David rested with his feet on his computer desk. His computer was currently backing itself up. It was doing this by uploading small blocks of data to systems that had been infected with a worm David had created. This was not an uncommon practice among hackers of David's skill. However, even with the powerful processors in modern computers and the large bandwidth available by modern ISPs, it still took a long to to finish the back-up. This was mainly because, in order to insure the integrity of the data, each data segment had to be uploaded to five different systems. The computer was halfway through the back-up and there was still a half-hour remaining.
   The screen went blank. David nearly leapt out of his seat in a mad scramble for the keyboard. He pounded mad on the keys for a few moments with no effect. He quickly ducked under the desk, ignoring the irony of a crash during a back-up, to check the machine proper. The power was still on, he could hear the disks still spinning, and all the connectors were still in tight. Pulling himself from under the desk, David flipped the switch on his KVM switch, changing over to the left monitor. Nothing happened. He climbed back under the desk and tried plugging the second monitor directly into the computer. Getting back up, he checked again. Once more, nothing but a blank screen. It wasn't the KVM switch. David grabbed his laptop from the charging port and plugged the center monitor into the back of it. Two seconds of booting later, the monitor sprang to life. It wasn't the monitor.
   David crawled back under the desk once more, this time at a much slower pace. He slowly reconnected everything back into the original configuration. 'At least all he critical files went first. The most you'll loose are some random anime rips and a gig or two of porn.' Slumping back into he chair, David slipped into the denial phase of crash-recovery. 'Maybe the video card just burnt out? Yeah, I'll just wait until the back-up finishes, do a hard shutdown, and replace the card.'
   David sat staring at the blank monitor for a few minutes, his gut slowly twisting itself in knots. A light went on and he took not of something interesting. Though the screen was black, it was still lit. It was not the cold black of an powered-down monitor. It was more like the computer was displaying nothing but blackness. David's heart leapt in his chest. He had his first clue to the nature of the failure. Sure, there was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he recognized that it meant the video card was fine, but now he could be proactive about it!
   David nearly wet himself when the head popped up on the monitor and blinked at him. While he didn't wet himself, he did scream like a little girl. The head cocked to the side and looked questioningly at David.
   ?Did I scare you?? It took David a moment to realize the voice was emanating from the speakers and no the screen.
   ?What the hell have you done with my system?!? David screamed, realizing he'd just been hacked, however unlikely that was.
   The figure sat silent, blinking occasionally but otherwise not moving. ?Meet me downstairs in two hours if you want you data back in one piece. Bring the transceiver.?
   The screen went dark. This time the real thing. David took a minute to check his system over. It was completely unresponsive. Even the hard drives had stopped spinning. He couldn't even do a hard shutdown. He was tempted to just unplug the box from the wall, but thought better of it. With just a small fraction of the stuff he kept on his system, someone could get him put away for a long time. David was officially helpless. It was not a pleasant feeling.
   It only took David a few minutes to gather his laptop, his phone, and the transceiver. The rest of the time, all David could do was fret. He ran the face on the screen through his mind's eye again and again. He couldn't make out the ethnicity of the face. There were no distinguishing features. In fact, it was as if someone had told a computer to generate a face to define ?human? and it was the result.

--

   David could almost see his breath in the cold autumn air. He dug his hands deeper in his pockets out of both anger and cold. He pulled his wrist far enough out of his pocket to check his watch. Six more seconds and they'd be late.
   Exactly two hours after the face had told him to meet her downstairs, his phone rang. David generally carried two cellphones with him. One was a standard, ubiquitous cellphone that he used for calling people. The other was a soft phone; it was a computer playing at being a phone. He used the soft phone exclusively for phreaking and communicating with other crackers. The fact that it was his soft phone ringing set off warning bells inside David's brain.
   David slipped the ear piece to the soft phone over his ear and pushed the talk button to answer it. ?Grey,? he said curtly.
   ?Turn left and go down two blocks.? It was the same voice as from the computer earlier.
   David was smart enough to shut up and just go along with it.
   After just over a half hour of walking, David was in a back alley in an unfamiliar neighborhood.
   ?Stop,? the voice commanded. ?You're here.?
   ?Where are you?? David asked, peering down the alley. It was already twilight and it was hard to make out shapes in the shadows.
   ?I'm right behind you,? the voice said, then hung up.
   David spun around quickly, and when he saw no one there he realized his mistake. The was a metallic clicking noise behind him.
   ?Don't turn around or I'll shoot you.? This voice was different from the one on the phone, thought it was also female. ?Take the bag off, slowly, and put it on the ground.?
   David did as he was told, feeling very stupid indeed. He heard footsteps come up behind him, then felt the muzzle of a gun press into his back. He heard the woman pick up his bag and then take several steps back. He was glad to have the gun no longer pressing into his flesh but he was still anxious about his bag. He had both the transceiver and his laptop in it. It took a great deal of willpower on David's part not to turn around as he heard his bag unzipped, the sounds of rummaging, the soft clicks of adapters being pushed into their ports. In less that two minutes, it was over.
   ?Now I'm going to slowly back away. You're just going to keep facing forward. I'll call you when it's safe for you to turn around.?
   A minute later, David's soft phone rang again. He quickly reached up and tapped the talk button.
   ?Tune in, log on, drop out,? the voice from his computer said, then hung up.
   David snarled at the phone. He very much wanted to smash the thing against the wall of the alley. Unfortunately the soft phone was far too expensive to waste like that. Instead, David quickly walked over to where his bag lay in a heap and checked the contents. He was surprised to find his transmitter still there, as well as his laptop.
   David grinned evilly. Maybe he could work out his frustration after all. ?Shit rolls downhill,? he said aloud.
   Carrying the equipment further into the alley, David ducked behind the side of a dumpster. He pulled out his laptop and turned it on. He let it boot up while he set up the transceiver. He had built the transceiver himself. He was quite proud of the design. It was small enough to easily carry around in a backpack but could easily link to SatNet. It was cheap; it had only cost him just over three-hundred dollars at RadioShack? to buy the parts for it, though a third of the cost was from him deciding to buy rechargable batteries for it. The best feature was the hardware encryption/decryption that let him hack IEEE 802.11m transmissions that were supposedly the most secure way to transmit data ever.
   David plugged the UPB cable from the transceiver into the port on his computer. He started scanning for a carrier wave and found one within a few seconds. He locked on to it and the transceiver automatically synched with the signal. The security on the network was blas? and David had smurffed an account in under three minutes. He took a moment to peruse the network before he decided what hell he was going to unleash. He settled on releasing Pr0n_C0c|<.t41L.qs into the main server. It was a combination worm, trojan, and web crawler. It would access the Internet, download porn, and overwrite all the files on the system with it. All text documents, slide show presentations, graphics files, icons, video files, and cursors would be replaced with the sickest, most vile, most obscure porn available, most of it illegal. Some poor fool would find their vacation photos replaced with two midgets DPing a twelve year-old transvestite. Now that was fun for the whole family.
   David's finger hovered over the dialog box. ?Heh! Tune in, log on, drop out!? David spat the words out as he gave his misery company.
   David's phone began to ring once more. He hadn't even hit the talk button when the phone picked up on its own.
   ?That was an impressive demonstration of the transceiver,? said the voice of the gunman. ?We'll be in touch.?
   The phone went dead again before he could cuss the bitch out.