Idempotency (40 page)

SIMEON:SIM_a8f3de13320b. . .<256PB>. . .34cf6

KRSDNA:KRS_e99235f8f3cb. . .<256PB>. . .cc8f2

[SIMEON 02:21:24] Sin, nice job. We’re able to watch you most places now, by the way. Jay-san is making headway; opening more access every hour. We’re starting to think they let us in initially, but they don’t know that we know that they did that. And we’re using that to our advantage now.

[SinTh3t!c 02:21:29] I still have only an hour?

[SIMEON 02:21:34] Yeah, well, 51 minutes now. We haven’t been able to extend your time limit. Jay and Grep are working on it.

[SinTh3t!c 02:21:39] Okay. And where are we with the SolipstiCorp tech? How do I get the training data to you?

[SIMEON 02:21:44] I’d like you to meet Kristina Hollerith. Kristina works at SolipstiCorp. She knows the tech better than anyone. She was our inside girl who helped Dylan use SolipstiCorp’s headgear the first time to meet me in our virt.

[KRSDNA 02:21:58] Hey Sin. I’m here. There’s no way you can send this amount of data back to us without them knowing about it, so our goal is to store the data with you, in your ocImps. When we get you back to us, safely, we’ll analyze the data then. We’re going to send you a small binary executable program for your ocImps. After you install it, we should be able to do a routine data dump from the SolipstiCorp headgear admin interface directly into your ocImps. Got it?

Sindhu had already seen the notification and was installing the executable. She glanced at her watch. Twenty-five minutes had passed. She had roughly ten minutes before she needed to head back. Any later than that, and she risked becoming a red, flashing warning dot in some AI’s navigation system.

[SinTh3t!c 02:24:28] I’m running out of time, people. Quickly settle my doubts about this admin interface.

[KRSDNA 02:24:39] I sent you instructions with the executable, Sin. It’s easy though. Just get to the login screen and execute the binary with the private key I also sent, it should take care of the rest.

[SinTh3t!c 02:24:44] Won’t this tip them off? Having us snoop around in the admin system?

[KRSDNA 02:24:53] The binary I wrote should remove all trace of our presence. BUT, I don’t know how much they’ve modded the system. I’m guessing not much, cause in my limited work with our “customer” they’ve seemed pretty stoopid, technically speaking. But, you never know.

[SIMEON 02:25:05] Listen, Sin, Don’t screw around. Honestly, we have no idea what will happen with this. They could have all sorts of alarms over this backdoor. We just don’t know. Don’t push it tonight, play it safe. Get the dump, and get back safely. If this works, we can come back tomorrow and do it all over again.

[SinTh3t!c 02:25:12] Aww, Simeon, you do care!

Without saying a good-bye, Sindhu darted out of the supply closet, quickly crossed the hallway, and flung open one of the two tall doors that marked the entrance to the classroom. The room itself was a vacuous, circular lecture hall. A sterile blue hue of night lighting provided a harsh but dim glow that highlighted the thousands of white ergonomic reclining chairs that filled the descending stadium seating, 360 degrees around the room. Each chair was form-fitted, with two simple armrests, head- and footrests, and SolipstiCorp headgear tech resting atop a small pole at the head of the chair. In the middle of the circular room was a state-of-the-art holoVid unit. Sindhu correctly assumed the holoVids were used before and after the virtTripping. She descended a few stairs, and then stopped due to how loud her footsteps sounded within the still air of the quiet room. She glanced around pensively then sat down, figuring the chair nearest her was as good as any other.

Sindhu grabbed the headgear off the pole and sat sideways on the chair—an inner recalcitrance ensuring she did not lie down; she refused to be made to lie down. With a heavy breath, she flipped the headgear on top of—

Instantly—so instantly it might have happened before the moment itself—Sindhu was surrounded by a blue ocean of water. She lay on the water and yet she was standing, as if the ocean was defying physical laws. In front of her, words floated; a welcome message greeted her, asking for her identification. She wondered if this alone would trigger an issue: Would the system be confused about why it couldn’t automatically detect her?

Sindhu opened her ocImp BUI interface (no simple feat, given her present discombobulated state). She first opened the instructions sent by Kristina. Sindhu was relieved to note that everything was proceeding as expected. She moved quickly, as her internal clock was counting down from ten minutes with precision. The instructions were clear and simple: A private key was listed in the text file, to be used with the executable. She copied the private key into the interface and then executed the program. And then she waited.

The welcome message dissolved and was replaced by a simple menu with only five textual options:

1) Status

2) Config

3) Network

4) Debug

5) Help

Never one for instructions, Sindhu felt confident enough at this point to eschew her BUI—it had only been distracting her, anyhow, floating above the admin menu. She worked quickly. First, out of habit, she clicked
Help
, not intending to read it, then smiled when the screen told her:
Help?? What do you think this is, a customer interface? Read the code!

She clicked
Debug
next. Three options were displayed:

1) Export logs

2) Export

3) Full dump (hah-hah)

She clicked
Full dump
and the system shot back at her:
No session data loaded.

She snarled angrily. She was moving too quickly. Swiping backward, she tapped the
Config
option, and saw several options:

1) Environment variables for U-E837F-FA839 (this unit)

2) Global Environment variables

3) Load Session deathTrip

4) Close Session deathTrip

Clicking
Load
, she was presented with twelve different virt experiences, all numerical, the first labeled:
Titus_DT_WorkClass_001

Sindhu sighed as there appeared no method to export all of the files at once. She picked the first, swiped backward, then forward, and began a full export of the data. A progress bar floated in front of her, showing the completed percentage of her data export. As the percentage climbed, she calculated internally how many exports she could do with her eight-and-a-half remaining minutes. She guessed three, assuming all the virtTrips were similar in size.

She would grab
Titus_DT_WorkClass_012
next. Her strategy was to get the first, the last, and the middle virtTrips, surmising that this would provide them with the best random sampling. She had hoped to have time for more than three, but was becoming convinced three would even be difficult, as the transfer of number twelve was taking longer than the first.

After what seemed to be a mind-numbing amount of time, the transfer eventually completed. This time, however, Sindhu decided to dig a little deeper. Rather than simply transfer the last virtTrip, she navigated into the compressed data that made up the worker-class training virtTrip number twelve. Her eyes glossed over as she quickly scanned rows upon rows of inscrutable binary data resources. Frustrated, she began guessing at common interface gestures that she hoped developers had added into the system. She smiled when, after waving a magnifying glass into midair, a common search box appeared in front of the resource list. The box was a common search protocol that allowed for the creation of complex regular expressions. With the deft flick of her fingers, she quickly searched the millions of binary objects for metadata specific to multimedia files.

Success! A smile pursed her lips. A few keystrokes later, and Sindhu had uploaded and replaced all audio files contained within the virt file
Titus_DT_WorkClass_012
with copies of her own favorite song. She quickly and smugly backed out to the main menu and began transferring file
Titus_DT_WorkClass_006
. Once started, she opened her BUI to find out exactly how much time she had left: just under one minute.

I can sprint.
Her lips moved subtly as she talked to herself.
I can make it back in less than twenty-five minutes. I can push close to fifteen if I had to. I’ve nearly done ten through the courtyard before. I’ll go straight through this time.

When the file was at 90 percent complete, she clicked her BUI off. She was three minutes off her schedule; thirty-eight minutes had passed, leaving her twenty-two minutes to get back to her bunk bed.
One more
, she thought,
I can get one more
. She randomly grabbed number nine, and the transfer seemed to be going quickly.

She opened her BUI.

Eighteen minutes left, precisely.

I can make it in fifteen if my life depended on it.

She set up a countdown timer and left her BUI on.  The timer floated in front of the deathTrip admin menu, and displayed a time of 17:53 as the transfer progress hit 100 percent. She was about to exit when it struck her that she hadn’t clicked on the
Network
menu. Water droplets from the vertical ocean dripped directly away from her when, with a flick of the wrist, she opened the
Network
menu. A new menu materialized in front of her:

1) Connection Status

2) Active Local Sessions

3) Network Map

She clicked
Active Local Sessions
, and a screen with a myriad of data utilizing a small font materialized in front of her. Within the data, she quickly discerned that she was looking at a listing of the lecture hall she sat within. There were nearly 4,999 inactive sessions and one active session: her own. She swiped back and clicked
Network Map
. The next screen was another listing of inscrutably small text. It took her a moment to discern that she was looking at rows of networks; she guessed most were classrooms similar to the one she was sitting in. The first column was labeled
ID
and included what Sindhu guessed to be a text identifier for the specific networks. Glaring with a focused intensity at the ID column, she quickly decided the text field represented some kind of location numbering system. Listed on each row, among other data, were the active sessions in that network. Using this, she spotted her own room quickly due to the one active session listed next to it:

SESSION:

Titus_H2O_WorkClass_LectureHall_245.600.503

UNIT:

U-E837F-FA839

She continued scanning the data, looking for anything that could help her learn—outliers—when her eyes were suddenly forced to focus upon a strobing flash emanating from her timer: sixteen minutes remained.

Her lips moved slightly as she swore in her native Tamil tongue. Resigned to acquiescence, Sindhu raised her hand to exit the system—and then she froze. Nearly every row was the same: cryptic text identifier, followed by columns of zeros. Except for Sindhu’s row . . . and one other row. There, toward the lower half of the rows upon rows of data, Sindhu’s eyes were locked upon a row with one active session:

SESSION:

Titus_StTitus_Exec_Lab_000.999.599

UNIT:

U-E837F-FA839

With a blink, she was back to full speed. She tapped the session row and a new listing appeared:

Active Sessions for:

Titus_StTitus_Exec_Lab_000.999.599

23FF787EA8B998
2:34:43:23.2139

Total Sessions: 1

Clicking the session enacted a new menu that befuddled Sindhu, which read:

Session:

23FF787EA8B998 2:34:43:23.2139

Location:

Titus_StTitus_Exec_Lab_000.999.599

1) Monitor Session

2) Join Session

Sindhu blinked twice. There were no doubts in her mind: The other open session had to be Dylan. Could she reach him somehow? Simeon had to know this possibility would be there; why didn’t he tell her about it? Too risky? Probably. She guessed he was holding this for a second night, assuming this night went safely. Her hand hovered over the second option when, suddenly, her countdown timer erupted into a blindingly bright, pulsating, red-and-orange warning. The timer pushed itself toward her face, wrapping around her hovering hand. It read: 14:55.

Damn it, Simeon. If you had just told me. You should have guessed I’d find this.
She tapped her forefinger quickly against her thumb; a nervous, hovering tick of her slender hand.

At last, she said out loud, “Fine. I’ll do the needful.”

She clicked
Join Session
and her menu, and her timer, and her worlds spun around and away.

“She found him. She found Dylan. She must have. I knew I should have told her.”

“Then why didn’t you, dear?” Nimbus asked softly. She winced as she saw her husband’s ponytail whip around. The flames on his arms were flicking curiously.

“Not helping, dear,” he replied, his eyes remaining peeled to the three-dimensional map floating in front of the team. He raised his hands and twirled the map, zooming out at the same time. Sindhu was represented with a brown dot. There were no labels; none were needed. The dot hadn’t moved in quite some time. It needed to move.

The yurt was quiet. The tan canopy over the circular wooden floor—usually flapping—was oddly still. An afternoon light streamed in from between the top and the sides of the circular, tentlike structure. Outside, beyond their own technologically infused confines, the slums were putting together whatever scraps they could muster for dinner.

Upon arriving at SOP’s current headquarters—if it could be called that—Kristina had been shocked at the apathy that the slum’s residents had shown their team. There was obviously wealth behind the thin-canopied yurt walls. And while they did possess decent security, they were clearly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of other residents. And yet, the lower classes let them be. Simeon grandly claimed it was because the people realized SOP were fighting for them. Nimbus had been more realistic; these people were beaten down past apathy. Even if a group of slum dwellers did make a play for SOP’s yurt, what would it provide them? They didn’t have the means to sell the equipment held inside the tent, let alone know how to use it. To the slum dwellers, a can of protein powder or an application of cell-regeneration actuators would have been far, far more valuable.