F. Paul Wilson: Crisscross

"What about backups?"

"My gut tells me he stashes those someplace where, say, a fire wouldn't hurt them."

Russ grinned. "And you want to follow him to the backup."

"You got it."

Not exactly, but why waste time explaining it to someone who didn't need to know.

Russ thought a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Got it! HYRTBU!"

"Her taboo? I don't need voodoo, 1—"

Russ laughed and spelled it for him. "It's a mischief virus. Deletes all kinds of files—docs, jpegs, waves, mpegs, gifs, pdfs, and just about every other suffix you've ever seen—without harming the programs. In fact, it doesn't just delete the files, it overwrites them."

Jack was relatively new to computers. He'd bought his first about a year ago and was still feeling his way.

"What's the difference?"

"When something is deleted, it's still there on the disk. You can't get to it through the operating system because its references are gone from the system tables, but it isn't gone until it's erased or overwritten with another file."

"But if you can't get to it—"

Russ was shaking his head. "You can get to it. All you need is a data recovery program, and there are dozens of them."

A scary thought, that.

"But HYRTBU overwrites every file and leaves a doc with the same name in its place."

"Doc?"

"Yeah. A document file, each with the same message: 'Hope You Remembered To Back Up!' Get it? It's an—"

"An acronym, yeah." Jack was baffled. "You mean someone sat down and spent all that time writing the code for this HYRTBU thing, just so he can screw up strangers' hard drives?" He shook his head. "Some people have way too much time on their hands."

"Guy probably justifies it by telling himself he's teaching his victims a valuable lesson: Always back up your files. I bet once you've been hit by HYRTBU you become a compulsive backer-upper."

"But still…"

"Hey, it's like Everest, man. You do it because it's there. Back when I was a kid, in my phreaking days, I used to break into the phone company's computers just to see if I could. And then I'd push it to see how far I could go, you know, seeking system mastery. Of course later I figured how to get myself free long distance, but that wasn't how it started."

"All right, Sir Hillary, how do we get HYRTBU into this computer?"

"Easiest way is to send it with an e-mail. Guy opens the attached file and, if he's doesn't have his AV setup to screen e-mail, kablooey —he's toast."

"Audio visual?"

"Antivirus software."

"1 don't know the guy's e-mail address, don't even know if he goes online."

Russ looked glum. "Everybody goes online. Everybody but me." He sighed. "Well then, you've got to get to his computer and physically slip the virus into his system."

"I'm planning to visit his office."

"Perfect. What's his rig like? New? Old?"

"Unless he's replaced it, I'd say it has a few miles on it."

"Great. A floppy should do it. For a very reasonable fee I can put together a special boot disk that'll get you past any password and AV protection he's got and infect his hard drive."

"How reasonable?"

"How's a half K sound?"

"Sounds like a lot."

"Hey, I got expenses."

Jack made a show of looking around. "Yeah. I can see."

He spotted a variety of blank invoice forms on Russ's desk. He picked one up. Yellow Pages was printed across the top next to the walking-fingers logo in the upper-left corner.

"Oh, no. The invoice game?"

Russ shrugged. "Hey, I gotta make ends meet."

Phony invoices… a small-time, hit-or-miss scam. A guy like Russ would invoice medium-to large-size companies for services that hadn't been rendered. Unless someone was watchdogging it, more often than not the invoices got passed to the accounting or bookkeeping department where they were paid.

"You're on parole , Russ. You get caught, you're back inside, and most likely not in a country club like last time."

"Yeah, but they gotta catch me first. And then they gotta convict me. You see, nobody ever bothered to trademark 'Yellow Pages' or the walking fingers. They're public domain. Now, check out the lower-left corner."

Jack squinted at the tiny print. " 'This is a solicitation'?"

"Right. As long as I've got that there, I'm within the law—at least the letter of the law."

"So you go through the Yellow Pages and bill companies for their listings."

He grinned. "The bigger ones with the display ads are the best. They advertise in so many places they expect lots of invoices and don't look too closely. Works like a charm."

Jack tossed the invoice blank onto the desk and shook his head. "Still… you're on parole…"

"What else am I gonna do? I was a frosh at CCNY when I caught the hacking bug and dropped out. I know one thing, man, and I'm not allowed to use it. Shit, I'm not even allowed to work in Circuit City. And I need money for tuition."

"Tuition?"

"Yeah, I gotta look like I'm bettering myself, so I'm taking courses back at CCNY. Started as an English major, so I figure I'll go back to that, look like I'm trying for a degree. Makes my parole officer happy, at least."

"But not you."

He shook his head. "Taking a lit course. Now I know why I dropped out. Prof's got us wasting our time reading Marcel Marceau."

Jack blinked. "Um, Marcel Marceau was a mime. A man of few words, you might say."

"Well, then, Marcel somebody. Long-winded guy—zillions of words about nothing. The most boring shit you've ever read." He shook his head again. "My life sucks."

"If you're trying to break my heart, it worked. Five hundred for the disk. Half down, half when I know it did the job."

Russ's face broke open with a big grin. "I'll have it for you tonight. Jack, you just made my day!"

Deadpan, Jack reached for his wallet. "That's me. Jackie Sunshine. It's what I'm about. I live for moments like this."

3

Jack didn't feel completely naked walking through town without at least one weapon hidden somewhere on his person, merely stripped to his underwear. At the stroke of noon he arrived at The Light offices, just west of Times Square. A peek through the glass doors of the front entrance made him glad he wasn't carrying. Jamie Grant hadn't been kidding: An armed guard and a metal detector waited just inside.

After confirming that John Robertson was expected, the guard passed him through the detector without a hitch. He was told to wait until someone from editorial came to escort him up.

Soon a heavyset woman with short, curly ginger hair and a puffy face showed up and extended her hand. Jack immediately recognized the voice.

"Robertson? Jamie Grant."

As they shook hands, Jack checked her out: Early forties, about five-five, a large chest and bulky torso but thin arms and legs. She wore a loose white blouse over dark brown slacks. Small gold earrings, thin gold necklace, no rings. Her eyes were bloodshot and she smelled like an ashtray. Other than that she was a dream girl.

"Thanks for meeting me." He handed her one of the Robertson cards, then jerked a thumb at the metal detector. "I'd thought you might be kidding. Why the high security?"

"It's new. We've got an ongoing threat situation here. The Light pisses off a lot of people, so we're always getting one kind of threat or another. But nothing like what's come in since my Dormentalism article." She flashed a nicotine-stained smile. "I now hold the death-threat record. Hallelujah." She turned and motioned him to follow. "Let's retire to my boudoir."

She led him to a messy little third-floor office that looked like it had been trashed by burglars on PCP. Books, magazines, newspapers, printouts everywhere. As she lifted an elastic-bound pile of papers off a chair, Jack noticed that her right pinkie was only a stub—the last two bones were missing.