The Desolate Guardians

And I love that the world is quiet. That's
less people to bother me, and more thickness for the walls of
darkness and solitude that surround this place. As the off-hours
network manager, I'm typically alone in my duties, and I don't have
to
manage
much of anything. I don't have to train people, or
deal with customer issues. All I have to do is make sure our
extremely expensive network doesn't go down or lock up or implode
when nobody else is around.

With today's technology, that means I spend
the vast majority of my time sitting around and browsing things
online. I'm pretty sure I've seen the entire Internet. I used to
cover my tracks by deleting my connection history from the network
log, but, one week I forgot… and nobody cared. I quickly got the
sense that nobody was even looking, and, if they did, they wouldn't
give a crap about the browsing history of the off-hours network
manager.

I mean, realistically, what else was I
supposed to do? Cooped up in this half-dark, half-rainbow server
room, alive with the breath of endless banks of computers and the
cooling system needed to keep it all from melting… I used to joke
to myself that my ultimate responsibility here was to literally
pull the plugs out of the walls if the air conditioning ever
stopped working, something no software could ever do, and something
a monkey could have managed - but my little joke ceased being funny
when I realized that was actually, probably, most likely the case.
I'm a glorified button pusher.

Once I'd seen the entire Internet, I grew
bolder. I began looking at files on our own network. I had excuses
lined up if anybody came to ask what I was doing… but nobody ever
did. We did quite a bit of work with military contractors, and it
was rather astounding to sift through bid documents, designs, and
plans that dealt in the billions of dollars. It was all protected
and encrypted, of course… except I was the acting network
administrator. Score one for the network being far too big for
anyone to lock down perfectly.

There were files, emails, and logged
communications from practically everywhere, and a few places I'd
never even heard of. We weren't military, or governmental, but we
did business with them all. VPs discussed third-world coups over
lunch, accountants logged tax tricks that were clearly illegal but
heavily obfuscated and ready to be pinned on patsies hired for the
task of taking the fall, and soldiers emailed their families back
home.

That was the thing about these memos and
emails. Unlike the swarm of crap on the Internet, they were
real.
One soldier's email chain ended two months ago, and
the subsequent data linked to his widow trying to get money out of
our insurance department despite their best efforts to renege on
the payout. These were
real people
being churned through the
system. Was that widow asleep somewhere right now, ready to fake
her way through Christmas morning with her daughter, or was she
still awake, with anger and despair gnawing at her?

I mean, I had access… and the system was the
system… and I knew it was inevitable. Alone in here ad infinitum,
I'd eventually do it. Why not now?

I closed the widow's insurance payout ticket,
taking it away from the current person assigned to it, then
reopened it without an assignee… a simple matter. With a few
manipulations, I created a fake employee in a department with a
redundant sounding title. Then, I sent it on over to pay
processing… doubled the amount… and marked it as Approved. It was
nothing to a gigantic corporation, but everything to a single
person. As a final act, I deleted all traces of my actions.

Huh.

That was it.

Maybe what I'd done was illegal, but it
seemed… the morally right thing to do. She'd be getting an email
confirmation before she woke up. That seemed like a Christmas
present and a half.

And I couldn't be caught, in any case. There
was simply no trace in the system that I'd had
anything
to
do with it, and hardly anybody knew I existed anyway. The system
was the system, and if, through some impossible feat, a mid-level
manager noticed an issue, he'd simply pass a ticket up… to me.

And that ticket would most certainly be lost
in the shuffle.

I felt oddly great for a little while, until
I realized… everyone's asleep. If ever I had an opportunity to do
more like this, and get away with it, it was now.

I delved deeper into the files, looking
specifically for military communications with signs of
distress.

Somehow, I think I knew it the moment I saw
it. The message log hung there in emptiness - alone, like me.
Nobody had read it, and nobody was even aware of its existence. It
was encrypted in a unique way, and hidden by rare system
priorities. No users had the rights to access it, and the file had
no traceable origin. This was a message intended to be read by no
one.

But the access process
did
exist
within the system, even if nobody actually had the rights to
it.

I couldn't resist.

***

0110111101110101011101000110011101101111011010010110111001100111001000000110001101101111011011

0101101101011101010110111001101001011000110110000101110100011010010110111101101110001000000110

1111011011100110110001111001

You'd be surprised how easy it is to play
chess against yourself. The game is uniquely suited to cold
decision-making, and your next move doesn't depend on prior states.
You can spend a few hours reading a book, come back to the board,
and legitimately make a move in your own best interests before
doing it all again as the opposite player.

Of course, your opponent is perfectly matched
to your level of skill, and there's no bragging, so nothing really
gets decided. I did find, curiously, that black won more than fifty
percent of the time…

At some point, I'm pretty sure the human
brain forces you to stop doing things you realize are pointless.
Once chess became agony instead of welcome distraction, I had only
the books left.

And when I'd memorized all the books, I…

I went for a lot of walks. They don't take
very long, though.

I've got seven chambers here. One has the
shower and the toilet, and the marks I make in the wall for each
day that passes. One chamber has my bed, my books, and a picture on
a nightstand. The third chamber has a kitchen area, and a table
that serves adequately as a ping-pong arena against my only
opponent - the wall.

The fourth chamber has the computers and
communication equipment. Screw all this stuff. It's all held
together by rubber bands and scotch tape. You know, I think I've
finally managed to send a message out somewhere… but I always think
that, don't I? This time, with everything going unbounded, with
time slipping into time and thought slipping into thought… I really
think I've done it. This message is going
somewhere.
It has
to be.

The fourth chamber has a wall of televisions
and radios, incoming-only. Some goddamn genius got hired to make
televisions and radios that couldn't be repurposed to send a
message out. I
hate
that guy. I've been in and out of half
of these things, even burrowed into the wall myself, and the crap
back there just won't give me a break.

I used to watch the TVs, but they just remind
me how cooped up I am. And everyone out there seems to be getting
dumber and more outraged at everything all the time. I wish I could
shout loud enough for them to hear.

The fifth chamber has, of all things, a
couch. What am I gonna do,
have a guest over?
There are fake
blinds, too, always down and closed because they only show onto
concrete. Was this room supposed to make me feel a little less
trapped? Idiots…

The sixth chamber, offset a bit from the rest
by a small tunnel, houses a vast little factory and furnace room
that keeps me alive. Air conditioning, carbon scrubbing, an
automated hydroponics bay, geothermal power plant, the works… that
shit could run for a hundred years all by itself, if it hadn't been
made by the lowest bidder.

See, I know I'm not supposed to send messages
out. I
know that.
That's the fundamental design of this
whole place. Thing is… there's somebody down here.

I mean, I might be losing my mind. I get
that. But I can feel the curve of insanity ahead in the road, and I
don't think I'm there yet. I really think there's a person in my
furnace room. And I
checked.
I went over every crack in the
wall, every nook and cranny in the air vents, even re-checked the
welded-shut elevator like I do every day: there's no way in or out
of this place.

Yet, there's someone in my furnace room.

I can guess what that means for me, and none
of my guesses are good. I suppose there's no point in hiding,
though. There's literally nowhere to go. And I chose this, so it's
pretty much my fault. Time to face the music… and, more supposing -
better to die now than to spend forever down here losing my
mind.

Actually, not like anyone will get this
message in time to do anything. I might as well check it out
first.

I crept down that long, small concrete tunnel
with the weirdest sense of anticipation. The furnace room had
always creeped me out for some reason; it wasn't meant for anything
but maintenance access, so it was like a series of mechanical caves
and burrows that went on longer than I'd ever reached. It was
always breathing and moving and clinking, even during my supposed
night hours. I hated it.

So,
of course,
an intruder had to have
appeared there. Anywhere else would have been too simple. Crawling
between the water recycler and a furnace duct, I tried to get a
long vantage on whoever was back there.

I froze as I saw a shoe move out of sight up
ahead. Scraping across cement, it had been pulled forward by
someone else crawling through the maintenance tubes. That was it:
proof that someone was down here. But how? Was…
was there a way
out?

"Hello?!" I shouted, immediately taken aback
at the ragged and unfamiliar sound of my own voice.

The only response came in the form of someone
scrambling away in the distance.

"Please, I won't hurt you," I yelled out.

Eventually, I retreated back to the tunnel.
If there
was
somebody in there, they'd have to come out
sooner or later. I pulled the couch over, tilted it up on its end,
and used it as a makeshift barrier in the tunnel. It could easily
be moved - but it would make a noise.

I moved through my chambers carefully, noting
the placement of every object. Nothing had been moved, and I could
find nobody around, so the possible intruder still had to be in the
furnace room…

I decided to get some algae paste from the
kitchen and eat. There was really nothing else to do. I couldn't
risk crawling around in there with some stranger on the loose…
here, I'd at least have a clear view of what I was up against.

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