Содержание → Neal Stephenson The Great Simoleon Caper → Часть 3
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Часть 3
I'm pawing through one of these racks when I sense another avatar, something big and shaggy, sidling up next to me. It mumbles something; I ignore it. A magisterial throat-clearing noise rumbles in the subwoofer, crackles in the surround speakers, punches through cleanly on the center channel above the screen. I turn and look: it's a heavy-set creature wearing a T shirt emblazoned with a logo HACKERS 1111. It has very long scythe-like claws, which it uses to grip a hot-pink cylinder. It's much better drawn than Raster; almost Disney-quality.
The sloth speaks: "537, 824, 167, 720. "
"Hey! " I shout. "Who the hell are you? " It lifts the pink cylinder to its lips and drinks. It's a can of Jolt. "Where'd you get that number? " I demand. "It's supposed to be a secret. "
"The key is under the doormat, " the sloth says, then turns around and walks out of the club.
My 15-minute break is over, so I have to ponder the meaning of this through the rest of my shift. Then, I drag myself up out of the couch, open the front door and peel up the doormat.
Sure enough, someone has stuck an envelope under there. Inside is a sheet of paper with a number on it, written in hexadecimal notation, which is what computer people use: 0A56 7781 6BE2 2004 89FF 9001 C782 -- and so on for about five lines.
The sloth had told me that "the key is under the doormat, " and I'm willing to bet many Simoleons that this number is an encryption key that will enable me to send and receive coded messages.
So I spend 10 minutes punching it into the set-top box. Raster shows up and starts to bother me: "Can I help you with anything? "
By the time I've punched in the 256th digit, I've become a little testy with Raster and said some rude things to him. I'm not proud of it. Then I hear something that's music to my ears: "I'm sorry, I didn't understand you, " Raster chirps. "Please check your cable connections -- I'm getting some noise on the line. "
A second figure materializes on the screen, like a digital genie: it's the sloth again. "Who the hell are you? " I ask.
The sloth takes another slug of Jolt, stifles a belch and says, "I am Codex, the Crypto-Anarchist Sloth. "
"Your equipment requires maintenance, " Raster says. "Please contact the cable company. "
"Your equipment is fine, " Codex says. "I'm encrypting your back channel. To the cable company, it looks like noise. As you figured out, that number is your personal encryption key. No government or corporation on earth can eavesdrop on us now. "
"Gosh, thanks, " I say.
"You're welcome, " Codex replies. "Now, let's get down to biz. We have something you want. You have something we want. "
"How did you know the answer to the Soldier Field jelly-bean question? "
"We've got all 27, " Codex says. And he rattles off the secret numbers for Candlestick Park, the Kingdome, the Meadowlands. . .
"Unless you've broken into the accounting firm's vault, " I say, "there's only one way you could have those numbers. You've been eavesdropping on my little chats with Raster. You've tapped the line coming out of this set-top box, haven't you? "
"Oh, that's typical. I suppose you think we're a bunch of socially inept, acne-ridden, high-IQ teenage hackers who play sophomoric pranks on the Establishment. "
"The thought had crossed my mind, " I say. But the fact that the cartoon sloth can give me such a realistic withering look, as he is doing now, suggests a much higher level of technical sophistication. Raster only has six facial expressions and none of them is very good.
"Your brother runs an ad agency, no? "
"Correct. "
"He recently signed up Simoleons Corp. ?"
"Correct. "
"As soon as he did, the government put your house under full-time surveillance. "
Suddenly the glass eyeball in the front of the set-top box is looking very big and beady to me. "They tapped our infotainment cable? "
"Didn't have to. The cable people are happy to do all the dirty work -- after all, they're beholden to the government for their monopoly. So all those calculations you did using Raster were piped straight to the cable company and from there to the government. We've got a mole in the government who cc'd us everything through an anonymous remailer in Jyvaskyla, Finland. "
"Why should the government care? "
"They care big-time, " Codex says. "They're going to destroy Simoleons. And they're going to step all over your family in the process. "
"Because if they don't destroy E-money, " Codex says, "E-money will destroy them. "
The next afternoon I show up at my brother's office, in a groovily refurbished ex-power plant on the near West Side. He finishes rolling some calls and then waves me into his office, a cavernous space with a giant steam turbine as a conversation piece. I think it's supposed to be an irony thing.
"Aren't you supposed to be cruising the I-way for stalled motorists? " he says.
"Spare me the fraternal heckling, " I say. "We crypto-anarchists don't have time for such things. "
"Crypto-anarchists? "
"The word panarchist is also frequently used. "
"Cute, " he says, rolling the word around in his head. He's already working up a mental ad campaign for it.
"You're looking flushed and satisfied this afternoon, " I say. "Must have been those two imperial pints of Hog City Porter you had with your baby-back ribs at Divane's Lakeview Grill. "
Suddenly he sits up straight and gets an edgy look about him, as if a practical joke is in progress, and he's determined not to play the fool.
"So how'd you know what I had for lunch? "
"Same way I know you've been cheating on your taxes. "
"Last year you put a new tax-deductible sofa in your home office. But that sofa is a hide-a-bed model, which is a no-no. "
"Hackers, " he says. "Your buddies hacked into my records, didn't they? " "You win the Stratolounger. "
"I thought they had safeguards on these things now. "
"The files are harder to break into. But every time information gets sent across the wires -- like, when Anne uses Raster to do the taxes -- it can be captured and decrypted. Because, my brother, you bought the default data-security agreement with your box, and the default agreement sucks. "
"So what are you getting at? "