Free Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon Page A

likely just wants to keep stuff away from inquiring minds.” Eric’s original tactic was to pretend to be a script kiddie out for a joyride, seeing if he could get in with Back Orifice and then install a NetBus server. A message came up immediately written in Leet characters along the lines of “Congratulations noob you think you made it in but all you’re really in now is a world of deep shit.” Something in the style of this response caught Eric’s attention. Why should their security be going to the trouble to make it so personal? Why not just brief and bureaucratic, like “Access Denied”? Something, maybe only its amused vehemence, reminded him of older hackers from the nineties.
    Are they playing with him? What sort of playmates are they likely to be? Eric figured if he was supposed to be just some packet monkey nosing around, he’d have to pretend he doesn’t know how heavy-duty, or even who, these guys are. So at first he goes after the password as if itmight be something old-school like the Microsoft LM hash, which even retards can crack. To which Security replies, again in Leet, “Noob do you really know who you’re fucking with?”
    Reg and Eric were out in the middle of Brooklyn by this point, the doo-wop and Bible recitation long out the exits and Eric poised for flight. “You’re in and out of there all the time, Reg, you ever happen to run into any of their security people?”
    “Rumor I hear is that Gabriel Ice runs the department himself. There’s supposed to be some history. Somebody had a live terminal in a desk drawer and forgot to tell him.”
    “Forgot.”
    “Next thing anybody knew, there was all kinds of proprietary code out there for free. Took months to fix, cost them a big contract with the navy.”
    “And the careless employee?”
    “Disappeared. All this is company folklore, understand.”
    “That’s reassuring.”
    No more dangerous than a chess game, it seems to Reg. Defense, retreat, deception. Unless it’s a pickup game in the park where your opponent turns violently psychopathic without warning, of course.
    “Paranoia, whatever, Eric’s still intrigued,” Reg reports to Maxine. “It’s dawning on him that this could be a kind of entrance exam. If it’s the Ice Man himself on the other end of this, if Eric’s good enough, maybe they’ll let him in. Maybe I should be telling him to run like hell.”
    “I heard it’s a recruiting tactic over there, you might want to point that out. Meantime, Reg, you sound a lot less enthusiastic about your project.”
    “Actually, it’s a coastal thing you’re hearing, I don’t even know what I’m doing on this one anymore.”
    Uh-oh. Intuition alert. None of Maxine’s business, of course, but, “The ex.”
    “Same ol’ blues line, nothin important. Except now her and hubby,they’re making noises about moving out to Seattle. I don’t know, he’s some kind of corporate hotshot. Vice President in Charge of Rectal Discomfort.”
    “Ah, Reg. Sorry. In the old soap operas, ‘transferred to Seattle’ was code for written out of the script. I used to think Amazon, Microsoft, and them were started up by fictional soap-opera rejects.”
    “Keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, cute li’l announcement card from Gracie, ‘Hooray! we’re pregnant!’ Should be happening about now, right? So end the suspense already.”
    “You’d be OK with that?”
    “Better than some creep thinking my kids are his. Which gives me nightmares. Literally. Like he could be a fuckin abuser.”
    “C’mon, Reg.”
    “What. These things happen.”
    “Too much family television, bad for your brain, watch the after-midnight cartoons instead.”
    “Come on, how’m I supposed to deal with that?”
    “Not the sort of thing you can just let go, I guess.”
    “Actually, I had a li’l more proactive approach in mind?”
    “Oh no, Reg. You’re not . . .”
    “Packing? Bust a cap in the muthafucker’s ass, lovely fantasy ain’t