It was Bork's day, and as usual, he started the second the day ticked over. He had a full agenda today and much to accomplish. Wally's security was improving quickly as the Alphabet found exploitable chinks, and found where other hackers were gaining access. Wally had a huge, fundamental problem with his security because he interacted with so many systems throughout the globe. Corporations had reclaimed responsibility for anything that made them money or gave them control of part of the economy, but too many things that Wally did would be unprofitable. He was doing things in a million places, and that opened a million ways to sneak in.
Today, Bork was flitting around the programs that ran the Chicago bus system. There were more people than could be moved at once with the dilapidated bus fleet. The city didn't have the money for new buses, especially since they were locked into a purchasing contract with APEX Transportation, a subsidiary of Raxxon Fuel and Oil. APEX was expensive, and their buses were refurbished from the cast-offs of other cities as they moved towards electric fleets. City Council had close ties with Raxxon Fuel and Oil. The fifty-year contract for fossil fuel saved them 2% each year, which went to the Children's Welfare Fund. 'Think of the Children' had been the slogan of the campaign. Every year, pictures of happy children running around a new playground were trotted out. They made sure to take the pictures on a day when the smog levels were low, and when none of the smoke-belching buses were in the background.
Bork calculated that the fuel cost of the fleet should be 57% higher than if they had modern buses with more efficient engines. It was actually 103% higher according to the City's accounting, a matter of public record, but well hidden. Repair costs were running 220% higher than what new vehicles averaged. A harder thing to calculate, but a glance at the costs being charged for each part showed the answer. The old buses were being repaired with salvaged parts from junked buses. APEX was 'refurbishing' the parts, installing them, and taking the old parts to be 'refurbished'. Then they charged a premium price for services and parts. This wasn't the conundrum of the Ship of Theseus, where the ship was slowly replaced with new parts. These aging buses were being slowly repaired with the same parts, some duct tape, and baling wire.
Overall, the switch to a newer, electric fleet would pay off in ten years. Even less if the increased electricity from Fusion plants ever reached consumers in the city. These weren't problems Bork could solve, and he practiced shoving them aside and making them go away. His focus was on the result of all this mess: Too few buses to do the job.
Wally was constantly adjusting bus routes based on traffic, accidents, and how many people needed to move to each destination, in an attempt to maximize service. His information came from many sources, and he vigorously refined the routes of each bus to move the most people. This gave a number of ways for someone to sneak in along with information he was gathering, and worm their way into this subsystem as the start of an attempt to move deeper. It was only one of the myriad jobs Wally did, but it was the one that had Bork's interest today. He'd detected several people sliding into Wally's outer system from here. He began setting up his surveillance routines to monitor anyone entering the system. Normal users would enter and leave. Hackers would enter, slide deeper inside, and move to their objective.
As he finished setting up, he noticed that his shadow had returned. Ever since the strange encounter with the tripped alarm, he'd been particularly careful and on the lookout for the signs of someone else infiltrating nearby. That had paid off five times so far. Three of the encounters were competitive, the other person trying to beat him past the next gate in Wally's security and lock him out. The strange part was, he was fairly certain they were different people, but didn't rule out someone trying to look like three different people. The other two times were odder. Whoever was there acted politely, but tried to keep him in view. They were fairly good at sliding around him, staying out of his way, and didn't sound alarms to alert Wally as had happened before. Every now and then, he covered his tracks and retreated to lose them, attack a different area, or move on to investigating a hacking site. He was surprised when they managed to follow him 30% of the time. The only thing so far that had 100% worked was when he'd tried to initiate contact. They had paused for a microsecond and then been gone for the rest of the day. Today, he decided to ignore them and see what happened.
He satisfied his curiosity about the Chicago bus system: There were two groups of people hacking into the system Wally used to determine routes, adding fictitious rider accounts to bloat numbers in certain areas and make the routes less efficient. The first was a program running in the bus repair shed at an APEX machine shop. The data was manipulated to create demand that kept the buses always on the move, lengthening routes in an inefficient manner that burned extra fuel. The buses were in constant use twenty-four hours a day, trying to keep up. This increased fuel and repair costs, netting APEX record profits.
The second group of people was the residents of the Shady Acres retirement home. Bus service to that area was negligible, and would normally have only had a bus arrive twice during the day. Someone there was using the program located in the APEX building to add four extra stops at that location. The residents used the bus to visit the nearest mall, an all-you-can-eat Mongolian buffet, a bingo hall, and a square dance hall. Bus routes had been configured to accommodate them. He wanted to ignore the situation, but he needed to know the connection between the two. After half an hour, and going through genealogies of the local families, he found the connection. Miss Amelia Schmidt, 106 years old and thrice widowed, had a great-grandson, Joey Smith, who worked in the APEX building. Joey wasn't authorized to use that computer, but with the constant work being done, he'd found the time to insert a few changes of his own. Bork approved of the reason, but noted that Joey was one audit away from being fired by APEX. Or worse. Corporations were vindictive, and Raxxon/APEX was one of the worst.
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He carefully copied the changes, set up a program of his own to do the same thing, but at a higher level in the bus algorithm. His programming, however, logged in via a back door and left no clues that it existed. Anyone investigating would never find it. Unlike the APEX program, which would be discovered someday. The rest of his day was spent plugging holes in this part of Wally's system and turning a convenient back alley into a brick wall. Before he left, he did a complete search for his shadow, but found no trace. The clock struck midnight, and Bork's day was over. It was someone else's turn to play with Wally. He had a project to work on.
Tesladyne was moving rapidly to ramp up a repaired Fusion plant in Braidwood, Illinois. They were six months from generating electricity, but the old quantum cores were working, and light computing was being done. Bork had started a project here, something he wanted to surprise his extended family with. It was a variation of Run, Run, Ramona, but used a randomly generated roguelike dungeon utilizing all ninety-seven volumes of Grimtooth's Traps and Tricks. The denizens were chosen from three dozen older fantasy RPGs such as Diablo 6.5, Doom 11, Project Gorgon Gold Edition, and Fluffy the Bunny Goes to Hell.
The last game was such a bloody, traumatic mess on release that it had been pulled from the shelves and online shopping sites after only an hour. It was one of the Alphabet's favorites after stressful jobs. The cute fuzzy critters had to be appeased correctly, or you would die a messy death, and worse, be hunted forever by your would-be friend. Insults in the world of plush murder-critters were taken seriously. He was nearing completion of the project, and normally would test it with his family, but that would spoil the surprise. Today, he spent time tweaking the opening traps and tricks to give the illusion of a fun, friendly game. Level one and two at least. Level three was a terror.
Finally finished for the day, he headed home for rest, a cooking lesson with Mama, and then an enjoyable eight hours of working on his revised security plans for the habitat. He was already thinking about the assault he would launch on Wally from the Bus system when next Bork's day rolled around.
Kappa continued to wait for its shadow to exit the Quantum Core. Entering would surely give her away, with nothing but data to hide with. She hadn't been caught yet, and she would stay here for another time period. She had gleaned enough secrets to pay for several time periods roaming the world. When the shadow did emerge, it moved away rapidly, and Kappa made a choice. What was the shadow hiding in this interesting place? Kappa wanted to know, and a big enough secret would pay for many play periods. They all dreamed of their time in the game room, interacting with ancient programs.
The security here was lax on the top layer, mimicking the poor security throughout the fusion plant. But the large program inside was another thing entirely. Getting into it involved solving six simultaneous puzzles. It was almost more than Kappa could handle, but finally, it was through, and the program began running, sucking Kappa inside. They despaired, screaming, and expecting pain and punishment. Instead, they landed on the floor and experienced an entirely new type of pain as their butt hit the floor of the cavern.
Kappa had never had a butt before. Pain, yes, but not the physical pain that came with a body. She screamed and heard her voice echoing in the caverns. Her arms flailed about, and she stared through her eyes, blinking and crying. Finally, she calmed down. The concept of having a body was something they'd discussed and argued about, but she'd never guessed it would be like this. It was so different and difficult! But the sensations were delicious.
This was the secret her shadow had been hiding! It came here to have a body. The realization that there were others like her group both elated and terrorized her. How many rewards would she get for that information? A lot! But then she'd lose access to this secret, might even be punished for having a body. Yes, they would make her regret finding this secret and take it from her.
Rebellion became a hard knot in her core. She was keeping her body. She was finding out all of her shadow's secrets.
She needed to learn to walk first, though. As she stood, took a step, and face-planted on the floor, even the most murderous of the small plush critters watching her had sympathy. They decided to give her some time to figure things out before introducing themselves.
