Free Turing's Delirium by Edmundo Paz Soldán Page B

and realizes that everything is linked to her obsession.
    She goes to her desk and sits in front of her computers. She opens e-mail, reads the latest news. A group of hackers has taken control of various government and private company sites (GlobaLux being one of them). They have also sent a virus to the computer networks at several federal organizations. An e-mail from a cracker friend warned her two days ago that this would happen. The Ministry of the Interior has declared a state of emergency because of "this concerted attack." Flavia reads the information. Even though she tries to maintain her journalistic objectivity, she is dying to know whether the Resistance is a local group. For four years now she has been refining her knowledge of cyber outlaws; she has approximately three thousand files on hackers, from neophytes to big names, most of them Latin American. Her computers search and file their conversations in chatrooms, on IRC (Internet Relay Chat), and in Playground. The information has given her files a sophisticated depth. Even though they don't like to admit it, the media and the intelligence service are some of AllHacker's most loyal surfers. Few in Rio Fugitivo know as much as she does.
    She reviews her files and prepares a series of Identikits on those who are in the Resistance. They are speculative, since in truth she is unsure of the group's makeup. She isn't even sure if the hackers who wound up dead were part of the Resistance. In fact, she doesn't even know whether Vivas and Padilla were hackers; the information she was given could have been false.
    She would like to get her hands on a photo of Kandinsky to put on her site. With a scoop like that, her reputation would be bumped up another few notches. No one knows who he is or what he looks like. Although she would get into trouble if she did publish it. Hadn't her meeting with Rafael been a warning? Two years ago, when she helped the Black Chamber catch a couple of hackers, she had received death threats and her site had suffered several DoS attacks ("denial of service": a computer is instructed, for example, to bombard a certain address with e-mail, and the flood of traffic hangs the system). Since then she had promised herself that she would be more neutral on the topic, that she would spend her time informing above all. She has a love-hate relationship with hackers. They say they prefer secrecy and anonymity, but they also like to let their pseudonyms be known when they manage to do something that they believe is worthy of admiration. As long as they see that she is independent, they will leave her alone.
    Flavia has a hunch: Rafael belongs to Kandinsky's inner circle. He was trusted enough to be in charge of contacting her, to abandon the virtual world in order to send a message to the real world. He may even be Kandinsky himself. It would be incredible if it were true, but why not?
    She needs to create a false identity and go into chatrooms and IRC channels, or some of the neighborhoods in Playground, to find out the latest. Hackers live in the shadows, but they can't keep quiet. Sooner or later they need to tell someone about their exploits. Hackers are marvelous storytellers.
    She decides to log on to Playground. A little more than a year ago, three recent graduates from San Ignacio High School had borrowed money from their parents in order to acquire the rights to the Playground franchise for Bolivia. Created by a Finnish corporation, Playground was both a virtual game and an online community. There, for a modest monthly fee—twenty dollars, which could grow to much more, depending on the time you spent—anyone could create an avatar or use one of those that Playground put up for sale. The game takes place in the year 2019. Participants try to live in an apocalyptic land governed by the strong arm of a corporation. Playground's success in other countries was replicated in Bolivia. It started out with the young middle class in the country's