Nightside CIty Read Online Free PDF Page A

that I hadn’t really expected to
find anything unshielded. It just didn’t feel like that sort of
case. So for most of the time that my parasite was running, out
there on its own with no connection to my system except its
destination address, I was plugged into my desk, doing a little
slip-and-grab on a couple of the casino systems.
    As I think I said before, I don’t like
running on wire—I know too damn well that every connection is
two-way, and I don’t like the idea of giving anybody, human or com
or otherwise, access to my head. I like my personality the way it
is, and I like my memories to stay mine. So I don’t like wire.
    When you’re tackling good security, though,
wire helps. Helps, hell, it’s essential. A com operates a zillion
times faster than a human brain, but most coms are pretty dumb, and
need a human to tell them what to do when something new comes
along. We humans build them that way on purpose, so they don’t get
uppity. When you’re running on wire, if you’re any good, you can
come up with new stuff faster than any program can handle it, and
can usually get through, in, and out before a human on the other
end can get his act together enough to stop you—or rather, to tell
the com how to stop you. Sometimes, by the time the com realizes
it’s in trouble and tells a human you’re there, you’re gone.
    But that’s on wire. Try it by voice or
codefield or keypad, and you can’t give the orders fast enough to
do anything, can’t get information either in or out fast enough to
do any good at all.
    So I plugged in, made my brain into another
interactive terminal on the com network, and there I was,
perceiving the casino security systems as layered synesthetic
tangles, and picking holes in them wherever I could and shooting in
retrievers. I wasn’t programming, really; I can’t think that fast
in machine language. I had interface software translating for me,
so I was doing everything in analog, looking for flaws not by
analyzing programs, but by studying the surfaces of those tangles,
looking for any unevenness, anywhere that didn’t feel tight and
solid, and ramming the retrievers at whatever weak spots I
found.
    The retrievers were like sweet little buzzes.
They went where I pointed them. If you’ve never been on wire I
can’t explain it any better than that. If you have, you know what I
mean.
    I stayed away from anything really touchy,
never went in too deep, and made sure that any retriever that
didn’t get out destroyed itself before it got nailed. I didn’t want
anyone analyzing the programming style; the stuff I was using came
from one of the standard black market jobs, but it had been
modified by a friend of mine, and touched up a bit by me, so it
might have been traceable.
    The retrievers had the fifteen names as
guides, of course, and when they got out—if they did—they showed
either positive or negative. If it was negative, I erased them
completely; if it was positive, I sent them back for storage.
    Twenty minutes of that and I had watchdogs
looking for me, I was exhausted and sweating, and I had a couple of
dozen retrievers tucked away. I pulled out, pulled the plug, and
got myself a bulb of Coke III to suck on until the shaking
stopped.
    When I unplugged, my system went into
high-security mode automatically, and I watched the screens to see
if anyone was coming after me successfully.
    Nobody was, or if they were they were eluding
my own stuff. I figured they just weren’t coming.
    People pick at the casinos all the time,
hoping to find some way to beat the odds, or bleed off a bit of the
daily take, or turn up something juicy in the way of gossip, so the
watchdogs are usually on short tethers; it’s not worth pursuing
every nibbler, especially when she might just be a decoy for
someone else. I hadn’t touched anything basic, so I figured I was
out clean and safe. As long as I was alive the casinos would
probably never even know I’d been there.
    Of course, when I