The Gastropoda Imperative, Peter Barns [story books to read txt] 📗

love those chickens. To know that they’re probably all dead by now. Well—”

Lyra walked over and hugged her aunt, kissing her cheek. “I’m so sorry auntie.”

Her aunt hugged her back, sniffing the last of her tears away. “Never mind dear. We’ll go and get some more tomorrow. Will you help me choose them?”

Lyra nodded and smiled. “Of course I will,” she said, struggling with the wires as she tried to pull the first of the cans from her leg.

“There’s a pair of pliers in the kitchen drawer over there,” her aunt said.

Lyra giggled as she opened the drawer and snapped the pliers in front of her face. “I know who’s nuts I’d like to be cracking with these right now,” she said.

“Lyra!” her aunt and mother exclaimed in unison, trying not to laugh.

“So tell me,” her mother said, “why have you come home looking like someone tried to make you into a tin of beans? It’s a bit late for a fancy dress party, isn’t it?”

***

Lyra waved to her mother and aunt as they drove up the track. They’d asked her if she wanted to go shopping with them, but she’d grabbed at her chance and told them she had a headache and would sit in the garden for a bit.

“Well don’t get yourself sunburnt,” her mother warned. “You know how easily you catch the sun.”

As soon as the car had gone, Lyra ran up to the bedroom and opened the trunk again. And there it was, sitting right where she’d left it - the pen drive with the name Lexi scratched on the side. Now maybe she’d get some answers as to why poor Piers was so convinced there had been aliens on the island and dressed in tin cans. Even he wouldn’t just make a story like that up. Something must have kicked it off in his mind.

Opening the bedside cabinet drawer, Lyra took out her phone charger and detaching the cable, tried to plug it into the pen drive. It wouldn’t fit.

Damn.

Then she remembered that her aunt had an old PC in her bedroom that she used to keep in touch with her Facebook friends. She’d need to be quick, she didn’t know how long they’d be out.

Feeling a little guilty to be using her aunt’s computer without permission, Lyra tapped her fingers against the keyboard as she waited for the computer to boot up, willing it to load quicker.

Finally the Desktop appeared and she pushed the pen drive into the USB slot. Her face dropped in disappointment when a Password window appeared. After trying a collection of random words, including all the different combinations of Lexi she could think of, she gave up.

What she needed was someone who could hack computers, and she thought she knew just the person. Picking up her mobile, she tapped out a number.

***

Lyra sat swinging her legs and chewing her bottom lip. Where the hell was he? It had been at least half-an-hour since she’d phoned him.

“So what’s the emergency then?” Fin said as he stuck his head into the bus shelter.

“Oh hi Fin. Thanks for coming.” Lyra walked out of the bus shelter and saw that Troy and Willow were there as well.

“Called the whole gang as back-up,” Fin said. “You sounded as though you were stuck in some trashy thriller novel from the way you were talking.”

“Yeah,” Troy said, winking at his friend, “what’s all this about secret passwords and derring-do out on Flat Rock Island then?”

Lyra felt her face flush and wished with all her heart that Fin didn’t have such a big mouth at times. How much should she tell them? It all seemed a bit silly now that she thought back on it. Giving Troy a quick glance, she wondered if he had in fact threatened Piers to keep away from her. If he had, she knew that he’d have done it for the best of reasons.

“So?” Troy prompted.

Deciding to play safe, Lyra explained about the scientist that had worked on Flat Rock Island and how she’d found the pen drive in the clothes trunk.

“Yes, I remember her,” Willow said. “I saw her shopping in the supermarket a few times. She died in the accident, didn’t she?”

“That’s what my aunt said,” Lyra replied.

“Always thought there was something funny about that,” Fin said. “I mean, why didn’t they find some way of bringing the bodies out instead of burying them all under hundred of tons of concrete the way they did?”

“Not hundreds Fin. The lab’s still there according to the boatman. He said that they only filled in the lift shaft. It would have been too difficult trying to fill the whole place with concrete.”

Lyra was getting a bit impatient. “Look Fin,” she cut across them, “do you know about computers or not?”

“Course he does,” Troy said. “He’s hacked into the school files and given us some good grades, haven’t you Fin?”

“Fin!” Willow’s voice was full of scorn.

Fin slapped his hand against his forehead and groaned, kicking out at Troy, who adroitly sidestepped and laughed.

“Got cha,” Troy laughed, pointing at Willow.

“Will you two be serious for a minute,” Lyra said. “If you can’t do it Fin, it’s okay.”

Fin allowed an expression of shock and disappointment to flood his face. Then he raised his eyebrows and held out his hand. “Give it here girl, never let it be said that I don’t rise to a challenge. I’ll have it ready for you by tonight, no problemo.”

They all agreed to meet back at the shelter the next day, as Troy had to go somewhere with his dad, and Willow was off to see her boyfriend.

Chapter 18

”Yeah?”

“Hey Grant, it’s Fin.”

“Yeah?”

“Look, I’ve being trying to crack a password for a mate of mine who’s forgotten what she used on her flash drive.”

“Yeah?”

“So can you help me?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll bring it over then shall I?”

“Yeah.”

The call went dead and Fin turned off his mobile, shaking his head. His friend Grant may have been short on words but he was the best hacker in the country. If anyone could get into the files on the flash drive it would be him.

Grabbing a coat, Fin told his mother that he was going out for awhile. Jumping on his bike, he cycled down the road to the other end of the village. The moon was high, lighting the road as Fin rode out into the countryside.

Arriving at the large house where Grant lived, Fin rang the bell and waited. Footsteps sounded from inside and the door was swung open. Fin stepped into the hall and followed Grant up to his bedroom. The house was huge, the stairs swinging in a sweep up to the large landing. The pile on the carpet was so deep that Fin felt like he was floating rather than walking. Fin wasn’t a close friend of Grant’s, he just knew him from school, and this was the first time he’d been in his house. He was impressed.

Arriving at his bedroom, Grant pulled Fin in and closed the door. Fin just stood there, mouth open as he looked at all the equipment. Along with the flat screen TV and large monitor PC, were numerous other pieces of hardware that he had no idea what they might be for. A projector was whirring away on a low table and Fin could see that Grant had been playing an on-line shooter game, but instead of the usual hand-held paddles, Grant had an electronic rifle connected to the system. The projected image took up all of one wall and was so life-like that it was almost as if he were in the game itself.

“Shit!” Fin whispered, walking over to the rifle and picking it off its tripod. “This is awesome.”

“Signing off,” Grant said. “Back later.”

Fin glanced at him and saw that he was wearing a mike and small earphones. After switching off the game, Grant walked over to his computer desk and sat down. Fin was still engrossed in the rifle and jumped when Grant called to him.

“Where is it then?”

Fin put the rifle down and walked over to the desk. He handed the flash drive to Grant and pulled another chair over to sit beside him. Grant slid the flash drive into a USB port on his wireless keyboard and sat back while it loaded. An oblong box appeared on the screen and he grunted. A long column of characters were running down the left-hand side of the screen. Grant rattled the keyboard and another monitor lit up. Moving it nearer to the main monitor, he jabbed a key and the characters appeared on the second screen. They were moving to fast to read, but didn’t make any sense to Fin anyway. If they’d been coloured green, he’d have thought he was watching the film, Matrix, one of his all time favourite movies.

Grant tapped another key and the characters slowed on the monitor. Another tap and they stopped completely. Then a succession of taps and they slid down a screen at a time. Fin watched for the next half hour as Grant studied screen after screen of characters. He seemed to be looking for something in particular.

Finally Grant sat back with a sigh and tugged the flash drive free, tossing it in his hand and shaking his head.

“What, you can’t crack the password?” Fin said.

“Oh I reckon I can do that okay Fin. It’s just that I don’t think I want to.”

Fin looked down at the flash drive that Grant was holding between his fingers, not understanding what his friend was telling him. He shrugged, raising his eyebrows.

“Look mate.” Grant leant forward and tapped the computer screen, where the characters were still displayed. “What do you know about encryption?”

Fin laughed. “The usual. But this hasn’t been encrypted, it’s just shielded by a password.”

“Not quite,” Grant said, shaking his head. “There’s something behind the code there that’s encrypted. Something that would take years of high powered computer power to break.”

Fin felt the disappointment flood through him. “So the password is encrypted then?”

Grant spoke to Fin as though to a child. “No Fin. The password is not encrypted.”

“So what’s the problem then?”

“The problem is going to be what happens when you trigger the code behind the password and the cops suddenly show up banging on your front door,” Grant said. He pointed at the screen again. “This is stuff I’ve never come across before Fin. Government level stuff. You know what I mean? No ordinary hacker wrote this. It’s some sort of tracker code. I’m sure of it.”

Fin laughed. “Christ, you sound like someone out of a bloody movie, Grant. When does this code stuff kick in?”

Grant shrugged.

“There’s only the one file?”

Grant nodded.

“So if you crack the password for me, I can take it home and use a series of VPNs to hide behind. No one can get through those, not if I use enough of them.”

“You could.”

“So?” Fin was intrigued, wondering why such a sophisticated code had been used on a flash drive. What the hell was in this file?

“What’s worrying me mate is that this code wasn’t written on the flash drive. It was written to sit in the background on the original computer, only operating if files were copied from it.” He held up his hand when Fin went to interrupt. “Plus this bit of code here,” he pointed at the screen, “wipes the files if you use the incorrect password more than three times in a row.”

“Shit!” Fin slumped back in his chair defeated.

“I take it you’ve tried more than that then?”

Fin nodded.

“Tough luck mate,” Grant said, tossing the flash drive at Fin.

Fin caught the flash drive and stuck it in his pocket.

“Well thanks for trying anyway Grant.”

Grant got up and switched his shooter game on. “Back on line,” he growled into his mike.”

“I’ll see myself out then, shall I?”

Later that night Fin was surprised to get a text from Grant.

Couldn’t let the damn thing beat me. Here’s the password.

Fin made a new file on the pen drive and saved the password in it. Finished, he tossed the drive on his desk. It wouldn’t be fair to open it without Lyra being there as well, but half an hour later he was back at his computer typing in the password. Ready, Fin hesitated a moment, then taking a deep breath, he