"Your message mentioned a building hack."
"Right. I spotted your squiggle in the Hand Building last night."
Milkdud's eyes lit as he smiled. "The Hand Building… the twenty-five story ferroconcrete on Forty-fifth. Yeah, she's a beauty. A prime example of postwar urban architecture. My handle's still there? Cool. Hacked her about three years ago. Should've brought my notes, then I could give you the exact date and some details. A very cool place. That lady's full of blind spaces."
"You keep notes?" Jack said. This was great news. "Like some sort of hacking diary?"
"I like to think of it simply as 'exploring.' We were calling it 'hacking' back in the seventies, but then the computer geeks co-opted the term. I don't like the comparison. Computer hacking implies mischief, malevolence, and malfeasance."
"Not in its pure form," Jack said.
"True. The pure computer hacker is an explorer. He wants to gain entry, open all the doors, find all the hidden places, learn all the secrets, and leave everything pretty much as he found it. That's what I do. I get into a building and explore all the spaces the workaday occupants never see, don't even know exist, then I get out."
"But not without leaving your 'Killroy-was-here' squiggle."
Milkdud smiled. "Which, in a bow to CB culture, we call a 'handle.'"
"How the hell did you ever get into this?"
A shrug. "It's sort of a rite of passage at MIT."
"For everyone?"
"Hell, no. It's got its dangers. First off, you can get killed. We use roofs and elevator shafts a lot, and those shafts are dangerous. Second, it's illegal. You may not mean any harm, but try explaining that to the Man. At the very least, it's trespassing. At worst, it's attempted robbery. And you'd better not be claustrophobic, because your hallways are air shafts and ducts."
Jack nodded. "I can see how that might weed out quite a few."
"Better believe it. And add to the weeds all the ones who just don't get it."
Jack slapped the side of his head. "You're kidding. You mean there's actually some people out there who don't think crawling through air shafts is cool fun?"
Milkdud smiled. "One or two. But the ones who really understand us are the computer hackers. And there's a fair amount of crossover. A good number of keyboard geeks, at least the ones who aren't acrophobic and claustrophobic, hack buildings too. Back at MIT I used to explore with a guy named Mike MacLaglen—expert phreaker and ice in his veins when it came to building hacks. But he wasn't pure, man. There's no money in building hacking. He dropped out to hack video chips. Don't know where he is now. But he was good."
"As good as you?"
"Hell, no."
"And you're still hacking?"
"Yeah. Got a curious nature, I guess." He sighed. "But it's getting harder. Security's getting better and better. Still, when you get into the right sort of building"—his eyes unfocused here—"you know, one that's been remodeled a dozen or two times over the years—and you start finding all these blind spaces in corners, and stairways to nowhere, and maybe even a tiny sealed-off room in the middle of a floor, and you know you're the pioneer hacker here because yours is the first handle to get marked on the walls of those spaces… I tell you, Jack, there's nothing like it."
Jack shook his head. A brilliant guy, but definitely a few kinks in his Slinky.
"Say, I wanted to be in on a meeting in a certain office on the twenty-first floor of the Hand Building. Could you help me?"
"Sure."
Excellent, Jack thought. This is going to be easier than I thought.
"So you could place an AV pickup behind a grille where I could see and hear what's going down?"
Milkdud shook his head. "No way."
Jack opened his mouth, then closed it. That wasn't the reply he'd been expecting.
"No way? I thought you just said—"
"I said I'd help, but I'm not bugging the place for you. That's against the code."
"What code?" Jack tried to hide his annoyance, but he was sure some leaked through. "The official building hackers' code of ethics?"
"Maybe." Milkdud stayed cool. "Don't know about any official code, but I, know it goes against Milkdud's."
Jack leaned back and sipped his Pepsi. "Damn, Milkdud. I was counting on you."
"You want to eavesdrop these days, you don't need anything in the room. You just bounce a laser beam off the window glass and you'll hear every word they say."
"I'm fresh out of lasers today."
"You can buy one in dozens of these 'executive security' places all over town. I think there's even one on Fifth Avenue around the corner from the Hand."
"My operation's not exactly high tech, Dud. No way I could rig up a laser on Forty-fifth Street. You see that stuff on TV all the time, but I work in the real world. And besides, I need more than just audio. I want to see into that office. The meeting itself isn't as important as who's present and what's said after the meeting."
"So," Milkdud said, "why don't you get in there and watch and listen yourself?"
"Me… hack my first building… in midtown… during business hours? Right."
Jack had a vision of himself wedged into a ventilation duct, mewing like a kitten up a tree, while firemen and EMS men broke through walls and acetylene torched their way through the galvanized metal to cut him free.
And then his picture on the front pages of the Post and the Daily News. He could see the headlines:
AIR SHAFT AIRHEAD GETS CAUGHT!
He shuddered.
"No, thanks."
"I'll help you," Milkdud said.
"What about the Milkdud Code?"
"It says I won't plant any devices for you, but it doesn't say I can't show you how to hack a building. That would make me an apostle of the building hack. I'd be… St. Milkdud, a missionary, spreading the word to the unenlightened, making converts—"
"Okay," Jack said, smiling and holding up his hands. "I get it."
He thought about the offer. If Milkdud could get him to a spot where he could see and hear what went on in Thomas Clayton's lawyer's office…
"Let me get this straight," Jack said. "You're offering to be my guide into the bowels of the Hand Building—"
"Pathfinder would be more accurate. Trailblazer even more so."
"Which means?"
"I'll check my notes and rehack the Hand this weekend. You tell me where you want to be, and I'll see if I can find a way for you to get there. If I do find one, I'll get you into the building on the morning of the meeting and point you in the right direction."
"You mean you won't be coming along?"
Milkdud shook his head. "Uh-uh. The code, you know."
"But what if I get lost or"—the Jack-as-kitten-up-a-tree vision flashed before him again—"stuck?"
"I'll diagram your route and mark the passage. If you can follow directions and road signs, you should have no problem. And if it'll make you feel better, bring along a cell phone. I'll be outside. You get in trouble, call me."
Jack drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. His instincts told him to find some other way. He wasn't claustrophobic—he'd spent long hours in cramped places before—but he preferred multiple escape routes whenever he put himself into a situation. But with Milkdud available to back him up… maybe it could work.