Trapped. Salaryman has been trapped. The Company’s network admins are on to him. He had taken precautions so that no one would know what he was doing - all communications encrypted, all net sessions veiled with his own brand of workaround… But in the end, some paper pusher in Security had found a discrepancy in the logs. Or maybe they were directly monitoring his terminal in a way he hadn’t yet discovered.

The first day on the job, he found what he was up against. Standard company procedure - multiple proxies, traffic logs, network analyzers… That night he took a look from the outside by plugging his laptop into a public digital terminal on a newer payphone and dialing into a compromised account. The Company was easy to find, an ugly hulk sprawled across the digital landscape, draining the bandwidth from local lines.

Salaryman winced at the sight of it. This was never supposed to have happened. The Internet was no longer the last bastion of free expression and had never been allowed to become the pinnacle of information sharing that it had been touted for in its early years. Everyday users, ignorant to the lurking agents that routinely diverted and examined net traffic, exposed themselves in ways they would never do outside of a computer environment. They just did not understand the importance of security… not enough of them had been personally attacked for it to matter just yet.

And big business had stepped in and sealed their fate. Where before there had been ordinary users sharing information in the spirit of self expression and education - there were the feds, dialing in from net task force offices, trying to get anyone to do anything wrong in the digital realm so they could break down doors and throw someone’s non-digital ass in jail. And online malls, casinos, whorehouses, pay-to-surf schemes, million dollar advertising campaigns, and not enough bandwidth to go around. How had it all come to this?

Online business had obviously been the precursor to publicized online crime. In the days of old, nobody really gave a damn if phreaks cheated Ma Bell out of long distance calls, because the phone company was screwing everyone else anyway (PAY for those electrons, worm!). Salaryman believes that the word "hacker" was reinvented by big business, coined in the first seconds those ridiculous "keep intruders out of your system" commercials started appearing on television. Salaryman thinks the current state of affairs is an affront to those who labored to bring a wired world to the common man. "Hack the planet!" he quips, and grins like an idiot.

Hackers? Salaryman silently whispers their names as he flexes his fingers and sets up the tools he needs. Archimedes. Edison. Hawkins. People who tried to find a better way of doing things. People who incessantly played with stuff to see how and why it worked. People who freed minds. Salaryman hasn’t come across a real hacker in ages. He pretty much dropped out of the ranks when newbies started getting jail time for defacing websites and stealing e-mail.

Among his online peers, Salaryman is known as Zen. This started out as a joke, based on his location in Japan, and how he could seemingly walk through the walls that bound others. As he shared what he knew and, in turn, learned new tricks from others, his ability grew. So did his desire to explore, to see the sights he was not supposed to see. When Salaryman is online, he assumes the qualities of Zen.

He is now on the frontline. Salaryman wonders if he could make a forced entry through these formidable defenses. Maybe a coordinated attack up front as a diversion to cover sneaking in through the rear… Today is not the day. He is only here to spot cracks in the wall, not to utilize them. So he watches the traffic going in and out, and studies the patterns. And he finds a hole.

Actually, the hole does not interest him as a possible entrance because this type of hole is surely a dead end on a system this large. It might even be booby-trapped. However, there is a hairline fracture that runs in a path that intersects the hole. If a little more stress were put on that part of the wall, the fracture may run all the way to the hole… It might be interesting to see what would happen then. But not today. Today is strictly for reconnaissance, information gathering.

Some of the ways he thinks of breaching the defenses have been researched extensively by others already, so he continues watching from a distance and starts looking up their work, their documentation. Ah, yes. That trick. Hmm, he doesn’t know that protocol very well… This will have to be studied in depth, later. Meanwhile, his time is running short. If someone very clever was watching him and if they wanted to bother with such small fry, there is a small possibility he could be in danger in a couple more minutes. These payphones with the digital jacks are relatively new, and scrutinized by the phone company pretty closely. Besides, he likes this account and doesn’t want to lose it on a scouting mission. So he logs out, unplugs his laptop from the phone, and walks out into the chilly night air.

The second week of work, a manager called him out. He was taken in a room, and asked many questions about his activities on the net, both at work and otherwise. To be quite truthful, he was not surprised. He had been quite careless about browsing this and that in between working, because like every other American bandwidth junkie, he felt it was his God-given right. Management was not happy with his attitude at all. Salaryman was about to lose it and tell them all to get fucked. The situation looked grim. Chameleon woke up in the middle of all this and immediately assumed control: "I’m sorry, almighty superiors, for doing something so wrong! I’m sorry that I am a worthless foreigner, placing these huge burdens on your back, but I am stupid and don’t know any better! I’m sorry! So sorry! Please forgive me! I’ll never so it again! I’m sorry! Sorriness is my current country of residence. Sorry! Forgive me…please…"

They were obviously relieved he chose to apologize so honestly, just the way a Japanese would have done it. They dismissed him and he excused himself from the room. As he returned to his desk, Chameleon actually felt quite bad for what Salaryman had done. But the proper apology and formal groveling added insult to injury, and Salaryman fumed inside as Chameleon used the "I’m sorry and have been properly disciplined" visage to make his coworkers feel better about working with such a dishonorable foreigner. It worked, somewhat, and his coworkers stopped noticing him to the point where Salaryman could find out how he had been caught…

There was a deleted entry in the install logs dated the day before, and he dug deeper. Holy shit! They were logged in remotely to his terminal! That meant they were probably watching his every move, even now…

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