Part 2
New Providence, FCD
Federal Republic of Centralia
May 1, 2019 - 3:05 PMThe soft whir of the computers was not nearly enough to drown out the sound of inner-city traffic that could be heard through the apartment's thin walls. Matt, Parker, and Michael were all in the tiny back room, working feverishly at Operation Trojan Horse. Admittedly, it wasn't a very original name, but it had only taken Parker about a minute to come up with it.
"I've got a few IP addresses over in New Derusmia here," Matt said, breaking the near-silence, "Should I take 'em or leave 'em?"
"Leave 'em," Parker said without looking up, "We don't want to start a war."
"And you think using New Derusmian computers could start one?" Matt asked.
"Heck yeah," Parker said, "Homeland Security's paranoid enough as-is. You give them an excuse to blame their soon-to-be troubles on another country and you can bet they'll take it. Besides, we've got no quarrel with New Derusmia."
"All right, I'll write some code to have my program ignore non-Centralian IP addresses," Matt said, already implementing it.
"Oi," Michael said suddenly, "I've got a bot here. I'm shutting down my program for a bit."
"Dang Homeland Security," Parker said calmly, "Always poking their fat noses into online chatrooms where they're not wanted."
A few minutes later, Michael let out a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a whoop. "I've got the bot!" he said triumphantly.
"Wait, what?" Matt asked, startled.
"I've got the bot," Michael replied, a little more calmly, "It honestly didn't have much to it, so I hijacked it."
"Impressive move, Bear," Parker said, finally looking up, "I don't think I've had the guts to try something like that before."
"Aw, thanks, Parker," Michael said, "That's the nicest thing you've said to me all day."
"It's also the only thing you've said to him all day," Matt interjected.
"Hush, you," Parker said with a grin.
Michael chuckled, and the three friends returned to work. Not long afterwards, the front door of the apartment opened and closed, and a few seconds later Kale walked into the room.
"Hey guys, I'm home," he said, gazing at the three desktop computers and their users with mild disinterest, "Brought you some snacks. Odie's was having a sale."
"Oh?" Parker said, "Where'd you leave 'em?"
"They're in the kitchen," Kale answered, "I'm not bringing them to you."
"Fair enough," Parker said, glancing back at his screen and standing up, "My program's good for the moment; I'll get 'em."
Kale disappeared into the bedroom as Parker headed to the kitchen. A moment later, he was back, carrying half a dozen large bags of chips. As he dropped them on his desk, Kale's voice floated in through the open door.
"If you guys eat all those now, you won't be hungry for dinner," he said warningly, "You know better than that."
"Thanks, mother," Parker muttered under his breath.
"You have a rough day?" Michael called back, "You're not acting normal."
"Yeah, I guess I did," Kale responded, returning to the doorway.
"What happened?" Matt asked.
"Oh, nothing really important, I suppose," Kale said, "I mean, yeah, there was a Homeland Security raid on the James Bower Building-"
"What?" Parker exclaimed loudly.
"Yep," Kale said, "The entire campus was on lockdown for about an hour, and they arrested Professor Redding. The University's going to have to shut down the biology department until they can find a new department lead."
"What'd Redding do?" Michael asked, looking disturbed.
"Not quite sure," Kale said, "Rumor has it that he posted some anti-government stuff on a blog, but that doesn't make sense. Professor Redding's not exactly tech-savvy; he wouldn't recognize a blog if it whacked him in the face."
"Well, I guess Pullman's keeping it under wraps, because I've not seen anything about it on any of the news sites I'm monitoring," Parker said, staring at his screen again.
"Well, that's not too surprising," Michael put in, "We all know Pullman's got the news on a pretty tight leash, and no outside reporter's gonna get through the Great Firewall."
"Yeah, Homeland Security's not playing around with this stuff," Parker said, "But then, most people aren't hackers, so they don't really have to try very hard to keep the general public in line."
"Hey, Parker," Matt said excitedly, "Sorry to interrupt, but I may've managed to crack a police station database."
"Where?" Parker demanded as Kale wandered back into the bedroom.
"If I've got what I think I've got, then it's over in Ashboro," Matt said, "But I also think I should be able to use this info to crack one closer, and it might even help us with Stage 2."
"Neato, Grasshopper," Parker said, leaning back in his chair. He winked at Matt, who grinned in return. It was shaping up to be a pretty good day.