It's the early 90's. The Iron Curtain has fallen. A small country in
the heart of Europe grows comfortable with the gift of free
information. Most personal machines are in the safe-keeping of
universities and government facilities. The internet is slowly being
rolled out to the public, but very few have the actual machines to use
it with.
This is the apartment of Mateas Novak's mother, a student of the
Technical University in Prague. He's here with his younger friend
Robin Kopecky, a student of chemistry.
MATEAS:
"It serves text, that's what it
does."
ROBIN:
"Across the entire globe? Geez.
They weren't kidding about
freedom, were they?"
MATEAS:
"Don't get too excited. We're
just rats in an experiment. Once
they figure out how to profit
off us, they will. We better
make the best of what we have
right now."
ROBIN:
"This... protocol... You think
there's going to be
monetization?"
MATEAS:
"Without a doubt. Everything you
get to see today will end up
costing you a pretty coin.
That's the better outcome
anyway. The price for the phone
line will be negligible."
ROBIN:
"How do you mean?"
MATEAS:
"I don't know, I'm as clueless
as you are. But don't you find
it a bit irresponsible to
disregard the decades of 'FEAR
THE CAPITALIST'? Maybe there was
something to it."
ROBIN:
"Don't know what to tell you.
This sure beats standing in line
for toilet paper."
MATEAS:
"That ever happen to you?"
ROBIN:
"I'm sure my mother mentioned it
once."
MATEAS:
"Right."
The men lift a large machine off the floor and carefully place it on
top of a desk and plug it into a small device connected to the phone
line. Mateas flicks a switch on the side of the monitor and the
computer comes alive.
ROBIN:
"No way this is legal..."
MATEAS:
"It is not. Hand me the
diskette."
ROBIN:
"They're gonna skin us alive, if
they find we stole a fucking
UNIX machine."
MATEAS:
"Yeah, well. The university was
hellbent on wasting its
potential."
Mateas inserts the 5" diskette into the computer.
MATEAS:
"Magical, isn't it."
ROBIN:
"So, you're telling me we can
create a sort of a service that
people can connect to and.. read
stuff we offer them? All from
the comfort of our home?"
MATEAS:
"That's the idea."
ROBIN:
"Who wrote it?"
MATEAS:
"Some polish guy, Marketa
brought it from her visit to
Krakow. Turns out the border
cops have no idea what diskettes
are. Hell, nobody expects people
to smuggle software across. Yet,
anyway."
ROBIN:
"A fucking gopher server..."
MATEAS:
"A fucking gopher server."
0&1/2 HARD DAY'S MODEM
A police station. A phone rings on the desk of officer Dvorsky.
DVORSKY:
"Sir? What's up?"
PHONE:
"Dvorsky, how about that
advancement?"
DVORSKY:
"Sir?"
PHONE:
"BIS tells me they're forming a
new department for what they
call 'of cyber crime'. Turns out
this brave new world is about to
be abused by a whole lot of
criminals. They tell me they're
looking for the sharpest pencils
in the case. Made me think of
you."
DVORSKY:
"Cyber crime, sir?"
PHONE:
"Computers, the internet. I
don't fucking know. War in the
digital vacuum."
DVORSKY:
"I'm in."
PHONE:
"Pack up your desk. Report to
the BIS offices in Dejvice. I'll
let them know you're coming.
Tomorrow."
* The next day Dvorsky arrives at the BIS offices in Dejvice
and is walked to a small room. There are cables everywhere, a
few computers lie on the floor. The department is in the
process of being set up. The place is a mess. There are
engineers lying on their backs, twiddling with screwdrivers. A
woman in a white lab-coat greets him. She fixes her hair when
she sees Dvorsky enter, wipes her hands on the coat and
extends her arm.
KAROLINA:
"Hey! They told us you were
coming! Well... this is us!
Welcome to the offices of cyber
criminology! I think we'll have
to come up with a better name
ourselves. The name is Karolina,
I'm a... was.. studying
networking at FEL. Got picked up
by some tie-wearing ominous
character. And here I am!"
* Dvorsky shakes her hand.
DVORSKY:
"Ondrej Dvorsky. I was a cop."
KAROLINA:
"Oh, cool. Shootouts and bank
roberries?"
DVORSKY:
"More like dog shit and parking
meters."
KAROLINA:
"Well, I take it you're new into
this whole thing, judging from
what they told me. Unless you
want to help with making these
machines work, I might have
something for you to get started
on right away."
DVORSKY:
"I'll be honest, I never used a
computer. But I understand the
general idea of... computing and
networking... I think."
KAROLINA:
"That's alright. You'll get a
grasp of it real quick. We have
a report of a stolen UNIX
machine from CVUT."
DVORSKY:
"Why does that interest us? I
thought we were going to be
fighting crime in the uh,
cyberspace?"
KAROLINA:
"Well, about 6 hours after the
machine was reported missing, a
gopher server went live
somewhere in an apartment
block in Modrany."
DVORSKY:
"Gopher?"
TBC
THE RETURN OF THE GOPHER BANDIT
~prahou
I. NO REST FOR THE DEAD
Gopher-criminologist detective Dvorsky enters an old apartment
building on the outskirts of Prague. The street is dilapidated. Burnt
trash cans and walls covered in grafitti. A bunch of kids are playing
soccer with a plastic bottle in the middle of the road. The elevator
doesn't work. The detective makes his way up the stairs until he
reaches the 7th floor and walks underneath a POLICE tape into a small
apartment. There are several police officers hovering about. A woman
sitting on the floor is crying. Constable Konrad is inspecting a
laptop machine from 2002 covered in a thick layer of dust. A body is
hanging from a soviet-era ceiling lamp. There are wires running along
the floor.
DETECTIVE DVORSKY:
"What a shitshow. Konrad, what
was lost?"
KONRAD:
"Detective. 72 gigs worth of
pdfs and ebooks."
DETECTIVE DVORSKY:
"And the machine?"
KONRAD:
"Not exactly a poor man's setup.
This little feller did most of
the heavy lifting proxied behind
TOR. Don't know what software
did the hosting. We're
suspecting gophernicus, but it's
too early to say with
certainty."
* Detective Dvorsky points at the corpse on the ceiling.
DETECTIVE DVORSKY:
"Who's our unlucky winner?"
KONRAD:
"Some Mateas Novak. Unemployed
for 13 years. The boys over at
BIS ran a background check for
us. Nothing permanent. Just your
regular homebrew hacker with a
taste for archivism and animated
pornography. No criminal
record."
* The detective picks up the machine and inspects it closer.
KONRAD:
"Not as far as we can tell. The
disk is encrypted, but we have
most of the access logs. The guy
had a printer hooked up to the
server. It printed out
everything in real time. All
files seem to have been in the
public domain. My guess is the
printer woke him up to reveal
someone somewhere was scraping
the entirety of his gopher hole.
He pulled the plug and then,
well..."
* Konrad looks up at the corpse.
DETECTIVE DVORSKY:
"Who's the girl?"
KONRAD:
"A girlfriend. She didn't give
us much. Woke up in the morning
to find her partner hanging here
like this. You think this was...
him?"
DETECTIVE DVORSKY:
"I don't know what the fuck I
think."
* A policeman walks into the room holding a stack of papers.
POLICEMAN:
"Detective? You better have a
look at this."
DETECTIVE DVORSKY:
"What is it?"
POLICEMAN:
"Well, the printer ran out of
ink somewhere past the page
2394, but among the lines of
file retrieval, there is a
single submission to a guestbook.
It's a rudimentary script, but
the logs list the string that
was posted to it."
DETECTIVE DVORSKY:
"Let me see it!"
* 'GB WUZ HERE'
DETECTIVE DVORSKY:
"Motherfuc-"
TO BE CONTINUED
GOPHER BANDIT EPISODE 3
Polish clique
I
Four heavily armed officers from the Special Internet Protocols are
slowly advancing up the stairs in a dilapidated apartment building on
the outskirts of Krakow. Every now and then someone peeks through a
tight slit of an opened door. Light and shadow dances behind each and
every peephole, as the curious inhabitants observe the team.
Finally the four men reach the 7th floor and stack up by an apartment
number 64.
SIP#1:
"Weapons check."
SIP#2:
"Hot."
SIP#3:
"Hot."
* a flick of a safety switch echoes through the otherwise
empty corridor
SIP#4:
"Hot."
The leading officer #1 speaks over a wired radio in his right ear.
SIP#1 (OVER RADIO):
"SGO, this is entry team. We're
in position."
* a familiar voice of detective Dvorsky comes in.
DVORSKY (OVER RADIO):
"Entry team, this SGO, hold. We
may have a development here."
SIP#2:
"What the fuck is it now?"
SIP#1:
"Quiet! Keep ready."
DVORSKY (OVER RADIO):
"Entry team, we just cracked the
encrypted packets. We believe
there are two non-hostiles in
the apartment. I repeat, two
non-hostiles. Woman and child.
Evaluate."
SIP#1 (OVER RADIO):
"Copy that."
SIP#1:
"Gentlemen, rules of engagement
just changed. Not all targets
are hostile."
SIP#3:
"Fuck..."
SIP#4:
"Jesus Christ. They tell us
now?"
SIP#1:
"Two, camera under the door."
* Officer #2 pulls out a spy-cam and sticks it through an
opening at the bottom of the apartment door, after a few
moments he reports:
SIP#2:
"No one in sight."
SIP#1:
"Alright, fuck it, we're going
in. Mind your targets."
SIP#1 (OVER RADIO):
"SGO, this is entry team, we're
proceeding as planned."
DVORSKY (OVER RADIO):
"Understood, keep us posted."
II
The Special Gopher Operations team is gathered around a single CRT
monitor in a repurposed Tatra van parked just outside the apartment
building. Detective Dvorsky and Karolina, the Gopher Specialist, are
both here, so are two other men.
KAROLINA:
"God, I hope this is it."
DVORSKY:
"Don't we all."
All sip cold coffee from paper cups.
Eventually officer #1's voice comes through the radio.
SIP#1 (OVER RADIO):
"SGO, this is entry team. You
might want to see this."
Detective Dvorsky rushes out of the car and up the stairs. He
reaches the apartment 64. The lock is blown away and the door wide
open. Officer #3 stands by it, giving the detective a slight nod.
Dvorsky proceeds through the apartment.
It's a small Soviet-era apartment with a single bedroom and a
kitchen. In the bathroom, on the toilet, sits a corpse of a young
man with several bullet holes in his chest. Dvorsky recognizes the
man as Mateas Novak, a suspect in the stolen university machines
case.
Dvorsky continues to the bedroom. Another dead man, Robin Kopecky,
Novak's friend. Officers #2 and #4 hover about.
SIP#4:
"In the kitchen, detective."
Dvorsky enters the kitchen. Officer #1 stands by a corpse of a dead
woman, killed by gunfire. There is a Soviet Agat personal computer
on the dining table with a floppy drive connected to it.
DVORSKY:
"Talk to me."
SIP#1:
"No live targets. We found them
all like this."
DVORSKY:
"What?!"
SIP#1:
"Looks like your intel was off,
detective. These boys are the
least of your problems now."
By now the rest of the SGO team arrives at the apartment. Karolina
sits down by the Agat and boots it up.
SIP#1 (POINTING AT THE DEAD WOMAN):
"Who is the woman anyway?"
DVORSKY:
"Marketa... Marketa Patrasova...
She was the boys' schoolmate at
the Prague Technical University.
She smuggled the software over
the border..."
DVORSKY:
"Karolina? What do we have?"
KAROLINA:
"Well, this machine is incapable
of networking, but judging by
the floppy drive, it's safe to
say our suspects planned to
copy the gopher server software
and sell it. Very little else to
go on here..."
Officer #2 walks into the kitchen, holding a piece of paper.
SIP#2:
"This was in the boy's pocket."
* #2 hands the paper to Dvorsky
There's a date on in two days old and below it, the initials G.P.
SIP#1:
"Excuse me, detective, but from
what you told us, we're a kid
short."
THE WELL NEVER DRIES 4
The bandit finds himself in the city center, a floppy clenched in his
hand, buried in the pocket of his coat. He finds a café and seats
himself by a table on the busy street. A stream of tourists trickles
around the astronomical clock, just as the bell tower begins its
deafening concert. One in the afternoon, coffee for 125 crowns. The
air is cold.
A man in a striped waistcoat sits down next to the bandit.
WAISTCOAT:
"Mister Cheblik?"
BANDIT:
"I have it."
WAISTCOAT:
"Not here, Mister Cheblik. Meet
me at the entrance of the Jewish
cemetery in 4 hours."
BANDIT:
"I can just give it to you
now..."
WAISTCOAT:
"You're being followed."
The man in a waistcoat stands up and disappears into the trickle of
tourists. Detective Dvorsky rushes in to the café, wire in his ear.
DVORSKY:
"*into the microphone* He's
gone."
DVORSKY:
"What did he want?!"
BANDIT:
"He asked for spare change. I
have hardly enough to pay for
this pisspoor coffee... Wasn't
he an extravagant beggar."
DVORSKY:
"Damn it!"
DVORSKY:
"*into the microphone* The
bandit slipped away, I'm going
back to the office."
