Brian's attention came back to the attacks on Creek's system; more complex diggers were arriving now, these from anonymous sources. The smarter kids had arrived, with their shiny toys. Brian wasn't concerned that they would drill the system, but if too many drillers arrived, defending the system would eventually and inevitably tax its resources, and Brian had other things to do today than play with the hacks.
Brian reached out and grabbed one of the simpler drillers, generating a trapping program on the fly to do so. He cracked it open and spilled the code; it was nothing special, but it featured what Brian was looking for—the hacksig of its maker, one OHN-SYAS69, more prosaically known as Peter Nguyen of Irvine, California. Brian learned with one sweep through Nguyen's system that Peter Nguyen was 15, had an extensive collection of busty porn, and was a budding if clearly not gifted hack; his driller was all off-the-shelf code, jammed together inelegantly into a barely functional program.
Peter Nguyen, I'm going to make you a star, Brian thought, and from the inelegant mess that was young master Nguyen's drilling program, crafted something new under the virtual sun: A metadriller, designed to latch onto other drilling programs, crack them open, find the hacksig of their makers, and then re-program the drillers to head home to their maker's system. After drilling the system open, they would broadcast the availability of its contents onto the world network for anyone to see and sample. A few hours later, the driller would initiate a system crash that included the driller program itself, leaving only Peter Nguyen's hacksig behind.
Drilling the drillers would be simple, for the simple reason that no one had ever done it before, so no one had thought to protect the drillers from being drilled. This is what Brian loved about hacks. They were smart, but they didn't like to think about things not directly in front of them.
Brian finalized the code (making sure the metadriller would self-wipe if drilled itself; wouldn't do to fall into the same trap as the hacks) and then fed it into an autonomous replicator program that would spit out a metadriller each time Creek's system registered an attack. Native system resources spent on dealing with the attacks would now be limited to pinging the replicator program after each attempt. As a bonus, the hack world would fall into chaos and ruin for a certain amount of time while the geeks tried to figure out what the hell was going on.
That was just fine with Brian. He might be a disembodied virtual consciousness, but at least he wasn't some fucking geek. Maybe deprived of their systems, some of these geeks might go out and get some sun or meet people or something. It couldn't hurt. In any event, the hacks might learn a little humility, which they were sorely lacking despite the fact they couldn't be relied upon to shower more than one day out of three.
As Brian contemplated the enforced socialization of the geek set, he noticed two programs—not drillers—hanging about his system's periphery. The first flitted from driller to driller, marking each with a tiny autonomous program; Brian recognized it as a monitor program. The other program hung there, unpacked. Brian reached out, grabbed it, cracked it open. It was a retrieval program, waiting for a driller to finish its work before entering Creek's system. Brian read the code and discovered who was trying to get inside of him.
"Well, hello there, Mr. Archie McClellan, whoever you are," Brian said. "I think it's time we got better acquainted."
Fixer opened a freezer in his basement and pulled out an economy-sized Popsicle box, like you'd buy in a warehouse store, and held it for Creek and Robin to examine. "Here it is," he said.
"Here is what?" said Robin.
"Your new identity," Fixer said.
"We're going to be Popsicles?" Robin said.
Fixer grinned. He set the box down on the table and slid out a plastic tray from its inside; on it was what looked to be extremely thin, arm length gloves. "I don't want you to think I'm glad you came to me," Fixer said. "Because, truly, I am not. However, your decision was either smart or lucky for you. From time to time the Malloy family has the need to get someone past the authorities quickly and get them offworld for a nice, long, relaxing vacation. And when they do, they come to me, because I have this"—he pointed to the gloves—"a new identity in a box."
Creek reached over and picked up one of the gloves. "It looks like skin," he said. "Did this come from someone?"
"I didn't flay someone, if that's what you mean," Fixer said, and pointed at the glove. "Human skin cells grown from a culture, suspended in a nutrient base to keep them alive. Fingerprints, palm prints, and skin texture are laser-etched. Refrigeration makes them last for about six weeks. Unrefrigerated, they last for about two days. They'll get you off planet, and that's about it"
"Where do you get something like this?" Robin asked.
"One of the Malloys' legitimate businesses is a chain of nursing homes," Fixer said, and went back to the freezer to pull out another box. "I get skin samples and identities from the residents. They're good to use because they're alive but they're not going anywhere. As long as you've got a breathing body, DNA, and fingerprints, everything else is just paperwork. The gloves themselves I make on medical apparatus I modified myself."
"You're pretty handy," Robin said.
"Thanks," Fixer said. "It's nice that my college education is not completely wasted." He handed the second box to Robin, who stared at it, and back at Fixer.
"Women's DNA in those," Fixer said. "Because, genetically speaking, one size does not fit all."
Fixer helped Creek and Robin with the gloves and trimmed off excess material, so that the gloves went midway between the elbow and the shoulder. Fixer had both of them bend their arms and put their palms up; he tugged at their gloves to line up the fingerprints and then brought out what looked like a pair of calipers and placed them on either side of Creek's upper arm and pressed a button. Creek felt a mild thrum of electricity and then the constriction of the glove adhering tightly to his arms.
"Ow," Creek said.
"Relax," Fixer said, doing the same to Robin. "They'll give a bit in a few minutes. But better too tight than too loose. Now, let's deal with your heads." Fixer went away and returned a few minutes later with another box. "High-tech," he said, reaching into the box and handing a small plastic container of tiny circular tabs to Creek. "I apply these tabs to particular points on your face and head, and they tighten or relax the muscle groups underneath to alter your appearance. You'll look different enough from yourself that you'll get past facial-recognition scanners. Another short-term solution. The power on the tabs works for about six hours."
To Robin, he handed a pair of scissors and some hair dye. "Low-tech," he said. "You have great hair, my dear. But it's far too obvious." Robin took the scissors and dye and looked like she had just been told to cut her own throat. Fixer guided her to a bathroom and then came back to Creek. "I need to make a few calls," he said. "I need to call in a few favors."
"Thank you," Creek said. "I really appreciate it."
"They're not favors for you," Fixer said. "I can get you off planet under my own steam. But I have a feeling you've just qualified me for a long, necessary, and possibly permanent vacation. That's going to require calling in some markers."
"Sorry about that," Creek said.
"Don't be too sorry," Fixer said. He dug out Creek's anonymous credit card and handed it back to him. "You're paying for it. And I don't mind telling you I'm putting a hell of a markup on my services tonight." Fixer headed up the stairs; Creek pulled out his communicator and made a call of his own to Brian.
"You're very popular," Brian said, again without preamble. "In the last hour or so there's been about 2,000 attempts to hack your system, some of them actually pretty good."