He stepped away from the monitors and ran the tips of his fingers on his temples. Too many things were not making sense lately.
“Should I ask around with the Steamers I know and find out what's going on? Or at least who that Steamer is?” Two-Step asked.
“That’s a good idea. We can’t have the SRS moving in here. I need to get in touch with the other code flickers and see what they know. We might have to ban together to keep them out. I’ve wanted to ask some of them about the bad code that’s going around anyway,” Jacob said.
Xia gave him a concerned look. “Shouldn’t you wait until we finish this job first? You tend to want to take on too many things, and this is just one more thing to worry about.”
Jacob smiled a half-smile. “You’re right. It can wait a few days. We’ll be done with Your Better Life in less than a week, and the SRS isn’t going to take over The Galleria in that amount of time. We need to focus on figuring out a way to test the flippers on a quantum processor.”
“Back to square one,” Two-Step said.
“Can it be an old one?” Xia asked.
“An old computer? I guess so, I think they’re all pretty much the same speed,” Two-Step said.
“Why?” Jacob asked.
“There’s one in the Science Museum. It’s one of the early ones, but they have it running demonstrations all the time,” Xia said.
Jacob and Two-Step exchanged smiles.
“What do we need to do to connect to it?” Jacob asked.
“Well, if it has wireless capabilities, I can link the flipper with it that way. At least I think I can. If it doesn’t, we have to directly connect to it.”
“I’m sure there’s information on the museum's site. I say we check it out and take a trip to the Science Museum tomorrow,” Jacob said.
Chapter 43
The computer in the Science Museum hung from a frame in the middle of a room. The size of a large refrigerator, it was a maze of copper and silver colored tubes and wires, resembling a futuristic chandelier or an out of control Steamer design. Lining the walls of the room were stations allowing museum visitors to input problems to the computer. After inputting the problem, the guests were shown the results, along with an estimate of how long it would take a conventional computer to solve the problem.
A woman at a desk near the entrance of the room handed out pads coded with a variety of problems to feed into the waiting stations. Jacob thanked the woman and took a pad as he, Two-Step, and Xia walked in. They were a bit out of place in the room. The only other adults were three sets of parents with their children and two teachers with their students, all of whom decided to keep a watchful eye on the trio as they stepped up to a free station.
“I guess adults don’t care about science anymore,” Two-Step said.
“At least no one will have a clue what we’re doing. The good thing is, we know it’s linked or these wouldn’t work,” Jacob said, holding up the pad.
“Let me see that,” Xia said. Jacob handed her the pad and she scrolled through the list of problems. “How about an optimization problem?”
“Sounds good. You input the problem and look interested while we try to connect with the flippers,” Jacob said.
Jacob and Two-Step took the modified flip phones out of their pockets. The hack seemed simple enough. They would link with the computer and program it to cycle data through the phone, creating a sort of data logjam, slowing down the computer. If it worked. One problem was trying to type on the flip phones. The only keys they had were number keys. One of Two-Step’s mods took care of that. A low-level AI algorithm he pirated from a smartphone anticipated which letter was intended each time a number key was pressed. Jacob and Two-Step had been using the flippers for days, allowing the AI to learn their typing habits. The results were acceptable, but this was the first time they would be using the flippers in a live hacking situation.
“Let us link with the network first,” Jacob said.
“I’m in,” Two-Step said shortly.
“Same,” Jacob said. “Xia, send the problem first. We’ll see how long it takes to get a response, then we’ll slow it down, and you send the same problem. We’ll see if this works.”
Xia nodded and typed on the pad.
Twenty seconds later, the pad dinged.
Xia read the results. “It says it would take a conventional computer 1,000 years to solve that problem. Crazy.”
“All right Two-Step, let’s do our thing.”
It was easy. Too easy, really. The computer didn’t have a firewall or any other defense systems. Why would it? It wasn’t linked to an outside network, so there was no need for security. Getting into the system was the easy part. Programming the computer to send all data to the phones was a different matter. Despite Two-Step’s program, typing code with the phones was slow going. It was clear that when the time came to hack the Your Better Life system, Jacob would have to find a workaround if he wasn’t able to directly link.
When the code was finished, Jacob sent it to the computer. Immediately his phone’s screen began to blink and fill with an incomprehensible stream of code. “Look at this,” he said, showing the phone to Xia and To-Step.
“It’s working,” Two-Step beamed.
“It seems like it. We have to see if it is actually slowing the thing down. Xia, send the problem again,” Jacob said.
Xia tapped on the pad. They waited. Thirty-seven seconds later the pad dinged.
“Holy shit, it worked,” Two-Step said a bit too loudly. Mothers and teachers shot looks of disapproval. “It wasn’t much of a slow down, but it worked,” he said more quietly.
“Let’s disconnect and get
