Chapter 6

As they passed through the gate the security cameras followed them checking their every move, trying to detect concealed weapons, giving their armourment one byte of reason to blast them to pieces. But Ken and Roger were clean. Besides the security wasn't too tough when you were going in to the Chinese Sector, only when you were coming out. People carried weapons in to the Chines Sector to protect themselves, and that was legal. People carrying weapons out of the Chinese Sector were most likely smugling arms out of the sector where it was fairly easy to get most anything.

After leaving the security zone they were on their own. The only sign of police you could see was the security cameras placed around the sector, and the occational obvious undercover cop running after someone.

Entering this sector was like suddenly going 50 years back in time. This part of town had been the same for as long as the people who tried to live the could remember.

Roger and Ken got hold of a Rickshaw which took them to one of the people Ken meant could tell them more about the Worm program. The rickshaw stopped in front of a dark alley. A sign hanging off the wall in its last screw said 'The Club Soda'. 50 years back this was one of the most popular clubs in the Chinese Sector, but now no one had the extra credits to buy drinks so they closed the place. Nowadays this was the home of Harvey Wong. A notorious chinese hacker. Specialized on analog computers, he was one of the people the Computer Emergency Response Team feared the most.

Ken pressed the door bell button. A hatch opened and a small surveilance camera popped out. Seconds later the big steel door slid open. A voice called them and they walked in. The interior looked like a rollerskate disco. Harvey, like so many others had sold some parts of his biological body, but he never got around, or he never had the credits to replace them with synthetics. Harvey had sold both his legs so he rolled around wherever he went in an electric wheel chair.

"Gosh Ken, you showed up at an awkward moment. I'm a bit busy, but this might interest you... Just got a new Worm from a guy. Have a look at this baby."

Ken leaned over the huge graphic terminal. Two of Harvey's largest debugging modules were trying to figure out what the program was all about. The printer module was printing furiously.

"Looks like you're having some problems with this one, Harvey"

"Sure looks like it. It's a mean mother. Someone got this from the EISDN a couple of months ago. Even though this is only the fifth generation of the Worm, I had to borrow some disks to fit all of it at once."

"Fifth generation ? So it has replicated itself five times ? Isn't it better to work with a first generation copy ?"

"If I only could get my hands on one..."

"Check out this disk!"

Ken handed Harvey the storage module. Without saying a word Harvey stopped the debuggers and moved the Worm over to his own disks.

"Oh woow... oh boy... oh boy... Where did you get hold of this sucker ?"

"Roger here gave it to me. He got into som trouble with the Responce Team because of it."

"Well, welcome to the big league, Roger. Everyone has trouble with the Responce Team here."

Roger wasn't paying attention at all. All he could do was stare at Harvey's equipment.

"Sheez. You got some setup here, Harvey. Those IIC code breakers are illegal in almost every country in the world. How the hell did you get hold of them ? And that satellite control module with the TGA power module. Sheez. You could start a war with this.

"I know. And you never saw this equipment anywhere, ok?"

"Sure. Hey, I do do some hacking myself you know. I broke the TWA main access code in 26 seconds."

"Yawn. What would you do with the TWA access code. The TWA only handles ordinary passanger flights."

"Well, ehrm.. I just did it for fun.."

"Yeah, right."

Harvey was one of the top ten hackers in the World, and he knew it. To him, Roger was just a kid having fun, making life shitty for the real guys.

"So what you got, Harvey?"

"Nothing much. Yet. Hey, ya'mind if you go get a couple of thousand burgers while I take a closer look at it. Take your time.."

"Sure. No problem. 'com Roger, let's go."

The heavy steel door closed behind them. Roger didn't have much high thoughts about Harvey the way he had treated him. They crossed the street from the alley and started looking for a burger shop. Just about every place you could get a bit to eat in the chinese sector served nothing but sushi with fried rice, spaghetti og noodles. Finally they found one. Not quite the standard of the places Roger was used to, but he was so hungry he could eat just about anything apart from sushi. After consuming the meat surrogat burger Roger got really impatient and suggested they'd find a phone and call Harvey to check on his progress. Outside it was raining heavily and they ran along the pavement until they found a working phone booth.

"Harvey ? This is Ken."

"Ken, you better get over here right away. You gotta see this, man."

They ran back to Harvey's place.

"Hey! Do you mind ?! Go drip on someone elses computers, ok!?"

"Sorry Harvey. Do you have a towel ?"

"Yeah, look over by the bed there. Ken..You brought me a treasure here. I guess I should thank Roger, but since he's just a fake hacker, no offence, I thank you instead. This worm could mean the way out of this shithole for me. Check out this part I found."

Harvey brought up a couple of code viewers and started the large IIC decryptation computer. After just a few seconds the code started changing in to readable characters. It read "log Computer 33.223.119283.299-23 PX"
"So what's a log computer ?"

"It isn't the word log..it's probably analog, right. Since the first character is in lower case, that means that the first part of the word is missing. No wonder since this is probably left here by a mistake. So, if the word is analog computer, the rest must be the serial number and the module serial number, right ?"

"Seems like a serial number to me"

"It is. Look at this. I ran the serial number through some data bases and came up with this."

Harvey showed Ken a note which said "The requested number is not registred"

"What? What does that mean ?"

"It means that the number is not in any computer registration data bases. It's either a computer that hasn't been sold yet, or someone has pulled some strings to remove it from the registration data base."

"How can that be ? Not even you could get in to that data base without a known access code. And if you tried anyway, the Response Team would blow this place up in seconds."

"You said it. The only people who have access to this data base is some of the high bosses in the Response Team... So what I think is that the Response Team own the computer who made this worm."

"Makes sense doesn't it ? The worm, as far as we know, has only affected known hackers. Even you Roger is considered a hacker to the Response Team, obviously."

"I better tell the other guys about this. It could blow us all out in the open..."

"Yeah, and I'll call Tanisha and tell her to erase all the copies I have at home."

"You have copies of this at home?! What ? Are you suicidal or something ?"

Ken didn't answer, he just rushed over to the phone and dialed his home number. There was no answer.