01-01-00
Authors: R. J. Pineiro
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Contents
Â
F
OR
L
ORY
A
NNE
,
loving wife,
doting mother,
loyal friend,
soulmate.
Thank you for your unconditional love, yesterday, today, and all tomorrows.
Â
And,
I
N MEMORY OF
D
R.
L
UIS
V
IDAURRETA AND
M
ARI
T
ELLERIA.
Vayan con Dios.
This book came about in a most interesting way. Ken Walker, president of WalkerGroup/Designs and creator of the 01-01-00 licensing program, thought it would be a great idea to tie in a millennium novel with his highly successful merchandising program. With the assistance of our mutual friend and agent at William Morris, Matt Bialer, plus the invaluable help of Marty Greenberg from Tekno Books, a dialogue began among the four of us. Once we settled on an outline, we sought and received the publishing support of Tom Doherty, president and publisher of Tor and Forge Books. As with all my previous projects, I received much help during the writing and rewriting of this story. Credit goes to a lot of very talented people whose dedicated efforts helped turn this book from a mere concept to reality. It's now up to the readers to decide how successful we have been. Any remaining mistakes are mine and only mine.
Special thanks go to:
St. Jude, saint of the impossible. You have my eternal gratitude for continuing to make it possible.
My wife and compassionate critic, Lory Anne, for your honest feedback on this and previous outlines and rough drafts (and for your endless patience while I hammered out the story on nights and weekends). You are my first line of defense against embarrassing myself.
My son, Cameron, age nine, for continuing to let me rediscover the world through your innocent and unbiased eyes, and for making me so proud with your good heart, excellent grades, and awesome karate kicks.
Tom Doherty, Linda Quinton, and the rest of the staff at Tor, including Steve de las Heras, Jennifer Marcus, and Karen Lovell. Thanks for treating me like one of the family during my visits to New York City. I'm really grateful that you not only publish my stories, but also put in a tremendous effort to promote my work, including that unforgettable light show on the side of the Flatiron building. The neon lights were surely bright on Broadway that evening!
Bob Gleason, my editor and friend, for your clever feedback and support, and also for all the good times in Austin and New York.
Ken Walker, architect and visionary, for your confidence and ideas, and also for turning a simple sequence of numbers into a dazzling, worldwide millennium campaign, with the 01-01-00 logo appearing everywhere, in numerous categories of merchandise.
Matt Bialer, my astute agent at William Morris, for your support during this and other projects. It's certainly been a pleasure working with you all these years, my friend. Looking forward to many more.
Marty Greenberg and Larry Segriff from Tekno Books, for your encouragement, confidence, and excellent feedback during all stages of this project. It's always a pleasure working with such professionals.
My good friend, Dave, for your technical assistance on weapons and other subjects, and also for turning me into a gun buff.
Andy Zack, who, although not directly involved in this project, did teach me more than a thing or two about writing thrillers during all of my previous novels.
My parents, Dora and Rogelio, for your love and guidance. I couldn't ask for better moral, professional, and spiritual role models.
Su hijo los quiere mucho y nunca los olvida.
My sisters, Irene and Dora, and your wonderful families, for always being a source of support and inspiration.
Bienvenido a este mundo, Lorenzito! Que Dios te bendiga.
Mike and Linda Wiltz, my awesome in-laws, for your love as well as for so many wonderful memories. Places like Florida, Tennessee, and Arkansas will never be the same again. Look out, Europe!
Michael, Bobby, and Kevin, my teenage brothers-in-law. May the Good Lord grant you the courage and wisdom to fulfill your dreams, whatever they may be.
And last, but certainly not least, a very special thanks to all my buddies and colleagues at Advanced Micro Devices, including John H., Jerry V., Lisa L., Doug R., Lee R., Terry M., Bob T., Allan O., Dave B., and so many others. Also, a long-distance hello to my friends at AMD Singapore, particularly Balan, Alan T., and Bobby K. for their hospitality during my 1998 trip. By the time this book gets published, I will be celebrating my sixteenth anniversary at AMD (and what an incredible ride it's been). Together we have shared (and survived) the many ups and downs of this unstoppable roller coaster we call the high-tech industry. I'm looking forward to the challenges and triumphs waiting for us in the new millennium as we take our products to the next level of excellence.
Thank you.
R. J. Pineiro
Austin, Texas
February, 1999
In the year of our Lord 1998, the Earth rotated along its axis relative to the Sun, just as it had done for the past 4.5 billion years, after interstellar material in a spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy condensed and collapsed, flattening into a counterclockwise rotating disk under the influence of gravity, triggering the birth of the Sun, followed by turbulence in the solar nebula that led to the formation of the planets.
The Earth rotated along its axis while also traveling at a speed of sixty thousand mph on an elliptical orbit around the Sun, completing each journey in just over 365 days, and repeating the cycle over and over, through the seasons, across centuries, millennium after millennium. On the surface of this blue planet, protected by a thin layer of nitrogen and oxygen, the land bustled with the activity of billions of people across all continents. Entire metropolises came alive at night, the sheen from millions upon millions of lights visible in space as the globe continued to rotate, continued its perennial, tireless journey, from sunrise to sunset, from blue skies to star-filled nights, slowing down at the rate of two milliseconds every century from its interaction with the moon. Where 900 million years ago there had been 481 eighteen-hour days in a year, now, as the Earth came close to completing a new millennium, its rotation had slowed to twenty-four hours per revolutionâthe length of time experienced by mankind.
The end of the millennium, the first to be witnessed by the modern world, triggered feelings of accomplishment and hope, of intrigue and fear, of renewal and celebration, touching people from every land, every race, bringing unity to an eclectic planet. The countdown to this transcendental event was displayed across the globe, from the Eiffel Tower in Paris to Times Square in New York, from Ginza in Tokyo to Piccadilly Circus in London. In Moscow and Sydney, in Rome and Singapore, in Baghdad and Beijing, massive digital clocks counted down to the most significant and unifying event in the past one thousand years. Days, hours, minutes, seconds, and hundredths of seconds, displayed high above the world's most famous boulevards and squares, reminded humanity of this nearing and remarkable moment in time. And as the planet spun, carrying along the world's metropolises, turning the present into the past, the towering clocks continued to count down, their digital displays washing the heavens with crimson light, always changing, always decreasing, always symbolizing the end of an era and the dawn of a new world. Many people lived or worked near these monumental icons, oftentimes stopping to dream, to wonder, to be reminded of the passage of time, of their own mortality, before continuing on their daily routines, as dictated by their societies, by their laws, by their personal ambitions.
In downtown Washington, one of those people worked the dark keyboard of an IBM ThinkPad notebook computer with practiced ease. The scarlet glow of the large millennium clock across the street fought the early-morning light diffusing through his eleventh-floor living-room window, splashing hues of orange and yellow-gold across the small apartment, dimming the images on the plasma color display. He adjusted the brightness on the screen and resumed his work.
He was a hacker, but more than that, he was the last surviving member of Masters of Deception, the rogue hacker group that splintered from the infamous teen hacker gang Legion of Doom during the early nineties. He was born as David Canek, a name he'd stopped using after his induction into the LOD as Hans Bloodaxe. He had eventually left the trade after the FBI cracked down both LOD and MOD operations nationwide, sending most of his colleagues to jail. Only his unmatched skills had prevented his capture. Bloodaxe vanished overnight from the Internet and joined the respectable high-tech workforce in Washington, D.C.
Now I'm back, you bastards.
He'd been up most the the night working on his masterpiece, finally collapsing from exhaustion on the living-room sofa, where he'd slept until his alarm clock woke him up minutes ago.
Two hours is enough rest,
he thought, convinced that true genius did not need much sleep.
Images flashed on his screen as he launched a set of programs that retrieved a thousand lines of assembly language code from a directory buried deep in the ThinkPad's hard drive, protected by a triple layer of software shields. The hacker wasn't worried about an illegal user breaking into his system and accessing his coveted file. He feared the virulent code in the file breaking
out
of the nested software cocoons he had designed to keep it contained. The fatal sequence of instructions and data, improperly handled, could easily neutralize his system in seconds, gobbling up millions of bytes of data.
His software retrievers performed just as he had designed them, accessing the malignant strain with the caution of a biologist handling a vial of Ebola, moving it to a customized editing screen. He spent the next hour touching up the code, adjusting the virus's target address, rate of replication, and the subroutine that defined its mutation sequence.
A feeling of omnipotence descended on Hans Bloodaxe as he yawned, momentarily regarding the huge millennium clock across the street, counting down with a near-hypnotizing rhythm. He glanced at the folded edition of yesterday's
Washington Post.
The city planned additional layoffs this week. More of his friends would lose their jobs, just as the master hacker had lost his two weeks earlier, when the city no longer required his computer services.