Free The Cyber Chronicles IV - Cyborg by T C Southwell Page A

slumped,
turning back to Trevare and Kole. “So what do I do now?”
    “ The only people who have that kind of access are cyber techs,”
Kole said.
    “ Then I need to find a cyber tech and make him remove this
software patch.”
    Kole shook his
head. “Impossible. I think they swear an oath or something.”
    Trevare
glanced at him. “He might if you held a laser to his head.”
    Tassin nodded.
“The tech on Ferrinon did.”
    “ He was just a low-level host repair tech. I don’t think a
repair tech could fix a control unit problem,” Kole
said.
    “ Then we need to find a high-level control unit
tech.”
    “ Easier said than done; the security on Myon Two is
airtight.”
    “ But there’s a world they go to on holiday,” Trevare said.
“It’s called Dojan Five, in the same solar system as Myon Two.
There’s way less security there. If you grab a senior tech, he’ll
be able to remove the patch, I reckon. Look, usually it’s
impossible even for a tech to disable a cyber, because the control
unit is hardwired into the host brain and it can’t be reprogrammed
to release him. The core programming must be inaccessible, even
with high-level codes, or someone would have done it by now. It
might be possible for a control unit tech to modify it and maybe
even erase parts of it, but not the actual interface, which gives
the control unit domination over the host brain. People have tried
to free cyber hosts before, and it’s never worked. But this guy’s
hardware was damaged, right? That’s why the unit lost control of
him. So if you remove the patch they uploaded to fix the problem,
he should be free again.”
    Kole inclined
his head, looking thoughtful. “It’s certainly a scenario that’s
never happened before, because the control unit is impossible to
break without killing the host – or at least, everyone thought it
was impossible until now. This was one hell of a freak accident.
Maybe his control unit was always flawed, and that’s why it
broke.”
    “ Maybe,” Trevare said. “It doesn’t matter, though; the point
is, he can be freed, and, unless the tech you grab knows why the
patch was installed, he’ll probably remove it to save his skin.
He’ll think removing it would just make the cyber
malfunction.”
    “ Which could make him dangerous,” Kole pointed out.
    “ True, but that’s what the override is for, although there’s
never been a case where a cyber has become dangerous because of a
malfunction – in fact, I’ve never heard of a cyber malfunctioning,
come to think of it. The override is primarily used for transfers,
to ensure the new owner can’t use the cyber to kill the guy he just
bought him from, or, if they do the transfer the other way, to kill
the guy who just bought him. Either way, whoever doesn’t own the
cyber before the funds are transferred has the
override.”
    “ Yeah,” Kole nodded. “The only time I’ve heard of an override
being used for anything else was when an owner flipped out and
ordered his cyber to murder innocent civilians. Then enforcers were
called in to arrest the guy and get his override, and they ended up
killing him.”
    “ Well he’s fair game if he uses a cyber to commit mass murder,”
Trevare remarked.
    “ Do enforcers have overrides that work on all cybers?” Tassin
asked.
    “ God, no! That would make owning a cyber pointless, wouldn’t
it? There’s no such thing as a general override. They’re always
keyed to a particular brow band, and they can’t be hacked,
either.”
    “ Hard coded,” Kole agreed.
    “ So you can’t hack something that’s hard coded?” she
enquired.
    “ Well, you can,” Trevare said, leaning back and clasping his
hands behind his head, “but what would be the point? No one knows
what code overrides what cyber. So, let’s say you hack your own
override – and only someone who owns a cyber has one – and you
change the code. You don’t know whose cyber that code belongs
to.”
    “ What about if you found