Impulse

My computer was humming. Winter, the perfect season for intensive CPU work. My window was open letting in a breeze that had already iced the glass. Two weeks were all I needed, and I would have access to Solaron’s main network. For obvious reasons, I won’t be disclosing which campus I was targeting, but this was one of the corporation’s axis mundis, they wouldn’t emerge from this unscathed. I had penetrated past their obvious traps, the easy to exploit honeynet, the dummy servers and faux communications. Their DDoS protection was top tier, but I had already obtained one employee’s hashed password. The digest took my code a few hours to crack, in which time I had been working on my resume.

I was going to apply to be an employee at Solaron. And then I was going to hire myself. I was just steps away from finally spearing a white whale, one of this Campus’ central managers. From emails I had intercepted he was heading for CTO by the next quarter, but right now he was as good as my pawn.

The hash was cracked. I took a note in my black notebook. Had to keep all sensitive data online. People looked sometimes when I wrote in it at the bookstore, probably conflating me as a novelist, or some petty short story writer. Perfect. I had access to Selena’s username and password. Looks like she had used her daughter’s name and birthday. Very cute. I logged into her company email…

It was empty?

I looked through the records, her employee paystub and employment management page. She was still listed…

I got a notification from her inbox, it read:

“Every Summer”

I clicked, my head buzzing, hopped up on energy drinks, wired like soldier right on the border of Russia and Ukraine.

The body read:

“Every summer I reseeded my entire backyard. And every summer, weeds spring up like ambitious fools grasping for the sun. But one summer, I decided not to draw the weeds out. Instead I gave them space to grow

I’m going to give you that chance, M-”

No, nonononono. It was my name, written in plaintext.

Listed under it was my location, the apartment were I lived with my father, my school and major, and technical details on my laptop, everything.

Attached to the email was a pdf. I had scammed people with this very trick, putting malware into pdfs, but at this point the alarms were blaring, my scalp was furiously itchy, my tongue felt dry and the BCAAs in all the energy drinks concocted a foul metal taste.

I clicked.

It was a check, for 20,000 USD. The note on the check said: Meet me at the Denver Campus, state your name to the guard and ask for building B.

This was… insane. He hadn’t written much, he didn’t need to. This was Dijkstra Khan, a highly respected computer architect. This wasn’t nepotism, he was a true veteran, but I had thought I’d outplayed him. The first honeynet looked so obvious, I should have realized there were others!

The mistakes kept replaying in my head, but soon the sugar crash came. I had been up for 48 hours now, coffee and creatine and sugar keeping me barely conscious. I was ready to let go.

The next day, I woke up, I had a good breakfast. I wasn’t your typical hacker, or perhaps now your typical felon. I kept in shape and ate well. The energy drinks were still a staple, they gave me a rush I absolutely needed. I decided to overdress. He had caught me, so I was going out in style. I put on a 3-piece from my aunt’s wedding. I even dabbed perfume, administered eyedrops, tied my long hair back. I had been preparing for a job interview, not an interrogation, but if we were to battle this was the right armor in the corporate world.

I took a bus to the campus, saw college students near my age milling around, carrying sleek laptops with the worlds most cutting edge cores. I gave the guard my name and he rung the receptionist.

“She’s telling me to escort you, Mr… uh,”

“Shamir”

“Let’s go, Mr. Shamir”

He took me to the tallest building. I was getting a premonition, this would be a grand penthouse showdown. But he stopped at the 15th floor. Plenty high, especially for an accident.

“Just down this corridor, the door up ahead.”

It was the gullet of the beast. I saw his name card, emblazoned next to a mahogany door.

I opened it. It was a pleasant office, two seats that looked lavish and soft, and an ultrawide monitor obscuring the man I had come here to meet.

“Please sit.”

He had a clean setup, a nice mechanical keyboard, no-nonsense, but still fitted with custom switches.

“Would you like some green tea? This office has been the end of a long excursion for you.”

“Sure. Green tea sounds nice.”

He typed on his keyboard. I looked around the room. I had played false a million times in many offices. This one wasn’t even that impressive.

Dijkstra slid his monitor out of the way. Facing me was a well-groomed man, seemed to be of average build, his eyes were quite bright and together with the brow gave an impression of sharpness. His glasses too, which were wrought in fine metal, added to the look, a studied expression.

“I think you have quite the talent, Slive”

“So you know that too. Which forums, or IRC chats?”

“We’ll have time to discuss the games I play later. For now, do you accept my offer?”

“What offer? That bribe? The 20k? I don’t do this for money. I do this because your company ruins lives, it rips apart the environment, you’re dogs!”

“ Stop! Calm down. I know that Solaron has been moving in the wrong direction for a long time, but I want to fix that. I’m not trying to hire you, to coopt you, fool, I’m going to give you direction. Mentorship, a vector for your energy and talent!”

A knock on the door.

“Open it.”

I got up and opened it, facing me was a girl, or woman, maybe a year or two older than me.

“Here”

She passed a tray with two glasses of tea. I took it and placed it on the desk. I took a sip and a lungful of air.

“Listen, I understand your goals. And I’m going to help you. But change cannot happen today. I know you were planning on trying to eradicate Solaron’s backups. But you are ridiculously myopic, Solaron has a net income surpassing countries, countries you BOY. If you levelled every campus they could build it from the ground up!”

“So what, should I join you and start slurping up their paychecks?”

“No. We beat them”

“Ah yes, beat them from the insi-”

“No. We outclass them. We outproduce them, we OUTMACHINE them.”

“So that money… You want me to beat a business by becoming a business? And Solaron no less! You just spelled out how hopeless that was.”

“Today, it’s hopeless. Today, Solaron can rest on its laurels because it’s too big to fail. But, if you’ll forgive my somewhat condescending tone, you, my young sprout, cannot see the whole garden.”

“What is it that then?”

He got up from his chair and pointed

“Do you see that building?”

It looked to be in the corner of campus, under construction…

“That is the plan. It’s cutting edge research. I’m going to need a lieutenant.”

“How much green tea do I get?”

“Now you’re asking the right questions!”