1992.  Somewhere on the border of Belize and Guatemala.  ~

"We're almost there, I'm sure, the border is close," the guide attempted to
laugh, but what came out was an almost maniacal screech.  The headlight
embedded in his forehead kept changing its luminosity in various intervals
for the past few hours - it was bound to run out of juice any moment now.  I
followed the tatooed punk deeper and deeper into the jungle.  One could
hardly tell the time with the sky obstructed by thick foliage, even though
my wristwatch reported UTC 4:32PM.  Fucked if I'd known whatever that meant
in Guatemalan time.  My instinct told me we were still in the same timezone
as Florida, but would you really trust your instinct on time, if you were
cloaked in the darkness of a rainforest in Belize?  Every few minutes I kept
checking the machine strapped to my back.  The laptop was the only thing I
was carrying, but it was not the actual computer that had value to me.  It
was the 3,5 in it's drive.

..

4 MONTHS EARLIER

"Listen, B," she shifted her voice to that comforting tone of a worried
mother.  She was 20 years younger.  "It's just not good.  The Big wants you
out.  The material you got...  it put a lot of people out of the picture.
You know what that means.  I don't want you to get...  hurt." Paige was just
that and much, much more - the lover all men lust for their whole
unfulfilled lives - a hurt girl in her thirties who made it past the
reception desk job, tolerated all the pricks who kept her pretty face down
until one day she ended up in my office straight out of R&D.  She was to
help me revise the code that was to be pushed to the public.  I knew there
and then that she was all I could ever hope for.  And even then a little
voice in the back of my head whispered that she would be the undoing of
everything I've know up to that point.

Revising the code was no easy matter, required dozens upon dozens of tests
and rigorous benchmarking to make sure everything would be rended properly
and the little spinning images would keep on spinning.  I look back on that
one evening, way past the office time, when she tapped my shoulder with a
lack of expression that could only mean one thing.  I look back on that
evening and wish she missed it.

The code was fine, in fact it was so skillfully put together that someone,
someone big, was hoping we would miss it and I did, but not Paige.  "This,
this right here - it looks like a function to offload the cached memory,
but...  look...  this variable, the capital I is replaced with an L - and
the regex reveals..." I think we both gasped silmultaneously, followed by a
load vulgar exclamantion.

There was code injection hidden in one of the rendering functions.  When
someone, anyone, would attempt to render a 4x8 table, the code would connect
to a server somewhere in South Korea, quietly download and execute a single
script and allow full remote access to the local machine.  Little would you
know, the intranet of most state defense agencies had a 4x8 table at the top
of the log-in page, displaying system information.  Nobody cared about root
access then, we all thought it was virtually impossible to control machines
remotely, but this little snippet of code said otherwise.

This was no mistake, no intern low on caffeine making a typo.  This was an
outside attempt to expose our services as flawed.  It was clear this was
corporate espionage.  It was several months ago when us, the Global Web (tm)
received the full go-ahead from the ministry of security to develop a new
version of HTML.  There were several runner ups to score the job and you can
be assured there were many sore losers.  It was then that I've learned that
men of the internet do not go down quietly.

With the archived vulnerability on a tape disk, we waited in the office
until the morning hours.  I guess it was the adrenaline, the rush of
discovering something vile, that lead us to spend the rest of the night
making love under and over my desk.  I did not think of my wife that night.

In the morning, we sidestepped in front of the locked office of the then
Global Internet Manager, Nelson Husky.  After revealing to him what we have
discovered, he sent Paige outside the office, sat me down and spoke very
calmly: "Bruce...  I strongly recommend you forget about this and push the
code upstream.  You are a good man, your dedication is clear, but this is
something that does not in fact exist.  Let it go, greenlight the code, go
home to your wife." I thought about Paige and her breats pressed to my
monitor.

"What did he say?" She asked nervously.

..

NOW IN BELIZE

"Fuck!" The punk exclaimed and quickly tapped at the headlight in his
forehead, it died in a brief glint.  I ducked down and looked around, but I
had no idea what I was to be looking for.  The mud we've been stepping
through was up to my knees.  It wasn't that I was alien to dirt, in fact I
have worked with my fair share - it was the jungle in its whole that in the
past twelve hours I had come to hate.  No light and creepy crawlers
everywhere.  The machine was still firmly placed on my back.

Finally, after a brief moment of inaction, my guide spoke in an almost
inaudible whisper: "the cartel...  they set up landmines in this area...
The goood news is, we're close to the edge, but...  fuck...  this isn't
good." It wasn't.  As if on cue, an explosion echoed throughout the forest.
"No matter.  Take this." The punk handed me one of his pistols.  There was
no time for inquiries, as six shadowy figures emerged nearby.  We had not
yet been spotted, but this would not last long.

..

"Mister Morris, what a surprise to see you here." The bastard was pressing
his foot on my face.  The gun was lying some distance away.  No way to get
to it now.  The Big's gorillas prowled around, looking for the machine.

"Quite the fuss you've caused us, mister Morris.  Surely you understand the
trouble we had to go through to get to you." I knew what he meant.  My wife
- "Your wife is alright, as we speak.  And as a man of a...  certain
principle, I would not intend to harm another man's family...  His secret
lover on the other hand, and the one person responsible for his..." He was
looking for the right words, as if to sound properly villanous.  "- his fall
from grace - well, that would feel almost...  poetic." So they got to Paige.
My senses kept reminding me that this was no moment for hasty action, but a
plan was already forming in my head.

Although there was a military grade boot pressing at my face, my hands were
free.  It would take me 2 seconds at best, to turn the tide and if God
willed it, to break the fucker's leg in half.  His goons would be another
story altogether.  I would let him have deliver his monologue.  I needed an
extra moment to calculate my options.

"Mister Morris, let us make this an easy endeavor for the both of us.  Tell
me where the machine is and I will make sure your...  lover...  comes to
no...  well...  further harm." So she was still alive.  No way to tell if he
was bluffing, but that was irrelevant at this point.  My task was simple.
The direction of my action was now clear.  As he paused I grabbed his foot
and twisted it sideways until a solid crack could be heard.  He howled in
pain and fell on his back.  But by the time he hit the ground, I was on one
of his goons, my fingers in his eye sockets.  His weapon was now mine.  What
followed was a short exchange of chaotic fire and a few precise headshots.
It was over.  For now.

He looked as slimey as any other day, but the ski mask rolled over his
forehead added to his stupid.

I retraced my steps through the jungle and recovered the machine by a tree
trunk I left it at.  Having lost my guide, I would have to press on on my
instinct and pure luck.  But the Big's crew left behind a trail out of the
jungle even my untrained eye could track.

..


[you've just read the preview to the upcoming
Bruce Morris, the Global Internet Manager preview.
Stay tuned for the upcoming release.]