all around it. There were chips in the background, and the
head had an odd blue sense to it.
  In big letters on the top were GURPS. Then, underneath it, CYBERPUNK.
By Loyd Blankenship.
  The Mentor.
  Now a member of Austin's grungiest funk band.
  Max smirked. How the hell did this get published?
  The air was rather clean and refreshing when he walked in a park.
There was Chief Seattle's head, doubling as a water fountain. Time and
pigeons had chipped away at it, and now, it looked like most statues did
nowadays, Chief Seattle was crying.
  He slept in, and woke up to Nirvana playing on the boob tube. He
ordered a bit of room service, and ate breakfast at one in the afternoon.
Then he slept the rest of the day, waking up at eight. He was ready to go
moshing.

  A man-made haze covered the room from just a bit over eye level. There
was a band up on the stage, and the fog rolled around about their legs.
There was a twenty by twenty feet pit a few inches from the stage. The
pit was full of youths, like Max, only a year or two older. Each youth
fought to keep themselves up. There were a few tables off to the left
side of the room. On the right was what appeared to be a
bar/deli/restaurant. A few more tables were huddled around the bar. There
were stools lined up at the bar, and each was occupied. A table here or
there was occupied, but the majority were empty.
  Max, as of yet not too keen on the idea to ruin the leg again, waited
at a table for the crowd to clear. After the hour, the crowd had
increased. Max looked for a part of the pit to start in, and, mumbling a
quick prayer, joined in the festivities of mass youth fighting.


-----------------------------------------
Don't be surprised if the normal quick
issue of _The_Alaskan_ doesn't come
out too quick in the next few months.
School's gonna be starting up for me
soon, and it's going to be harder to reach
the computer (or it's supposed to be
harder to reach the computer). Anyhow,
if you need a back issue, just write
[email protected] and ask.
No problem.

CHAPTER 8
Power Modems
(aka _The_Alaskan_ chapter 8)
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK


"Why would Stauf keep this room, a room filled with dolls locked? I know
what this is! I know what these dolls are... Oh, no, the dolls are the
children." -- The Seventh Guest

"I heard singing upstairs, like some mad choir. Well I heard nothing,
except you rumaging around your room, yelling like a crazy man. Well, I,
I saw blood. How ghastly. How boring. Let's have some supper. Wait, wait,
we need to have some room, we need to stick together, play as a team.
Don't be such a bore darling. It's a *game*. Everyone for himself, or
herself. Crazy old Stauf is watching us, scaring us, only he knows the
rules, only Stauf knows the rooms." -- The Seventh Guest

"No! Stop struggling! Or I'll squeeze you to a pulp! The boy is mine!
I've won, I've solved the puzzle!" -- The Seventh Guest

  The victim was helpless. He sat in the middle of the room, duck taped
nude to a chair. It was rather funny, if you had an odd sense of humor.
He had this place in his back that needed scratching. It was that one
place you couldn't reach even if you tried (course the duck tape adding
to it wasn't a helping factor.)
  He'd been picked up earlier in the night, and clubbed over the head.
He came to here, taped to this chair. A man wearing a ski mask, jeans,
and a muscle shirt (his muscles were quite big), came over to the victim
and looked at him. "How are you?" his raspy voice said.
  His lips were taped shut. "Just fine." the other managed to mumble.
The ski masked man jumped up in the air, and landed with a kick on the
victims stomach. The wind was knocked out of the victim, and the chair
broke apart and flew across the room a bit. Had the chair stayed in one
place, who knows? The kick might have been strong enough to crush the
victim's ribs, ending his life on this planet.
  He wished that he would have died, for the pain in his chest grew
quickly, and the pain began to distrubute itself around the body. Before
the pain could spread all the way around his body, however, he was
already dead. The gun would require cleaning now, as well as the removal
of the prints. Too much work when the killer remembered it.

  The giant squid rolled past the bottom of the ship. The Cap'n saw the
squid. Working to the best of his abilities, he ordered the ship to be
set to full throttle. The ship began to move at sixty knots. The sub
moved slowly northwest.
  "Oh, Cap'n," a voice called. "don't you realize that their's a spy
aboard?"
  "A spy?" the Cap'n replied, manuevering the sub.
  "A Russkie, sir."
  "Oh, my. Any idea where he'd be?"
  "No, Cap'n. I haven't seen any Russkies since that secret mission back
in eighty six."
  The ship rocked by a sudden blast, and the Cap'n was sent reeling
back. The sub rolled a bit. Then there was a crack above the Cap'n, a
large crack at that. The entire wall was splitting. The last thing the
Cap'n saw before he did was the eye of the giant squid.
  The GAME OVER icon blinked in front of Max. He pulled the helmet off
his head. "Best virtual reality game to date, and it was made back in the
eighties."
  A familiar voice responded, "Yeah, I realize that, Forte."
  Forte? That was his hacker pseudonym. This must be some hacker, a
close hacker at that. "Ralph?"
  A tall, bulky figure pulled Max from the VR machine. "Yup. Lion King
in person. How you doing? What you doing in Seattle?"
  The noise of the arcade made Max have to yell. "Doing fine, just
hanging out in Seattle." This didn't seem to satisfy the other. "Vacation."
  The bulk nodded. "Yeah, guessed as much. Play you a game of WarMechs?
Or do you want to go get a bite to eat?"
  WarMechs was the most sophisticated battle role playing virtual
reality game on the market. It was two dollars to join the game, and
there were usually fifty or so WarMechs out on the field. It was a big
field, and every now and then teams were formed to fight against each
other.
  WarMechs were large eco-suits that fit around the players. There was
an outside clothing, a helmet with a pull down visor, and simulated
landscape. It was odd, running into a mountain you knew wasn't there, but
you fell to the ground anyways.
  The game didn't hurt you, much. There was always the one or two
accidents that ended up in a broken tooth here or there, but that was all
part of the game, wasn't it?

  Over cokes and fries, the two friends discussed old times, and the
Santa Claus raids. "Biggest raid to date, Max. I gotta admit, I'm getting
scared. Think they got Paul?"
  "Nah. OCFNYC's still up."
  "Doesn't mean anything. What if they're reading all the email that's
been traded and backlogged? Private information that I really wouldn't
like to share with anyone, especially not the USSS."
  "Risk you're gonna have to take, ain't it? Anyone can read anything.
Nothing's private. Nothing ever *was*."
  "Oh, come on, Paul's got the entire board encrypted. The doors are
locked to the media. The USSS isn't going to be knocking on the doors
when Paul won't let them in." Somehow, the assurance in his voice wasn't
was assuring.
  "Just because they haven't found you yet, Ralph, doesn't mean that
they don't know where you are. 'member, Ralph, 'just because you're
paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.'"
  "Just because they haven't found me doesn't mean that they're going
to. Remember, I ain't stupid, Max. 1550 SAT."
  "Just a statitistic. Doesn't mean that you're a genius, could just be
you're damn lucky."
  "Or smart, but, hell, that means the same thing." The subject changed.
"Got a place ta stay?"
  "Yeah, I'm staying back at this hotel. I've got free room service, if
you wanna come up there... We could pop down to the lounge, I hear
they've got public access onto the internet."
  "Gonna have to monitor it to make sure that no operator traces the
route back to the 'tel though."

  "Routing trouble?" the bell boy asked.
  Max grinned. "Don't you got a job?" he responded, not looking up from
the screen.
  Ralph joined in the slander. "Yeah, go work or something."
  The bell boy walked towards the lobby counter. He said something to
the desk clerk, who, in turn, looked down at his computer screen and
began to type. They were being monitored.
  "Know anything to do on the Net besides the OCFNYC?" Ralph asked after
gulping down some soda.
  "Anything on the Net besides OCFNYC? Didn't know anything else
existed. Know what they say, find something you like, gotta stick with it."
  "Idiots. I'm surronded by idiots."

  "If you should die before me ask if you could bring a friend. Like the
song, bud?" the masked man asked the victim that sat in the chair in
front of him. Well, he was forced to sit in the chair in front of him.
The taped one was by the name of Max, and this place here was his hotel
room.
  Max had let Ralph leave the night before. He'd locked the door and
fell asleep on the suite's sofa, watching Letterman. He woke up in this
chair, with this bozo in front of him.
  The bozo got into a posistion to strike. He jumped at Max. The tackle
sent Max and the other up against the window, and out. The tape had
loosened from his body, and Max had complete control again. The other got
up before Max, and quickly kicked Max in the chin. Max responded by
biting the other in the shin. The masked one hobbled back through the
broken window and onto the ground of the suite. Max hobbled to stand up,
but somehow his strength failed him, and once again he was on the floor
of the suite.
  It could end now.
  The other ran quickly to the opposite side of the suite were a duffel
bag had been plopped on the ground. He quickly searched the duffel bag,
found what he was looking for, and pulled the gun out.
  It could end now.
  Max hobbled onto the balcony's railing, prepared himself, and jumped
towards the other balcony. A two feet standing jump is not a hard thing
to do, but with a slight fear of heights. The sound of a bullet whizzing
off into the blankness of dawn was behind him. Max looked into this
suite. Curtains open, bed made, no one there. He pulled on the window.
Locked. And why wouldn't it be locked? It was a private room. The other
was on the balcony Max had just come from.
  It could end now.
  Max pushed on the window, but his strength alone couldn't break it
down. He'd have to try again, with more force. Max heard the familiar
sound of a gun firing. A  bullet flied by Max.
  To date, no hacker has come out shooting.
  Max pushed on the glass again. A bullet ricocheted off of the concrete
balcony. Max reared back against the railing of the balcony, clutched the
rails, and kicked at the glass. The first kick jiggled the glass a bit.
This was going to have to work.
  It could end now.
  The second kick broke the glass. Max jumped into and through the
glass, rolling into the suite. Max got up and ran to the door. He looked
behind him. No attacker. He opened the door to the bathroom, turned on
the light, and closed the door. Max looked back to the blacony. No
attacker. He opened the door and left the suite.
  He pushed the elevator button for down. Their was noise inside the
suite he had just left. The door to that suite opened, and, sure enough,
there was bozo.
  Max stepped into the elevator, turned to the control panel, and
pressed the close doors button. The elevator closed it's doors, and Max
pressed the lobby button. It went down to floors before stopping, and
rising back up. The elevator reached the floor Max had just came from.
  It could end now.

  She knocked again. She'd waited all through boring lectures at school
to come to Max's house and see him. She had a surprise. She clutched it
in her jacket pocket, shivered, and waited for the response.
  No response.
  Wait, wasn't Max in Seattle? Hmph. Welp, she'd just have to go to
Seattle and find him. Find Max in Seattle. That would be near impossible.
  Course, then again, she did have a surprise or two left, didn't she?

-------------------------------
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Untill next time, tah tah.

CHAPTER NINE
Cheap Surprise
(aka _The_Alaskan_ Ch. 9)
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK

  Rich packed the last of the computer equipment into the box, and
carried that one to the truck as well. Diana caught up with him before he
could reach the keys, and get out of this little town.
  "You leaving, Rich?"
  "Ending the ride, kid, I got things to do out there in the world."
  Diana pushed her hair back from her eyes. "That simple, Rich? You just
leave?"
  He shrugged, and went back to the store's door. "I guess so, dahling.
I just gots to do what I gots to do." He locked the door one last time.
The entire store was empty, and the sign that had once carried the name
of the store so proudly had lost its place. Dust would collect in this
room now, and the dream of starting a business of this proportions in
this small town had dissappeared. He half-sighed, half-moaned at seeing
this place go. But a waste of money was a waste of money, even he did
enjoy wasting it. "Yup. I'm moving back to Seattle. Already got the lease
on this nice big store. Easy to make money in Seattle. Pull a few chains,
call up some old numbers. I've got lots of friends there." He started
back to the truck as though the conversation was over.
  "You ain't gonna leave us, Rich. You aren't, are you?"
  "Crying out loud, Diana, you think it's so goddarn easy to make money
in this town? You don't have any use for computers, no one does. The only
person who does is in Seattle. I'm gonna stop by his hotel, see how he's
doing."

  The stalker aimed the gun at the elevator doors. In seconds, the prey
would be visible, and then.... Then he'd have the job of taking the lug
away.
  Max searched his pockets. They'd given him two keys, hadn't they? One
for the room, one for the elevator. WHERE WAS THAT KEY?

  "Listen, kiddo, you'll be just fine here. Hell, four years, you're in
college. You'll have a nice successful job with a good husband, who
knows, maybe Max."

  WHERE WAS THAT KEY? Max looked through the pockets one last time. He
needed something fast. The doors were separating, and the other would be
in sight soon. Then there was something. Then there was an idea.

  "I've got a lot on my mind, anyhow, sweetie. I've got things to figure
out. Family trouble. My parents just moved to Switzerland, I hear they're
going to be going to the Carribean soon." Was that a cry forming behind
this rock hard man, an impenetrable fortress of strength? "I'll have to
find a life soon. It ain't gonna be fun and games forever. Might have to
find a loving wife, have a family, settle down. See life to its fullest.
I just don't think I can do that in this town."

  The doors opened. Max leaped from the inside of the elevator onto the
attacker. The attacker has been attacked. The gun was away from the
attacker now. Good. Max was good at hand on hand.

  "Could I drive down with you, Rich? I'll find a way to get back."
  Rich smirked. "You wanna take a road trip all the way down to
Seattle?"
  "It's worth it, I need to see Max urgently."

  The attacker rolled away from Max, towards the gun. That couldn't
happen. Max hopped up on his hind legs, twirled around, and jumped at the
other. The force of the jump threw the attacker up against the wall.
There was a loud thud, and the attacker's body went limp. Good, Max
thought, now we could finally see who this little bugger is.
  Max's first instinct was to pull the mask off, so he did. It was
Ralph. Lion King had attacked him. Lion King, one of his favorite
friends, had attacked him!
  Max went looking for the gun. There it was. There it was. He picked up
the gun and pointed towards Ralph, only to be tackled from behind by two
officers. A third came up behind him and cuffed him. When they had
finished with Max, they cuffed Ralph. Both boys were taken to the
station.

  Paul hadn't gotten his copy of Optical Overkill's e-zine. It was odd
for Optical Overkill to miss publishing a copy. Ah, who knows, he could
be behind, or caught for that matter. Course, the press had never found
any leads on Optical's case. Nothing had happened. Nothing would happen.
  The thought had leaped into his head again. Optical'd gotten out.
OCFNYC wasn't going to be found. At this his brain cells did a little
dance, but then they came back to order. What if he had been caught?
Mendelson had been caught.
  Mendelson was dead. That was what Paul believed, anyhow. They'd had
this same sub for a while now. The sub began to know names, and Paul's
penance of reading manuals had gone away. Mendelson was no longer here.
  But the sub kept a watchful eye on Paul. He'd already seen him break
into the internet at the school to add the sub's account. So when this
OCFNYC deal came up, Paul found a couple of FBI agents at his door.
  It's a raid. That was what popped up first. But no, it wasn't a raid.
There were no guns, nobody bursting through doors. This wasn't a raid.
  Ok, maybe it was a silent raid. Paul had heard of such a thing within
the ranks of elite hackers.
  Hackers bragged they'd come out shooting. Sure. Come out shooting.
Have you *ever* held a gun before? Have you ever owned a gun before? Do
you know how to reload a gun? Sure sure sure, I'd come out shooting. Just
one question: How?
  And so Paul contemplated the ups and downs of coming out shooting. It
would be a good death, very violent, and he'd make the news tonight. But
then again, he'd only make it because he ran OCFNYC, not because he came
out shooting. Who gave a damn if some idiot hacker came out shooting?
  The first agent introduced himself, something Mahoney. The second
didn't say a word. Good cop, bad cop routine? Nah. These are FBI. They
don't play stupid games like that, do they?
  Well who could say? How many files on OCFNYC were there about the FBI?
Simple, concrete answer: none. No one had ever ran into any FBI, no FBI
agent would ever leak out information to the hackers, and no one really
had anything to say about the FBI. So the topic was left untouched.
  But now that the FBI were actually at his door. What was he gonna do?
Come out shooting?
  The first agent asked a few questions, the first few about
Mendelson. Nothing that Paul couldn't answer without pausing. When did
you see him last? What was he like? Did you ever see him outside of
the school enviroment?
  While the first one questioned Paul, the second looked around the
house, taking notes on certain places that could hide electronics? Was
that it? No, he would be looking for the computer.
  That, at least, was the impression Paul received when the second
asked where Paul kept his computers.
  "They're in my room. On continually, I'm running a big project
meeting other... people." Was that pause too long? Nah...
  The second invited himself into Paul's room. "Nice puter, this an
eighteen inch monitor?"
  "Fifteen."
  "All look the same to me."
  The second pushed the space bar. The screen came to life. There was
the standard unix setup. Nothing special. It was Paul's account,
except there were the acronym for the OCFNYC sysop. The second didn't
seem to notice that the acronym was for that.
  "What's the /home/osys account? You don't have the standard root
setup?"
  Paul shrugged, and blushed slightly at the posters on his wall.
"Operator System Administrator. OSYS for short." Good lie, Paul.
  "Hmph." The other began typing in a few unix commands, and
eventually found the outward link to the InterNet, the place where
OCFNYC sat.
  "Nothing special around here, Jenkins." the second said to the
first. "Place is clean. Kid's got an outward link to the InterNet.
Come take a look at this." Then turning to Paul. "Mind if we look
around?" Paul shrugged. "We could always just use a guest account. Do
you got one?"
  "Not directly from this computer. Course, I'm linked through the
local university."
  Then out of no where. "You know anything about OCFNYC?"
  Paul raised an eyebrow. "What?"
  "OCFNYC. The local hacker community hangs out there, so I hear."
  "You hear, you're the FBI after all."
  "I know. Do you know anything about OCFNYC?"
  "No."
  "Have you ever been involved in the hacker community?"
  "No."
  "Do you know anyone who's been involved in the hacker community?"
  "No."
  "Have you ever come into contact with any hackers?"
  "No."
  "Have you ever personally met anyone through the InterNet?"
  Mendelson. "No."
  "Have you ever came across any hacker programs on the InterNet or
within the bulletin board community?"
  "No."
  "Have you ever met anyone in the bulletin board community?"
  "No."
  Paul was tired. Q&A. Wouldn't it have been easier to come out
shooting? Probably. It would save on time. It would save on this Q&A.
They'd take him away. He'd rat on Max, Ralph, and all the hacker
community. But there was one that they'd never find. Phonebone was
somewhere else entirely. He was identityless, he was homeless, he was
never alive. He was non-existent.
  "Have you ever taken any drugs?"
  "No. I've never done any of that."
  "Have you ever owned a weapon of any kind?"
  "Well." He had. He had one in his pocket right now. "Yes, I have a
few weapons."
  "In whose name are they registered?"
  "My father's. It was a birthday present."
  "What is it?"
  "A gun."
  "Do you have a gun on you now?"
  "Yes. I carry it at all times."
  Jenkins intervened. "You carry a gun to school?"
  "No. I haven't carried a gun to school ever."
  The second started again. "Why do you own the gun?"
  "Self protection."
  "*From* what? You haven't met any hackers, you aren't involved in
gangs, you know all this stuff about the InterNet. Have you ever sold
--"
  Jenkins broke in again. "What do you know about Halloween Harry?"
  Halloween Harry.
  That was a name he didn't want to hear again. It sounded worse aloud
then it did blaring off a computer screen. Halloween Harry. The big April
Fool's joke that got a bit out of hand. He'd gotten the sequencer off
OCFNYC. The press hadn't found that one out. And they hadn't found out
about Maximillion Forte, the Alaskan.
  The Alaskan that patroled the board. The Alaskan that wanted to create
a master race of hackers. The Alaskan that had destroyed Harry's life.
The Alaskan that had exposed OCFNYC. The Alaskan that had screwed the
hacker community.
  Maximillion Forte, why hadn't they found that bugger? He was the one
who was dangerous.
  "What you need, Harry, is a sequencer. There's one here."
  Was it Paul's fault then? Paul's fault for running OCFNYC in the first
place?
  Who was to say?
  Not Paul, that's for sure. Not Max, he would blame Paul once he got
caught.
  Harry would know. Harry would know anything and everything he'd want
to know.
  So, Harry, was it Paul's fault for running this board?
  The answer wouldn't come. Paul knew that. If the answer had came what
would Paul do with it?
  "I've never heard of Halloween Harry, except of course, the news." He
knew more. He was all knowing. He was the sysop. He could look into
anything and everything he wanted. But why would he tell the FBI?
  Jenkins was typing slowly, lurking around the Net. "So what do you
know about Maximillion Forte? Did I say that right, Jenkins?"
  Jenkins shrugged. "Who knows, Herb. And who's to say anyhow?"
  Herb waited for the answer. "I've never heard of Maximillion Forte? Is
he important?"
  "Ok, let me name off some others. Phonebone?"
  "Never heard of him."
  "Optical Overkill?"
  "Heard of him, he was on the news wasn't he?"
  "Lion King?"
  "Name's familiar, ain't that a movie?"
  Jenkins' mouth was wide open. "Ever notice, Herb, that most things on
the Net are restricted now? Passwords needed daily."
  "Sure, sure." Herb responded. "Let me take a look at your gun, kid."
  Paul showed the gun to the agent. "Fourteen shot Baretta. Nice gun.
Targeting is good, there's an add-on scope for that." Jenkins observed.
  "Yeah, cost a nice deal."
  Jenkins logged out and yawned. "I think we've seen enough. We'll be in
touch, kiddo."
  And with that, the two agents excused themselves and left.

---------------------------------
Yah-whoo........................
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See ya later.


The Midnight Curfew
(aka _The_Alaskan_ Ch. 10)
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
PLEASE SEND FEEDBACK
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis

  And ye, the nation of sleepwalkers, the dead and bloated.

  The charges against Max were dropped quickly. A fine was sent to
Alaska to pay the hotel for the damages. And so, in the end, Max and
Ralph were released from the clutches of the authorities.
  There once was an ideal called the nuclear family. A loving wife, a
working husband, and two to four children. This ideal dropped out of
sight with the beginning of the neo-presidential administration, the
first woman president.
  Women's rights skyrocketed. The number of househusbands shot up as
well. Education laws passed first, and the price of education rose as
well. Then crime rates began to grow as well, and the cost of living
doubled overnight. Interest rates leaped.
  There was a second Great Depression. The president was impeached,
and life returned to normal. Or as "normal" as life gets. The interest
rates still sucked, but life was better. In a depression, life was
better.
  The ideal of a nuclear family collapsed when this idea shot into
the minds of others. But then the dream had ended, and Max woke up one
last time in this hotel.
  He was soaked in his own sweat, and the ideal of the nuclear family
came back to him again.
  Ralph had tried to kill him. That idea blocked out the nuclear
family idea, and Max, dazed from the dream and weary of waking, fell
asleep again.
  This time he found Harry in Heaven.
  "They feed you well here, Max. Steaks and shit. Not particularly in
that order, by the way." Harry seemed to be in a good mood. "So do you
know that Diana is on her way to Seattle?"
  "What?"
  "Yeah.. She's coming down to see ya, Max. I hear she's got a surprise
for you."
  "Yeah, so what else is new?"
  "Let's see here... Paul got picked up by the FBI." No reaction by Max.
"Paul, the sysop of OCFNYC, he got questioned."
  "Did he squak?"

  The press had found its way to Ralph's house, just outside the
perimeter of Seattle. And there they camped out on the lawn of the
neighbor's house. There they exchanged old war stories about Bosnia and
Rwanda.
  "And so here I am. Working on some idiot hacker's case here in Seattle."
  Ralph watched them with a pair of binoculars and when they fell
asleep, Ralph took his hiking backpack and began to run.
  Ralph slept under a bridge late that night, and in the morning, his
house was raided. No one found anything incriminating. There was no unix
set up on the machine. There was no boot up sequence.
  So that ended it. On the nightly news, the first topic was the botched
hacker raid. What if the press hadn't been there? Would the raid had gone
well?
  "Not exactly." the president was saying at the press conference. "To
my knowledge, the hacker had been aware that he was going to be picked up
well before the press had arrived."
  "What about the -- wasn't the hacker in custody the day before the
raid?"
  "I have no comment about that."
  Every reporter stood up. They wanted more.
  "Was the hacker in custody before the raid? What was the hacker's real
identity? Why wasn't he kept before they released him? Do you have any
leads to where the hacker would be now?"

  So the word was out in the authority world that the prez was mad. The
OCFNYC search pushed into full gear, everyone looking for the sysop of
OCFNYC, and anyone else on their "hotlist".
  It was soon known that four more hackers had been raided. No one on
the hotlist.
  The hotlist:

Optical Overkill (presumed dead, escaped (?) )
Lion King (escaped)
Maximillion Forte
System Operator
King Kong
Elgion Doomed (escaped)
The Looter (presumed dead)
  The hotlist had grown by a few people. By the end of the day, the
hotlist would be down to four.

  Jake was playing hide and go seek when he found the first hotlister.
Jake, a long black haired eight year old, smelled something funny. Using
a toy shovel he had in his pocket, his friends and himself dug at the
smelly spot.
  There was good news and there was bad news.
  Good news: they found a hotlister.
  Bad news: he was rotting.
  In a shallow grave in the middle of no where, here was the body of the
Looter, not to be confirmed until later that evening. The idea of playing
soccer with the kid's head was out of the question; there was an
incredible gap where the hair and skull should have been. It looked, for
some odd reason, shot out, or kicked numerous times.
  So Jake and friends were escorted off the site. Agents from the FBI
came and looked around the site, for any number of clues. They came
across a blood trail that led back to the woods, and from there, wheel
marks.
  No question in their minds that this was murder. But who would murder
a hacker?
  The autopsy would be performed soon. The whole nine yards. Someone
killed this kid, they wanted to know more.

  Max was awakened by another body in the room. At first, he thought it
was another Heaven dream. But on opening his eyes, he saw differently.
  Diana was sitting at the table, having a drink of Pepsi. Rich, it
seemed, was observing the view from the balcony.
  "He's awake." Rich observed aloud. Rich seemed distant.
  Diana nodded in agreement. "How's your brains feeling, boyo?" she
asked, walking over and putting a water bottle on his head. "We heard you
got knocked around." Max nodded. "Oh, well, I got a surprise." She
reached into her jacket pocket, fumbled a bit, and came up with an
object. A ring. "Seems so '80ish, doesn't it, Max? Oh well, wanna go steady?"
  Gulp.
  "Sure."
  Then she reached into her other pocket, and came up with another
object. Looked like plane tickets, no, it wasn't that. "Plane rental,
Max. We're going to go have some fun."
  "Wh-.." A short pause. "What?"
  Rich had stepped back into the room. "We-- the three of us -- are
going down to Montana for a bit. We're gonna check out.. well, sort of
infiltrate this place there." Rich pulled out something that looked like
a satellite photograph.
  "What the --?"
  "Sat photo, times eighteen thousand. We could show him the diagram we
made." Diana responded.
  Rich pulled out a second picture, putting the sat photo on the bed.
"This," he said, pointing to the diagram. "is a rough description of what
the sat photo tells us. It's an AI lab in Montana. Diana, she, well, how
do I put this?, she sort of did some research on OCFNYC, and came across
this--"
  "How did she get on the InterNet? How did she get onto OCFNYC?" Diana
had already put the ring on his finger. He wanted to pull it off now.
"God, I just..."
  "We already knew, Max."
  "But now you've got it in concrete form. So do you know who I am at
OCF--?"
  Rich interrupted Max. "No, we know you hang out there, though. Anyhow,
Optical Overkill sent Gene Splicer there awhile back. We're renting this
plane and going there ourselves."
  "Why, though? You don't owe any deals or favors to me." Max sat up in
the bed, and got comfortable.
  "We're your friends, Max. If you haven't figured that one out, the FBI
will be in your door before you can say Montana. And if you're wondering,
neither of us have been there before, OCFNYC that is."
  "Montana."

  The view from a plane is always different, disorientating. Well, they
certainly picked a different plane. Max, rummaging through his
"infiltration" equipment, found a few different gadgets. Halfway through
the flight, Diana got him ready for his jump down to an area about a mile
away from the lab. Diana would be jumping on the other side of the lab
and Rich would be landing the plane three miles from the lab. They were
going to have to make it back to the plane, or this infiltration would
end quickly.
  Among the various objects was a Baretta fourteen shot. The weapon of
choice. There was the parachute, conviently painted light blue to keep
itself from drawing attention in the sky. But then again, it was getting
dark. It wouldn't matter if it was light blue or if it was flaming red.
The parachute wouldn't be seen.
  There was a small scope flashlight that would shine a square foot of
light. A pair of wire cutters had been included, along with a lockpick.
  So was Max going to make it out alive?

-------------------------------------------
Here we go! Here we go! We're coming close
to the end of _The_Alaskan_.. We've got
a few questions to answer:
Does Max make it out alive?
Who is Phonebone?
What happens to Paul and Rich?
Feedback, requests for back issues, etc. etc..:
[email protected]
Have fun, d00d.

CHAPTER 11
The Infiltration
(aka _The_Alaskan_ chapter 11)
by Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
Hey, why don't you send some FEEDBACK?
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis

  The Baretta clutched in his right hand, Max opened the plane's door with
his left. How had they persuaded him into this?
  Max had read the article.....

Hey, d00dz, I got some stuff you might wanna check out...

From: ******@****.***.mil
To: ****@***.**.**.***.mil
Subject: Delete After Reading

  The National Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (NAIL) has been
granted by the president an extra funding of US$1.2 billion dollars. The
NAIL in Montana will be expanded. The exact location of the NAILM is
priveleged information [ed.'s note: it's shown in a later message in this
article.]. The president has also allowed more NAILS to be built in
different states. Presently, there are labs being built in Maine,
Wyoming, North Dakota, New Mexico, and Nevada. While the funds for the
buildings are limited, another grant of US$17 billion has been given to
purchase Cray supercomputers for the creation of artificial intelligences.
  According to Dr. Rementon, the creation of an intelligent super being
has neared completion. Dr. Rementon has informed us that the superior
being will be tested in the South Pacific early next year. It will be
responsible for a tactical missile strike on a not yet specified island
there.
  The super being will be built, a replica will be made, and the two
beings will be sent out to perform military duties.
  NAIL will not assume any damages done to US property.

                          Delete After Reading,
                          Yours Truly

  And, had the dating been correct, the artificial intelligence lab has
created this being, and is at present preparing it for departure to the
South Pacific.
  So was it curiosity that sent Max on this mission?
  It was curiosity that drove Lion King to murder. The autopsy of the
Looter found several bullets that were identical to the ones fired at the
hotel. And so the FBI was chasing Ralph now, trying to find him. They'd
be chasing Max now, too. But no one knew where Max was. Max's mother
didn't, Max hardly knew where he was.
  Ralph was running south right now. At least, he thought he was running
south. He found a car and hot wired the sucker to move faster. This
worked well, untill, that is, he ran into a road block at the border
between Washington state and Oregon.
  The tired officer stoped Ralph and threw out the same tired material
he'd been saying for the last few hours. "Hi. We've got a man hunt going
on. We're going to have to ask you some questions."
  "Sure." Ralph responded, acting as normal as he could.
  "What's your business in Oregon?"
  "I'm driving down to San Jose, California, to see my grandparents."
  "Oh. Just going through Oregon then?"
  "Yessir."
  "Allright. Move along."
  That seemed easy enough. But as Ralph drove away, the officer jotted
down the plate numbers, and fed them to the machine.

  Max jumped from the door. The parachute was automated, having the back
up "idiot" system. If you forgot to pull the cord, it would pull for you.
Max looked down to see the approaching ground. Eerie.
  Could the sattelite up there see him right now? It was there. It was
taking pictures. How many places around the earth had these sattelites?
  This was an invasion of privacy. You can't do your daily chores
and odd quirks with someone watching. And the magnification of those sats
were incredible. The details numerous. Pictures could be modified in the
satellite and then downloaded back to its master. So if you wanted to
track someone, what would you do, aim the sat at them and follow them?
There was an article Optical's zine awhile back about the number of sats
in space. The number was between four and eight thousand, give or take a
few hundred. These sats were orbiting only orbiting earth, and some where
the size of fingernails. So were the Russians spying on the Americans, or
were they both spying on the other, checking to see what the other was doing.
  Did they ever realize that they were just watching each other?
  The ground was coming up slowly now. The parachute let him land ratehr
easily. Land and roll. Land and roll.
  Max detached the chute from the backpack and got his adjustments. He
thought he saw in the sky the plane. Probably not. It was dark. So this
was Montana, huh.
  And there was the lab, a gun tower was firing off a couple of rounds
at something in the sky. A short spark from the object in the sky, and
then a burst of flame and a ball of smoke. But that was it. If the plane
had been hit, it was still there. It seemed as though only a diversion
had been hit. Max was being hopeful. He wasn't going to get out of here
unless he found his way into that lab, and then out.
  Max began to walk towards the lab, clutching the gun.

  The gun tower hadn't spotted him, and, as Rich had said before, there
was a two foot gap between the fence and the woods. That's where Max
huddled. He took out the wire cutters, shivered a bit, and cut a nice
hole for him to get in through. He crawled through the hole, looked left,
right, and then ran towards the lab's main building. There were guards
out, here and there, but no real guards that wanted to pick a fight.


Optical Overkill (found dead)
Lion King (escaped)
Maximillion Forte
System Operator
King Kong
Elgion Doomed (escaped)
The Looter (found dead)

  The agents crossed out The Looter's name and Optical's name. They'd
found a trap door in Optical Overkill's house. They opened the trap door,
and the stench hit them. They found a woman who had been dead for some
time now. There was human waste, as well as a few outher gruesome sights.
  Optical Overkill Is A Woman. That's what the morning's headline would
read. There were now five on the hotlist.
  Before the end of the night, there would be only four left.

  Something had hit the plane. "Shit." Rich mumbled, steadying the plane
to the best of his abilities. Diana was preparing for her jump in the
back of the plane.
  "What was that?" she asked.
  "Sounded like gunfire." Rich looked back quickly. "Jump now."
  She did. And her body plummeted. "Pull the fucking cord!" Rich yelled
from above.
  She searched for the cord. "The cord!" She couldn't find the sucker.
Rich was turning the plane now.
  Another burst of gunfire from the ground. The plane rocked. Small
explosion. Burst of flame. Ball of smoke. The plane slowed down. He
pulled up on it, turned the plane to the right, towards the field.
  The fixed gear shook slightly. "Stop firing at me!" he yelled,
bringing the plane down slowly. Another racket of gun fire, one more
burst of flame on the right wing.
  Diana looked for the cord. There was the main lab building, and she
was coming up close on it. There was the cord. She pulled it. Her speed
slowed down incredibly. Then she hit the roof, rolled and crashed through
a window.
  She released the chute, and got the gun from her chest. The room was
full of Cray supercomputers. No one was here, and each computer was shut
off.
  Then the lights turned on with the computers. There was the odd sense
of another prescence in the room. It made itself known quickly.
  "You are not authorized to be in here." an angry voice declared. "You
are not authoried to be in this building. I am warning the authorities of
your prescence."
  She aimed the gun at a Cray, and fired off a couple of shots. The
monitor blew out, and bits and pieces of the computer flew here and
there. She then saw the voice in its real form: AI.
  The AI was human looking. It appeared in the body of a male, seven
feet tall, blonde hair, blue eyes. It was wearing a lab coat, and looked
scoldingly at her.

  Another spasmodic blast of gun fire blasted the plane. There was a
fire in the back of the plane which gave away its posistion. Rich brought
the plane down in a good landing. Then turned to the back of the plane
and put out the fire with an extinguisher.
  Rich hoped they would get out alive.

  Max walked down the hall untill he found a door that was labeled MAIN
COMPUTER LAB. He opened the lab door to see Diana aiming a gun at a seven
foot tall man.
  "What?" Max asked, looking at Diana.
  "The AI!" she answered, looking at Max. She turned her head back to
the AI, only to be punched in the face by it.
  The AI had knocked out Diana.
  Max aimed at the AI's head, and fired. All fourteen shots of the
Baretta were unloaded into the AI.
  The AI didn't seem to notice.
  Max ran towards the AI, and jumped at it.
  The AI took the unexpected hit and stumbled backwards into another
Cray. The monitor burst into flames. Its synthetic skin melting away to
show a synthetic skull. It might have passed for human, had it died then
and there. But it hadn't. It wasn't metal. It had a human brain, a human
body, and computer intelligence.

--------------------------------
Boogledee...boo..............
Feedback, requests for back
ishs, etc.. etc...
[email protected]


CHAPTER 12
Big Empty
(aka The Alaskan Ch. 12)
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
FEEDBACK would be appreciated.......
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis

  The cool night wind blew around the compound. There was a plane three
miles from the lab, and two intruders in the lab at the present moment in
time. The cool breeze blew through the compound.
  The two intruders are Diana and Max, just recently their relationship
went up a level. They were now going "steady". Diana is unconscious, and
her boyfriend is putting up an unexpected fight. A fight which could end
at any moment and send him to Heaven.
  Or Hell.
  So the fight between good and evil rages on inside the Main Computer
Lab of the National Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Montana. Known
to the few people that know it exists as NAIL. The NAILs are being spread
out into different states at this very minute. The top scientists in the
US are working on creating the supreme intelligence. The intelligence
that could become the next president of the US, and then, who knows, the
world. United we stand, divided we fall.
  But the margin between good and evil is not clearly defined here.
Who is to say who is good and who is evil?
  Max is the hacker. The intruder. The illegal. He is responsible for
numerous deaths. Three to be exact. Three to be blamed for, at least. And
at this moment in time, there are people on the run from the FBI and
USSS, hackers, like himself, that do not wish to be caught.
  Diana is the innocent. She does not belong here. There is no reason
she should be here. She loves Max, that's one reason. But that is beyond
logical conclusions. She is not a hacker, she has never done anything
illegal.
  But that is all in the human mind. What defines a hacker? What defines
illegal? And what are the borders between right and wrong?
  If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it
really fall?

Lion King
Maximillion Forte
System Operator
King Kong
Elgion Doomed

  Elgion Doomed Comes Out Shooting.
Pittsburgh, PA -- Elgion Doomed, leader of the Dragon Riders Pact, a
local area hacking organization, was arrested late last night on charges
ranging from vandilism to murder. The FBI has reason to believe that
Elgion Doomed (whose name has not yet been realeased to the press) was
involved with the murder of Washington state hacker the Looter.
  Elgion had destroyed his monitor and computer by the time the FBI
arrived, but three thousand disks were found in the hacker's closet. The
Dragon Riders Pact, consisting of Elgion Doomed, Menolly Reinedeath,
Yanus Overlord, and Alemi Dayswork, have yet to be captured.
  Elgion did, however, come out shooting when the FBI arrived at the
house. One agent was killed, and another wounded. Elgion was vigorously
questioned about the Dragon Riders Pact, the Open Computer Facility of
New York City hackers, and other topics.
  Elgion had, among his possessions, a printed copy of Optical
Overkill's electronic magazine, or e-zine. The e-zine had information
about a "top secret government project in Montana", which the FBI
dismissed as overactive teenage imaginations.
  Elgion informed the authorities of another hotlister, or important
hacker, by the name of Phone Bone. Phone Bone (whose name comes from
Bone, a comic book with a character named Fone Bone) is supposedly a
hacker coming from NYC. Could Phone Bone be the system operator of
OCFNYC?
  Elgion answered no. The sysop for OCFNYC and Phone Bone are two
different people, although, Elgion declared, Phone Bone probably knows
the sysop personally, and could lead police to the hacker behind this
scandal.

  The clock struck midnight, and there were four hackers left on the
hotlist. The FBI added another. Phone Bone was now on the hotlist for
hackers. He was going to be caught.

  Paul yawned as he opened the window. He looked out into the burbs of
NYC and yawned again. How dreadfully dull. In the distance he thought he
could see the lights of the Statue of Liberty, America's greatest symbol
of independance.
  He closed the window, pulled the curtains behind him, and looked at
the computer screen. Once again OCFNYC was buzzing with hackers, mostly
new hackers he'd never heard of. He'd trashed file privs to anyone who he
didn't know. He looked at the user file, and was astonished. Four hundred
thousand lines worth of users. Four hundred thousand users listed. He
listed the users of OCFNYC at the present moment in time. Seventy.
Seventy users.
  If Paul ever needed to do a publicity stunt, he knew how to now.

  The AI, incredibly strong and smart, kicked Max in the shins. Then it
punched him in the nose, then the stomach, then the nose again. Max
doubled over, whining. The AI walked towards a telephone that hung on the wall,
and picked it up.
  "Hello. I'd like to report an intruder alert in the MCL." A short
pause. "Oh, very well." He turned towards the intruders. "I'm sorry, but
I've been given the opportunity to end your lives. Have a nice day."
  The AI ran towards Max, it's human skull appearing like a demon.
Then, from above them, a spasmodic burst of uzi fire. The AI
looked up, as did the intruders.
  "Jenkins!" It yelled, jumping at the fellow on the roof of the MCL.
The AI reached the rooftop and was standing face to face with Jenkins.
"How many times have I told you that this project does not in any way
shape or form NEED you?" The AI pulled out a gun of its own design. It
aimed at Jenkins' leg, and fired once. "We don't need you, or any of your
American agencies." Jenkins aimed the uzi at the AI's head, and fired
again. Chips of the skull flew off. "We don't need you, Jenkins!" The AI
fired at Jenkins' other leg. Jenkins was on his knees now, the pain
enormous. "We don't need you, Jenkins!" It aimed at Jenkins' head.
  Jenkins fired the uzi at the AI's gun.
  "We don't really need you, Jenkins." the AI said calmly as it fired.
  The top part of his skull flew off, and his brains mixed with his
blood to make a lovely looking soup. The AI fired again at Jenkins, the
loud pop reinforcing what Max already knew:
  Jenkins was dead from the start.
  Max stood up and picked up Diana. "We've got to get out of here."
  She nodded, and followed him out the door of the Main Computer Lab.

  "Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be. As a friend, as a
friend, as an old memory.... Swear I don't have a gun."

  Rich stepped out of the plane. He wiped some sweat from his eyes.
Mighty hot out tonight.
  Then, a slight movement in the bushes to the west. Rich's rifle was
cocked and ready, aimed straight at the head of the intruder. A mouse
scurried out into Rich's field, saw the plane, and scurried back to the
bushes. Scurried back home.
  Rich couldn't do that. He was stuck away from home. He could go back,
like that one story in the Bible, and ask forgiveness from his parents.
But, technically he couldn't, he wouldn't. He's got more guts than to
just crawl back to his parents asking for money.
  Besides, Rich's parents were gone.
  He put the rifle back in the plane and sat in the doorway. Why was he
here? Why was anyone here?
  And why did his parents leave him?
  They didn't love him. That was the conclusion he made. How could they
leave him to fend for himself and still love him?
  Why was he here?
  Why was he involved with these people? He hadn't known them. They
surely hadn't known about him. Two small town kids learning about one of
the world's richest parents' kid. But they weren't really rich.
Technically they were poor. Technically they were struggling to stay alive.
  Technically, Harry was still alive.
  Technically, he didn't give a shit.

  Jenkins' head was splattered across the roof of the MCL. Jenkins' body
was somewhere in the MCL, and the organs somewhere in between. The AI had
been advanced alright.
  It had emotions. If it had sex organs, it would have been human, but
slightly better. It really didn't care for what happened to you after you
died, it wanted the most "ingenius" disposable possible for your body.
That means your entire body.
  And your soul, too, if the AI could have gotten a hold of it.
  I'm sure the next model of AI will.

  Diana leaned on Max. Her body was surprisingly heavy, though her waist
was skinny. They were heading down one corridor after another, searching
desperately for an exit. They needed to get out of here, the AI was going
to be tracking them down and finding them. That couldn't happen.
  Behind Max a noise was made. Human. Diana dropped to the ground,
almost taking Max with her. Max was pulled out of the way of the gun
shot.
  With incredible speed, Max aimed and fired the gun at the guard. The
guard, a man in his thirties (wife and kids back home), dropped to the
ground. He was wounded in the abdomen. Hours of surgery, but other than
that, he'd live. Max hoped he'd live. No one would believe that it was
self-defense. You broke into the compound, you are tressapessing. Its murder.
  He picked up Diana's body and limped along some more. "I'm tired." she
whispered into his ears. "We need --" She paused, coughing loudly. "We
need to find a place to rest."
  He continued down the corridor. "I thought you rested on the plane."
he whispered into her ear, carrying her body as he walked towards another
door. "Are you that tired?"
  She nodded to the best of her abilities.
  He lifted her up into his arms. "Ok. It's a bit back to the plane, so
you're going to have to get out of the compound yourself, but from there,
I'll carry you back to the plane."
  She kissed him. "Thanks."
  He felt the need to blush.

  They stopped at a door that lead to the outside. Max let Diana land
softly on her feet, then opened the door a crack to look out.

----------------------------------------------
Requests for back ishs, feedback, etc.......:
[email protected]

Miguel (MPC): I have gotten your mail, but I
can't respond. Problem with the email I guess.

CHAPTER 13
Phony Bone
(aka _The_Alaskan_ Ch. 13)
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
Please Send Feedback

  The moon was changing posistion in the night sky. It was hugging the
horizon now, yawning slightly. The moon was preparing for bed. The night
sky was pricked with white holes, and there was a cold wind blowing
through the compound.
  In a field a couple of miles away, Rich sat in the doorway of a plane,
pondering the reason he was here. He truthfully didn't know why, and that
frightened him. Frightened him past his outer shell of invulnerbility to
the inner person, the inner self, the vulnerable one. Everyone has the
outer shell, to a stronger or weaker point. The inner shell was
vulnerable to everyone and anyone. It was the point when you begin to
cry. Was Rich crying? No. He wasn't that sad. Not yet anyhow.
  In the compound, the government funded project named NAIL, there are
two intruders. There is the hacker by the name of Maximillion Forte,
otherwise known plainly as Max. The other intruder is the hacker's
girlfriend, Diana. They are not welcome here.
  Jenkins was welcome here, and now his body is strewn in various places
around the MCL. The AI saw to that. The AI was the reason Max and Diana
are here, along with Rich.
  Max was looking out the door and scanning the compound for a place to
run to. The old saying was true. You can run but you can't hide. There
were places along the fence that had guard towers. Guard towers allowed
to shoot to kill.
  Mendelson, Gene Splicer, had been killed here. He had been sent by
Optical Overkill to study this place, infiltrate it. He had been killed.
  Optical Overkill herself was dead now. The OCFNYC ring of hackers had
been traced, and the chain reaction, which had been forecasted by
Halloween Harry (another dead hacker), had come true.
  There were, of course, the few hackers that hadn't been caught. The
SysOp hadn't been caught yet, Phone Bone hadn't been caught, King Kong
hadn't been caught, and Maximillion Forte hadn't been caught.
  Lion King was being chased at this very moment along a Oregon highway
at speeds over 150 miles per hour. He wouldn't make it out of this one
alive. That was taken as given, wasn't it? He was being chased by police
officers. They were shooting. The FBI had a helicopter flying at 300
miles per hour in close pursuit. They hadn't caught him yet. Yet.
  The helicopter aimed their machine guns toward the highway in front of
Lion King's car. Ralph's car. They fired off a few rounds. The windshield
of the car cracked at first, then broke into pieces, scattered along the
highway.
  The car spun out of control a bit, not more than two seconds worth of
uselessness. Ralph steadied the car, drove faster. The highway turned
suddenly, and the car spun wildly, flying off the road into a deserted
area.
  The car landed on its side, spun, burst into flames, and rolled down
the hill, taking trees down with it here and there, untill a large tree
stopped its downward motion.
  Ralph was dead.
  The rubble of Ralph's stolen car would be cleaned in a few days time.
The press would be informed that the car was found destroyed in Oregon,
the driver dead. There were now four hackers left on the hotlist.

System Operator
Maximillion Forte
Phone Bone
King Kong

  The moon hugged the horizon one last time, and went to bed. The sun
rised above the horizon, waved to the moon good morning. But the moon was
gone. Not gone, but forgotten.
  Max stepped out of the door first, and let Diana back him up. He'd
plotted a route to get to the fence, and from there, to the plane.
After that, where to?
  Diana maybe? Could he live a normal life?
  Shit... He was too young. He couldn't drive, and he's thinking
about marriage.
  Well why not?  Besides the no money and no place to go. He could
still date her, right? No prob there. But school, and the FBI.
  He was going to make it out of here?
  He was going to live a normal life?
  What the hell was he doing here?
  Diana slipped on something, fell down. A yelp of pain. "My ankle!"
She gulped. "My ankle, Max." He picked her up.
  "Quiet now... We've got to get to that fence, or your ankle won't
be the only thing hurting."
  They walked a bit, and turned around. The AI, aiming its gun at
them, stood in the door way. "You have intruded on United States
property. Prepare to die, you son of a bitch."
  It fired at Max. The bullet was off by a foot or two. Was the AI's
aiming damaged?
  From behind the AI, a second FBI agent emerged. He had tears running
down his face, his hair was fussed, and he had a large knife drawn in his
left hand, in his right was a high powered gun. "You killed Jenkins!" the
agent said, bringing down the knife on the AI's back. "You killed Jenkins
you mother --"
  The AI punched Herb in the nose. It began to bleed instantly. "I
thought I told you, I don't need you, or Jenkins!" The AI turned towards
Herb and began to punch him.
  Max broke into a run, clutching Diana like a valuable package. They
made it to the fence. Max placed the package on the ground and got the
wire cutters out of the backpack.
  Herb was cutting at the AI's chest now, fighting with the
misconception that the AI was evil.
  What was evil?
  He clipped the first couple of wires.
  Herb slashed at it again. It couldn't win. It was evil. Good always
triumphs over evil.
  So was Jenkins evil?
  A few more pieces of fence to go, then the hard part would be over.
  "My ankle, my ankle, Max. I think it's broken."
  The pieces of fence were clipped. Max pushed Diana through the hole
in the fence. There were spasmodic bursts of gun fire behind him.
  Herb was dead.
  Max pushed himself through the fence, and picked up Diana. He began to
run. Again.
  The AI began to run, taking long three meter strides towards the
fence. It jumped the fence easily, landed on the opposite side, and drew
its gun.
  "I don't want to have to kill you." it yelled, aiming at Max's back.
  Then a long burst of machine gun fire sounded out in the air. The AI
had been hit by the guards. Someone was doing their job a bit late.
  "Idiots!" it said, aiming at the guard tower and killing the gunner.
  Max could see the plane now. "Rich!" he yelled. "Get the plane
running! Get the plane running!"
  The AI turned back to Max. It fired. Nothing seemed to happen. The
bullet missed, was that it? No, no sound of a bullet. The gun must be
off.
  It began taking the strides again, catching up on Max. For every step
Max took, the AI took three. The plane was in sight for Max. Rich was
manuevering the plane towards them, ready to pick them up and fly them off.
  "Get the gun, Diana, get the gun and shoot it!" Max yelled, running to
the best of his abilities.
  Diana took the gun from Max and aimed at the AI. She fired twice,
making sure not to hit Max. One bullet plowed into its leg, taking out a
chunk of wires and various other pieces of debris. The second missed.
  The AI slowed down a bit now, taking two meter strides instead of
three. The plane was roughly a hundred meters away now. Close enough to
reach. They had a chance now.
  Diana aimed at its other leg, trying to slow it down some more. She
fired. The bullet hit its other leg, tearing off some of its flesh.
  Max puffed. The plane was getting closer. Rich was turning now, idling
the sucker. Rich's face appeared in the door's window, and he opened the
door. "Hurry up!" he yelled, grabbing the shotgun and aiming at the AI.
  Rich fired, landing a nice shot in its chest. The AI staggered, then
stopped.
  Max stopped and looked behind him. The AI was motionless. He wanted to
cheer. He wanted to thank Rich. He wanted to do something. Sweat rolled
into his eyes and he blinked a bit.
  Then a loud popping sound, and Rich yelling at him again. "It's still
moving!"
  Max opened his eyes. It was still moving.
  He turned around and began running towards the plane again. It was
closer now. Forty meters, give or take five. Five would cost them.
  He was gaining on the plane now. The AI was behind him, stalking him.
Diana fired at it again, no damage.
  Twenty meters, the plane was beginning to taxi.
  She fired again, still no damage. The AI was gaining as well, no less
than thirty meters behind him now.
  Diana pulled the trigger. Had they fired fourteen already? She pulled
it again. The gun fired, and Diana was thrown from Max's arms.
  The AI didn't care. It was closer. It was hunting.
  It was predator, they were prey.
  Max picked up the gun, turned, aimed, and fired. A bullet lodged
itself between the AI's eyes. It stopped to take a look at it, fascinated.
  "Help, Max." Diana said, begging Max not to leave her here.
  He had no reason to leave her here. Well, he did. He needed to live.
He needed to live.
  The AI began to run towards them again.
  "MAX!" she screamed. "MAX! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
  Rich was turning the plane towards Max and Diana now. All Max had to
do was pick up Diana and run to the plane. They'd make it if they left now.
  The AI began to charge them, building up momentum.
  "MAX! MAX!" she yelped.
  "Max, pick her up, we can get out of here!"
  Thoughts raced through Max's mind, thoughts of Phone Bone, of
Halloween Harry, of Diana.
  Halloween Harry, hacker supreme. He'd killed Halloween Harry. He
hadn't pulled the trigger, don't get that wrong. But he'd implanted the
thoughts of a master hacker race. Of succeeding by being a hacker. Some
poor kid, some little Halloween Harry. He didn't deserve to die. Why had
he bothered?
  His girlfriend had died, maybe that made some sort of difference to him.
  "Max, pick her up and get yourself in this plane!"
  Halloween Harry, who had gotten that sequencer and played around with
a bank. He'd stolen a nice amount of cash, become a wanted man overnight.
  Was that why hackers do what they do? They want to be wanted.
  "Max, please.." Diana was whining, grasping her ankle.
  You can get there now, Max, without trouble.
  A meter a second, its pratically jogging.
  You killed 'im, Max, you killed him.
  "MAX! Get off your sorry ass and get over here!" Rich bawled from the
plane. The plane was eighteen feet away, six yards.
  Diana began crawling towards the plane. "If you aren't going to help
us, Max, I'm going to have to help myself." she said, crawling towards
the plane.
  "You've got no chance!" it said in a sinister voice. "You'll never
escape me! I am all knowing! I am your better! I am your god!"
  Max looked at the AI.
  "Bite me."
  He fired at the AI, unloading the clip into him, then dropped the clip
and reloading.
  He turned towards the plane and ran towards it, stopping to pick up
Diana on the way. "We're gonna reach that plane, Diana."
  Rich began to taxi it again. Max ran towards the doorway and dropped
Diana into the plane. She crawled towards the back of the plane and sat
there, playing with her ankle.
  "You alright?" Rich asked from the cockpit.
  "Yeah. Yeah."
  Was the plane moving faster, or was it just Max?
  "Come on, Max. Hurry up!"
  Max huffed. The plane was going too fast. He wasn't going to make it.
"Slow the plane down! Slow the plane down!"
  The plane lifted off the ground and dropped back down. "Come on, Max,
that big lug of intel isn't going to give second chances!"
  The door was just out of his reach, he could jump for it, grasp the
door, and survive. Live. But if he missed, he'd be on the ground, maybe
under the landing gear, surely dead.
  So was this what he wanted as a hacker? He wanted a chase right?
  "Slow it down, Rich. I can almost reach it."
  The plane stalled for a bit, and the door was within reach. It was
farther away after the stall. He could have reached freedom there.
  He missed his gate.
  "You're going to have to help him, Diana." Rich called back to her.
She crawled towards the doorway, and extended her arms to him.
  "You can make it, Max." Her voice wasn't very reassuring.
  He put out his hand, still running. His other hand was holding on to
the gun. If this came to a fight, he wanted to be prepared.
  "Come on, Max, just a little closer." She put out her hands a bit
farther. "Just a little closer." She extended her fingers. She could
touch the tips of his fingers. "COME ON MAX! IT'S NOT THAT FAR!"
  The AI was at the tail end of the plane.
  Max grasped for her hands, catching one. She pulled at him, using her
strength.
  "Got him!" she yelled towards Rich.
  The plane sped up, and began to lift off.
  Max was dangling from Diana. If she wanted to, she could let him go.
He could die now. His life was in her hands.
  The AI aimed the gun at the plane, and fired off a burst of bullets.
They whizzed past the plane, missing the wings. They were flying over the
compound now, and the gun towers began to fire at the plane.
  "You wanna pull me up into the plane?" Max yelled, pulling himself up.
  "Kill them! Kill them all!" the AI screamed towards the gun towers (and
its vocal chords were strong enough that the gun towers heard him).
  Every gun tower was firing at them now. "Pull me up! Pull me up!" he
whined, looking down at the gun towers as they attacked this small plane.
  Diana was using all her strength now. "Rich, get a rope, we'll tie it
to the other side of the plane, then pull Max up with it."
  Rich let the plane fly by itself. As long as they weren't hit (knock
on wood), the plane woud fly straight and level. He found a rope in the
back of the plane, unrolled it, and tied an end to a bar on the inside of
the plane. He then threw the rope out the doorway, and Max grabbed the
other end.
  He began to pull himself up, slowly but surely. Then Rich grabbed hold
of the rope and pulled. Diana crawled to the cockpit and kept the plane
level.
  "Uh, Rich --" Diana mumbled, looking out the cockpit's window.
"We've.. uh--" She looked towards the back of the plane, Max was only a
few inches from entrance to the plane. "Rich, we've got a problem."
  "What is it, Diana?"
  "There's this army blockade up ahead." she announced.
  Rich pulled Max inside the plane, and entered the cockpit. "Give me
the controls." She stood up from the pilot's seat and moved towards the
back of the plane. "Close the door, and sit down. We're going to have
some trouble."
  She sat down next to Max. "You 'k?"
  He nodded. "Not really."
  "You're gonna be fine. Rich is going to get us out of here."
  "That's good."
  "We've been through a lot today, Max. Don't feel so bad. Everything's
going to be just fine, trust me."
  Max has never trusted everyone in his life. Why should he trust Diana?
He's never really cared for anyone either. Maybe he was gaining
something, what was it called, morals?
  Nah. He still wanted to get home, log into his computer, and visit
OCFNYC. The day was going to be long, and he was going to need help
getting through this part.
  He was going to need all the help he could get.

---------------------------------------------------
Ok... We're winding down here.... It's going to be
ending soon.... Anyhow...
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OCFNYC
(aka _The_Alaskan_ ch. 14)
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
Send Feedback. Please.

  We stand on the edge, looking over. It looks nice, right beyond the
edge. Into the nothingness of the world beyond us. Truthfully, it scares
me. But then again.
  I'm paranoid.

  Paul gripped the gun in his pocket again. It was cold and wet against
his fingers. It felt funny. This was funny, in its own very odd, very
strange sort of way.
  Was this how Harry felt before he brought his to school?
  Paul wanted to look at the gun. He felt wierd doing this. Why would he
do this? This was meaningless. This was pointless.
  This was a form of expression.
  He closed the locker with the other hand, and turned towards the lab.
  There was the sub, sitting at the net gateway. He wasn't really the
sub anymore, he was the replacement.
  Mendelson was dead.
  He looked up and saw Paul, standing with his hands in his pockets,
gripping something maybe. "Hey, Paul, how --"
  "You're Phonebone."
  He pulled the gun from his pocket and aimed at the sub, the
replacement's forehead.
  "Now, come on, Paul, can't you come up with something more original.
Maybe I'm King Kong. Or, hell, I could be Godzilla." Paul wasn't
laughing. "What do you want me to be, a fucking Mighty Morphin' Power
Ranger?"
  "You're Phonebone, you sonuvabitch."
  "C'mon, Paul, you've got no evidence to back it up, and anyhow, why
would you kill me? I poked around your system, you've done that to
hundreds of others. I messed with your mind, you've messed with others."
  Paul was waiting for evidence. He wanted him to say it. Say he was
Phonebone. Say it you motherfucker!
  "You leaked it to the press. You told them!" Paul moved over to the
door and closed it. He walked back to the sub, now standing, and aimed
the gun again. "You told them all about OCFNYC. You must have known
something. Done your research. How the hell should I know? You came here
after Mendelson left, made yourself at home. You've already known stuff
about Harry. Halloween Harry. Did you know him personnally? Did you owe
him some sort of favor and this was your queer way of returning it? Were
you related to him?" His trigger finger was itching. "Or are you him?"
  The sub backed up towards some IBMs. "Now come on, Paul. No one's
going to blame you if you walk out of here --" He pointed towards the
door. "and be a good little boy for the rest of your damned life! I knew
you were the sysop. I've been watching you for years, waiting for a
chance to catch you doing something, anything that involved hacking. You
think Phonebone was just some late night creation. Some sort of fun
hacking experiment by a zit faced cover dickhead?" The sub pulled his own
gun from a backpack Paul hadn't noticed. The backpack sat on the table,
Paul saw now. How had he missed it? Was it here earlier in the day? "No,
Paul, I've been planning this moment for the last four years of my life.
FOUR FUCKING YEARS!" Was he crying? "I did so much research, stalking!
I've been fingerprinted, photographed, videotaped. Every electronic
scanning device has been used on me, Paul." He aimed at Paul's head. "So
I guess it ends here, huh." He sighed, audibly. "I really wish we could
have been friends. We would have made beautiful music together. Course,
now, boyo, you're going to be playing the harp."
  Paul wasn't budging. "Are you Phonebone?" He wanted to be sure. "I
want to know before I kill you."
  The sub sighed, wiping his forehead with his forearm. "You really are
dense, aren't you. It isn't just all this computer shit."
  Paul fired the gun. "I wanted you to say 'Yes, I'm Phonebone.'" Paul
put the gun in his pocket, turned towards the door. "Stupid fuck."
  Paul turned the doorknob, looked out into the hallway. It was as he
had left it, completely dark. No one was in the building this late at
night. No one except the sub and Paul. Paul was the only living one.
  He walked down towards the end of the hall, turned, entirely by
instinct, to the left. Down that hallway, then to the right. Four paces,
and a turn to the left. Open a door, turn right, walk. Stop, open the
door, and enter.
  He turned on the light and looked around. There were some old Star
Wars posters up on the wall, a lava lamp on the desk, and in the far
corner, an old Chaplin poster.
  He put the gun down on the desk and took a pen from the drawer. He
took a piece of stationary and began to write. In a few seconds he had
what he wanted:

  I NEED HELP.

  He threw the pen at the Chaplin poster, knocked over the lava lamp,
and picked up the gun. He stepped to the doorway, stopped and turned
around.
  He aimed the gun at the light and fired.
  The counselor would be pissed at him in the morning.

  "So this is it?" the leader asked, looking down at the list in front of
him.
  The hotlist:

System Operator
Maximillion Forte
Phone Bone
King Kong

  "There were some minor variations that we were unable to print out,
sir. King Kong was captured earlier this night. He didn't put up much of
a fight, just gave up." the first said.
  "Parents were pissed." the second added.
  "The parents always are pissed." the leader said, lighting up a cigar.
  "So what do we do now?" the first asked, standing motionless.
  "Well, we find the operator. We know he's in New York. We find the
operator, we'll find Maximillion Forte. And Phone Bone."
  "We haven't had any leads."
  "Find him! Jenkins questioned what's his name, that kid who liked
computers, was in Mendelson's class."
  "Paul. I believe his first name is Paul, sir."
  "Yes, that's it. He had an internet gateway, didn't he?"
  "Well, yes, I believe Jenkins mentioned that."
  "Good god, no one's raided him yet?"
  "Well, no we didn't --"
  "FIND HIM! He's the *fucking* sysop!"

  Paul's room was illuminated. The window was closed, and there were
people, three, taking pictures. Paul sat outside, in the bushes, waiting
for a chance to get into the room. Then a light came on on the outside
porch, and his parents were escorted outside. Two FBI agents came out of
the doorway, holding flashlights.
  "We're going to ask you once more, where's your son?" the first asked.
The second was shining his flashlight along the bushes, looking for any
sign of life, finally stopping on Paul.
  "What the fuck? Look, it's the kid!"
  The second dropped the light and ran towards the bushes. Paul broke
out into a run. There was a slight moment of chaos, but it was broken by
fourteen FBI agents running from down the street. In the street, seven
agents were running towards Paul. Paul turned towards the houses, running
through house pathway through house pathway.
  "Don't shoot him, we want him alive!" Paul heard someone yell.
  "Kill the fucker! Kill the fucker!" he also heard, accompanied by
gun shots.
  Then he ran into an agent. "Found him!" the agent yelled, grabbing
hold of Paul's body and holding onto him.
  The rest of the raid was blurry, but Paul was caught.

  So the only one left was Maximillion Forte, who was on a plane with
his girlfriend, Diana, and his best friend, Rich. They were on their way
back to Alaska, back to Max's home.
  It was a long trip, but they landed in a field a short walk to the
town. So Max took Diana by the hand and they walked home. They discussed
many things, but finally, stopping on the road between Max's home and the
rest of the town, they discussed where their relationship was going.
  "Are we going to marry, Max?" she asked, looking into his eyes.
  He felt like his insides were exploding, but at the same time, they
felt like they were imploding upon themselves, ruining their lives.
  "Well, I don't know. We're young."
  "We're also in love."
  "We're doing just fine. We just went 'steady' earlier today. It hasn't
been a week."
  "You've got a lot to learn about life, Max." she said, running ahead
of him towards the house. "You never know what a woman will do!"
  Max chased after her. She climbed up the side of the house, and up
onto the roof. She waited for Max. His head appeared above the roof's
edge a few seconds later.
  "You're too damn fast."
  He walked on the roof over to her, picked her up into his arms and
looked out over the horizon.
  "It's beautiful at this time of day." she said, looking at the sun.
  "You're beautiful at this time of day." he answered, looking at her.
  "Don't get mushy on me, Max. I don't like mushy."
  He smiled, and looked back at the horizon.
  As the sun hugged the horizon, he hugged her.


----------------------------------
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Next ish: Epilogue


Max's Dilemma
(_The_Alaskan_ Epilogue-- it all ends here)
By Joshua Lellis
[email protected]
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
Please Send Feedback

  Time to take her home her dizzy head is conscience laden.
  Time to catch a ride it leaves today no conversation.
  Time to wait to long to wait to long to wait to long.
  Conversations kill.

  Max was picked up early the next morning. His hair was not combed, he
wore the same clothes he had the night before. He was picked up first.
  Then Diana, her hair uncombed, was also picked up. She had stayed the
night on Max's roof, moving into the actual room a long time after Max
fell asleep. She had watched him sleep, wondering what he was dreaming.
  Dreaming.

  "Good morning, Maxie waxie. Had a nice night with your girlfriend, did
you?" Harry grinned, absently watching television. "Wanna hear a joke?"
  "No, but I'm sure you don't care. And yes, I did have a nice night.
Why would you care?" Max retorted, waiting for this dream to end.
  "See it's about this chicken, crosses a road." Harry saw that Max was
not amused. "Oh, come on. You should at least give me ten minutes of your
'precious' time. You're dreaming. It doesn't matter what you do when your
dreaming. Your in Heaven. Careful what you think, it may come true."
Harry was showing off his pearly whites. "So you raided NAIL."
  "Why did you do it, Harry?"
  "Que? What did you say?"
  "Why did you kill yourself? You had the crime pulled off. The police
were around your house to ask you about the murdered boy in the bathroom.
You could pull a lie here, there."
  "And live a lie? Now now Max."
  "You'd be alive, Harry. Life is more precious than anything you'll
ever have. You knew that. You had skills. You had brains. You had life!"
  Harry chuckled. "Craps, you can't see beyond that, can you. Life.
Life's shit, Max. Frogs will change sex if there are not enough of one
sex to mate. To survive. No human does that. No human changes their sex
to survive. No one cares any more."
  "If I had a gun, Harry, I'd kill you."
  "You have a gun." Harry replied absently.
  Max looked at the gun in his hand.
  "Careful what you wish for. Just might come true."
  Max aimed at Harry.
  "Killed you once, I can do it again."
  Harry grinned. "Go ahead." He laughed. "Make my day."
  "Dirty Harry. Dirty." Max fired the gun. "Thanks, Harry. I've always
wanted to do that. You said I killed you before, now I have." He dropped
the gun. "So why don't I feel better?" He turned towards Harry's corpse.
"Fuck you, Harry! Fuck you!"
  Harry laughed, standing up. "Can't kill a dead man, Max. Thought you
knew that."

  Rich was not found. They searched for him, all day, all night. They
couldn't find him. He was somewhere in that plane, flying god know's
where. He had escaped.

  They flew Diana and Max to New York. There Max met the sysop of OCFNYC
for the first time.
  "Maximillion Forte." Max said, holding out his hand. "Hacker supreme.
I assume you're the sysop."
  "Name's Paul." Paul said, taking the hand and shaking it. "So we
finally got caught, eh, Max?"
  "Yup." Diana punched Max in the ribs. "And this is Diana, my, my --"
  "Girlfriend." Diana finished, shaking Paul's hand. "Nice ta meet ya."
  "You can pick 'em." Paul said, winking to Diana.
  "He's cute, you know." Diana whispered to Max. "Better be careful. The
cute convicts are the ones I go for."

  Diana was sitting next to Max and Paul, with lots of squinting
lawyers around them. The judge was had just sat down, and was now calling
their case.
  "Now, I realize that the media is going to eat this case up, but I
want to end this case ASAP. We're going to set the trial date for next
week, and start this sucker up." He rambled on for a bit, and the three
were herded up, and pushed out to their cells.
  The week passed quickly and the trial began.

  "All rise. Jury foreman, have you reached a desicion?" the judge asked.
  "Yes your honor." he answered, giving the slip of paper to the baliff
to give to the judge. The judge opened the paper and looked it over. He
nodded, handed it back to the baliff, who gave it back to the foreman.
  "Read it aloud, please."
  Diana's name was called out, along with her charges of helping Max
escape from NAIL. "We find her not guilty, on account of lack of
evidence."
  Max's name was called out, along with his charges of computer hacking,
manslaughter, and other numerous charges. "We find him guilty of computer
vandalism, guilty of manslaughter, guilty of conspiracy to commit
computer vandalism, guilty of conspiring to commit manslaughter, and not
guilty of murder."
  "Sentencing will take place at a later date." the judge called out.
  The foreman continued. Paul's name was called out, along with his
charges of hacking, murder, and other charges. "We find him guilty of
computer vandalism, guilty of murder, guilty of conspiracy to commit
murder, guilty of conspiracy to commit computer vandalism, guilty of
software piracy, guilty of owning an illegal firearm, guilty of possesion
of an illegal hallucinagin, guilty of vandalism."
  "Sentencing will take place at a later date."

  So Diana said goodbye to Max, there in the courtroom. They hugged,
quietly, and she walked towards the door of the courtroom. He watched her
leave, sighing inside.
  It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
  It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
  It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
  It wasn't supposed to happen this way.


  But it did.






Fin
(from Bruce Sterling's non-fiction _The_Hacker_Crackdown_, page 149-153)
Sundevil was the largest crackdown on boards in world history. On May 7,
8, and 9, 1990, about forty-two computer systems were seized. Of those
forty-two computers, about twenty-five actually were running boards...
About twenty-five boards vanished into police custody in May 1990. As we
have seen, there are an estimated 30,000 boards in America today. If we
assume that one board in a hundred is up to no good with codes and cards
(which rather flatters the honesty of the board-using community), then
that would leave 2,975 outlaw boards untouched by Sundevil...
In 1990, Sundevil's organizers...had a list of at least three hundred
boards that they considered fully deserving of search and seizure
warrants...
At least forty "computers" were seized during May 7, 8, and 9, 1990, in
Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, Phoenix, Tucson,
Richmond, San Diego, San Jose, Pittsburg, and San Francisco. Some cities
saw multiple raids, such as the five separate raids in the New York City
environs. Plano, Texas...saw four computer seizures. Chicago, ever in the
forefront, saw its own local Sundevil raid, briskly carried out by Secret
Service agents Timothy Foley and Barbara Golden...
The Sundevil raids were searches and seizures, not a group of mass
arrests. Only four arrests took place..."Tony the Trashman"..."Dr.
Ripco"..."Electra"... and a male juvenile in California...
When hackers are arrested on the spot, it's generally for other reasons.
Drugs and/or illegal weapons show up in a good third of antihacker
computer seizures...
This is not to say that hacker raids to date have uncovered any major
crack dens or illegal arsenals; but Secret Service agents do not regard
hackers as "just kids". They regard hackers as unpredictable people,
bright and slippery. It doesn't help matters that the hacker himself has
been "hiding behind his keyboard" all this time. Commonly, police have no
idea what he looks like. That makes him an unknown quantity, someone best
treated with proper caution...
To date, no hacker has came out shooting...
In addition to the forty or so computers, Sundevil reaped floppy disks in
particularly great abundance--an estimated 23,000 of them, which
naturally included every manner of illegitamate data: pirated games,
stolen codes, hot credit card numbers, the complete text and software of
entire pirate bulletin boards...
These 23,000 floppy disks also include a thus-far unknown quantity of
legitimate computer games, legitimate software, purpotedly "private" mail
from boards, business records, and personal correspondence of all kinds...
A typical hacker raid goes something like this. First, police storm in
rapidly, through every entrance, with overwhelming force, in the
assumption that this tactic will keep casualties to a minimum. Second,
possible suspects are removed immediately from the vicinity of any and
all computer systems, so that they will have no chance to purge or
destroy evidence. Suspects are herded into a room without computers,
commonly the living room, and kept under guard--not armed guard, for the
guns are swiftly holstered, but under guard nevertheless. They are
presented with the search warrant and warned that anything they say may be
held against them. Commonly they have a great deal to say...




Author's Notes
This series was originally written in a series of posts to
alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED (I always wanted to say that).

It may be freely distrubuted as
long as I get:

1) credit for writing the laborous monster
2) maintain the copyright
3) a whole bunch of feedback! :-)

You can see my style change as I wrote the book. The Prologue was never
meant to be anything more than a short story, so it was written as one.
You can see the way that the Alaskan changes from recruiting everyone and
anyone to his actual personal life. You can see he's got a conscience.
Conscience's are not good for hackers. It gets them caught, as I have
seen many a time.

                      --Joshua Lellis
                        [email protected]

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