The Problem With Hackers
By RougeScholar

Through the course of my life I have heard many things that are contrary to my beliefs. Especially in the seven years I have spent in this place. But one stands out clearly in my mind as being complete bullshit: people loving their jobs. Sure you can like your job. I do, but eventually something will happen through the course of your career that will piss you off or otherwise make you think of early retirement.
Take my job for example: I work for a corporation that develops and builds technology allowing dimensional travel. I, however, can’t revel the name of my employers because the current position I hold requires me to step outside the law on a regular basis. I work in information management. Basically, what that means is when an inept security guard decides that it is too much trouble to take five minuets out of his busy schedule of looking up kiddy porn on the net to do his fucking job, and leaves some of the doors to the R&D labs unlocked, thus allowing some punk to come in and steel some critical information or, God forbid, a prototype, and then he says “this is someone else’s problem;” I have to take over and handle it. I’m Someone Else.
Most of the aspects of my job don’t bother me, but when the vid-screen to my car pops on and my employer screams so loud that it wakes me out of my drunken stupor, I tend to get a little irked. (Yes, I slept in my car. That usually happens when you go on an all night bender and you can’t get the hooker to go to your house.)
“Listen Xander, and I have a job for you. Someone has stolen a Ripper form one of our warehouses last night, and we need it back,” my boss said.
A Ripper, for those of you who are not up to date on all the latest in illegal military technology, is a device that tears a hole in the fabric of reality. The hole isn’t the nice safe portal you see being created by the dimensional gateways at every world port in the system. Those only allow organic matter and simple items, like clothing and metals, to pass through. But not these bad boys. They sacrifice safety for the ability to pass guns and bombs to other worlds. So we can spread Democracy… like cancer. They even look like weapons. They look like giant cannons, like something you would see mounted on a star fighter.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but tough shit,” I said. I waned nothing to do with this. I have heard stories of people who dicked around with Rippers getting welded into walls.
“I’m sure if you help us with this little problem we can finally be help you with yours.” The dickhead had to bring that into it.
“Fine. What do we know about the people who did this?”
“Not too much. They drove a truck into the front of the warehouse, and made off with the Ripper. They must have panicked when the alarm went off because they grabbed an older mode, a JEST-1398, which was stored in the front of the warehouse. If they would have walked nine crates over they would have gotten our newest model.”
“It’s most likely hacker, and if it is then I know exactly what they did with that thing. Now I really don’t want any part in this.”
“You’re the best, Mr. Xander. We have full faith in your abilities. That’s why we come to you.”
“No, you come to me because you have my nuts in a sling.”
My boss just smiled and the screen went blank. There was no more to be said because I already knew what needed to be done. I have done this countless times before. I had to recover the stolen piece and deal with those who took it. And by deal they mean murder. There was nothing left to do but get it over with, so I zipped up my paints and tried to start my car, and about a half hour later I actually got the thing to run. They can make things that can blow the entire world to hell a thousand times over, but they can’t make a hover-car that will last for more that three years.

The means by which I came to know the location of the Ripper are inconsequential even if I could tell you, but I have to protect my sources. Lets just say I came into this fortunate knowledge through a combination of bribery, bar fight, word on the street, and the odd accidental death. You would be surprised how often people with just fall right on to a bullet. It happens every day.
At any rate, I found out that, in fact, hackers had stolen the Ripper, and they were trying to sell it, so I put the word out on the street that I just so happened to be looking for a Ripper. They must have been so blinded by their good luck that they did not even bother to check out who I was. They set up the meeting almost as soon as I put out the rumor.
The meeting place was in the Smith and Russell Tower on the edge of the city. (It’s a brown gnarly thing that is smaller that all the buildings around it. You can tell by looking at it that it probably smells like feet. And it does.) I was to meet them on in room 309 on the 2034th floor. I could already tell that these guys had led me right to where they actually lived. Nobody with even half a brain does business up this high. This is where all the drugies, fugitives, and morons lived. They all lived up here because the top floors of these buildings always have the cheapest rent. What they didn’t find out until after they signed their lease is that the air is so thin up there that it has to be piped at an extra cost. The people up here would steal any piece of merchandise you were trying to move if they thought it was worth something. Luckily most people don’t even know what the hell a Ripper is, let alone how the use the damned thing.
As I approached the apartment, I could tell that this was place was in the really good section of the tower. It wasn’t the fact that all the lighting fixtures were ripped off, or the dried blood on the walls, that provided this revelation, but the drunk that I stepped over, who seemed so pleased with the fact that he had pissed his paints. At least his pluming still worked, which is more than I could say, probably, for all the apartments in the building.
I knocked on the door to the apartment, and I could hear some rustling around and a few drowned out voices. They couldn’t have been going for a gun because they took too long to answer me.
“Ahh…wh…who is it.”
“It’s Bob Williams. We have spoken though our friend Eddy. I understand you have some business you wish to conduct.”
And with that the rustling instantly stopped, the door opened, and that wet-dog smell of bad weed hit me in the face. Why can’t people just save up the money to buy good shit? Instead, they waste their cash on that microwaved crap. Well, now I knew what all that rustling was about: they were hiding their stash because they thought I was a cop. It’s good to know that these guys have their priorities in order. There is a huge piece of illegal equipment sitting in the front room, and they are going to make sure The Man doesn’t get their pot.
“Oh, cool dude. Come on in,” the guy said. Now that I could see him, I could tell that he was just your average idiotic hacker. He had dreadlocks and was unshaven and looked to be about twenty years old.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t just bust in there and shoot up the place like some maniac. I had to make sure that these were the only parties involved in this little caper. If not, well, I was going to have a late night.
I walked into the apartment, and instantly, I started to case the place. It was a little apartment. There was one main living room/kitchen. Behind the kitchen part was a hallway with two rooms on either side. The one with the door open was a bathroom, and the other was the bedroom, but the door was closed.
There were three people in the living room with me. There was the guy that talked to me, who, I guessed, was going to be the mouthpiece of the group. There was a guy who was glaring at me. I guessed he was there to make sure “everything goes smoothly and we don’t get ripped off.” This jack-off was in for a surprise. He looked like he only weighed about a buck twenty, and he wasn’t strapped or he would have been holding it in his pocket. Guys like him always do. The third guy was sitting with the second guy on the couch that was facing the far wall. He was the only one I was worrying about because he looked like he was going to throw up. They probably made him eat all the pot when they thought I was a cop, and that shit was not agreeing with him. I was going to kill him first because I knew that seeing me spray his friends all over the walls was going to push him over the edge. I was going to have lunch after this, so I really didn’t want to see that.
I wished I could see into that bedroom. It was the only X factor. Even though this was a real dumb-ass crew, I had to assume that they were hiding their real muscle in there. I also had to assume that he had a laser rifle, or a rocket launcher, or a chainsaw, or a flamethrower, or a huge dildo, or any other kind of nightmare that I did not want to deal with. Because of this unknown I was going to have to keep alert and always working the problem. I couldn’t just sleepwalk though this case.
Damn it.
The one thing that brought my mood up was that the Ripper was sitting in the living room. They had covered it in a bed sheet, but from what I could see, it looked to be in all right condition.
“Check him,” the second guy said, but, of course, he doesn’t get up to do it himself. He was trying to make me think he was a bad ass.
You just keep your act up, I thought, I’m going to make a mess of your face.
“Alright dude, I hate to do this, but lift your arms,” the first guy said as I complied and he patted me down just like he had seen in all those crime movies. If he had checked my crouch he would have found my piece. I had it in a special holster down there that kept it from view. But no one will check your nuts. These criminal assholes don’t want anybody to think they’re gay. I guess it is better to be a dead heterosexual then a living fag.
“Okay now that that’s over,” the first guy said, “Proper introductions. I’m Skip, and this is Chuck.” He pointed to the second guy.
“And I’m…Uhg. Oh God,” the third guy said as he grabbed his stomach.
“I would offer you a drink or something to eat,” Skip said, “but we don’t have anything in the house.” Of course you don’t. You spent all your money on bad drugs.
“That’s okay. I would really just like to get down to business.”
“Yeah me too. Is that the money,” Chuck said as he pointed to the black case I was carrying.
“No, I was going to pay you in check.” That really freaked them out. I could see that they were trying to figure out if guys like me really did that.
“I’m just kidding.” That calmed them all down. Actually, what was in my case was eight tacos with cream cheese.
I had to make sure that these were the only guys that knew about the Ripper. “So how did you guys get a hold of this piece of merchandise?”
“Why is that an issue,” Chuck barked.
“Because I want to know just how hot this thing is.”
Chuck nodded at Skip to tell the story. I so wanted to kill this guy last, and take a long time doing it.
“Well what we did, man, was we boosted one of those old trucks for a museum. You know the one’s that run on gas made form oil. Well, they don’t have any tracking chips in them either. And the one we got didn’t have any kind of ID at all on it. So we took that thing and found a turbo lift big enough for it. Then we took it and slammed into the front of the storage center on floor 1457 of the Orion Tower, and then we just ran in there and grabbed the Ripper,” Skip said. So far his story checked out.
“But how did you know that there was even a Ripper at that place?”
“Oh well, Chuck used to work in that storage center, but they canned him, so we decided to get’em back for all the shit he had to put up with.”
“Hey,” Chuck said, “You don’t have to tell him this stuff.”
“Yes he does if you want me to buy this thing. I need to know everything. Or I could just walk out the door.”
They both answered back with a “No, no, no.” Yeah that’s right, you know who is in control of this situation.
“So go on,” I said. “Who was in your crew?”
“Just us,” Skip said.
“Who else, besides you guys, knows you have the ripper?” The six million-credit question had reared its head.
“The fuck do you need to know that for,” Chip said.
“The more people that know about the Ripper, the more people that the cops can turn. And that gets them closer to you. And if they get you, they can get me. And I can’t allow that to happen. So how else knows about the Ripper?”
“Oh. Just that guy Eddy. We told him to get us a buyer. He got us you, so are you going to buy this fucking thing or are we going to sit around all day telling stories?”
This situation was going very good for me. Aside for the unknown horror in the bedroom, I knew that only one other person knew about the Ripper. And he was on my pay role. The best part was that these guys didn’t suspect a thing. It’s always more fun for me when I surprise the hell out of the marks. I just had one more lose end to tie up.
“Alright then. Let’s see this thing.”
Skip yanked off the bed sheet, and, to my horror, I saw the Ripper. Or what was left of it.
“We have made a few modifications.”
“I would say you did.”
I fucking hate hackers. This model of Ripper looks like a giant cannon. What these guys did to this thing was make an Omni-Prez Rig conversion to it. Inside the barrel they placed a prism made out of glass, and behind that they plugged up the barrel with a glass disc. They did this because, for some reason, the dimensional tares can’t pass through, and don’t affect, glass. They want to keep the rip inside the device itself.
On the barrel, pointing inward, they mounted a standard consumer model hologram projector. Then they hard wired the projector into output of the VR drive on their computer, so that when someone plugs the computer into the little port drilled into the back of their skull the hologram projector will shoot an image of them into the prism. When they fire the Ripper, the dimsonal rip will engulf the prism and send the hologram of the person anywhere he wants, and it will feed the information of the holograms location back to him. This set up mimics omnipresence because, in this modern world, you just need to be omnipresent.
Why do hackers do things like this? I knew these guys were going to do this the minuet I was told about the case. All hackers want to do is make their computers better. They just sit around all day and think up ways of interfacing everything into their computers. Why can’t they just masturbate like normal people?
Skip looked very proud. “I did most of the changes myself. Chuck helped a little bit, but most of it I did.”
“Why did you do it?”
“To up the price of course. You did want an Omni-Prez rig right? That’s what we told Eddy to get us a buyer for.”
Eddy had neglected to tell me they had done this. If he had I would have just came in shooting, but I had to keep up the act that I was going to buy this thing.
“Yeah I’m here to buy an Omni-Prez rig.”
I was tired of this whole situation. I knew what I was going to do next. Before we settle on a price, I was going to excuse myself to the bathroom. My hearing is good enough that form there I would have been able tell if anyone was in the bedroom. If there was someone in the bedroom I would have listened to their breathing to pinpoint their location in the room. After that I would have just shot into the room. Then I would have just walked into the living room and moped up the rest of those fucks. I would have done this, but things just have a way of getting fucked.
“Well let’s test it out and see how she flies.”
Of course he wanted to test it. He was proud of it. And why shouldn’t he be? He took an already unstable piece of equipment and made a conversion to it that made the probability of it blowing up and killing all of us almost one hundred percent. I could not let him turn that damned thing on, but before I even could tell what happened, he had already plugged himself into the computer. And he was reaching for the enter key.
The next four seconds were in slow motion.
I reached down to get my gun and end this thing.
To hell with the mystery in the bedroom.
I was going to deal with that when it came.
I tried to pull my gun out, but my belt got caught on itself and would not move.
My paints weren’t lose enough for me to reach down in there to get the gun.
Skip was just about to press that button.
This was how I was going to die.
Killed by a button.
The air stopped getting piped into the apartment.
I had guessed that they had stopped paying their air bill.
I ripped the belt off and gabbed the gun out of the holster.
I looked up just in time to see Skip push the button.

The machinery inside the rig started to turn on. Then this clicking and banging started. For about three seconds, it kept getting louder. Just when it got to where I couldn’t stand it any more, the barrel of the Ripper exploded and shot the hologram projector like a mortar through the wall and into the next apartment. A blue flame ran up the wire connecting the computer to Skip’s head. When it got to the port in Skip’s skull, it went inside. Then his forehead blew off and his brain spewed out like a hot chunky stew. Chuck pissed his paints, and, sure enough, Uhg through-up all over himself.
I said, “Well, I’m not going to buy it now.”
I looked through the hole in the wall to see if I could find any witnesses that I would have to kill later. In the space between the two walls that separated the apartments there was a ripple in air. It was like it was there but I wasn’t. I knew exactly what it was: a subspace distortion. It happens when something is about to be teleported to a location. The Ripper couldn’t have caused this; it was too clean. I noticed that in the middle of the ripple a small piece of steal had formed. The piece grew and it quickly filled the space that was reveled by the hole. I could hear it continue filling the space in between the walls. It moved quicker as it got bigger. The door to the apartment shuttered as the steal materialized through it and locked it into place. It continued to move through the walls, floor, and ceiling until it held the entire apartment in its cold caress.
This wasn’t the first time I had seen this done. This was a raid. The cops were about to storm the place. I so didn’t need this. I wouldn’t be having this problem if Skip had left the casing on the Ripper. All technology that messes with time and space gives off a subspace distortion that can be detected by the police. Rippers have a special casing that protects them from detection, but Skip had to make his conversion. The cops were on to him the minuet he started. They were just waiting for him to turn it on so that they could get him on something worse than possession.
I turned my head around to see that there was a shadow in the middle of the kitchen area that wasn’t being cast by anything. Then I noticed that about three meters form the shadow there was a ripple in the living room. The shadow started to move towards the ripple. As it got closer, the shadow grew. I started to run into the hall. Chuck and Uhg seemed perfectly content, however, with sitting in their own bodily juices watching all the wonderment that was happening around them.
When I got to the spot in hallway where the two doors were, I looked back to check on the progress of the shadow. It was about half a meter away from the distortion. It leapt up off the ground and dove right into the center of the ripple. A two and a half meter hole ripped into the fabric of space where the ripple had been. A brilliant white light lit up the apartment, and a dark figure jumped out of the hole. The fabric of the universe forced its full weight on the hole and closed it.
The dark figure was a sentinel. These are the guys that police the use of technology that alters the fundamental workings of the universe. When you break the laws of physics, these are the guys that show up. And for all the different crimes against reality there is only one punishment: on the spot execution.
The sentinel pointed a fully automatic rail rifle at Chuck and Uhg; they put their hands up. They had no idea who this person is or what kind of weapon he is pointing at them. They learned really fast as he lit off a barrage of twenty-three centimeter long steal bullets into their bodies. The bullets went through them at almost the speed of sound and they embedded themselves into the steal plate that was conveniently placed in between the walls.
Then the sentinel looked over to the hallway and saw me. I greeted him by firing off a few rounds. I almost never miss, but as I dove into the bathroom, I could see that all the bullets I shot at the guy were curving around him and flying into the walls. All sentinels carry a personal field generator that bends space around them, so anything moving as fast as a bullet is deflected. I knew I wouldn’t hit him, but I wanted him to think I was some dumb punk. I was hoping he would underestimate me.
Another thing I noticed about the sentinel was that when I shot at him he flinched. He wasn’t use to being protected from gunfire. He was green. This was good news because I knew that he wasn’t going to fire through the wall that separated the kitchen form the bathroom. He was going to follow protocol and use the scanner in the visor he was wearing to see me through the wall. I wasn’t going to show up on that scan which meant he was going to have to take me in alive for questioning. His inability to use deadly force gave me the edge because I was still willing to.
That was about the time I heard a woman scream from inside the bedroom as another rail rifle went off. A second sentinel kicked down the bedroom door. He had his rifle in one hand and an old shotgun, that he probably took form the woman, in the other. He looked directly at me.
“Who the fuck is this? There are only supposed to be four of them,” he said.
“He’s not showing up on any scans, sir. We have to bring him in,” the other one said.
“Fuck that. I’ve got things to do later.”
The second sentinel dropped both of his weapons and walked into the bathroom. I through a punch at him, but he caught my arm with one hand and grabbed my neck with the other. He slammed my head into a mirror. Then he dragged me out into the hall. About two meters from where the two doors were, the hallway just ended. He threw me through that wall.
I didn’t slam into a steal plate like I thought I was going to because this was the only wall they didn’t teleport one behind. What was behind that wall was a long shaft that was used to pump air to the higher up floors. The air was turned off so that the sentinel could throw the bodies in there. The shaft ran up the entire building so anyone that was thrown in there would fall all the way to the ground floor. No one would ever find the bodies because the only way to get to the ground floor of any tower is to enter it form the surface, and nobody has even seen that in almost a century. The sentinels like to get rid of the bodies of their victim so that they can keep up their mysterious wrath of God image.
Now, I was one of their victims. I fell down the shaft and I died.

Or at least, that’s what the two sentinels thought. I fell about four floors until I was able to stop myself. I levitated up to where the hole in the wall was, and then I walked through it. I could tell that the two sentinels were absolutely amazed.
“My God, it’s a fairy,” the second one said.
I just smiled and crescent kicked him in the head. I hit him so hard that it knocked him out. While he was on the ground I decided to get a little anger out.
“Cock.
“Sucker.
“Don’t you.
“Know.
“How much.
“It hurts.
“To use.
“Magic.
“In this.
“Place.”
I picked up what was left of his body and threw it through the hole. I turned around to see why the other one hadn’t unloaded into my back. He had dropped his gun and was shaking worse than a junky. I guessed he had never seen anyone glow bright orange before. I didn’t feel like beating him into tiny pieces, so I just repeated an old incantation I knew and his heart exploded.
I ran out of the apartment before anyone became wise to what had just gone down. I didn’t take the Ripper with me because it was so totaled that no one would be able to figure out what it was. I got in my hover car and flew off to the head quarters of the corporation I work for. Maybe now they would let me go back to my own dimension. That sentinel was pretty smart. I am a kind of fairy called a Nymph. I look more or less human except for the moss growing out of my head that everybody just thinks is green dyed hair. I got stuck in this place seven years ago when some scientists fucked up an experiment. I have been working to pay for my transport back to my home. This place is insane and I hate it. But it’s okay. I just work here.