BOUNCE
WOOOOOSH
These intercity train noises just don't seem to have the same effect as "chugga chugga" did when I was 7.
Hmm, Ten years of maturing and this is what I'm up to. Contemplating the merits of train noises.
I turn my head up from my laptop, tilt my wrap-around shades 10º southwards and observe my fellow passenger for the 1-hour trip enter. We'd just stopped off at the Leeds station so I'm guessing this guy's a Leedinian? Leedoner? Leedite?
Whatever he is, he's more than likely of Leeds origin.
What appears before me is a 6'2, slim weed of what is probably human. He's wearing denim jeans, faded and larger than a World War 2 parachute. He couldn't imprint himself more with the phrase "mosher" if he lugged round a sign saying as much.
Scruffy trainers, probably 3 years if not more of age, gone through a few skateboards too by the looks of the long board-looking thing hanging from his side.
Long hair. I mean it. So long if he knelt he'd drape the scraggy strands on the floor and probably come back up with plats.
Wearing thing spectacles, reminds me a picture of Lennon I once saw...only with clear plastic instead of purple drug-lovin' glass.
Now the piss-de-resist-ons! What's he got on his mid-section? A hoody bearing a Kult symbol.
The symbol of the decker klan.
He's a decker. Hacker. Computer Geek! Someone I can talk to who won't just wanna know about what I do and who I'm fu....fornicating with.
But more importantly, he's a probably off to the meeting, same as me.
Oh bugger...forgot to talk again...what's it been? 20, 30 seconds?
"Hey...ummm....you're a decker!" I state more than I ask.
"Oh hey...aah...yeah? You're with the kult, huh?" he throws back with a voice that sounds like its had to fight its way through 3 separate levels of honey, maple syrup and tar.
"Yeah..umm...I'm a decker. Names Vampyre, you?"
"Vampyre! Hey dude, its me. Werka22..."
"Werka! Jesus man...didn't think I'd meet ya like this...."
"Yeah. Shit, I mean. What a small world, huh? Suppose it isn't even worth sayin' we're both off ta Dex's meetin'."
"Well duh...heh..which is about what exactly? I don't have a clue...you?"
"Woah now, dude. Yer gettin' ahead of me there. We got bout 40 mins before we hit Manchester and I could do with a nap. Been smokin' a few on an all night if you know what I..uh...heh...mean." he smiles and winks.
Of course I know what he means. I knew what he meant before I even knew who he was.
"Sure, take a 20 min nap and we'll chat before the train dumps us in Manchunian central."
Over the next 20 minutes I return to the code and 'Net messages on my laptop, and the train RUMBLE, BOUNCE and WOOOOOSHes its way onto Manchester.
"SnoooOOoooOOOoOOoooooree....hmmmm....*snort*...Huh? Haaaa...what times it, dude?"
"2:42...exactly 20 minutes since your nap began. Nice timing."
"Heh..cheers."
"You said we'd talk?"
"Yeah....I did..umm...yeah...well, I've got a sorta story to tell."
"A story hey?" What the hells he been smoking? "Least it'll make the journey go quicker."
"Uh..yeah...spose yer right. Anyway. It like starts 2 months ago. I'm doing a crack..."
"You're what?!" A crack. An illegal hack into a computer system, bypassing security to get information that isn't yours.
"Yeah..I know..but its like...this system. It was this Accounting process server in Massachusetts. A mate of mine said it was offered up by the admin as a challenge. No one could crack it. So my mate had me..um..try. So I did. So I'm checkin' the system out like...doing random scans from different locations. Never giving myself away, when suddenly my system reports a return scan. It shouldn't have been able to. I hid myself behind shitloads of different 'Net locations. But still, the damned server scanned me. After this I know it's more than the ordinary business-bunch piece of kit and I go for the full haul. I bring up my big list 'o' aliases and bounce my data trail of each one."
"..erm..fancy makin' a long story short?"
"Shit dude...this ain't a laughing matter, I'm serious here.
You want a short story?
I got in! I got in and found something that shouldn't be there. Some fucking accounting system! Multiple encryption layouts, intrusion detection, semi-intelligent programs..the lot. And at the centre, a program that shouldn't exist. Everything on the system was pointing to it. And the software? Big pieces of data which when I tried to rip out the system, it just didn't convert. It was beyond gibberish. Look at it in Hex, Binary, ASCII, Arabic or Ancient Sumerian and the bastard thing still wouldn't make sense. The only data coming back to me from the server was an assumption. The software was converting itself close enough to something we could understand and it still came out fragmented and just complete bollocks!"
"You're rambling again...so..you found some garbage data? So what?" I wouldn't even admit it to myself ordinarily, but I'm scared. I'm scared because I can sense the crap about to explode from this thing.
"It was garbage. It was data that couldn't be anything. But there it was. Random. But not. Normally I'd say encryption, but the only way to figure out what was to go through the system itself. I loaded through; it was on a separate device. Some weird device with a connection I couldn't even identify. A quick look through the systems commands and I hit lucky. The program just loaded with a simple '-s' command. Just that. And when it loaded it gave me a simple line of text: I am Adam.
It told me it was Adam and then it was a computer system in Massachusetts. And that it was sentient. It knew who it was, what it was, where it was and why.
It was an AI. And for the past month I haven't slept."
"You're either shittin' me or you're high.
The alternative is currently beyond what I can think...umm....we're nearly there. Better get ready."
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