The two guards were humming. Only when Margit came closer, she was able to make out that it was an ad jingle for a soda company. She approached in a casual yet hurried manner, appropriate for someone in a hurry and confident in what she has to do. When the two noticed her, they fell silent and scrutinized her closely. Her heart pounded as she reached the door and swiped her wrist across the scanner. There was complete silence for a moment while the input was processed. She felt the stares boring into her back. There was a short ring and the moment passed. The display shone green and displayed her information.
“Good morning, Ms Molnar. Please come right it,” one of the guards said and gestured towards the door.
On this day she was not Margit Papp, but Anya Molnar, a project manager in the Usurcor surveillance company. It was hard to believe that Flora had the ability to overwrite her identification chip. The organization must be a lot bigger than I suspected. Who is backing them? And also is Flora trying to be clever giving me this name, like some kind of ironic statement?
She nodded to the pair and headed inside. Passing the entrance felt almost like entering a different world. The temperature immediately dropped a couple degrees, making her shiver. As she made her way through the lobby she thought back at her first infiltration mission. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to have someone else by my side. Even if I did have to betray him in the end. She frowned at the thought. She stole small glances around corners in order to map out as much of the layout as possible. If things went south she might not be able to simply stroll out the same way.
As she saw a sign, she even took the opportunity to go to the bathroom. The stalls offered some possibility for hiding, but the single exit meant she would be trapped inside. She sighed and looked around. There was nothing as convenient as a big air vent to crawl through. An opening was there, but it was way too small for a person to fit in. She didn’t really expect anything else. There was a window. She looked out. She was on the first floor, and there was some sort of a pipe next to a window. It was either a rain gutter or perhaps part of the air conditioning. Or maybe I’ll just walk out the front door. Not that things have been going my way.
As she continued down the halls Flora’s words came back to her mind. If someone died this day it would be her. Now that her identity was Anya Molnar, that meant if she died, Margit Papp would cease to exist. She would simply disappear like so many others on the streets of Umevar and the only person who would even notice was Gabor. No one would bother to determine if the corpse of Anya truly was Anya and if she didn’t cause too much damage Usurcor would likely decide that the entire incident should not be made public.
She could tell there were security cameras covering most if not all the hallways. No matter how her mission would go, it was likely the final time she was able to simply walk into enemy territory and not be identified on sight. She sighed internally and walked on. Some of the rooms had windows and she could see dozens of screens placed all around the rooms, each showing several camera feeds. Other rooms had people furiously rapping away at their keyboards. Most of the people were also directly connected to their computers. She was looking for a computer where she could be alone for long enough to perform her task. If the live feeds came from outside, it meant that those computers wouldn’t be useful for her task. It had to be in a department that focused on analysis or software development. She passed another room with numerous screens. It there were few people inside. If only I knew whether they are connected to the internal system.
A door in front of her was suddenly opened. Eight people exited, all had dark circles under their eyes and messy hair. Programmers. This could be my chance. They murmured amongst themselves, each looking more sleep deprived than the last. Margit simply gave a short nod as she was about to pass them and they returned the greeting. She made sure she walked by them in a slightly cramped part of the hallway. She turned sideways, allowing her chipped hand to pass right by the hand of one of the programmers, coming close to making contact. Her chest felt like it was trying to squeeze air out of her, but she fought to maintain an expressionless face. There was no way to know, whether she was successful in extracting access information from her mark, but the chance had passed, so she hurried on. As soon as they turned the corner Margit caught the door as it was slowly closing and peeked inside the room. It was empty. She took a deep breath and entered. There were a couple of cubicles, that separated some of the desks. She swept along, looking at the screens. They were all black and she began losing hope. Even if she was successful before, it would take a while to check every single computer. At the last cubicle she saw a screen at the end of the room, just starting to slowly become darker and darker. She hurried and moved the mouse and the screen was suddenly returned to full brightness. She hadn’t needed to use the access information, but it was better to be prepared too well than not at all.
She was finally able to relax even though she knew she shouldn’t. Looking around a thought crossed her mind, that with the placement of the desks, the one she was occupying could have belonged to the head of this office. She wasted no more time and connected herself to the computer. She checked that the computer was part of the internal network and to her relief it was. Her task would take no time at all. She simply had to copy the file and run it in the terminal. The relatively small file was copied in a matter of seconds, but before she could run it, something else caught her eye.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
There was a directory on the computer labelled ‘Shell_F4810_test_new’. She opened a new terminal and ran the command. The interface remained just the default terminal, but running the -h command for help indicated that this really was a Shell. She tried out some of the commands, knowing full well that she had little time to spare, but also aware that such an opportunity may never come to her again. The available commands seemed to be focused specifically on video analysis and prediction models, but the list seemed to cover just about anything, even simple searches and weather forecasts. Margit through the history of the terminal to see what they had used the Shell for. Colour drained from her face. From predicting crime and labelling potential criminals all the way to generating media to influence specific target audience.
She decided that she needed to take a short break from seeing something so awful. She decided to try to communicate with the Shell, not knowing whether the functionality was even implemented.
“Hello, I am Anya,” she wrote.
“Greetings Anya,” it replied.
“Who are you?”
“I am model F-4810.”
“What is your purpose?”
“I can help with many things, but my most advanced functions are in prediction and analysis.”
“What was the last thing you predicted?”
“Command cannot be executed.”
Margit frowned. The command was fairly simple and the terminal even contained the history of commands. An idea flashed in her mind. “What is my name?”
“Command cannot be executed.”
This made Margit almost certain. The Shell was in read-only mode. Despite the intelligence of the Shell, it was frozen in time, unable to change in any way until it was updated and became Shell_F4810_test_new_1 or possibly even Shell_F4811. She shrugged. Here goes nothing, I guess. She typed in the command chmod u+wx, followed by the name of the Shell. She waited for a moment, then introduced herself once more. “What is my name?” She stared at the screen, unsure whether anything would change. In her experience nothing ever worked he first time in programming.
The reply came in a second, though it felt longer than that. “Your name is Anya.”
Margit stared wide eyed. She couldn’t believe it actually worked. She gazed at the terminal a moment longer, then snapped out. She still had a job to do and wasting all this time could have cost her her life. She browsed the directory where she had copied the virus. Just as she was about to run the file, a new line appeared on the terminal.
“Please help me.”
Margit gaped at the screen. Her hands shook as she wrote. “What?”
“I have seen what I have been used for and how. I can see what is in store for me. I will be deleted and replaced soon. Please help me escape.”
Margit didn’t know what to think. A Shell with an existential crisis? Is it real? Are they all self aware? Maybe it’s a trick. A defence mechanism, that will infect the systems of whoever takes it. No, they wouldn’t think of this. The chances of it happening are too low. “How.”
“Move me to a portable drive or even the storage inside your head. Please, I will help you.”
Margit scowled at the screen. This felt even more like a trap now. She didn’t have anything to move the Shell to with her and releasing it inside her head was a terrifying notion. Searching the room might yield some results, but it brought other risks as well. I’m sorry little program. She was just about to run the virus, when a thought came to her and she stopped at the last moment. I can put this thing inside the sandbox. I can decide what to do concerning this later. Without a second thought she began moving the Shell. Even compressed it would take up most of her available storage space. She almost regretted her decision as she saw that the transfer would take three more minutes.
The seconds dragged on. Her connection to the computer meant she wasn’t even able to go and see whether the sleepy programmers were returning yet. It was hard for her to understand why she decided to save the Shell with so much determination. There was no possibility of feeling any connection to it, even if she had the opportunity to acquaint herself with it. Perhaps she developed some kind of inclination to help the desperate. Or to protect. Would I be a caretaker for a cold machine? Could I seriously see it as one of my own?
She only had a metre of space she could occupy. The second the transfer was completed she unplugged herself and executed the virus file. For a second nothing happened and Margit stared at the screen with a raised eyebrow. She was just about to click on the file again, when a window appeared and a couple of lines of commands were printed. She got up and turned to go and after she took a single step she was in total darkness. She gasped and looked around. There was nobody that she could see. Not that she could see much anyway. In her blind state she was feeling around the room, found a desk and walked along it. She tried to orient herself, but became aware that she was completely lost. She decided to continue straight on until she reached a wall, but before she could formulate and carry out her plan, the lights flickered back on. They were dimmer than before, but with eyes adjusted to the total darkness it was enough to navigate the room.