Chaos Records

A lot of girls have walked into this office: blondes, brunettes, HR bitches.  I've grown accustomed to sizing them up with a mere glance above that days Calvin and Hobbes strip.  That's why when this woman walked in, it wasn't her large bust that I noticed, but her red badge.  Programmer.  There are many, many red badges in this company, and they are rarely seen on women of her...style.  Needless to say, she had my full attention just by walking in there.

My first instinct was that this was a social engineering attempt.  Fuck if it hadn't been tried before, and with uglier girls.  She started going on about a communication problem with her service while I checked out her badge.  To my shock, it checked out.  She was in the system.  I leaned back in my chair to soak in her tale.  She noticed me noticing her, and didn't look surprised.  It was all about rogue servers and missed SLAs.  I grabbed my coat.

We took three sky bridges on our way to the server closet.  I watched the city's two monorails, Narya and Nenya, pass below us.  It was raining outside.  It's always raining in this damn city.  The elevator dropped us forty floors to the sublevels.  As soon as we stepped off, the power went out.  Red running lights along the edge of the floor lit up.  I've been in this business for decades, so I'm not the skittish type, but nonetheless I squeezed my left elbow against my side just a hair, feeling the reassuring precense of my glock under my coat.

My compannion produced a flashlight and we made our way to the server closet.  Inside the server closet, now, that's where things got interesting.  We found her rogue computer.  It was on.  I checked it out with the console.  At first glance everything looked fine.  That's never good, when something broken looks like its working.  I decided I wasn't dealing with this shit on a friday night.

"Pull it and spin up a new host," I said.

She refused.  Company TCO, and she's been getting a lot of these failures recently, and the Requisition Department says they haven't received any of the old ones, and yadda yadda yadda.  I sighed and went to work.

I worked my magic on that box, hands dancing over the keyboard.  Most people who watch me gasp in admiration, but this cat looked like she'd seen this tier of skill before.   I finally find out:  it was a DNS record.  Looked funny.  Some moron had written an NAPTR record with a REGEX using pound signs for backslashes.  Kids these days.  Couldn't compile their way out of a room with four open doorways.  But I digress.

That DNS record.  Something rubbed me the wrong way.   She was in a hurry to get out of there, but I insisted on checking it out further.  I have an instinct with these things.  I took at look at the code on the box.

"Where's the source control markers for this package?" I asked.

"I don't know.  Its not ours.  The markers are usually hidden-"

"I know, I know.  I'm looking at the hidden files.  They just aren't there."

"But who would code without source control?" she asked.  I looked at her, and then back at the computer.  I dumped every DNS record on that machine.  A full third of them were in the CHAOS class.

"Traitors..." my voice trailed off under my breath.  Then all hell broke loose.

Without warning I yanked that computer right out of the rack, knocking the console onto the floor, its screen shattering.  I pulled my glock and pushed her behind me.  They were outside.  They were coming through the door.  A man of my pedigree rarely retreats, but it was at least twelve to one and I had a civie to escort.  The Codex Engineerica clearly called for escape in this situation.  We pulled up the floor boards of the patch floor and crawled under the server rooms.  They followed us.  I could hear them growling.  I fired off two rounds into the darkness behind us.  Couldn't tell if they hit anything.

I led the way, dragging her into a run, taking the stairways.  It was lights out all the way down, until we reached doors so old they had mechanical locks.  I busted one open with my foot.  Before us was an ancient eight-car, yellow monorail.  I was lying when I said the city only had two monorails.  There had been a third, a long, long time ago.  Its official name was Vilya.  I called it Blaine the mono.  That monorail would probably kill us, but it was our only chance at escape:  they were 30 strong, and right on our heels.  I shot the safety arms off just before I shoved us inside the head car.  The door closed just in time for bullets to ricochet off of it.

I wasted no time getting Blaine started, and we shot out of the station.  As soon as we were safe, she hugged me.  She told me she's never been so scared in her life, and yadda yadda yadda.  The standard damsel in distress.

We parted for a second, though still in a bit of an embrace, and looked in each others eyes.  She had that shut-up-and-kiss-me look written all over her face.  I may read those cues, but I play the game my way.

"I like your bangs," I said.

"Do you."  Her voice was sultry.

"Love 'em.  They hide the bloodlust in your eyes, chaos bitch."

The word bitch was still on my tongue when she snarled and tried to stab me with the knife in her right hand.  Would have been a kill strike if I hadn't just handcuffed her wrist to the drivers chair behind her.  She looked down at the knife in her hand, just two centimeters off the fabric of my coat.

"Sorry babe," I said.  "Its not my night."

Blaine sped on in the darkness.