14. Hacking the Cube

By six o’clock that evening, Donny, Mickey and Lyle had been time accelerated in the FullSenz for another 10 days.  They had trained hard and their brains were hurting. During the pheel, they had taken sleep breaks, but the breaks had been hyper-accelerated and only about 10 minutes of real-time was lost to sleep simulation.

They ordered more room service but didn’t eat as much as they’d thought they would.  They didn’t talk much either.  Each sat deep in thought, trying to come to terms with what they were feeling.

Most of the afternoon’s 10-day-long pheel was spent in the Waste-REL simulation.  For the first 3 days, they were just trying to figure out how everything worked. 

In order to accommodate the nuclear engine, the flight deck was small.  Normally a space station can rely on solar energy to charge batteries, but if the Waste-REL had solar wings, they’d be hacked off or crushed by the first few hunks of junk attracted to the hull.

As things got serious during the Pheel, Donny and Mickey had insisted that Lyle turn back into a guy because the breathtaking beauty he was being was too much of a distraction.

Mickey had been the first to really understand the magneto/graviton-drive.  Lyle would scan for and find a target and Mickey would up the voltage until the target, or the Waste-REL, or both, would begin to move towards each other.  Donny would steer, and they’d always manage, somehow, to get to and cling to their target, whether it was a discarded stage-2 rocket, a cloud of debris or Major Tom.

The only problem is, it didn’t feel right.  Something was wrong.  The whole simulation didn’t feel like a normal Pheel.  It felt fixed, artificial and it left a bad taste in the three seasoned pheely-geeks’ mouths.

After a while, they tried to screw up the simulation, making an effort to do things wrong.   But the outcome was always the same ­– successful.  They even did stupid things and still it was fine.

The three pheely-geeks sat in their hotel room wondering why they felt so dirty.

“I should be able to see what’s wrong,” said Mickey.

“You too, huh?” asked Lyle.  “There’s something not right about it.”

“It’s got to be in the programming,” said Donny.  “It made me feel creepy, like I was being lied to by a friend.”

“Yeah,” said Lyle.  “That’s just it!  Like poison fed to you on a baby spoon.”

Mickey hadn’t wanted to hack the code in the cube he got from HortenZ, feeling that the cube was, in a way, almost sacred.  But now, faced with this sick feeling that he couldn’t put his finger on, he had to see for himself.

“I’m going into service mode,” said Mickey.  Normally Donny and Lyle liked to watch Mickey program the FullSenz.  He was a master at cracking the protective layers of code that were designed to keep hackers from ripping copies for their friends.  These protective protocols also kept hackers from changing important parameters, like effective level of pain constraints that protected players from feeling the anguish associated with each of the multiple deaths they normally would experience during game play.  After all, it is not unreasonable to predict that when your head is cleaved in two by a large green ogre with a battle axe, your last living thought is probably “ouch.”  Game players who lost battles with ogres could escape this experience, as long as the game was programmed to turn off the sensation of pain just before the axe met its mark.  If, on the other hand, a player was looking for a migraine with a twist, hacking the pain protocol to [off] would do the trick.

Mickey connected his SPECTACL to the FullSenz but the others were too tired to join in.

The flight deck in the Waste-REL’s interior was cramped for 5 crew members but ample for Mickey alone.  He walked over to the electromagnet control console out of habit.  A satellite in the shape of a large solar-panel winged cylinder was directly below the Waste-REL.

“Pause session, view properties, Mickey098gamma,” said Mickey to no one in particular.

A floating jumble of three-dimensional objects faded into existence and all the sounds, lights and console screens in the simulated Waste-REL control room froze.

“Let’s see,” said Mickey.  “Preferences please.”

A black skull appeared with the words “ACCESS DENIED” floating in red flaming letters beneath it.

“Ah, not in my FullSenz you don’t,” said Mickey.  Mickey grabbed the skull and twisted it.  “Mickey’s backwards hack delta one.”

A fairy with a magic wand appeared in Mickey’s hands, leapt into the air and opened a sparkling curtain, revealing a pattern of floating balls, all with their own control function.

“Okay,” said Mickey.  “Computer, fade out all controls set to defaults.”  More than half of the little balls turned transparent.  “Computer, fade out all controls using settings applied by Mickey098gamma.”  Only 3 balls remained opaque.

 The first ball controlled the players’ ability to change game parameters on the fly, which was off.  Either setting was appropriate for a training Pheel and Mickey left it off.

The second ball involved temperature control.  The setting allowed players to leave the Waste-REL without instantly freezing solid in the vacuum of space.  This was necessary because some of the training required leaving the Waste-REL to observe processes on the exterior of the ship without using a spacesuit, which was only required in the simulation if you were training for space-walks.

The third ball was something Mickey had never seen before, which was pretty wild for someone as jaded as Mickey.  He spun the ball by flicking it with his index finger and the ball displayed a line of script that Mickey had never seen before.  It said:

CHANGPARAM: HULLSTREN >*∞; PLAYSCRIPT “Winbig.spt”

Mickey had never seen a FullSenz script make a document call before.  Somewhere on the cube was a bucket full of over-writing Pheely code called “Winbig.”  He could guess what the code was for.

Mickey changed his finger into an I-beam cursor and selected the entire CHANGEPARAM command and the PLAYSCRIPT command.

“Delete,” said Mickey.

Two balls floated into existence, one said: “PERMANENTLY DELETE?”  the other said “THIS SESSION ONLY”

Mickey spun the “permanently delete” ball, it flashed and both balls faded away.

“Okay, computer,” said Mickey to the ceiling.  “Start session, new game.”

“Okay,” said the demigod voice.  The buttons and lights, sounds and consoles all came alive.

Mickey turned the dial on the graviton/electromagnet and the 3D display showed a satellite beneath the Waste-REL beginning to slowly close on the station.  Mickey watched as it inched its way to the surface of his ship.

“First level’s a slam-dunk,” he said to himself.

When the satellite impacted on the surface of the Waste-REL, the outer shell of the station ruptured, all the air escaped instantly and the nuclear engine exploded.

“Would you like another training session?” asked the demigod.    Mickey was floating in outer space, hovering hundreds of miles over the surface of the planet Earth, surrounded by radioactive debris.

“No,” said Mickey.  “End game”

Mickey sat up, his face drawn and his brows furrowed.  Mickey was actually angry.  Donny and Lyle rarely saw Mickey in anything but a pleasant mood.

“What?” asked Lyle.

“Tell us,” said Donny.

“We are in big trouble,” said Mickey.

Next: Losing Henry