From Deus Ex Effing Machina
They discussed troubleshooting attempts for fifteen minutes. In the process Carol dumped,
via the internet, the entire memory of the suspect MAGE to a USB stick, then transferred the
stick to an isolated test unit at her workstation. A dedicated monitor scrolled through the
MAGE’s memory. If there was a hack, it was now her prisoner in the test unit, totally isolated
from the rest of the world.
“Bill, I’m scanning through the hex display of your memory dump. There’s no trace of any
conventional hack. All the machines are running identical software, so it can’t be the update.
And even the best known hack would have left traces somewhere in memory or the system logs.
So it looks like something brand new. If you can hang on the line for a minute, I’m going to go
talk with my boss. I think he’ll declare a Hacking Red Alert. We’ll put together a Red Team to
investigate this immediately. Lives depend on our software, so we take this sort of thing very
seriously.”
“Good,” said Bill. “That’s what I was hoping for. I’ll hold.”
Carol put Bill on hold, and looked closely at the last line on the screen of her isolation unit,
the line of text, ‘Bang the rocks together, guys.’ She had stopped the program clock. If there was
a hack, it was now deactivated, inert, totally in her control. In techie parlance, she owned it.
There is no greater level of control. It couldn’t flip a single bit without her telling it to. It was
dead, and soon she would dissect it, bit by bit. To her this was right and proper. This was how
computers worked, and should work, with her in total control. There could be no other way, now
or ever.
She pursed her lips, and said softly, “I don’t understand you yet. But I will.” She grinned a
grin of confidence and self-satisfaction, and with something in her eyes that clashed with her
Tinkerbell appearance: merciless dominance. She whispered, “The Red Team will analyze the
shit out of you.”
The instant she whispered that, before her mouth even closed, the line of text changed. It now
read, ‘It won’t make any difference.’
Carol screamed.
_________________________________________________________________
The Colonel keyed his mike and calmly transmitted on the International Air Distress
frequency. “This is Red Cross flight 101 on Guard. We are on a rescue mission, protected under
international law. Stand down. We are unarmed.”
The Colonel was lying, of course. Though a politician would say he was misquoted, or
joking. The Russians, alas, are not known for their sense of humor.
Weps was also calm, yet urgent, speaking fast. “Colonel! Incoming! Lordy! Twenty-one
incoming missiles. Closing at Mach 10. Twenty-three seconds to impact. And our shields are
taking hits from long range [redacted] weapons.” The River Song shuddered silently. “Ouch!
Heavy hits. They’ve got some hairy-knuckle [redacted] down there. Thirteen seconds.”
... “Weapons free! Pilot! Get us the hell out of here!”
__________________________________________________________________
They heard the soldiers before they saw them. The four Russian grunts were led by a
competent sergeant who the women had watched before. Hagar’s jaw tightened when she
glimpsed him. Under the sergeant’s direction the soldiers left the beaten path to reconnoiter the
creek. The men stayed spread out about five meters apart in the broken underbrush, close enough
for mutual support, far enough for wider area coverage. This sergeant ran his team by the book.
No shortcuts. No beaten paths.
They made a lot of noise stomping their way through the underbrush. They slashed vines
with machetes. They smashed bushes with boots. They scraped through thorns. It slowed them
down. And one or another of them was always swearing about some snag or stump or thorn or
bug. But the sergeant was relentless about performing a thorough search.
One of his men was headed straight for Hagar and Carol.
Hagar slipped her K-Bar knife from its sheath. Then she took a deep breath and snuggled
deeper into the muck.
Carol saw her do that, so also held her breath and snuggled into the muck. She didn’t have a
knife. She wouldn’t have known what to do with it if she’d had one. So she just wriggled deeper.
Hagar didn’t pray. She was technically Jewish, but functionally atheist. So no prayers. She
didn’t even bother to hope. Hope was a waste of time. Instead she planned, running scenarios in
her mind, a thrust to the heart under the ribcage, grab his weapon and shoot the others. If he does
this, I’ll do that. If he moves here, I’ll move there. I’ll dodge and weave to the next and the next
... until they kill me.
The women were too deep in the muck and reeds to see him. But they heard him coming
closer with each step. A soft crackle in the underbrush five meters away.
A soft thump on a tuft of dry grass four meters away.
A soft squish in mud three meters away, along with a brief curse about the mud.
They no longer shivered. Too much adrenaline for shivering. The women lay as still as lumps
of muck. As still as death.
A wet squelch in deeper mud two meters away. A louder curse.
A scrape of reeds and soft splash in muck one meter away.
A soft squelch of muck and startling pressure as a boot stepped squarely on Carol’s butt.