Ntshona (24 page)

“Okay, that’s lucky man. You must now look for the government colocation suite and get this over with,” said Strys.

Dictated by logic, Lon searched for the suite entitled SARP, and soon located it, noting it, as he stood by its entrance, as the second colocation suite on the right from the server room’s entrance. From here he could maintain a decent view of the door.

He passed the keycard across the ‘open’ button on the glass of the door, and it horizontally slipped to the right. His spine began to tingle and his heart beat faster as he stepped into the suite and regarded the computer console. “This should be what we’re looking for,” he thought.

The screen of the console powered on as Lon moved closer to it, but something, he thought, was a little odd.

“This looks strange,” he told Strys, “I think it’s an operating system I haven’t seen before”. He placed his briefcase by his feet.

“But I thought you knew a thing or two about computer systems,” Strys said with lack of confidence.

“I do, I know quite a lot, that’s why I’m surprised I’ve never seen this before”.

“Can you identify it? Like, is there a virtual manual you can access or something?”

Lon tried to operate the system in a way he knew, but it was quite unusual. “I can’t find any information about it, its name, build number, the company who released it…”

“That is strange, man. But if it has a graphical interface, you shouldn’t have any problems, okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” replied Lon, “but it might take a little while to get my head around”.

“You should get started then. Find the root directory of the server”.

Lon did as he was told with little trouble, and was delighted to find the server was not empty. “It looks like there’s a decent amount of information here. I just hope it’s all useful”.

“Right, now that we know there’s something there to take, you must connect the console to your palm screen, and your palm screen to the storage device so you can begin the transfer”.

“How do I use the watch then?”

“To turn it on, you just have to press the screen, then it will light up. After that, find the ‘Special Connection’ app on your palm screen, then choose the option ‘
Make a connection
’, then it’s done. After that, you should use the same app to connect your palm screen to the server console, but you just do it the same way you would usually connect a new device”.

“Seems easy enough,” said Lon, “give me a minute”. He followed Strys’ instructions with no evident problems; after connecting to the storage device, his palm screen displayed the status “
I’m watching your connection
,” and the palm screen-to-server console connection established as expected.

“Now,” said Strys midway through a deep breath, “from the console you should be able to send the information files to the storage device, which should be called ‘
Wilsdorf
’”.

Lon did what was necessary and found the connection to the watch. He inhaled strongly, held the air tightly in his lungs, and began the information download.

“
Incompatible storage device
”.

“Oh my fuck! Is this a joke?!” Lon shouted in disbelief. “The watch doesn’t work!”

“What do you mean it doesn’t work?!” asked Strys.

“It’s incompatible with the console!”

“You’re kidding me”.

Lon tried the transfer again, but with no luck. He also tried sending the information directly to his palm screen’s storage, but with only the same result. “I can’t send the information anywhere!”

“God dammit! That operating system must be formatted different. They really don’t want that information to get out!”.

“How do I reconfigure the format of the watch?” asked Lon.

“You can’t right now, it would take too long for me to explain, and it might not work anyway; you must send me the data wirelessly”.

“How can you store it if I can’t?”

“I can set up a format-less virtual server that has no operating system, but it will mean that any information you send will effectively have to be decoded later if we can’t figure out which operating system it’s stored with at the moment. But right now it doesn’t matter what format the data is in, we just need to get hold of it”.

“How long will that take? The servers here are pretty big!”

“Look, it might take a long time, but you have to do it, otherwise all of our efforts will be for nothing!”

“Will Eve know what’s going on?”

“She’s still connected to me, she can hear what’s happening”.

“Please tell her I’ll try to be done soon, I think I may have an idea to speed things up. I just need to get the transfer started first”.

As Strys conveyed additional details of the situation to Eve, Lon set up a connection between the server console and ‘Mammy’ via his palm screen.

“Once you’ve established the connection with me,” Strys had returned his attention towards Lon, “send the information to the virtual server I just set up called ‘
Bags
’”.

After a few moments he began the transmission of data to Strys’ server, and gazed impatiently at the console’s monitor as the names of hundreds of successfully transferred data files flashed on screen. This, however, was only brief; not thirty seconds since the commencement of the transfer, a bad omen made itself known.

“
CNSGEOL11432.lxg can not be found. Continue transfer?
”

“Huh?” Lon found this a little unexpected.

“What happened?” asked Strys, a little worried, “The transfer stopped”.

“I don't know, I think one of the files is corrupt, it won’t transfer”.

He chose to continue the transfer regardless.

“
CNSGEOL11433.lxg can not be found. Continue transfer?
”

“Again?!”

Once more he disregarded the notification, yet once more was presented with another.

“What the hell?! It’s telling me a load of files don’t exist!”

“What?” Strys’ voice was a little panicked.

“Shit, nothing’s transferring now!” Lon exclaimed. He quickly re-checked the main server directory for data. “I don’t get it, there are still folders in the root directory,”

“Start the transfer again!”

He did as Strys instructed, but the desired action was not performed.

“Fuck, now it’s telling me there’s nothing to transfer!”

“Are you re-sending me the whole directory?”

“I’m trying, but it’s empty!”

“How can it be empty?! You’ve already sent me hundreds of files!”

Lon became agitated. “Shit, somebody must know what I’m doing! This must be a countermeasure to stop information getting out!”

“Stay calm man, we need to think this th-,” his sentence was disrupted.

Lon waited momentarily for the connection to re-establish, yet it did not happen. “Mammy? I didn’t get the end of that”.

Still the connection appeared severed.

“Mammy, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I can’t hear-”

Lon’s sentence was cut off by the thick sound of metal striking the floor around him, and was taken aback by the fulminant, imposing darkness smothering everything in the tiny room.

In the main room, Eve had become unnerved by the sudden lack of communication from Strys, and began to ready her gun. This portent had her worried of imminent, lethal danger, and she was filled with bewilderment about what actions to take; she could not contact Lon, as two people and a keycard were required for server room access, and she certainly would not separate herself from him, leaving her with only one reasonable option: prepare to fight.

The unusually loud clapping of flat footwear could be heard emanating from the corridor outside, the volume increasing as the footsteps became close. Somebody, it seemed, was in a hurry to get to Data Centre Eleven.

“Oh God”. Eve took a step away from the main door, raised her gun and steadied her aim. She made an intense effort to calm her breath and quell the tears dripping from her eyes. “It’s just like VR,” she whispered to nobody.

The door slid open with a bleep.

Eve readied her finger on the trigger, waiting to take out whoever stepped into the room.

Her heart relentlessly hammered against her ribs, perspiration dampened her brow, the strength in her legs wavered, and time… seemed… slow.

“Eve, don’t shoot!”

She incredulously stared wide-eyed at the person in front of her, and out of pure relief let the gun drop to the floor. She began to cry. “I thought I was going to die!”

“I’m here to make sure you don’t,” said Lin. She glanced down at the unconscious man on the floor, and smirked. “Where’s Lon?”

“He’s in the server room,” Eve sobbed. “What’s going on? Why are you here?” Although relieved, she was rather puzzled.

“There’s not enough time to explain, we need to get Lon and go, right now”.

“What if he hasn’t finished-”

“We need to leave this building,
now
”.

Eve remained extremely worried. “Only one of us can go into the server room, because the other needs to stay here to operate the door on the other side of that one”.

“I know that, just go and get him, I’ll open the door,” said Lin as she transmuted her briefcase into a firearm.

“Right,” Eve grabbed her gun from the floor and ran to the door of Server Room Eleven. “Oh wait, I need the access card, but I gave it to Lon!”

From her pocket Lin drew a gold keycard and passed it to Eve. “This should work”.

“Where did you-”

“Fucking hurry!”

After scanning the card across the sensor, the door rose and Eve ran to the other side of the man-trap.

Lin pressed the button for the following door, and prepared herself for a gun fight.

Before the door leading to the server room had opened fully, Eve was already inside searching for Lon, yet could not find any evidence of human activity, only rows of server racks and large, metallic cuboids as tall as the ceiling.

“Lon!” she yelled, “Where are you?!”

A faint voice appeared from somewhere in the room.

“Lon?!”

Again the quiet voice came.

Eve became soundless and waited for the voice once more.

“I’m trapped!”

“Trapped where?!” she began to panic.

“The colocation suite second on the right from the entrance!”

She was confused as there was nothing resembling how she had imagined a colocation suite to look. “I can’t see any colocation suites!”

“They must all be in lockdown! That’s why I’m trapped!”

She tried following Lon’s voice, and found it coming from somewhere near one of the large metal cubes. She then understood that each of these was in fact a locked-down colocation suite. She ran to the one in which Lon had explained he was ensnared and banged on the metal. “Are you in this one?!”

“Yes!” he replied, “I was sending the information from the server to Strys, but there was a problem, then the connection broke and this place went into lockdown!”

“How do I get you out?!” she yelled desperately.

“I don’t know! I can’t even see what’s surrounding me in this room, because there’s no light in here anymore!”

“I think it’s steel!”

Lon deliberated for a moment. “Isn’t there some sort of unlock button, or a sensor or something?”

Eve quickly checked all sides of the metal box, yet was not fortunate enough to discover anything like he had mentioned. “There’s nothing, it’s all just flat metal; I can’t seen any electronics anywhere!”

“There must be something somewhere to deactivate this!”

“Where would it be?” she asked.

“I don’t know, it could be anywhere! Look for a console or a panel or something; there has to be something!”

She scanned the space around her, however finding a specific “console or a panel or something” in a roomful of technology was set to be a dauntingly difficult task, particularly for somebody like Eve who knew not much more about computer science than the average person in her city.

Her desperation level rapidly climbed as the semi-muted sounds of gunshots were heard from the data centre’s main room.

With a large amount of stress she began to hunt for the device that would defuse the trap encasing Lon, running past rows of servers and locked-down colocation suites.

There were several consoles, but each appeared to be connected to specific server racks, and none to any form of security system.

More gunshots.

The sole location in the server room where she could imagine any form of security-linked electronic hardware, other than security cameras, was the room’s entrance, and beyond that, the main room of the data centre, where it was apparent some sort of gunfight was occurring.