Chapter 10

Ken turned around and saw them coming. At the same moment a dozen stun guns where fired at them and they dropped to the floor.

Ken heard voices speaking about him and Roger. They were back in the detention block, lying on the rubber floor.

"I will not have this! Do you understand ? If they are fired upon each time they try to escape their memory will be of no use to us."

"Yes sir"


It was Brenauzcky. He was very angry with the behaviour of the guards.

"Get up guys. There's work to do. The WORM is running again."

"It would be easier to get up if you didn't have your brainless guards fire at us all the time."

"Of course.. But then again, you where trying to escape and we can't have you running around town warning every low-live hacker."


Brenauzcky lead on. Two of the guards followed. They walked through a corridor with doors every second meter. As they came closer to the end, they could see a heavy steel door with a black and yellow stripe around it. Brenauzcky put his hand on the security scanner and the door opened. They walked inside and the door closed behind them. He again put his hand on a scanner.

"This air-lock is the outer limit of your access. You are allowed to move freely within this limit. Just put your hand on the security scanner like this."


The door opened and they faced a huge office landscape.

"This is the control room. All these people you see here are specialists in their field and if you have some questions, just ask them."

"Where's Tanisha ? I want to see her now!"

"I'm afraid that's not possible. We'll keep her on ice, so to speak, until we see some results from you."


At the far end of the office landscape there were a bunch of control consoles, terminals and decrypting equipment. In short, a hacker's heaven.

"Wow! Look at all this hardware, Ken!"

"Pretty impressive.. What do you want us to do exactly, Mr. Brenauzcky?"

"Let's move over to were your control consoles are. Here..."


Brenauzcky explained what all the gadgets were supposed to do and showed them how to use them. Another man walked up to them.

"Are these the civilans?"

"Ken, Roger. This is Mr. Merrill. He's in charge of the control room. He'll explain what you are to do."

"As you might know we've had troubles with WORM programs ever since Internet was the hot thing. I suppose you know much about WORMs, but this one is rather special. It seems to be adaptable to both digital and analog biological computers. Apart from that we don't know much about it. The problem is that it can move from a digital system to a biological system in a matter of milliseconds. When it moves it seems to insert a small seed in the microcode and this seed grows to become yet another WORM eventually linking up with the main WORM. The growth process, from then the seed is planted to the WORM is active requires so much capacity that most systems shut down or even worse, the security systems malfunction, revealing sensitive information with is linked up with the main WORM. We fear the moment the WORM leaves the network with all that information."

"Gee. You have a problem!"

"Correct. And I hope you can help us fix it."

"Well, we'll do our best, won't we Roger?"

"I guess so.. "


Roger felt real important. It's not commonplace for the government to hire kids their age to do their hard work.

As days passed on, Ken and Roger got the works of how everything worked and soon they were a part of the team. Even Tanisha, who eventually had to be reactivated for Ken to cooperate, was working with the CERT Tracer Team.

Mr. Brenauzcky and Mr. Merrill even felt so secure about their cooperation that Ken and Roger were let out of the complex for short trips to the city. Of course after being persuaded that their trips were non-leisure trips and were vital to the project, which they in some very seldom cases were.

The time had come to try and gain some information from local hacker clubs and underground hacker societies. They had heard a rumour that a place called The Laboratory might be a good place to pick up the threads.

The Laboratory wasn't the elite bunch of hacker in the country, but they often got mentioned on the news for doing illegal work for foregin corporations stealing industrial secrets. Therefor they had a pretty tight security system, and they wouldn't let just any stranger in.

One of Roger's old friends had set up a meeting with one of the Laboratory members and had promised him that Roger would bring a brand new Firefly XP-190 portable terminal. The only problem for Roger and Ken were that they had absolutely no money and CERT certainly wouldn't give them any.

"Ken, I've got it. I know how we can get hold of the Firefly!"

"How? Pump one of your cards for cash again?"

"No, that won't work. There's a limit to what you can withdraw from them and it doesn't come close to what the Firefly costs. Ok, there's at least four shops in this town that stock the Firefly right?"

"Right. So?"

"And since the model is so new, none of them have service capabilities as of now, right?"

"Right.. But I still don't get it.."

"I'll explain on the way over. Let's go! When do we meet this Whopper guy?"

"At twelve o-clock so we better hurry"


Roger explained the plan in detail as they ran down town. Outside the shop Roger stopped.

"Ok here we are. Remember - Poker face, right?"

"Right Roger, poker face.."


They marched casually in through the door and headed straight for the portable terminal department. At the display stand there were at least ten terminals that had been unwrapped and were powered up to show the customers. Ken moved quickly over to the clerk and started asking silly questions about the terminal. The clerk, thinking that Ken would actually buy the terminal showed off all its capabilities. Meanwhile Roger grabbed one of the terminals and headed for the exit. At the main desk he stopped and placed the terminal on the desk and broke the optical drive eject button off.

"Excuse me. Excuse me! Is it possible to get some service here!?"

"Yes, sir. What can I do for you?"

"Well, I bought this heap of scrap metal last week and the bastard won't give me back my disks!"

"I assure you sir, this model is no heap of scrap metal."

"Well, it won't do me any good since I can't get my disks out!"

"Ok then, let's have a look at it. Yes, this explains it. The drive eject button is broken. I wonder who did that.."

"Don't take that tone with me! Anyway, I want it serviced right this moment. How long can it take to replace a button."

"Well, I'm affraid we can't have it finished until the end of next week. You see we have to send it to the manufacturer for service. This is, as you are well aware of, a very new model."

"But I can't work without this for two weeks! That's it! I'll have it serviced elsewhere! Good bye!"


Roger walked slowly towards the exit door with the terminal trying to look angry while he really was very amazed that the trick worked. As he reached for the door handle, an alarm sounded and a heavy steel grid fell to the floor blocking the exit. Roger stood motionless. He heard people running towards him.