To grasp at nothing

or, another fragment of Precipice

Hello, lovely reader.

Another fragment of Precipice has been etched onto the page. These fragments represent short pieces that form a larger story. Don’t be concerned about the order in which you approach these. I want you to read them with ease, uncaring of what details fall into place. Eventually it’ll come together (will it?), but we’ve not reached that stage yet. The jigsaw is still being cut.

You can find more fragments here.

Source: Substack image generator

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The dangerous part of this is everything that comes now: the intrusion. Skirt the physical, swim instead in the electric waters of the city I so recently glimpsed. In the digital bowels of The Kernel, hidden somewhere within that building’s network, lurk the files and correspondence Cloud has asked me to find. The proof, he said. The proof of the lies.

I will slice them out. Scurry them away.

My fingers rest upon keys, eyes up at the clouds. The night’s dark shrouds are my final barrier. Warv’s probe—the glinting and slender cylinder that will show me the way through—sits ready. After a final pause, I begin to ping the skies, letting the probe and antennae modify my signal, tweaking the intensity so I can achieve a steady penetrance, holding back so I don’t fry the system or alert it to my presence. I wait, nervous, watching the screen, expectant of a slew of connections from the city … but all I see is static, the noise of the storms, written out like some garbled story, showing nothing, no hint, no network, no presence of the city that squats upon my own.

Fear arrives, unbidden. The probe is worthless. It’s empty, a sham, a move deliberate from Warv, engineered to let me fail, a pathetic attempt to save me.

No. He wouldn’t. Warv wouldn’t.

Would he?

I amplify the magnitude, pushing just a little, wary that if I punch through with too much strength I risk being detected, yet I do it anyway, watching, pushing a little more, as—there!—it hits. My screen is flooded with connections as relief floods my body. I’m in. I see tens, a hundred, more if I move, but I don’t; I hold, sure of my position, scrolling the list until … until … The Kernel’s public access. It’s right there, right there on my screen.

I exhale, look to the probe’s signal. It’s steady. The clouds move yet the signal holds near-perfect, making me smile—for me and for Warv. Then I check the umbrella. It hangs there, hovering like some dark creature, my ward from the rain as I sit perched on this ledge, legs dangling above the city.

“Here goes,” I mutter, and begin to rattle off commands, the process so fluid and intuitive I feel detached. My eyes see the screen, my fingers type, but between them there is no direct control, the process flowing from me, line after line, devoid of hesitation as I initiate a mock injection at another site, one owned by the governance of Vi, picking it for no reason other than my eyes happened to settle across its address, a desirable point of weakness, something to achieve a fleck of interference once my presence becomes known, because it will, I have no doubt, because I am not so naïve to think this can be done without detection, so I’ll be fast, so fast I won’t be locked out, so fast and with no traces, and even if I leave traces there’ll be no way, no conceivable way a hack could originate from outside of the city, from below it, from within Siridan itself, from upon a shaft in the sky.

I type, I flow, I see and understand, see that The Kernel has little protection—unsurprising; it is a public building, after all—so I dig, deeper, deeper within and—hah!—I find what Cloud had suspected, that the director, one Mondo Dovontor, a Rutan name I would bet my life, has … something … a second layer and … a decent attempt at hiding, and if it weren’t for Cloud’s tip maybe I wouldn’t have found it, or maybe I would (I would), but it doesn’t matter, I have found his little cache of files, hidden within, and even though it’s encrypted I will deal with that later, because first I need to get in, properly in, so let me in, so let me—

From the corner of my eye, the probe’s reading wavers with a sharp spike. I stare at the graph, see it resume its steady fluctuations.

I return to my task.

I push, daring, finding my way until a block, a no-go that’s made to read like a dead-end directory, a sneaky thing, but so obvious, so obvious to me, and I realise I have no notion of this Mondo, but already I have an image, him hunched over his desk, casting a cautious eye before accessing what’s hidden and … no, more likely he has his back against the wall, desk facing the door, no chance of anyone walking in without him realising, and perhaps there’s a plant on his desk, something exotic and unknown, grown within the very building he takes such pride over and he—

Thunder rumbles. The probe’s signal spikes. Twice this time, which makes me look up.

My jaw drops. My eyes go wide at the sheer size of what I see. From the east, a giant and voluminous cloud crackles and bursts with lightning, its size ten times larger than those around it. This was not on Warv’s forecast. This wasn’t on anyone’s forecast. I stare a little longer, trying to gauge its speed and direction, yet all I can conclude is that it is fast. Very fast.

The computer’s screen flashes and my eyes are drawn back. My little mock insertion has been located and is being dealt with. Nothing but a ruse, they’ll find. It won’t be enough though, and already I’m behind, the storm’s distraction halting—

A flash, a great blinding fork finding its way to the surface, followed quickly—far too quickly—by a deep clap of thunder.

Too much time wasted. My fingers go back to the keys. The probe’s signal wavers as clouds move and tumble, as the wind picks up. Yet the signal still holds.

My fingers flurry, searching out a way around, as I … as I rattle off a few commands, I … an attempt to sniff at it, test out ways in without betraying my presence, so then I can—

Cold rain lashes against my back. The umbrella has moved, its motors whirring at high speed, fighting the increasing winds. I reach up, grab the cord and pull it back into place. “Hang in there,” I plead. The storm has advanced. It’s larger. It’s moving straight toward me.

There’s no time, I realise. There isn’t a way for me to do this discreetly. With an odd mix of resignation and terror, I prepare my only option: a total spoof of system privileges, an action that will result in near-instant detection and a hasty, forced exit. I have no choice. Get in, get out, and—my eyes flit first to the storm, then to the strip of metal I straddle—hope I’m still alive at the end.

The umbrella shifts, rain pelts my back. The sky flashes, illuminating Siridan below.

My hand goes to my pack, pulls out the drive and jacks it into the side of the computer, all before I begin a system copy of the entire Kernel’s network. An insane, stupid move. I execute the command, fingers flicking away from the keys as though they were hot. I dare another glance to the storm. It’s so close now. The mass of black surges and swirls like it is chased by some terror within.

The wind picks up pace. The probe’s signal falters and I’m certain it’s going to drop out, but somehow, through sheer luck or something else, it holds. On the screen, files transfer at speed, flowing down through the sky, down to my computer, into it and across to the drive jammed into its side, and already I see my presence is known. Very known. I’m being traced. It doesn’t matter. What will they find? A stray signal, originating from an unknown location on a network that shouldn’t exist. But the transfer? If they shut that down …

I begin to initiate another diversion, a desperate attempt to stop my connection from being cut, all as the winds rage and the rain comes in great sheets. The umbrella fights it, motors squealing, juddering in the air and … and then, with a sudden, casual dip, it is gone, its departure almost graceful as it tumbles away. A distant, calm part of my mind wonders where it will land. 

Water hits me, soaking me as my hood is torn back, my computer’s screen now drenched. All I see are the traces of Warv’s graphs and lines of my code, refracted through perpetual tears, renewed and renewed as the rain falls. With each icy blast my focus shifts to squeezing tight around the jutting ledge, grasping the computer in my hands, hoping. Hoping it will all transfer in time. The screen prints off a scramble of text I cannot read. Lightning flashes, leaving me blind, a streak of fiery white repeated each time I blink. And then the wind—perhaps unhappy it cannot shift this creature clinging helpless in its path—drops to near nothing, affording me a few haggard breaths, letting me shift position and wipe at the screen, to see that my connection still holds.

As though it had never stopped, the wind resumes, swirling and gusting now from below, throwing me not sideways but up, jolting my body several feet into the air, the computer jerked up by the strap looped around my wrist. As I slam back down—legs somehow finding their prior position—the computer cracks against the metal ledge, smashing the screen, the whole thing flying off the side to be left dangling by the lone strap. The drive, the entire point of this idiocy, remains in place, out of reach as the computer twists in the air, pulled downward by gravity’s will and the weight of the probe and antennae. The strap is slipping, I realise. The loop, slick with water, slides across the back of my hand toward the knuckles. I try to bring my other hand over to reach down, but in the process I nearly send myself after the umbrella, my movement making the strap slip further.

“Fuck it,” I shout, thinking I have only one option, my eyes focussed on the drive, locked onto it as I flick my wrist up, yanking hard, never letting my eyes off it as my hand snatches out, as the loop finds its freedom, as the computers drops away.

“I was gonna break you anyway,” I say, watching as it plummets through the air until it is lost to sight.

I shut my eyes, press my back to the shaft. I am ignorant of the rain that beats against me, oblivious now to the violence of the storm; I am unaware of the cold, the way my entire body shivers with spent adrenaline; I am thoughtless to how stupid that was. I don’t care. For in my hand, wrapped safely in curled fingers, is the drive, blinking to signal it is full.