Greetings again all.
It was pointed out to me that my first post's heading was incorrectly
formatted. Sumimasen. Shitsurei shimashita.
I hope you enjoyed the first part of this story. I am still finishing the
rest which will be done shortly.
A few points before we begin: readers will notice that the Yggdrasil
systems appear to be based on Unix and TCP/IP. I felt these were the
logical choices. TCP/IP is as close as we have to a universal protocol.
After all, that is how all of us are communicating across the world. The
same basic premise with the appearance of Unix-like commands applies. Not
to mention, God told me that whether I used NetBEUI or not, Bill Gates was
still going to Hell regardless :).
Another point is the modem Urd is using. I am basing this modem on
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line technology here in the USA. As such it
gets a 1.544Mbps channel. In Europe and Asia, standard DS1 speed is
actually 2.0Mbps. I suspect most people won't give a rat's ass one way or
the other ;).
Without any more stalling, here is Part 2 of A Twist of Cain.
********************************************************************
Part 2
Keiichi didn’t even get out the door the next morning before the phone
call came from Hasegawa. Belldandy answered the phone and immediately
shouted for Keiichi.
"Hi Hasegawa, what’s up?"
"Oh Keiichi, two more people have died at school! Tetsuya from the fencing
club and my friend Misato were found dead this morning behind the
Facilities building. This is too scary! Three people in two days! Do you
think there’s an epidemic of some kind?"
"I really don’t know. I would hope the health officials would be all over
the campus if there was something like that going on. Was it the same kind
of thing as Johji?"
"Yes, no marks of any kind, and they were fully clothed from what I hear,
so it doesn’t look like … you know … r-rr-rape or anything like that. My
God, I just talked to Misato two days ago! She was complaining about her
brother stealing her CDs. How trivial that seems now." Hasegawa broke down
and quietly began to cry. "This is too weird. I think I’ll stay home from
school today. I just couldn’t bear being in class without her. Excuse me,
Morisato-senpai, but I’d like some time alone."
After Keiichi hung up the phone, he told the goddesses what had happened at
school. Urd frowned. "Three people dying the same way in two days in the
same school is too much coincidence for me. I’ll check the system." She
went to her room and came back with a small box with two foam rings on the
top.
"Hey, that looks like an old acoustic coupler modem!" Keiichi said.
Urd took the phone off the hook and placed it in the foam rings. "Same
idea, but a whole lot better. When I dial into Yggdrasil, I get a 1.544
Megabits per second downlink speed and a 64 kilobits per second uplink
speed. A heck of a lot better than 300 baud acoustic couplers." She placed
her hands above the box and made a gesture. A translucent keyboard and
screen materialized under her fingers and she began pounding away on the
keys. "Let’s see… ps -ef | grep fated should do it."
The screen spat out line after line of information.
<Line# UID GID PID ParentID CPUtime Process >
<1 root 1 640 32 0 fated >
<2 root 1 5023 640 0 fated >
<3 root 1 5024 5023 0 fated >
<4 root 1 5025 5024 0 fated >
<5 root 1 5026 5025 0 fated >
.
.
.
"What the hell? The fate daemon just keeps on spawning child processes
which just sit there. We should only see one fated running and it should be
using at least 5% of the CPU at all times. Calculating fates is a lot of
work." Urd muttered.
"Try killing off those processes and restarting the daemon, Urd." Skuld
suggested.
"Yeah ok."
#kill -9 640
#ps -ef | grep fated
<Line# UID GID PID ParentID CPUtime Process >
"Nothing. That’s good. Now restart the daemon."
Urd growled, "I know that, thanks! And bring up your own terminal, don’t
look over my shoulder!"
#./usr/sbin/fated &
#ps -ef | grep fated
<Line# UID GID PID ParentID CPUtime Process >
<1 root 1 6780 32 0 fated >
<2 root 1 6781 6780 0 fated >
<3 root 1 6782 6781 0 fated >
<4 root 1 6783 6782 0 fated >
<5 root 1 6784 6783 0 fated >
.
.
.
"Damn it! It keeps on doing that! What the hell’s wrong with this thing?
Skuld you haven’t been fooling around with the storage blocks, have you?"
"Not me. Just a second, I’m running a checksum on the executable." Skuld
pounded a command into her terminal.
<Checksum failed! >
<Expected Value: c69hb7d2 >
<Calculated Value: nh665us4 >
"Rats! It looks like this thing’s corrupt! We’re going to have to get a
copy from backup and recompile for the new kernel we put in last century."
Skuld groaned. "What a pain!"
"Why would it suddenly become corrupt now? It’s been stable for years!"
Suspicious, Urd decided to check the command logs for unusual root-level
commands in reference to fate. "Hey, what’s this?
<Date Time User Command Origin >
<0615 23:46 root cp fatedd fated 192.168.254.162 >
<0615 23:46 root ps -ef | grep fated 192.168.254.162 >
<0615 23:47 root ./fated & 192.168.254.162 >
"That’s three days ago! It looks like we’ve been root compromised! Someone
broke in, copied a different fated over our fated, killed the good one, and
started the corrupt one. Rotten jerks!" Lightning crackled around her
fists. "When I catch the bastards who did this, I’m going to burn out every
neuron they have!"
Belldandy looked over Urd’s shoulder at the screen. "Look at the origin.
That address is on the Purgatory subnet."
"You’re right, Belldandy. Let’s see what his machine address is." Urd
punched in some more commands.
#ping 192.168.254.162
<192.168.254.162 responds. 0% packet loss. MinTime: 4ms, AvgTime: 7ms,
MaxTime: 15m>
#arp -a
<IP Address MAC Address >
<192.168.254.162 00:00:81:02:0C:D4 >
#nslookup 192.168.254.162
<IP Address Resolved Name >
<192.168.254.162 gretzer.purgatory.heaven.god >
Urd smirked. "Hah! Gotcha, you weasel. His machine responds to pings, so
his system is active right now! I’m going to go get him. Skuld, you start
recompiling the daemon from backed up source code."
"Hey, why do I get the hard job when you get to go beat the stuffing out of
a hacker?" whined Skuld.
Static charges from Urd’s building lightning made Keiichi’s hair stand on
end. "Because I’m older, wiser, and far meaner than you, kid. Get used to
it." With that, Urd hurled herself towards the TV and disappeared into an
episode of Ranma ½.
Belldandy came up behind Keiichi and gave him a hug. "Well Keiichi, you had
better get to school. I’m sure everything is going to be fine now that we
know what’s going on. I’ll stay here and help Skuld today. Debugging and
recompiling that code is a big job."
"Ok, if you guys don’t need any help, I’ll get going." Keiichi checked his
watch. "Oh man! I’m an hour late already. Tamiya-senpai is going to kill
me! See you guys later." He ran out the door, jumped on his bike, and
gunned it down the street.
WHACK! SQUEEK! Skuld finished pummeling the last of the bugs into
submission and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. "Whew! I think
that’s the last one. Are those bugs getting faster or am I just slowing
down a little?"
"I brought you some lunch, Skuld. How is it going?" Belldandy set a tray
down next to Skuld.
"I just finished debugging and we’re ready to start recompiling. Thanks for
the food, it looks great!" Skuld grinned up at her big sister.
"I hope you enjoy it. Be sure to eat it all. Being a genius is hard work,
after all." Belldandy gave Skuld a loving smile and glanced at the kitchen
counter. "Oh my, it looks like Keiichi was in such a hurry he forgot his
lunchbox. He must be starving! Skuld dear, do you think you can take care
of things while I take Keiichi his lunch?"
Skuld nodded absently, already reabsorbed in her terminal.
Urd came charging into Purgatory at top speed and grabbed a frumpy office
lady by the front of her dress. "I’m looking for Gretzer! Where is he?"
"Aren’t you the tyrant? What authority do you have to grab me like this?"
fumed the OL.
Urd growled. "I’m a Goddess Second Class, Limited license. Now where is he?"
The office lady threw back her head and let out a guffaw. "You’re a second
class goddess and you think you can pull rank with me?"
"I f you want authority, how about the authority of a lightning bolt up
your nose if you piss me off anymore." Urd extended her hand towards the
old woman. The lady relented. Just because she couldn’t be harmed by Urd’s
lightning there in Purgatory didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hellfire.
"Well, he is actually a she. Ms. Gretzer is currently on her lunch break at
her desk over there. Just follow the blue arrows to New Soul Processing.
That’s her department." The office lady shrugged herself loose from Urd’s
grasp, turned on her heel, and stalked away.
Gretzer saw Urd coming and jumped up from her desk. "DAMN, it shouldn’t
have been this soon! She’s going to have my hide." She tried to make a
break for the door, but Urd flew up from behind and twisted her arm behind
her back.
"We know that you’ve been hacking into Yggdrasil, Gretzer. We know you
switched the fate daemons and you have been tampering with the executables.
Did you think you could get away with it?" Urd snarled. "If you’re smart
enough to hack into Yggdrasil, why didn’t you erase the command log?"
"I don’t know what you’re talking about! I just process new souls, I don’t
know the first thing about hacking." Gretzer stammered, straining against
Urd’s grasp.
Urd added some electrical persuasion into her grip on Gretzer’s arm and
said, "You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? If you’re a dumb
innocent office bimbo, I’ll swear off sake."
"All right, all right, a guy came up to me with a sheet of computer
commands and instructions on how to break into your system. He said he
would get me some time off in exchange. He said you wouldn’t figure things
out until you sobered up, which would be a long time, and that this was a
test on Yggdrasil’s security systems. If you came looking for me I was to
deny everything. He didn’t mention anything about torture however." Gretzer
gasped from the pain.
"Why do you need time off? And who’s this guy?" Urd prompted.
Gretzer winced and said, "Ouch, lay off of the electricity, lady! I need
time off because I’m a soul in Purgatory. If you’re in here, you’re in for
a LONG time. I’ve been here 300 years already without a break. I’m supposed
to be atoning for my earthly sins. Let me tell you, it gets tedious real
quick! The guy’s name was…um…Raisin?…no…Ralston?…no…Ransom! That’s his
name, Ransom! Short guy, black hair, strange eyes. Big sideburns too. He
said he was with a security firm called the Cain Foundation, and they were
contracted to do penetration tests on Yggdrasil. I didn’t care really. I
just wanted my time off."
"You’re an idiot! As if an independent contractor could bypass Purgatory
rules and get you time off. Really, you are so gullible! I think this is
going to delay your entrance into Heaven a little, sister!" With that, Urd
handed Gretzer over to Purgatory security for ‘reprocessing’. She then flew
off to check the records for any mention of the Cain Foundation.
The references to the Cain Foundation were few, and none of them were
pleasant. Urd scanned the records looking for clues. "Man, this is not a
nice bunch of people. Basically, the organization is a Satanic front! What
a dupe Gretzer was! Question is, why are they sabotaging Yggdrasil?" Urd
came across recent photos of some of their members. "They have people
everywhere. Washington D.C., Tokyo, London, all the major cities have their
own operative. Only one operative per city. Hmm. That’s strange. Maybe
they’d strangle each other if they worked the same city. Nah, we’d never be
that lucky." At that moment, a voice came from all around her.
"URD"
"Yes, Kami-sama?" Urd replied.
"THE WAR FOR HUMANITY HAS FINALLY BEGUN"
"The war for humanity? What war, with who?"
"AFTER COUNTLESS GENERATIONS, SATAN IS FINALLY MAKING HIS MOVE TO COLLECT
THE SOULS OF HUMANITY. HIS MINIONS HAVE ALREADY BEGUN THE HARVEST."
"Are you talking about the strange deaths all over?
"YES. THE HARVESTERS ARE BEGINNING THEIR TASK OF STRATEGICALLY
REMOVING…KILLING…PEOPLE TO CAUSE PANIC AND DISTRUST. THEY ARE ALSO
POISONING THE MINDS OF POLITICAL LEADERS TO HASTEN ARMAGEDDON."
"Why would Satan do this? What advantage does he gain?"
"THE SOULS OF HUMANITY ARE POWERFUL THINGS. HE WHO GAINS THE MOST SOULS
TIPS THE BALANCE OF POWER IN HIS FAVOR FOREVER. ONCE THE POWER RESTS WITH
HIM, SATAN WILL MAKE THE WORLD IN HIS IMAGE, JUST AS I MADE IT IN MINE. THE
WORLD WOULD BECOME PURE EVIL. WITHOUT YGGDRASIL TO PROTECT FATES, SATAN’S
MINIONS ARE FREE TO CONTINUE THEIR BLOODY CAMPAIGN."
"Ummm, you couldn’t have told us about this sooner?"
"WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I CREATED THE UNIVERSE? DO NOT QUESTION ME…. BESIDES,
IF I WANTED TO WORRY ABOUT EVERY SINGLE DETAIL I WOULD NOT HAVE DELEGATED
RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE GODS AND GODDESSES. WHICH REMINDS ME THAT THE FATE
DAEMON IS _YOUR_ RESPONSIBILITY AS SYSADMIN. YOU SHOULD HAVE NOTICED
SOONER. WHAT IS BEING DONE TO CORRECT THIS PROBLEM?"
"Well, we are recompiling the code right now. It should be done in a couple
hours. I think we caught them early enough that we should be able to
prevent Armageddon."
"THAT IS GOOD. HOWEVER, THE ONES YOU LOVE ARE IN GRAVE DANGER UNTIL THE
FATE DAEMON IS ON-LINE. THE HARVESTERS USUALLY TARGET PEOPLE WITH MANY
FRIENDS OR LARGE FAMILIES SO THAT THE DAMAGE WILL SPREAD AS WIDELY AS
POSSIBLE. GO TO THEM AND PROTECT THEM UNTIL YGGDRASIL HAS RECOVERED. SATAN
IS COMING FOR THEM."
Urd nodded and flew at top speed towards her portal to home.
Mark Turek Network Engineer
Bay Networks Professional Services
......................................
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they
shall catch flack from both sides.
Unofficial U.N. motto
......................................
>From the hand, mouth, and mind (and
other assorted body parts) of ME, not
Bay Networks.