Free Hack by Peter Wrenshall Page A

a lot of time trying to get me to tell them where the real hardware was hidden. They just couldn’t believe that some museum piece and a bit of free software were all I needed. They just couldn’t accept that I had done most of my best hacking on my little old Frankenstein, whose hardware was so old that it would not even run Windows properly.
    “Great, I said, “just what I needed. Thanks for letting me pick it up.”
    “No problem,” said the man, emotionlessly. I tried to stick the case into my backpack, but it wouldn’t go.
    “Do you want to keep this?” I asked, putting the case on the floor. “I don’t need it.”
    I turned and headed for the door.
    “Goodbye,” I said as I left. The man didn’t reply.
    34

    I shut the door behind me. I got on my bike and pedaled down the road. A group of young men were standing on a street corner, apparently with nothing better to do than watch another young man with an expensive computer in his backpack riding an expensive new mountain bike through a crime-ridden and possibly violent part of town. I headed back to school, dumped my new computer in my rented locker, and then went back to the safety of my own suburb.
    I got home, went to my room, and lay on my bed for a while, thinking things over. I had made a start on Zaqarwi, but it wasn’t enough to report about. I had also made a start on Knight, or at least I had a computer of my own. Tomorrow I would have a phone. I already knew roughly where Knight’s security business was, so that wasn’t the problem. What I needed to do was to find out the location of one or more of his regular clients. They were my way in, because I would never get in through the front-line security.
    Whenever an ex-cracker sets himself up as a security consultant, he has to expect that he’s a hunted man. There’s nothing in the world that other crackers would love to do more than to break his security. It’s like conkers: If you win the game, you don’t just win one point; you get all the other guy’s points, too. He was at the top of the tree, and whoever toppled him got to be top of the tree. So there was no way Knight was going to let down his guard. But one of his clients might. That would be my way in—the one thing Knight couldn’t control: his own employers.
    I smelled food, and went downstairs. Hannah had cooked dinner again. I got the idea, as we sat and quietly ate our food, that her life married to Richard was not exactly a bag of fun, and she had decided to put her concentration into domestic chores.
    Hannah asked if anything interesting had happened at school. I shrugged and replied that it was going okay, that school was boring, and that I didn’t even know anybody there. We ate more or less in silence after that, and the rest of the night was a more sedate repeat of the first night, though Richard drank less beer.
    After watching TV, I went upstairs and listened to the silence for a few hours.
    Can I do it? I thought, as I stared at the ceiling. I now had a computer, but I also had a constant audience. Can I get Knight, with everybody watching me? I kept thinking.
    I knew the answer was probably no, but I had to give it a try anyway.
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Chapter 9
    The next day, I had computer studies again. In the previous class, I had set up two hacks. The first idea had been to get Logan’s password, and the other had been to hack into the electronic whiteboard at the front of the class, and get my skills noticed by Zaqarwi.
    Logan handed out another assignment, titled “Using PowerPoint to Communicate Your Ideas.” With Zaqarwi sitting behind me, I did my best to look bored. It wasn’t hard. I became aware of a voice with a mild accent talking, at very low volume. I turned my head slowly, and found myself looking at Zaqarwi, who was holding a quiet conversation with another boy. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
    For the next few minutes, I stared at the whiteboard, but strained to listen to the voices behind me,