Chapter Eighteen
“There! Look! They are the ones that caused all this!”
The crowd jeered, then pointed, and soon a few voices rose to many. They began stomping toward the building.
People were always quick to point fingers at the nearest thing they could blame, unveiling every ounce of the uncultured characteristics which they possessed.
Eva and Rosa removed their laboratory coats with the Halikkon emblems. They hid the m in her leather backpack while they made their way as far from the crowd as possible.
Her heart pounded, her chest ached, and the voices of the frustrated men and women grew louder. They struggled to keep their distance from the growing crowd on the other side of the fence, trying to escape to their car.
The mob made its way toward the gates, yelling and throwing things at the front entrance of the Team Halikkon’s facility. The lobby’s bullet-proof glass was the only defense against the menace advancing toward those inside.
Eva and Rosa could not believe their eyes. The protest was getting out of control. It had barely been two hours since the power went out, but the crowd had lost it.
The pair scrambled into their car, hoping it was still operational and attempted to start it, manually locking the doors.
“Battery, four percent. Cannot engage primary systems, Error—Emergency Protocol. Do you wish to initiate the emergency process?” the AI asked.
“Yes!” Eva shouted.
“Fail-over to mechanical drives initiated,” the AI reported, as the legacy mini-combustion engine began slowly turning over, churning out a painfully slow clanking throng, finally giving way to a loud roar as it started.
“Thank God!”
“Head to the rear of the compound, the delivery exit. I’ll have to deactivate the security lock manually,” Rosa shouted.
Eva and Rosa sped away from the gate toward their home, hoping and praying that Viktoriya was safe.
“Battery charging, alternator as electrical source engaged. Minimum systems online. Estimated time to destination, twenty-two minutes. Please be mindful of operating the vehicle manually. Autonomous systems are not available. You must obey all—”
* * *
Viktoriya had finally unlocked the panel after a few tiny cuts to her fingers. Feeling her way, she found the two wires connected to each other. She used her nail file to try cutting them.
“Ouch!” she cursed as the metal edge of the opening of the electrical panel sliced her already sore finger. She sucked on it for a moment, trying to ease the pain, but it helped very little.
She pressed her bedroom door’s wire against two wires from the droid, and the green blip flashed on the door, causing it to jolt open just enough for her to make it through.
She navigated the house using the green light, making her way until she came to the laboratory.
The heavy glass door slowly gave way for her as she pushed it sideways, revealing the hallway. She took slow steps down the stairs, the sound of her feet against the frigid floor resonating with the darkness.
She felt her hair rise and could swear for a moment she heard someone breathe. She trembled, perhaps from the cold, but she continued down to the laboratory.
Oh, I think that was my own breathing.
* * *
Zho, Aura, and the rest of the team had finally reached the server room. With James’s help and the new bacterium he had been working on for the Mars project, they had dissolved through the digital lock, breaking into the secured room.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“What now, Portal?” Zho requested.
“The attack code has corrupted one of the server’s storage blades. Unfortunately, I cannot pinpoint it myself remotely. Plug me to the correct blade, so I may track how far the defect has traveled and attempt to remediate the vulnerability.”
“The right one?” Aura exclaimed.
“There are over a hundred blades here. How on Earth do you think we can find the right one?” she asked, raising two fingers on each hand, making visual quotes.
Zho interrupted, “We’ve got to start from somewhere. Enable DataDrop on your phones, guys. I will send the app code for Portal to your devices. Then, we can all split up and check from different ends to converge in the middle.”
They each brought out their phones and connected, as Zho shared the AI with them.
“I’m not putting any of your code on my phone whatsoever, thanks,” Edmund demanded.
* * *
Viktoriya reached the end of the lower stairs, making her way to the wall beside her. She reached down and turned on the switch of a legacy computer, backup power-pack.
The lights on the unit flickered on. She exhaled deeply before placing the small droid next to her on the side table.
She stared at the long desk with an old, large tablet with the cursor waiting patiently with a bleeping red line at the top end of the display. She pulled the chair out from underneath the lab desk and then geared it high enough so she could view the screen.
Next, she pulled out a mini-keyboard, wirelessly connecting it to the device. The welcome screen appeared from the menu.
She knew from her studies that Artificial Intelligence was just lines of code. Noxxor had even tried teaching her those lines of code to see if they could work on her emotions. Even though the AI predicted nothing would come of it, she had been optimistic.
The big, clunky tablet was not like those in her school. Perhaps that was one reason it was still active. And even though she was not acquainted with it, she had succeeded in typing out the long series of code she thought would revive her Artificial Intelligence.
But it did not work.
Viktoriya began fidgeting with her fingers, pressing her thumb into her palm, trying to regain her composure and focus.
She thought that if she disconnected Noxxor from the central home server, set her to run through the satellite, and rebooted her, she just may come back online, restoring all the data from the connection and the power in the house.
“Where is the… um, telephone thing? And it has a cable, like this one.”
She had found an archaic legacy modem along with its POTS cable and turned to the wall behind her where there were several types of ports on a connection panel.
“There, that fits.”
She turned back to her keyboard, making sure to type the code carefully before committing it, having to start over from the beginning a few times for errors and then corrections.
“Commit.”
The modem began screeching an eight-bit melody of conversation, sending her typed commands over the frail copper wires.
All that remained was for the command to reach the server through the satellite.
* * *
Team Halikkon continued their struggle to discover which of the blades had been the root source for the vulnerability that had taken them down, but as Herculean as their work had proved, they were losing hope.
They still had a very long way to go, and it took more than a minute for Portal to analyze a single server blade. They had heard faint shatters of glass against the front entrance from whatever protest was going on outside.
A green light bleeped in the middle of the room, dimly illuminating the central server box, showing an external connection attempt.
“Warning, someone is trying to re-access one of the server blades,” Portal said from all their phones at once.
Zho quickly unplugged hers, racing toward the center of the room. She plugged the phone into the port. After a minute, Portal’s voice came again.
“It’s custom Noxxor code, 0082 AI unit, from a T-HxP tablet 2009, sourced from Dr. Kuzland’s home. A very outdated version. From a… modem.”
“A what?” Zho shouted.
“Those still exist, really? How is it even running?”
“It’s Viktoriya! It has to be!” Aura exclaimed.
“Apparently, they do,” Portal responded. “The human seems to be inputting the code manually by keystroke.”
“I have now gained access to the server blade being requested. It is Sec-11 secured.”
“Shall I grant the external HxP tablet 2009 access to our connection through the satellite link?”
“Yes!” Zho shouted.
“No!” Edmund countered.
“Access granted,” Portal responded.
The team stared at Edmund. Finally, he turned his back and walked away while shouting, “As you are aware, granting a thirteen-year-old entry to the world’s most protected server Collective is a UiN crime. It’s not a bloody plaything.”
“One of the most protected systems just got hacked by God knows who. And that kid there, our own Viktoriya, has just reached it using an outdated tablet, manually typing code into the damned thing, on a POTS connected modem. I am not sure any of us here can do that. Can you?” Zho retorted.
Edmund squashed his lips tightly together and pressed his fingers hard against his eyebrow.
“She is chatting with me!” Zho interrupted.
“Hi, it’s Viktoriya! Viktoriya Kuzland! My mom and dad work there. My home intelligence is offline. The problem came from the server blades there, and I would like it if you grant me access. I can’t get in. I am alone at home, and I need it to keep me company. And it is dark here.”
“Ask her if she knows which server was hacked?” Aura said.
“She’s just a kid. What does she know about connecting to server blades?” Edmund yelled, stretching his eyes as wide as they could go, now grasping his forehead with both his palms. “You should hear yourselves, scientists—chatting online with… with a girl?”