By Dwayne Phillips
Short Story 2008-27, July 4, 2008
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Jerry Volt sat in the front seat of his car tapping ten fingers on the six o’clock position of the steering wheel. Between songs on his iPhone he kept repeating to himself one question,
“What am I doing here?”
Jerry was going to break into the proprietary files of Volkswagen America. That is what he did for a living: break into computers and take information from some people who wouldn’t pay him and give that information to other people who would paid him.
This was a simple marketplace transaction in Jerry’s eyes. He offered services to people. Some chose to pay him for his services while others chose not. Those who chose not risked Jerry’s ire and the money of those who chose Jerry.
Other people didn’t see it this way. They lectured him about ethics, social responsibility, and using his talents in a productive way. The lectures were all the same. The first came from Mrs. Campbell in third grade. Jerry had found his way into the school’s grade system. There were kids in Jerry’s class who were always told they were stupid and not good enough. He wanted to see the reaction of these kids when they saw A’s on their report cards. The joy on their faces warmed Jerry’s heart. He had done something for some people who he thought deserved it to the displeasure of some other people - the same situation Jerry faced this day and dozens of times in between.
Jerry felt that what he had done was ethical. He had done something that cheered these other kids and himself. Joy was ethical. Jerry had been socially responsible. The social atmosphere in class improved greatly the rest of the year. Jerry had made friends for life as most of his third grade classmates were still in touch with him doing favors for him now and then. If bringing joy to kids in particular and the school in general wasn’t a good use of talent, what was?
Jerry remembered Mrs. Campbell’s stern look and loud talk that day. He couldn’t remember anything she said because he wasn’t listening to her. Instead, his eyes wandered about her office. She had a picture of George Washington behind her desk. The picture had a sheet of glass covering it. That glass reflected everything on Mrs. Campbell’s desk to Jerry’s view.
On her desk were a list of passwords to her various computer and financial accounts. The passwords weren’t written simply as they were. Instead, Mrs. Campbell had used a cypher to encrypt them. The cypher was pretty simple, and Jerry broke it while sitting in her office. He was happy that her lecture was long as the last cypher took the same amount of time as the prior four cyphers combined. Jerry had lots of fun that year and the next three in elementary school with Mrs. Campbell and her passwords.
Third grade was the first, but certainly not the last time that Jerry had been caught while breaking into computers. There was the time at summer camp, twice in junior high, and six times in high school. Those only brought stern lectures from sincere adults. They also brought opportunities to sit in someone’s office and examine the computer systems of the powerful first hand. Jerry felt those were fair exchanges.
Once Jerry left high school he visited college. The word verb “visit” is how Jerry considered the six years he was at a college. He earned a PhD in Computer Science during that time attending class only to fill in exam papers. Those things were only a sidelight. The college had thousands of computers on one network. That was a playground for Jerry. He used each computer as a host and bounced among them as he broke into computers at universities and defense research labs around the world. Yes, classes and degrees where a sidelight.
Post doctorate work didn’t interest Jerry. Instead, he squatted in an abandoned office building near the college. He tied into old data lines that were still alive and used a borrowed lab computer to enter computer networks. The most powerful super computers in the world were his to use. The “owners” never knew that Jerry was on them as he used them for a millisecond or two now and then.
Jerry wasn’t perfect as he made mistakes once in a while. Some of Jerry’s friends felt that he made those mistakes on purpose. If he was perfect, he would have been the only person in such a condition on the planet and would have been awfully isolated and lonely.
Those mistakes led to capture and jail. Jerry visited jails a half dozen times. He also considered the verb “visit” appropriate for his encounters with jail. The longest he stayed in one was 12 hours.
He escaped every jail with ease. Jerry couldn’t understand how the law enforcement establishment didn’t comprehend the simplicity of it all. Before breaking into a computer system, Jerry would learn where he would be jailed if caught. He then studied that jail’s computer system thoroughly and planted his software on it. The law enforcers - like Mrs. Campbell in third grade - didn’t understand that a computer was a computer was a computer. Computers controlled all the systems of society, and that included jails. If jailed, Jerry merely waited patiently while his software rang phones and fire alarms, called beepers and cell phones, triggered burglar alarms across town, and opened doors all at the precise and orchestrated time. Jerry walked out of jails.
Jerry did have to endure the lectures. Most were dull and uninspired even when compared to Mrs. Campbell.
One lecture, however, was different. A behavioral psychologist named Dr. Mattei spoke with Jerry for several hours. Jerry listened intently as Dr. Mattei seemed to understand the situation and Jerry’s perspective perfectly. Jerry was so interested in Dr. Mattei that he sat still while his software arranged his escape. Jerry didn’t worry as he knew that the software would arrange another escape in a few hours.
“Computers present an insurmountable challenge to most people in society. People like me, so we just use them as instructed and go on with other pursuits,” started Dr. Mattei. “For a few others, computers are a challenge, but a surmountable one. Those people build computers and their software.” Dr. Mattei paused, removed his glasses, and rubbed his balding head with his handkerchief. “Then, Mr. Volt, there are a couple of individuals in our race who are like you. For you and your sparse peers, computers present an irresistible yet conquerable challenge. You cannot stay from them and they cannot defeat you.”
So here sat Jerry Volt in a 15-year-old faded gray Chevrolet Cavalier with a broken, well the list of broken items was longer than the list of functioning ones. “Great urban camouflage” was what Jerry and his friends called it. “You can drive through the parts of town that the Police won’t suspect and not draw any attention from anyone. Even a white boy can drive through any brother’s hood unnoticed.”
“What am I doing here?” came to Jerry again.
Jerry always broke into a computer without coming near it physically. In his mind, he crawled inside the computer and manipulated electrons and photons. In reality, he was hundreds or thousands of miles away. The networks of the world carried him to his prey and brought his prize back to him.
This time was to be different - very different. Jerry was going to walk into the residence of his prey and take the data with his own two hands. No one would accuse Jerry of being a coward or distant. He was to do this one personally, and the owners of the lost data would know that he took it.
Jerry would take physical copies of the data - DVDs burned the hour before he arrived in the regularly scheduled system backup. Jerry knew they existed because he saw them being created every day over the network. After he took the DVDs, Jerry’s software would erase all traces of the data from the network. He would have the only copy of the data in his hands.
Yes, this time would be different.
Jerry stepped from the car and laughed at himself. He wore a disguise - a freshly pressed pair of khaki Haggar slacks and a blue Van Heusen long sleeve dress shirt with a matching tie. He completed the disguise with a pair of dark brown Rockport Dressport wing tip shoes. “Damn I look good,” was Jerry’s first thought. “Damn I look stupid,” was his second thought.
He pulled two empty Hammermill paper boxes from the back seat of the Cavalier and carried them in from of himself on outstretched arms. Jerry stumbled and struggled as if the boxes were full and heavy. Thirty awkward paces brought Jerry to the front door of Volkswagen’s office building. A petite young lady opened the door for Jerry, “Please let me help you sir,” she said.
“No thanks. I’ve got it,” answered Jerry.
“Hmm, this works,” thought Jerry. If people think you are struggling with packages, they will open the door for you. Jerry had noticed this when watching people walk about in a shopping center years earlier. It was the key to this break in, “Just look like you belong and people will help you without noticing you.”
Inside the building’s lobby Jerry encountered the one person who was positioned to help him this day: Freddie Garcia, the guard in the lobby. Freddie was one of the third graders who Jerry gave an A. That A showed Freddie what it would be like to be “not stupid” and be “good enough.” That feeling inspired Freddie to earn A’s from then on through a Master’s Degree in Chemistry and a job with a pharmaceutical company. As a lark and an aid to Jerry, he took two weeks off work, let Jerry create an air-tight alias persona, played dumb, and landed the lobby guard job just for this day.
Freddie waved Jerry through the lobby. Jerry then twisted himself so that his proximity badge was close enough to the sensor on the door marked “IT Hallway.” Jerry made the proximity badge himself with some hardware he borrowed. The security codes were easy to retrieve as, once again, they sat on some computer on some network and were easy to copy.
Jerry stumbled down the long IT Hallway feigning the weight of loaded boxes all the way. He finally reached the one place where no computer could enter - the door into the computing center. It was locked with a mechanical cypher and the cypher was not stored on any computer - Jerry had looked. “Finally,” thought Jerry, “someone has some sense here to keep important information in the their head instead of on a computer.”
The computer room door was glass from floor to ceiling. The glass was reinforced with metal wires crisscrossing through it. Jerry continued his fumbling act struggling with the boxes while trying to touch the buttons on the cypher lock. Every moment or two he would stumble excessively, show frustration on his face, shake his head, and continue his act.
In two minutes, several young programmers exited the computer room. Jerry knew they were programmers from the topic of their conversation. One of the programmers held the door open for Jerry and told him, “Dude, thanks. We are out of printer paper. That goes in the back corner over there.”
Jerry walked in.
The computer room held several dozen 19” racks of servers. Blue wires flowed through wire trays hung from the extra high ceiling. Bundles of the wires fell down into each rack carrying information in and out of the computers and out into the world.
For once in his life, Jerry wasn’t interested in the computers.
“Okay,” he thought, “where do you keep really important DVDs holding proprietary data?”
Jerry set the two empty Hammermill boxes on the floor in the corner of the room near several printers. He looked down one wall and then the other wall from his vantage point in the corner. His wandering gaze fixed on a point half way down one wall. There it was. A black, four-drawer Mosler safe.
Ten steps, Jerry always counted his steps, and Jerry was standing in front of it. The second drawer from the top, the one with the spin combination and large lever, was open a quarter of an inch. On the top drawer was a security checklist held in place with two small magnets. Jerry traced the “Opened By” column of the checklist down to today’s date. The initials “AKR” were next to a scrawled “05:30.”
“Thank you Mr. or Ms. R for coming in so early to open this for me. Where else would you keep proprietary data but in a safe?” mumbled Jerry quietly.
Jerry opened the top drawer and slid it out six inches. The first folder in the drawer was labeled “B A C K U P S” Half way through the drawer were a group of neon orange folders labeled “P R O P R I E T A R Y”
“Why read the contents?” thought Jerry. “These are labeled so professionally that they must be the right ones.”
Jerry pulled the half dozen “P R O P R I E T A R Y” folders from the drawer, glanced inside each to ensure that it contained a DVD in a slim plastic case, and walked back to the corner where the two empty boxes waited.
Jerry placed the folders in the top box, picked it up, and walked out of the computer room. He continued to act as if the box were heavy. An older woman even opened the door from the IT Hallway to the lobby, walked with Jerry through the lobby, and held open the front door. “They have such pleasant and helpful people here,” thought Jerry. “Maybe one day I’ll try to get a job here.”
The rest was boring, but fun. Jerry set the Hammermill box onto the torn back seat of the old Cavalier. Freddie Garcia was already sitting in the front passenger seat. “Jerry,” said Freddie, “maybe you could buy a new car from this job.”
“Why?” replied Jerry. “This one still works. Besides, the new cars are loaded with computers and connected to the manufacturer’s network. They can track you and hear what you say and all that.”
“Or not,” said Freddie.
“Or not,” repeated Jerry.
The gray Cavalier pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. Freddie laughed as he tossed his alias ID out the window. Jerry tossed his disguise - the matching tie - out his window.
The Hammermill box that Jerry left behind in the computer room held a single piece of paper and a pencil that Jerry used to scrawl these words,
“Jerry Volt has been here. Someone else paid me when you wouldn’t. Don’t bother looking on your network as your files are all erased. And if you see Mrs. Campbell, tell her that I am using my talents in a productive, ethical, and socially responsible manner. Many people who society labels as ‘not good enough’ will benefit from your data.”
Go to
Dwayne's Home Page
Email me at
d.phillips@computer.org