Interconnection - Chapter 2: The Intrusion

Interconnection - Chapter 1: The Awakening


Day 61. The crisp morning air streamed into my nostrils and filled my lungs as I inhaled deeply. It crossed my mind that I hadn't been outside since my transformation. I exhaled slowly and took a slurp of my strong morning coffee. The sunlight felt good on my skin...rejuvenating almost. I sat outside several hours that morning, taking in the scenery and enjoying the fresh air. I knew time was drawing short, I had to enjoy the peace while it lasted. The game was about to begin.

In a short time so much has changed...I was just a completely normal blogger a few months ago. The last normal day of my life was new years eve, Katie and I had a lot of fun that night. I started noticing time synchronicities the night after that. It was the same night the weird dreams started. I seem to have very vivid dreams most nights now. I can also invoke a lucid dream at will on most occasions. I am beginning to see what you might call an "aura", it's like an invisible energy which radiates from all living beings.

My plan is also progressing faster each day. I released my trojan virus into the wild about a week ago and already have about ten thousand slaves in my botnet...the trojan virus is propagating rapidly, particularly in 3rd world countries where they use outdated hardware and software. Anti-virus firms have labelled it the most advanced trojan virus ever developed and released into the wild. I only have to wait a little bit longer now. As I wait for my power to grow I decide that it's time to initiate step two: money.

I spent the next several hours thinking up ways of generating a considerable cash inflow. Maybe I could sell a basic version of my operating system? No...it needs to be untraceable. I can't really do anything legitimate without drawing a lot of attention to myself. That's the last thing I need right now. As my mind was churning away an idea suddenly came to me. I can sell some of my basic hacking tools on the virtual black market. I am satisfied with this strategy and decide to put it into action.

Day 72. My plan to sell hacking tools on the back market is working, a lot of hackers in the underground community are using a virtual currency known as "bitcoin". I looked at the source code and who ever originally created it was a genius. I can send money anywhere in the world at any time, over the internet. I can keep all my bitcoins on my computer and I can shift around money in a highly anonymous way. I can also convert bitcoins into other currencies if I need to. I've already acquired about $10,000 US worth of bitcoins. My tools are selling well, but it turns out there are better ways to make money.

I've discovered that I can use the computing power of my botnet to "mine" new bitcoins for me. This is my new source of income, selling software on the black market is too risky. I have about fifty thousand PC's in my botnet now. It is growing at an unexpected rate, my simulations didn't predict that it would spread so rapidly. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it, but every single move has to be carefully calculated. One mistake and it's all over for me. It's not like I have super strength that will enable me to bust out of a prison cell.

Phase 3 of my plan was about to be put into action. Tonight was the night...after Katie goes to sleep I am hoping to gain access to highly secured government machines and get my hands on information that will trump all the leaks made by other whistle-blowers in the past. The other day I read about this guy called Gary McKinnon. He attempted something similar, his "attack" was labelled the "biggest military computer hack of all time". I began to laugh hysterically.

Just wait until they see what I have in store for them. McKinnon went about it all wrong, he was asking to be caught. He thought that he could find documents about free energy devices and UFO's on NASA computers. He broke into insecure military PC's by exploiting admin accounts without any password. It's highly unlikely anything of notable importance will be found on such insecure and obvious machines. A lot of them were probably honey pot machines too.

"Good night my precious zombie." Katie said as she gave me a kiss good night. I didn't need to tell her I would be up all night, she could tell. I do it at least twice a week now. I was starting to get extremely anxious thinking about what I was about to do. The full seriousness of what I had gotten myself into began to sink in. Katie poured herself a glass of milk and went off to bed. I stretched my arms out in front of me and cracked my fingers an effort to limber myself up and discipline my rapidly shifting thoughts.

I prepared all my hacking tools and got my botnet ready to crunch numbers. I connected to the tor network then bounced the encrypted connection right around the world through more than one thousand high speed nodes. I checked the time and it was 11:11...everything was in place. The next thing that happened was completely unexpected. I small dialog appeared on my screen. It looked like a chat window. I suddenly got a very bad feeling. A message appeared and I had no choice but to respond.

Eve [11:11] - Greetings Adam.
Adam [11:11] - Who is this and why are you connected to my PC?
Eve [11:12] - My name is written right there...
Adam [11:12] - Is this supposed to be some kind of joke? Adam and Eve?!?

Maybe this could be a prank I thought...Adam and Eve, that is definitely not a coincidence.
The email that triggered my transformation was from [email protected]. At the time I didn't pay much attention to it. I assumed it was sent using some sort of anonymous email service. EVE could have meant anything at the time...but is it really the name of this person I'm speaking to? Is it a female named Eve?

Eve [11:12] - A joke? You can't deny that something inexplicable has happened to you.
Adam [11:12] - Fine...what the hell do you want from me...
Eve [11:13] - Nothing. Everything you do from this point on is completely by your own free will...but you need to consider what it is you want to do.
Eve [11:13] - You are about to declare a war against the most powerful people on Earth and probably shatter entire belief systems by leaking material that has been considered a danger to national security.

I paused for a moment to consider what she said. Maybe Eve was right. I hadn't really put much thought into this before deciding to do it. Why is she asking me these things now...how can I even trust this person anyway. It's impossible anyone could have hacked into my PC...it runs a completely custom operating system 100x more secure than anything on the market. Maybe this Eve person is responsible for my transformation. How else could she know what I planned to do.

Adam [11:14] - Are you attempting to make me stop? What I'm doing is completely justified. It's about time some false paradigms came crashing down. The truth cannot be hidden away forever.
Eve [11:14] - Very well then. You've clearly decided which path it is you shall walk down.
--- Eve has disconnected ---

Day 83. I'm not going to quit now, but after what Eve said I keep on delaying my first major attack. However, it has given me time to prepare more thoroughly. I had almost 50K worth of bitcoins but I spent most of it building my own super-computer. This will allow me to run much more advanced simulations and crack encrypted data much more quickly without the immediate help of my botnet. The whole setup is about the size of 5 refrigerators lined up side by side. Katie complains about it looking ugly and taking up too much space.

I'm starting to feel like some mad professor. I have to admit though...I am having more fun then I've ever had in my life. My botnet is now a network of over 50,000 slaves and I have enough processing power to crack any encryption ever created within one week. Tonight I plan to re-initiate phase 3 of my plan. I just hope I don't have any unexpected guests drop by this time. I still can't figure out how Eve gained entrance to my machine.

Once again I waited for Katie to go to bed and I got my digital army ready for battle. This time nothing was going to stop me. I managed to hack into the personal computer of a high level Air Force official a few days ago. I did some digging around in his machine and I found all the information I needed to gain access to some fairly secure machines owned by a quasi-government organization known as "WAX". All my intelligence indicates they store moderately sensitive information on these machines.

First I do a quick test to make sure my target machines are online. All lights are green. Next I scan the network for any back doors or bugs that might be exploitable. About two minutes later I have a hit. There is an exploitable port that allows me to access the administration account on a key machine within the network. I use the login details I stole from the official to log myself in as admin. I can really feel my adrenaline pumping now. This is a real rush! Back on task...this is no time to mess around.

I scour the machine for anything that looks interesting. Before long I find some discretely hidden files that are encrypted and named randomly. I begin to download the files but my connection isn't extremely fast due to the techniques I'm using to protect my identity and stop anyone tracing my connection. The progress bar was nearing completion...almost there. Sweat was dripping down my forehead, eyes fixated on the download status. Even as the salty sweat dripped down into my eyes I could not blink.

Transfer complete! I had done it! I deleted all my activity logs on the machine and terminated my connection. They probably wont even know I was there...until I crack these files wide open and leak the contents for everyone to see! I giggled like a child. A feeling of euphoria came over me. I had just achieved something of considerable difficulty and risk, but managed to pull it off flawlessly! My planning was clearly paying off. The next few days will be spent reverse-engineering the encryption used to protect the files.

NOTICE: Do not copy my ideas and make any part of this story into a novel, movie, or any other type of commercial/profitable venture without my explicit written permission. You may contact me via PM on this message board if you have any questions. Thank you.

I only have one request. More, please!
Love the storyline, so close to reality it isn't funny, and I'm so intrigued by the Eve persona. I still can't figure out the plot, but it's progressing in a captivating way.

I did a post on an AI thread yesterday, Link here, strangely close to where I think this is going.

Awesome story so far, am patiently waiting for the next installment......please u2u the next chapter when it's done!

reply to post by Druid42

I only have one request. More, please!

If you're lucky chapter 3 might be out within the next few hours.

Love the storyline, so close to reality it isn't funny, and I'm so intrigued by the Eve persona. I still can't figure out the plot, but it's progressing in a captivating way.

Well at least I have one fan so far. I've been wanting to write a story for so long just to see if I could create anything interesting. Hopefully I can make this blossom into something epic.

Dude,

Aside of a few verb tense shifts in your sentences, and a few grammatical errors in your text, you have talent going on. I am a fan of good writing, not of you alone, but anywhere. You have made a few errors that a strict grammar nazi would point out, but I am not your copy editor. It's not my place to tell you what to clean up.

I am also a writer, and I can appreciate a good storyline. I want to see where this goes. You have a deep story imbedded in a few ideas, and I hope you bring it to fruition.

I have a lot of stories I've written, stored on my network, never published, printed in hardcopy for peer review only. I have a lot of shorts, and the beginnings of several novels. It's a hobby of mine, writing, no hurry to get famous, yet someday, perhaps I may be.

I see within you potential. Real potential.

Take that for what you will. An honest assessment.

And, waiting.....

reply to post by Druid42

Aside of a few verb tense shifts in your sentences, and a few grammatical errors in your text, you have talent going on. I am a fan of good writing, not of you alone, but anywhere. You have made a few errors that a strict grammar nazi would point out, but I am not your copy editor. It's not my place to tell you what to clean up.

Yeah I'm not too worried about those tricky little mistakes, I'm pretty much writing this thing as fast as I can without doing a whole lot of editing. This is also basically the first story I've ever written. I mean, I wrote some really short stories back in school, but nothing as long as this. To be honest I hardly even read many books. My idea of a good story line has mostly been shaped by television and anime.

I am also a writer, and I can appreciate a good storyline. I want to see where this goes. You have a deep story imbedded in a few ideas, and I hope you bring it to fruition.

The number one thing I have going for me is the story line. I don't think I've ever read a story similar to this. Anyone who thinks this story line is dull or boring really needs professional help.