Information: Dark Matter Volume 1

Chapter 2

Today her work looked boringly routine, the normal stuff, the kind of search that paid the basic bills. Nothing WISO or any of the other thousand security organizations would be upset about. She might push further than most, but there was nothing illegal in her normal work. Nothing particularly special, either. What made her work valuable were the analytic algorithms she ran. No risk of any security triggers in them. If anything, after a close look at them they might want to hire her. She was good and she knew it.

However, that didn't stop the ugly feeling of having a WISO bot mucking about in her equipment. Yes, if they could get far enough into her files she had stuff they'd want to see, and then happily interrogate her about. But to the very best of her abilities, there was no way they would get to it. Still, she couldn't help feeling a certain dread. Security was always a race between the security systems and the security crackers. Since it was backed by the UN, WISO had the resources to be on the bleeding edge of both sides of the race, plus with the anti-terrorism mandate it had the right to go anywhere and do almost anything. If they saw the wrong thing there would be big people in armour and guns showing up at her door, and they tended to presume guilt regardless of what the law said. It was the kind of thought that triggered bad memories, of being face down in the gravel with cuffs on. She didn't want that again.

There was another ping from her security system, this one from the front door: it was someone running a search on her corporate identity. Nothing abnormal there. She just liked to keep up on who was looking. It was surprising how much you could figure out about market conditions just from knowing who was looking for a grey market librarian. More than once that had led her to very lucrative requests for services, once she figured out what they were looking for.

Another ping; again, front door. Then another. Now things were getting a little odd. What was causing all the interest? She did not run a high profile. Nothing really public. She didn't hide, but she certainly did not go out of her way to advertise. Her formal company, Westgate Information Services, was a nothing entity and that was the way she liked it. Her customers came to her through word of mouth. She only kept a public profile to ensure WISO and other government security agencies knew she at least kept up a pretense of honesty. Sometimes it even turned in real work, though mostly just university students looking for dissertation advice and sometimes for ghost-writing. Some of those were interesting, but there was not much money in them. This interest was different. Something was going on. She figured she better take a look.

The first ping was a solitary user from a public access station. Not much there. Quite anonymous. John Q. Public? Or just a kid? Or a low-end business user?

The second ping was corporate, routed through a relative routine anonymizer. That was annoying but didn't faze her. She could probably crack it if she spent some time with it. Probably not worth it. It was the type of thing that happened routinely when a potential client first started looking for the services of someone like her.

The third ping was a public security company. That was different. Nice and bold, a clear invitation to come and knock back. Thank you, but no. No telling what they were running at their end.

Still, a puzzling set.

As she was thinking, her system pinged again—red light! It was a search for the backdoor. This was not normal. It was someone with an old set of WISO codes. But she updated, so this wasn't going far. But what was going on? This did not make sense. Who had old WISO codes? That was sophisticated, even if it couldn't crack her system. But that's the kind of stuff that cakewalked into most corporate systems. Who kept up to date? WISO was complicated stuff and no one with their right mind stole their materials. So most folk never changed their security set-up to match the new WISO protocols.