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The Mage With No Name...

I've joked my clients came in every shape and form, but a bespoke DV-ROM was something new. I glanced at the capacity code. 250 gigs? That made it a 'Big Blue', the latest word in mass storage. It sparkled so innocently in the morning light. I wondered what mischief rode its flat rainbow.

I took a few precautions, slotted the disk. My computer system hummed and whirred. The old ISDN modem woke, dialed out.

My wall screen swirled from blankness to dim shapes. I glimpsed a busy desk, laden shelves, a clutter of arcane curios, 'Live, screen-save or construct?'
A shadow turned.
'Construct!' I thought, in the moment before it spoke.
"You are Ken Thomas."

I checked the voice, the violet eyes, the cowled features. I was silent for a long moment. Us honest hackers have our heroes and legends, too. The Lands, a dial-in Virtuality Adventure, gave rise to most.

"And you are The Mage With No Name That Human Voice Can Utter." I replied politely, "A Demi-Mage to the Original Seven, now of the Nine of The Lands Council."
He dipped his head, "Just so."
"Okay." I leaned back, crossed my ankles on my desk edge, "What's your problem?"
He hesitated. Had I been too blunt? Would he think I was matter of fact from shock or habit? Surely he must realise that our rles were similar, but mine was real.

Eventually, his violet eyes twinkled, "Are you free to undertake a commission?"
"I have time for a preliminary investigation."
"Pray tell what actions do you mean?"
"Test the waters, gauge the fee, estimate expenses- travel, material, legal. Some-times, a remedy suggests itself, some-times a quiet settlement. Perhaps, retreat."
"You have a reputation as an unorthodox operator."
"So have you, come to that!" I countered.
"Mine fades to legend with the years. Yours-"

"Stems from early luck, a wry humour, and far too much hard work." I waved at my modem, "And from the rate that's ticking, I'd be grateful if you could get to the point."
"Ah, the impatience of youth!" He sighed, "Yet it is a grave matter. The Lands are afflicted- Nay! Infested! - with pirates."
"Ah. I take it you do not refer to Jolly Roger flags and such?"
"In part." He gestured vaguely, "They rise from the ranks of 'Resting' players. They reclaim stored credits and attributes, then turn wicked. In time, an angry missive comes from your Outer Land, crying of fraud and deception."
"Yet The Lands promised secure access and anonymity! They're beating your log-in and ID system?"
"In truth it would seem so, yet we can find no flaw."

"Hmm." I thought quickly, "So the false players grab unearned credits, skills and bonuses. You don't get their start-up fees. You have to pay off the victims...
"That's three. But, have they stuck to rape & pillage, or sunk to politics? They'd make fine assassins. Who would suspect?"
"That is four."
"Okay!" I sat up, "Well, you must have done enough in-house to run out of leads. First, I need to join The Lands. Normal license, 'utterly gormless'. Still means jumping the queue."
A nod.

"Second, I need to run a mini-Land on my system. Your disk surely peeked into all the corners. You'll know if it would hold a Local Node."
"It- would." A breath, "You mean to map The Lands program? You are fool or genius! Also, there is nothing to find. The core-dump matches our masters. There are no secret patches or slabs of Pi."
" 'There's always one last bug' ." I quoted, "There may be parasites. I've seen such hidden the strangest ways."
A slower nod.

"Third, I'll need a week to settle in. Do not disturb. Fourth, give me a Lands Senior Techie's number to call. You can warn them I'm doing a MTBF audit."
" 'Mean Time Between Failures' ? A canny gambit, indeed!" A wave, "I bid you fine hunting and a steady eye! 'Tis in the post this noon."

The screen spun to blankness. The ISDN modem shut off. The computer chittered, re-booted. The displays showed that DV-ROM was read/write, and had erased itself.

I grinned. I turned to my second computer, which had logged the whole affair. As I'd half-expected, the DV-ROM held a Trojan Horse. Intricate programs had unfolded like Kudzu vine, sending tendrils into every nook and cranny of the host machine. Even the 'bad track' files of my archiver had been scoured for surprises. Those held scant few, but artfully convincing, for this very purpose...

I laughed once. Few would care to copy a DV-ROM. They were so cheap, so vast, so swift to read, so slow to write, they'd swamp all storage media, save one. I pressed rewind on my modified video recorder, sat back to guide my twin systems' joint attack.

Next morning brought a large parcel. First out came a standard modem. Compared to it, mine flew Business Class. Next was a light-weight helmet with snug stereo head-phones and a boom mike. The opaque visor fed left and right eyes their correct views. A pair of data-gloves, shin pads and a bulky data-belt followed. A slim gray case linked to the gaming computer. A fresh DV-ROM waited to run.
I poked around in the packaging for the missing cables. Finally, I thought to check for vacant sockets. There were none. The helmet's twin video, the position of helmet, gloves, shin-pads and belt were all cordless. Even re-charge was cordless, care of inductive patches on case and components. I was impressed.

I put the DV-ROM to copying, went back to my working breakfast. Mapping an undocumented program could be made orders of magnitude harder than writing it. I reminded myself that I used to do all this by hand. I riffled the stack of hard-copy from the over-night run, glanced at a few pages of the computer generated index & concordance. I tacked just the index on my work-wall. I threw the rest, in dust-small print, onto the big screen.

Now I had my starting point. I put on the virtuality kit, adjusted the buckles. I started my cam-corder, attached another modified video-recorder to the interface box's stereo vision feed. I slotted today's DV-ROM.

Blankness swirled to a basic play-ground, a dull, bare cave with a single mirror on a wall. A slim, pale youth clad in tunic, pants and walking shoes looked back. I moved. A hidden exit showed brighter around a bend. I followed the light to a sheer-sided, winding valley, with an acre of larch and elder along the cliff-foot, various bushes and a tinkling stream. Yes, The Mage With No Name etc had delivered.
Time to explore! I jumped the stream, took and hurled a random stone. I tore a branch from a bush, stripped the leaves. I swung the primitive weapon until it whistled. I threw it into the stream, watched it wash away.

Inventory? Merely the clothes I wore. I checked in the cave. A crude box held an assortment of small coins and one small sheathed knife. It held a fair edge, and promptly drew a hair-line of blood from my thumb. I sucked the cut, wiped the blade on my knee.

I jumped up and down, did a few push-ups. The visor promptly faded to grays rimmed in red. 'I' was unfit! Enough fun. I stepped on my first switch to freeze the game. After 10 seconds, the game resumed without warning. I stood on a second switch. A second time-out tripped at three minutes. I shut the system down, removed the kit. It was time for some work.

I began by checking the event log against the videos in stop-motion. This part of the program drew and updated the play field, that section handled the virtuality sensors. Player's movement updated these registers, thus & so. A recursive sort handled deep back-grounds. Nested routines controlled object dynamics and stability...

I made mistakes at first, gained speed and confidence. My graph-pad daubings labelled more and more modules. A cascade developed, gaps rippling smaller as cross-references engulfed the unknowns. A dozen large islands remained. My concordance plus those two time-outs led me to a 'bio-rythm' cycler, then to a very well disguised back-up real-time clock. That meant two down.

I ran the program to the youth on screen, looped it. I had typical data for the personal and object attributes. I twiddled some bits. 'He' changed. Size, proportions, sex, speed, strength and stamina, damage and healing, wit and Psi, bone structure, body-fat, skin texture, apparent race and age, eye colour, expressed melanin, facial form and expressions shifted at my touch. One control served no obvious purpose. At last, I noticed it turned his shadow on and off.

The inventory list linked to object attributes. The knife switched through a score of variants, then changed topic. Swords, sickles, balls of vari-coloured flame, odd chunks of rock, an exquisite flint axe, a Colt .45 and a Trekkie TOS phaser flickered by. Clothing styles browsed history, spun off into wild fancy. The several coins changed value, appearance and metal, went through a dozen kinds of pierced shell, many types of token and paper notes, ended as Plutonium Amex cards.

I sat back, wondered where the morning had gone. My browsing was more fun than a kid loosed in Santa's Grotto, but sadly unprofessional. I sighed. I set up a back-ground program to collate and catalogue the stuff.

Meanwhile, it was time to tackle the security aspects. I drew blank with a brutal frontal assault. The Lands were secure against such simple software. I snatched brunch while a better breaker laboured, failed. A third spent six hours wheedling access. It failed. I nibbled a light supper, watched my next effort slide off. I napped. I woke with a neat idea. It failed. A modification got its foot in the door. The resulting lag between prime and back-up clocks invoked a hither-to silent module. It zapped my interloper, slammed the gate. My concordance located three further guardians of escalating ferocity and sophistication. An abortive attempt to out-flank them triggered a furious fifth. The Lands could certainly protect themselves. 'Here be dragons' filled a major gap in my map.

The next section had the look and smell of Comms software. That could wait for the morn. I checked my exhaustive cataloguer still ran, staggered to bed.

After a dawn breakfast, I cut open the modem. It was a standard design. All data transfers were handled by one self-optimising chip. I nodded politely. This self-same chip could run interfacing for modems, faxes, TV remote controls and even the virtuality kit. It had internal error correction, automatic line-noise monitoring, byte & variable block re-try, optional log-on facilities-

A very nasty notion came to me. I grabbed for the hard-ware catalogues, checked the chip's details. I'd remembered enough. I faxed the local distributor for full data sheets, scanned them minutely. The Lands' loop-hole was there in black and white. I called The Lands' Senior Techie. I asked her just one question...

A week from the first call, The Mage With No Name etc rang back. He found me languidly cross-legged on a tartan rug, enjoying the green-sward by the stream.

"Greetings, Sir Mage!" I called, "Care for a cucumber sandwich? Or a cup of herb tea?"
He eyed the picnic hamper with mild disdain, "Have you made other progress?"
"Um." I chewed the mouthful slowly, "These really are very good. You won't indulge? No? Well, yes. I know how it was done. I think I know why. I suspect who."

The Mage etc crouched, "Explain!"
"Well, first I tried to hack in. I failed. The defences are excellent. Then I tried to log onto my own machine with near-miss codes." I sipped my tea, "Can't be done. Fail an access, it locks that persona, plus that modem, then calls alarm. But, then I thought, 'What if the line is noisy? Surely you don't get dumped for a bad signal?' You see?"

"Surely. The modem simply re-tries at a lower rate."
"In an ordinary modem, Sir Mage. But, these are no ordinary modems. These have the self-optimising XBC 108 AR Comms chip. It is very clever, indeed. It corrects and adapts for random or pseudo-random static, switching drop-outs or over-loads, cross-talk and random, high-intensity bursts. For example, if a fair line is subject to severe crackles at random intervals, the AR enters a specific fault-tolerant mode. Then, unless pin 7 is grounded, or control bit 7 set low, you can make up to 18 attempts on a 3-try log-in before you fail. If you drop out sooner, then re-dial, you can re-try until you get in. All it takes is a few bursts of noise to condition the chips."
"Then it is a hardware problem!"
"Plus software. Only takes two tiny changes to set it right. And there's room. When the Node software was upgraded to use these chips, most of the low-level programming was simply blanked out. The chips would do the rest."
"So we change two simple lines of programming... And alienate all our distant players?"
"Hardly. Your limits were set for old-fashioned analogue lines. Now, 99.5 % use digital. You could compile a list of bad-liners, and keep special watch on them."

"A system flaw, then!" The Mage etc sighed, "What a relief! Our share-holders were stirring."
"You miss the point, Sir Mage." I noted, "There was a warning in the application notes. They suggest using the ARX variant where security is important. It counts how many tries were actually made...
"Sir Mage, this was no accident. This was an inside job. Some-one okayed the use of this vulnerable chip, then made sure the Comms software was flawed."

"But why? Who?"
"Why? Cash, I dare say. The Lands went through a lean time. I heard the dividends were slashed... And politics, too. Didn't The Lands have a lot of problems in the early days? Lots of arguments? I read that one of the seven Founder Mages pulled out. The rest split his A-share three ways, promoted three Demi-Mages to the ranks of the High Council. But The Lost Mage wasn't alone. He led a faction. The splits are still there..."

The Mage etc nodded, "Politics."
"Now, based on the date of the software & hardware upgrades, this can't be due to the original six. I suspect one of the later three."
"Who?"
"You."
The Mage etc laughed. I waited, "You had access. You had opportunity. You had motive. You have motive. And, you were among The Lost Mage's protegs."
"This is ridiculous! I called you in!"
"So? You were delegated to stop the pirates, and my services were suggested. You could hardly refuse."
"This is ridiculous!" The Mage etc snorted lilac flame, "You are accusing me?"
"Too right. You chose the chips. You ordered them. You re-wrote the Comms software. You suppressed the possible-"

I ducked. His ball of green flame missed me by inches, ashed a low bush, "Hey! Careful!"
I rolled aside, stood, hopped over a second fire-ball, spun from a third, "You could try logic, you know. Just prove I'm wrong."
The grass parted. Sea-green tentacles squirmed out. I leaped back, "This is getting us nowhere!"
" 'Violence is the last resort of the incompetent'." Quoth he, "But I'm very good at what I do! And it is fun!"

I dodged a persistent tentacle, came back into his line of fire. He gestured. More fire-balls flew. I batted at them with my knife. I connected with the closest, flicked it wide.
"You dance well!" He sneered, "Catch!"
A head-sized effulgence whistled towards me. I swung my knife. I connected. The fire-ball went wide. It grounded with a thunder-clap. The Mage etc struck a pose, "Die, wretch!"

A wriggling ribbon of scarlet flame reached from his left hand. He swung it toward me. First fire, then aim? I slashed it with my blade. The stump snapped back. His yelp told me he'd not expected that!
"A sorcelled blade? You've been a busy boy!"
His hands circled, stabbed. The ground split wide. More tentacles groped. I caught up the jar of mustard from my picnic, dipped the silver spoon, flicked gobs at the converging suckers. Contact prompted a switch from deep-sea green to rolling kaleidoscope, a chorus of eldritch screeches and random flailing.
"Must prefer mayonnaise!" I observed.
The Mage etc frowned, pointed. Fire fountains erupted about my feet. I beat a retreat. He twitched fingers. Gulleys opened across my path. I leaped, gathered my balance, skipped clear.
"You-"

The rest was lost as the stream followed a gulley to lava. Steam roared. Black fumes and white clouds filled the valley. Then a vortex formed, sucked all away. The Mage etc's aim was slightly off. The twister grounded. Stream, pebbles and turf slurped into the sky. He stopped it with a finger click. He laughed as debris fell about his head, warded by his personal defense.

"Give up now!" I called from the tree line. His next motion raised a local gale to strip leaves and fell saplings.
"Don't make me use force!" I pleaded. He laughed. Then he ducked as my coin-sized shuriken slashed his screen and cowl apart.
"So you want to play rough?" He snarled, "Play with these! Squad! Front and centre!"
A squad of Imperial Star-Troopers in full armour pounded around the valley's lower bend.
"There he is! Burn him out!"
They veered uphill, dived into scant cover. A few snapped shots at the sky-line, the rest fired back along their path.

"He's over there! What are you doing? Are you blind-" The Mage etc blinked.
First, they were a part-squad. Second, they lacked the heavy weapons of a standard assault team. Third, the smears on their armour was not camouflage, but battle damage- And freshly smoking, at that.
"What-"
The grim gray shape rumbling upstream explained too much.
"A Bolo 12 Autonomous Super-Tank!" The Mage etc exclaimed, "You have strange friends! And a misplaced optimism- Behold!"

He launched a thunderbolt. It veered off the Bolo 12's sudden golden halo, crashed wide. The re-fitted Bolo's survival sent him scurrying for cover. Its main battery raked the Troopers' line just once. The Bolo pivoted suddenly to avoid a fresh fire-pit. Its dorsal Phalanx snarled down a cruise missile. It fired its main battery upstream. An avalanche fell on metal. Massive grinding noises warned that something large was only slowed, not stopped. The minor mountain of a Bolo 16 loomed into view. Even its lesser batteries out-gunned the 12.

The Bolo 16 fired everything. The nimbler 12's counter-fire clawed a way clear. It out-ran the 16's predictors, found cover around the lower bend. The 16 pivoted a lesser turret towards me.
A gray, shark-sleek Aerospace frigate flashed overhead. The Bolo 16 fell in pieces. Sonic boom and wrecking blasts echoed as one.

"What the-?" Screamed The Mage etc, "Well, two can play Effinger! I'll give you Full Measure!"
A Klingon Bird of Prey dipped from orbit, chased the frigate wide. A prial of X-wings promptly gnawed on the Bird's tail. Tie fighters joined the fray. A dog-fight ensued. Two Stealth bombers crossed the valley's rim, released a pair of fuel/air bombs apiece towards the Bolo 12. Six mid-air explosions told us that tactic failed. Sundry shattered war-craft flamed or spun into near-by hills. The winners returned to attack The Mage etc.

His fury brought four more Birds of Prey from the edge of space. A slash of Federation Starship phasers downed one and damaged the rest. A Klingon heavy cruiser intervened. More X-wings blocked its route, wrecking some Tie fighters en-passant. A hapless Romulan ship maneuvered for position, gave and took only minor damage. The Aerospace frigate sparred with fewer Birds. Assorted aircraft swirled in furious combat at a dozen levels. More wreckage rained. The Bolo 12 unerringly demolished hazards, plus any hostile within range.

"Enough!" Howled The Mage etc.
A vast, angular shadow cut across the sun. The cuboid Borg fired on the swarming gnats in its path. The Klingon cruiser caught the merest fringe of one blast. The Commander cried betrayal. The Klingons changed sides. An impromptu alliance developed, briefly stalling the Borg's advance.

An odd craft rounded the planet's limb. Two rings of five spheres linked by chubby tubes, it looked a toy. But it was already a naked-eye object at that distance. It grew and grew. Its lasers reached through the Borg's rear shields, trenched two pair of molten tracks across the rear face. That drew the Borg's ire. A quartet of return beams simply bent off the newcomer's Fields. A larger octet began. The lasers culled them to five, three, gone. Suddenly, the Borg began to turn, to present an apex and three armed faces. Too late. Fields met shields. The Borg's coruscated, popped. The smaller craft passed close, by, clear away, unscathed.

The Borg's cube tumbled, powerless and dark, its shields and drives demolished by Field clash. The impromptu alliance opened fire as one. Massive fragments broke away. The smaller craft dealt with those. Soon, all that remained of the mighty Borg was a cloud of glowing dust.

"I do not believe it!" The Mage etc husked, barely aware of my cautious approach, "What was that?"
"Convention Trojan-class Rock-tug, on passage." I mentioned, latching silvered hand-cuffs onto his wrists, "Don't worry. You'll have plenty of time to catch up on your reading."
"Ha!" He sneered, "You'll never hold me- 'Ere? What's that?"
"Voder, Sir Mage."
"?" It spluttered, correctly, "Also known as The Mage With No Name That Human Voice Can Utter, you are under arrest for fraud, deception, conspiracy, intimidation, and attempted virtual murder. You have the right..."

We heard it out. The Mage etc turned to me. The violet fire in his eyes had dimmed. He pulled a face, "Who are you? Really?"
"Ken Thomas." I grinned, "Ah, by the way, your mentor, The Mage-Earl of Nonsuch didn't leave- He was caught with his hand in the till, and fired."
"We can still make a deal! A third ? No, half my A-shares in The Lands!"
I shook my head, "I usually take 10%."
"Then it is a deal ?"
"No way! I'm still under contract from last time!"
The Mage etc glanced behind abruptly. Though I saw nothing there, his face fell. He spoke hastily, "Last time?"
"Where do you think The Lands' 10% re-invested A-dividend comes from?"
He shook his head.

I guessed at the source of some extraneous noise, called past him, "You can take him now, Officer!"
He staggered backwards as invisible hands took his real arms, "But-?"
He began to fade. I flicked a parting gob of mustard onto his soiled, rent robe, "That's my share, you sucker! I've been a sleeping partner since I brought the Mage-Earl down!"