Orb Weaver: Within the Serpent's Coils: Chapter 3

Over the next week, things went pretty well. I focused on lone crimes, including both Empire and ABB, using my Orb Weaver identity. I even took a picture of a “giant hellspider” as one man claimed, pulling a would-be mugger into an alleyway for some talking to.

I would create an “Orb Weaver” ID right after I created “The Investigator” as a verified rogue on PHO. I would have to remember to keep both accounts on separate physical computers.

Also, Greg was involved with the gaming club, and surprisingly enough, doing a good job at it. But… he was starting to talk on PHO again.

So it might be wise if the “Verified Rogue” Orb Weaver was there, maybe to publicly remind him of his promise, now and then, if he was going off the reservation. I’d come to a conclusion, as part of my studies for my tutoring sessions, that Greg had some form of social disability and just didn’t understand people—Which made me feel pretty bad actually. Greg had tried, within his abilities, to reach out to me, and it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t do more.

Fuck. How was it that becoming a nightmare figure to most of the crooks in the Bay was making me more empathic?  Regardless, a reminder, now and then, might help keep him out of trouble, and keep him focused on what was, as far as I could tell, a pretty healthy route of social interaction.

But right now, I had other jobs to do, and a USB in my pocket to do it.

BROCKTON BAY ELECTRONICS SUPERMART!

I’d gone there, on several occasions, but to be honest, most of the hardware was overpriced and I knew more about the software than their workers did. I passed the display of the “TINKERTECH ROBOT OF THE FUTURE.” It had been here for the last seven years. The date of “first shipping” was seven years in the future, as it had been seven years ago. I remembered demonstrations of the robot, moving like a human. Now, it might be brought out once a week, to walk and do something, moving a little unsteadily.

Its inventor had been killed a few years ago, in an Endbringer fight, and rumor had it that the store was hiring Leet to maintain it. A rumor that the store had denied, but not before Armsmaster came out and verified it.

Further rumor had it that he’d been so annoyed by some issues, he’d actually tinkered up some maintenance routines that were the only reason it was working—sort of.

As I wandered through the store, I built a model of the building with my bugs, tiny gnats flying around and landing on surfaces. There were the repair rooms, the offices, the bath—

I pulled my bugs away and turned around so nobody would see my face get red. The bathrooms, with a pair of teenaged clerks in them. Very active teenaged clerks. Well. That was fine. Not my problem. 

The problem was that the cameras of the Safety First brand were designed to be secure from what I was trying, branded as “invulnerable to hackers” with the typical boilerplate about not being liable for Tinker hacks. IBM’s 5 billion dollar lawsuit loss made certain nobody was ever going to claim their systems were invulnerable to tinkers.

And part of that was that each Safety First Camera was set up in the store, and then handed to the client who created their own password. If the client forgot the password, there was no way to retrieve the information, but nobody had to worry about the store looking through their material. There was an optional service where you could provide the police with real time coverage, but surprisingly, the Empire wasn’t using many of those.

And where they were allowing police access, I could use that as proof that there was unlikely to be anything there I needed to check out.  Some of my reading had mentioned that what an enemy did to keep you from infiltrating him could provide information you could use, and that was very much the case here.

I waited until the store was closed, putting my bugs under various computers, waiting until the staff left for the night—and by tracking the crushed bugs, I had tracked their passwords and entry codes.

It wasn’t until 9:30 that the last were gone. I’d told Dad I’d be out late. He didn’t like it, but he just nodded and reminded me that, as per our agreement, murdering Hookwolf was off the table, and getting anywhere near Leet was even more off the Table.

Dad had tried to conceal it from me, but he’d been reading more about capes and even had a PHO account, “DadInPlaid”. 

The door opened to my code, and nothing happened. That was my first worry, that the door locks would be time locked or alarmed even if the code was right, but that would make things difficult if the manager had to come back and get something.

Now, I could not turn off the store alarm. That was timed, and if it was set off, the idea of someone breaking in, but not stealing anything would be far too suspicious.

But I knew where the cameras were aimed, what displays had their own alarms. I moved through the store quickly, insects on the cameras telling me where they were aiming as they were swiveling.

Easy enough to avoid. Cheap on the part of the store. I would have provided continual coverage.

But there was one camera I had to go past, and this was risky. I had to time my move, with a flicker of a moth’s wings. I couldn’t completely obscure it with bugs, which meant I couldn’t cover it. But a moth flying up for three or four seconds happened now and then.

I waited, took a deep breath, and then moved.

And then I was in the back section and this part of the store, being repair benches and computers, had no cameras, because any thief would prefer the bright and shiny new material out on the floor, or in the stock room.

Not here.

I turned the manager’s computer on, before keying in his 16 character password. He, at least, took security seriously, the password being a random collection of numbers, letters, and symbols.

But since I’d had gnats under his keyboard…

I waited and the computer booted up. The update routines required another password, which is why I had waited this long—he didn’t use it every day.

And there I was.

It had taken me reading days of time to figure out what to do. You couldn’t just download visual data—the company wasn’t staffed by idiots, after all. Only the client could do that, and only after they set their own password.

But the company hadn’t planned for this, someone breaking into their facilities. Perhaps their higher-level products did, in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised, but the Empire was pretending this was just purchases by “Frightened citizens” which would be a little suspicious if said citizens were purchasing 10K camera systems.

But the cameras used wifi to query the central computer to see if they needed an update. That update had to be approved by the user, but that didn’t matter.

Because after studying their programs I had found a weakness. The update query included a data dump of the camera’s condition, so that if there was a software or hardware malfunction they would notify the user. It was wireless, so I just added another internet address to that subroutine, an address I had already set up, and made a change to the camera’s data dump where it would include the part of memory where the password was stored. Fifteen minutes later, I turned off the computer, wiped down the desk—I was gloved but no need to take risks and left the store the same way I had come.

Now, anyone who bought a camera would, in less than a day, when the camera started up on its initial self-test and check for needed software updates, hand me the keys to their security camera.

I wouldn’t try this on something that was protecting the Empire’s most vital facilities. They might not have tinkers, but Toybox existed. But these cameras, used as a method to try to bring me down?  Well… they would be used… just not in the way the Empire expected.

With that, I returned home. I was cheerful enough that I only growled at a pair of kids putting up Empire graffiti… Well, growled and made the alleyway mouth by them look like… something was in it. Whatever. They got the point as they fled down the street.

And then I went home.