Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji

Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji

Author:Adam Oyebanji [Oyebanji, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Thrillers, Suspense, Action & Adventure, General
ISBN: 9781529417142
Google: Ao4-EAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B098PWRSC7
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2022-04-04T23:00:00+00:00


25.0

Y ou can’t hack a human being,” Boz said. “It’s not possible.” She was trying to light a cigarette, but shaking hands were getting in the way. The thin cylinder of tobacco slipped from her fingers and dropped lazily to the deck. Boz dived after it with a muttered curse.

Despite himself, Ravi could feel a small smile tugging at his lips.

“Just because you don’t know how to do it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Besides, you’re the gal who said someone had been playing house in my head, remember?”

Boz looked up from the deck plates, her expression sour.

“Yeah, but I was thinking of the medics or the chipset maintenance techs. About some gullgroper messing about with the coding to your implants. I wasn’t thinking about someone taking over your actual biological brain, making you hallucinate, and dropping real Archie-damned messages into your dreams.” She sat cross-legged on the deck, the retrieved cigarette back in her hand. “There are like a hundred billion neurons in the human brain,” she pointed out matter-of-factly. “With failsafes and backups and a bucket-load of self-protective mirror mechanisms. You can’t just waltz in and hack them. And even if you could, do you have any idea of the processing power you’d need to pull it off? It’s not possible.”

“Are you saying I haven’t been hacked?” Ravi’s voice dripped with irony. Strangely, even though abject terror would be more appropriate, the fact that his cousin, the fleet’s most incorrigible hacker, was confused beyond description struck him as funny. She looked like she’d been hit upside the head.

Boz had finally lit her cigarette. She took a deep, calming drag.

“No,” she said slowly. “You’ve totally been hacked. But sard me, Rav, it should be impossible. I wouldn’t even know how to start.” Her expression became suddenly sly. “I’d know where , though.”

“What? ”

“I’d know where,” she repeated. She rewound the logs to the first time the hacking signal appeared. “Think about where you were when this happened. You were halfway to the ass end of the ship. More importantly, because the routers in the engine rooms were down, you were out of range of the hive. All alone.” Boz’s expression became positively wicked. “And what did you do next? What did you keep doing? Again, and again, and again?”

There was a sinking feeling in the pit of Ravi’s stomach.

“I kept reaching out,” he said wretchedly. “Broadcasting code for all I was worth.”

“Exactly. And somebody picked it up. Your chipset was looking to make a connection, and they gave it exactly what it was looking for. That was their way in. And once they were in . . .” His cousin gave a resigned shrug.

Ravi wound the logs forward again. Now that he knew what to look for, there was no mistaking it. Every few sols, the hacking signal would appear, slightly different from the time before, more sophisticated, as if learning from its mistakes. And every time the hacking signal appeared, he’d had a weird dream or seen the girl.



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