CHAPTER 9
Electrons Need No Earthly Relationships
Second Friday of June
That’s where the Goalkeeper is. And it’s my job to fight them.
Kihan Kuyama was a hacker.
The type of hacker who didn’t particularly care about the differences between the white-hats and black-hats or the kinds that tended to show up in fiction for a while. A simpler name for him might have been Internet criminal. The first time Kuyama had touched a computer had been in the earlier half of elementary school. He’d been randomly pressing keys and coincidentally gotten past a staff member’s password lock. Ever since then, it had been a fixation of his to find the holes in computer systems. He’d researched all sorts of things after that, and by the time he got to high school, he’d already earned himself that strange title.
Around here, maybe?
Kuyama was sitting in a corner of an utterly unextraordinary open café that had a wireless LAN hot spot. He never made the mistake of letting an opponent trace him, and even if anyone tried, he always made sure to spoof his source address, so nine times out of ten it wouldn’t be an issue. Still, he never felt like going to battle in his own home.
A waitress approached with a smile; Kuyama put in an offhand order as he took out a laptop. This was his weapon. On the outside, it seemed like a cheap model from a common manufacturer, but on the inside lay something entirely different; he’d replaced everything, starting from the machine’s very foundation. Even so, all Academy City computers were preset with a security rank—D, C, B, A, or S—for that specific device, as well as something like a serial number. No matter how he spoofed his address, he’d had to do something about that number—it was embedded directly in the circuitry—or else the danger of them discovering his identity skyrocketed.
I’m actually nervous. That’s unusual, he thought, plugging in a wireless card—separate from the one already inside the laptop. Makes sense, though. I’m about to break into the Goalkeeper’s very own computer system.
He was operating less on information and more on an urban legend.
Among those who kept the peace in Academy City was an incredibly skilled hacker. Whoever they were, their abilities were outstanding, and the security system they’d created using all the knowledge and skills at their disposal was apparently one of the top ten tightest in the whole city. The General Board chairperson didn’t trust their abilities, however, and they ended up not adopting it for use in public systems. That created an odd setup where the small little office that hacker worked in had defenses several times tougher than even the data banks that managed information for all of Academy City.
He’d thought it was a joke.
This hacker world had been created by those with unknown faces and names. Infestations of groundless information were the norm, not the exception—always seeking to stir up gossip or to make the mastermind seem bigger and better than they were.
But the vague rumors had lined up with concrete evidence.
Within the past week, several hackers Kuyama knew had been arrested. And yes, every single one of them had been attempting to break into a certain system.
He’d never actually met any of them for real, but he did have a handle on their abilities. He’d had chats with them about how to illegally modify their stats in online games before. Considering their skills, he doubted they’d all messed up trying to get into some trivial system, like one belonging to Anti-Skill or Judgment.
Something was up.
And that thing was, in all likelihood, the Goalkeeper.
I’m not trying to steal information or anything. And it’s not that the so-called Goalkeeper rubs me the wrong way, either.
Academy City regulations stated that crimes related to electronic communication carried a maximum of twenty years’ imprisonment with hard labor or a fine of up to fifty million yen. The risks of intrusion for no reason were certainly not low, but…
Still, my master key needs to work on everything. As soon as there’s a door that I can’t open, the master key is as good as garbage.
He wasn’t exactly doing this because he hated to lose—it was to tear off a label unfairly applied to him.
He sought freedom, and he wouldn’t let anything stand in his way, no matter how small.
And that was what moved Kihan Kuyama, the hacker who didn’t seek reward.
The first thing Kuyama did was not spoof his ID using some obscure method, nor was it to undo password lock screens with incredibly fast keystrokes.
The first order of business was simply setting up his shortcut keys.
Maybe I’ll go with Preset 3 today—4 or 1 might be good, too.
He consulted his list of on-hand hacking programs to select the ones he’d use. After that, he assigned them all at once to the leftover keys on his keyboard, setting it up so that he could boot up any of them he wanted with a single keystroke.
What Kuyama was doing was akin to saving certain frequently used chat patterns for online games, such as “heal pls” or “let’s pull back,” in advance, so that he only had to press a few buttons to say them. There wasn’t much point to laboring over every single character, and most importantly, that would prevent quick reaction times.
The only flaw was if he needed any commands that he hadn’t set up in advance, he’d need to switch to doing things manually and typing out commands. It was best to consider most of those unusable in real world conditions. Because of that, he had to take into account the security level of what he was hacking, as well as what he’d need to do once inside, and from that, he put together the most optimal key setup he could.
After all, the Goalkeeper’s skill is an unknown variable. Throwing up a smoke screen should be the safest option. I hate to be too cautious and come off as scared, but I should probably assume this enemy deserves at least that much respect.
This moment, when he tried to get inside an enemy’s head and set up a limited hand for himself, was what Kuyama lived for. Even more than the feeling he got after breaking into a system. It made him feel as though he were connected with someone he couldn’t see on the other side of the Internet.
…Then, driving away that particular joy, he heard a nearby table clatter. Kuyama looked over there and saw some huge-chested woman wearing a green tracksuit sitting down at it.
“Phew… Aah, it’s such a pain having to write reports. Hey, miss—does this place have wireless LAN? I don’t wanna have to bother going all the way back to school to turn this in, yeah?”
…The hell is she?
It said right on the front door of the shop whether or not there was wireless LAN access. In fact, the very thought of her trying to submit an official report through the wireless LAN, where you had no idea who might intercept any kind of message, struck the hacker as unbelievably oblivious. And it didn’t look like she’d taken proper precautions to mitigate risk like he did.
Amateur, he thought contemptuously as he sneered at all the casual dabblers in every field before he immersed himself in his work.
After getting most of his shortcuts set up, Kuyama finally set off on his rather illegal caper.
Still, hackers weren’t exactly superhuman. All he was planning to do was run somewhat unique programs, which were made for developers, to use a normal search engine to find a certain website on the Internet.
A regular old internet browser popped up in the middle of his laptop monitor, with several windows that had lots of weird scrolling numbers and symbols arrayed around its periphery. Basically, it was only showing information you couldn’t generally see on the surface—none of it was any more than what a computer always processed.
Kuyama knew firsthand that the main thing hackers possessed that others didn’t was knowledge.
How much of the information hidden behind the scenes did most people understand? Those good at scooping up goldfish at festivals knew the trick to that. Hackers were much the same.
To repeat, hackers were not superhuman.
Under normal circumstances, all they did was bring the processing that happened under the hood to the surface.
All right, let’s get started.
He’d found the system administered by the Goalkeeper.
It obviously wasn’t made for regular people to view, but it had an interface; the likes of Anti-Skill and Judgment could use it to exchange information through the system. That was the route Kuyama used to infiltrate.
As soon as he gained access, there was a change in the windows with the scrolling numbers and symbols. Several rows of characters stood apart from the rest, colored in red, displaying multiple warning symbols.
Hmm! A redirect, eh?!
A redirect was a mechanism to automatically move anyone who accessed the website to another website, without their input. In many cases, the resulting website was something horrible, the kind where viewing it could give you a virus.
In this case, the destination was most likely something that would collect his personal information. Regulations prevented Anti-Skill and Judgment from creating systems for themselves that obtained personal information in violation of privacy laws; their main motive for the redirect was to purposely send the infiltrator somewhere outside their system and cook their goose, as it were.
This time, though, Kuyama’s reflexes were faster.
He’d noticed the Goalkeeper’s land mine before stepping on it. He slipped around it instead, smiling to himself.
This wasn’t how a protector did things. A redirect to a malicious website? It was obvious if you thought about what a weapon like that was originally made for. This was clearly how a hacker would attack someone.
And if he could see their system, he could discern their character.
While employing a rather shrewd method in response, Kuyama’s spirits began to soar with joy, as though this were a simple game—and he was winning.
And then, someone threw a wet blanket over him once again.
“Oh, here it is! It’s right here—right here!!”
The shrill voice belonged to a girl. Annoyed, Kuyama looked in that direction and saw someone who looked like she was in middle school at a table across from the lady in the green tracksuit, who had since grown bored of writing her report and was collapsed face-first on the table. The girl seemed to have a lot of flower decorations on her head that stuck out in the corner of his vision. She seemed to be playing a multiplayer game.
“Phew! Speed is finally stabilized… Wait, something terrible happened before I knew it?!”
Clack-clack-clack-clack went the buttons as the girl furiously pressed them hard enough to break them. Offhandedly noting how the only problem with mounting his attacks outside his home was that he couldn’t fully immerse himself due to distractions, Kuyama focused his attention back at his laptop screen.
Several more traps were waiting for him after that, too.
One made it look like he’d broken into the system, another put him into a protracted command loop, and yet another forced absolutely unreadable file types to open and give him errors. As Kuyama had predicted, they were all things a hacker would use for offense, and many of them surprised even him, a hacker by trade, with their ingenuity.
But he hadn’t fallen for any of them yet. Dangerous rows of characters would be marked in colors before he ran straight into them, and Kuyama would divert around them to get even deeper in.
Have I won?
The moment he had that thought, something changed.
A small window suddenly appeared at the edge of the screen. In it was a single indifferent word: disconnected. Kuyama was dubious, but there was no issue with his wireless LAN environment. Something or someone on the Goalkeeper’s side had, for some reason, cut the power.
Did they notice me?!
Kuyama glanced at several windows, but fortunately, it didn’t seem like his personal information had been collected. What most likely happened was his target realizing someone had hacked into the system, but they hadn’t figured out exactly who, so they forced a shutdown, deciding it was too dangerous to let him fish around any longer.
Even as he planted several misdirects, just in case, and made absolutely sure not to leave any trace of himself, there was no sense of triumph on Kuyama’s face.
That was good timing. I guess that makes it a draw for today.
While he had done everything electronically from start to finish, the Goalkeeper had been forced to resort to the physical solution of shutting off the power. In other words, Kuyama’s hacking skills had won out. And it all but proved the effectiveness of his master key.
And then it happened.
The realization dawned on him.
That simple disconnected message from earlier. It would have appeared on the Goalkeeper’s system at the same time it had shown up on Kuyama’s laptop. If you cut a tin can telephone by its string, both people would no longer be able to hear the other.
And the exact same thing would happen in that same second of that minute of that hour of that day of that month of that year.
So… If the Goalkeeper used the display time on the message that came up on their system to investigate, wouldn’t they be able to get a precise hit on him?
“…?!” A cold sweat broke out all over Kuyama’s face.
N-no, I already built a program to spoof my source address. They couldn’t possibly identify me instantaneously…!!
So he thought anyway, but the store’s surveillance cameras, as well as the multiple lenses on a security robot running on the road outside, had just taken perfect aim at him, as though they were snipers. And as the pièce de résistance, someone laid a hand on Kuyama’s shoulder. He didn’t need to turn around. It belonged to an Anti-Skill officer: one of those who protected peace in the city.
“That’s a violation of the regulation preventing unlawful electronic information manipulation. I’m not requesting you to come with me. You understand, right?”
But Kuyama wasn’t listening to the deep voice.
Not even close.
Wait. It hasn’t even been three minutes since my connection dropped. Anti-Skill couldn’t have gotten here that fast, even if they did pinpoint where I was. Which means…
They’d noticed he was here much earlier.
But then when? And where? And how?
Then, he heard a clatter. He looked that way and saw the girl, the one who’d been playing her game, getting out of her seat. The flower-adorned girl headed for the register with her bill and said, “Um, can I get a receipt please? Yes—please charge it to Kazari Uiharu, of Judgment.”
She went for the receipt even though all she’d done was play her video game. But Kuyama’s face twisted as though he’d been punched in the gut. He finally realized what she’d actually been holding.
That…that’s…
A portable game console that could connect to the net.
It could use wireless LAN, so it could theoretically also run programs on the Internet.
But…
It was a more practical issue. Could she seriously have fought Kuyama’s fully decked-out hacking system with nothing but that?
Come to think of it, when she got here, she said something about speed having stabilized and then something terrible having happened before she realized it. Could that mean she was—?
“Hey… Hey, you!!”
Kuyama unconsciously tried to go up to the girl, but the Anti-Skill officer must have thought he was trying to run away and pinned him. Squashed on the ground now, Kuyama still stared at that girl. She didn’t turn around. Not even once.
There was no proof that girl with the flower ornament was the Goalkeeper.
The real one could have surprisingly been giggling at him on the other end of the connection now. Maybe the Goalkeeper was a friend of hers, and she’d just been cheering them on from the sidelines.
However.
The problem wasn’t the girl, per se.
The Goalkeeper had been right before his eyes, yet he hadn’t been able to discern her—he’d only caught wavering glimpses of her shadow.
He stared at her back—at the person who was infinitely close to black but still somehow gray—the one who danced, her tail just out of reach—
“She’s a hacker…,” moaned Kuyama as cuffs were snapped close around his hands behind him.
“A…a real hacker.”
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