Tuesday Falling. S. Williams

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       23

      It’s not the hardware, it’s the operating system

      I avoid the systems most people use. They’re always updating, always prying. It’s like sticking a tiny plaster over a great big cut: loads of crap just keeps oozing out. And the more they try to fix it, the longer it takes to run, and the more they know about you. I always go free source. You’re still on the grid, but at least you’ve got a bit more control.

      When I was living on the street there was this boy called Diston, but everybody called him Deadman. He was rib-puncture thin with stinking dreads and had a unique approach when it came to panhandling for money. He used to go up to a person and ask them if they could give him some cash for his coffin. He would stare at them, hair down in front of his eyes, like some fucking zombie, and ask them for money. The poor sods used to be so freaked out they’d hand over whole wads of cash just to make him stop staring at them.

      The thing is Diston truly believed he was dead. He was just trying to raise enough cash so he could lie down and go to sleep forever. He had borderline personality disorder, or at least that’s what he told us.

      Me, I always thought he was a fucking liar. Anyhow, one of Diston’s things, one of the things that sparked up his plugs, was computers. He used to say he could leave his soul scattered across the Interweb. Diston knew all about computers.

      How to build them. How to link them up through the ether.

      And, most importantly for me, how to program them.

      We used to sit in the underpass by Tottenham Court Road, surrounded by hobos, blinded by anti-freeze-strength white sui-cider, and sludge-blooded, old-school clock junkies, one needle away from being compost. Diston had this Asus tablet that ran open-source: completely adaptable. Fuck knows where he charged it up. I know he used to steal the Wi-Fi codes from local offices. He said it was easy. I never knew how easy until he taught me.

      Really, just changing your password every week isn’t enough. You need to change your keypad too. Once Diston was into a computer, he had programs that could tell how frequently a key was pressed and then work out the passwords that allowed access to whatever the system was linked to. He blacked out whole swathes of information for fun, and then gently wiped his electronic feet, and left.

      And then there was the Internet. Once he was in the Interzone he was away. A spider ghost in the World Wide Web. The way he described it, when people cruised the Web, they thought they were in their own little virtual bubble, their own private cyber car. That, he said, was bollocks. It was more like they were in a taxi, a black cab. You’d type in your web address and click, and then get in the cyber taxi and it would take you to your destination.

      Recording all your information on the way.

      Who ordered the cab.

      Who got in the cab.

      Where it picked you up. Where it dropped you off.

      Diston used to tell stories, his face mad and rippled in the flames from a tramp fire. Stories of governments and corporations. Of cyber-tracking and data surveillance. He used to tell ghost stories too. About people who built clone cabs, cabs that navigate the Interzone without detection. About people who became the taxi driver rather than the passenger.

      He was a scary boy, Diston. I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t like him, but he knew what he was talking about when it came to computers. He taught me all about C codes, and UNIX, and open-source hacking. He taught me how to spirit-slide behind legit apps and about mirror protocols, and mimic programs. Really, it’s quite simple once you’re into the groove, so to speak. It’s like anything else; it’s just a matter of application.

      It’s not fucking art, is it?

      Anyhow, that was then, when I wasn’t what I am now.

      Branching off the main tunnels are little alcoves, cul de tunnels. They’re twelve metres long and kitted out with polymer racking systems to allow maximum storage. There are big, square, silver condensers bolted to the alcove roof with concertinaed tubing snaking away to remove the moisture and prevent corrosion.

      I walk in, open up my satchel, and grab a couple of high-end laptops with solid-state delivery, and a bunch of mid-level phones. Most smart phones these days have a GPS chip soldered directly onto the board so the phone can be tracked, but you can still find units that only have it as an add-on, but are still ok for Wi-Fi hot-spotting. I also pick up some external drives and some Bluetooth headsets.

      All the stuff down here in the tunnels isn’t registered yet, cos half the staff are on the steal. It doesn’t actually get on any books until it goes front-of-house. Perfect for me. I take a couple of prestige pieces to sell and then shadow-walk my way out of there, through the system and back to my crib.

      For a while I toyed with buying stuff off the Silk Road before it got shut down. And then off BMR. I kept one laptop solely for subbing through the Dark Web: the web hidden under the Web, used by criminals and hackers, and art-terrorists and, for that matter, real terrorists. The BMR is a kind of eBay for Dark-webbers. I thought I could get my hardware there. Maybe some guns.

      Well I could have, but the whole system was so full of spooks from all the covert СКАЧАТЬ