Chapter 2: Breach of Security
That evening, just before 4:00, Felix had given me a call, wanting me to check something he saw on his terminal. As I stepped into the red, stylish building he lovingly called the capitol, Felix greeted me and then punched in a number on his desk phone, which caused the bookshelf behind the desk to slide away, revealing the door to his workshop. “Ash, I'm glad you could stop by, I thought you might be able to help me figure this one out,” he said as he approached his terminal.
“Sure, what's going on?” I asked.
“Well, I've been getting some, eh, unwelcome server activity. Now, all of these computers were part of an intranet, but I disconnected all of them years ago, and they laid dormant for about six months before I used them, and yeah I do have connections to get Internet in and out of New Infinity, but they're not run through any of the old systems, so--”
“So what?” I asked.
“So, I think Happy Infinity found out about New Infinity.”
Happy Infinity, to my knowledge, was the company Felix worked for years back, and he's made it rather clear that he left forcefully. My guess is that he picked an abandoned lot of theirs here because he had all the info he'd need about it, worked to disable everything, and had been using it for what sounded like at least a few years. “How would they have figured it out?”
“I don't quite know, Ash, but this IP address, it belongs to one of their last remaining corporate offices, over in Boston, I've done what research I can on this and all the data they left behind points to that being the case.”
“So what did you want me here for?”
“I just kinda wanted some opinions, how I could secure this all a bit better.”
“Is there any VPN software encrypting the data New Infinity sends out?”
“These computers had something kinda like that, it was a network encryption switch that would go onto the line going into the their modem, but when I got to it, the wires weren't doing too well. I've been using just some VPN software for now, but I probably should go out and build a new one of those switches. Any other ideas?”
“I'm not sure, actually. Information technology isn't really my area of expertise, you might need to ask Nathan about that.”
“Oh, a great idea! Well, Ash, anything I can do for you then before you leave?”
This was my chance. “Oh, actually, I did have something I wanted to show you. Nathan, Franklin, and I were doing some research for something, and on a website for unsolved mysteries, we found this.”
I took out my phone and went to the page we found about Felis. “Is this who we think it is?”
Felix read through it and then sighed. “Yeah, that'd be him.”
“You wouldn't happen to have anything else abou--”
“Ash, I'm gonna stop you there. It's not a good time to talk about it with me, alright? Can this wait until New Year's?”
“I... I guess. I get it, it's because he died around this time of year, but is there anything else I should know about him?”
Felix thought about it for just a moment, and then said, “this is about as complete of an answer as you'll get. Anymore, there's maybe... I dunno, 200 people that knew Felis as well as I did, and most of them are long gone.”
“What does that me--”
Felix then handed me a bottled water and turned. “You should probably take that for right now, it's warm out, you gotta stay hydrated out there.”
“Felix, I--”
“New Year's, Ash.”
Why was he so dead-set on waiting until 2016 to mention anything about Felis? And what about those two hundred people? What happened to them? Are they just old now, did they move away? I had no idea, but I had started thinking that maybe the next course of action might be to track down any other info on rifts, maybe Felis invented them? I still had too many questions and Felix was holding tight on answers, it seemed like there was a lot on his mind. I made a note to just hold onto that until I had any other information, there was definitely more to learn about it all.
I got home just as Alex was closing his laptop, and we went to pick up dinner. On the way there, I decided I could ask him what he thought of the situation. “So, Felix mentioned he had an old friend, Felis, and the only thing we could find out about him so far is that he died in 1999 and helped Felix with the rifts.”
“He's Felix's friend and he's named Felis?” he asked.
“Yeah, everyone else has made that joke, stick with me. Well, Felix seems dead-set on not letting us know anymore about him, he says I'm going to have to wait until New Year's to learn more.”
“So? Why are you trying to pry into his life?”
“I dunno, Felis seems like he'd be an important guy if he knew how to build the rifts that make the town work, you'd think there'd be more information about him.”
“Maybe he didn't lead a very eventful life. And why not wait? What threat is there to learning about him in four months?”
I paused. “I guess you have a point.”
Thinking it over again, it took nearly a year to find out more about Felix, maybe learning about a friend of his wasn't the most important part, maybe it's as simple as he worked with Felis at Happy Infinity, except that if he died in 1999 and let's even say say Felix is 39, I wouldn't pin him as being any older than that, that would mean that Felis died when Felix was 23. In that case, say Felix was hired at eighteen, he might have only known Felis for five years, which would probably be enough to learn about the rifts. But that's a lot of hypothetical numbers, I figured I would also ask him about the other thing Felix and I discussed today. “Switching gears, would you know of any way Felix could better secure his network? He thinks people are pinging his server that shouldn't be. I already suggested a VPN.”
“He could always just use a shifting IP Address, or whatever they're called.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. He says he had some kind of encryption switch but he'd need to repair it.”
“Ah. Were there any other ideas you suggested?”
“I suggested he talk with Nathan, he knows more about that type of stuff than I do.”
“True, true.”
The rest of the ride to the deli was rather quiet and the ride home was more of the same. After picking up, I headed to my room, but as I passed by the back door of the house, I saw some sort of figure standing out behind the backyard, amid the trees and staring at us. I turned to ask Alex to check it out, but when I looked back, the figure was gone. “Huh,” I said.
“Must have been a coyote or something,” Alex said.
“No, it was on two legs, I know it was.”
“Must have been a bear or something,” he replied in the same nonchalant tone.
I headed back to my room and immediately tried to search for information on the rifts, but couldn't find anything of interest. One of the few results, oddly enough, was for the Happy Infinity Company's most recent website, but even then there was no actual mention of rifts anywhere on the site, just mentions of database software and corporate buzzwords by the handful. I closed the site and figured I'd work on animation a bit more, then. I was a bit burnt out over today and figured I'd just push Felis to the side for now. There wasn't much more I could do with that information.
That night, when I headed downstairs to grab an evening cup of tea and start heading to bed, the figure was back behind our yard. I opened the back door. “What are you doing? Go home!” I shouted.
“Wait, are you, eh, are you Ash Baker, er, Ash Smith?”
How the hell did this person know not only my name, first and last, but my father's last name? I hadn't seen my father in years and when I found out why the rest of my family was hiding him, I was furious, but I never did mention his last name out loud. “Wh... what do you want?”
“I just wanna talk is all.”
“No, go home!” I shouted.
“Wait, Ash, I think I might be able to help you out, you were asking for help?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You wanted to know more about Felix, the rifts, life, the Universe, everything?”
“I... I've heard enough.”
“Wait, give me just five minutes. Here, come outside, there's a nice shady slope over here just outside the fence.”
I stepped out into my yard and closed the door. “So, what is it that you wanted, uh...”
“Oh, call me Ardy!”
“Ardy?”
“Yeah, let me start by asking you what you know of New Infinity.”
“Well, it's a Digitized Civilization, Felix is very particular about that terminology, and Felix runs it.”
“That's a good start. Digitized Civilizations are good for a lot of stuff, because you don't need any of the regular rules or laws, not even the laws of physics. The world is entirely what you make of it, you know?”
“Okay, and?”
“Ever drop something here, in New Infinity? Ever watch the speed of the fall?”
“Why?”
“Watch it next time, it isn't quite 9.8 meters per second per second, things speed up to a relatively low terminal velocity and then fall at a constant rate, and the speed they need to hit to go terminal, it's based on the weight of the object! It's not quite correct. Felix took some shortcuts but he could have gone further! You could fly, teleport, live to a thousand years old, and that's just the beginnin--”
“Look, the last time someone tried to stretch the laws of reality like that, we all almost died.”
“Well, it's not all terrible, and the quicker you pick up on that and the quicker you start pushing for New Infinity to be the town of your dreams, literally, the quicker you can start seeing the forest for the trees, the civilization for the code. Hey, do you have a Modifier by any chance?”
“...Good night.”
“Wait, n--”
I headed back inside and closed the door behind me. God, what a creep, I honestly have no idea where this guy came from, but I hoped that was the last I saw of him. He kinda reminded me of Twitch a little bit, how his first interaction with me was panicking over New Infinity being a computer and how we're all going to die. I didn't believe him when I heard it that time and after the Spring or so, I would have asked him “So what?”
I put the little plastic cup of tea in the brewer and sat at the kitchen table, looking over the unsolved mysteries page again before glancing back out the window. That Ardy creep was still hanging out by our fence, and when we made eye contact I was sure to give him a glare. I sure as hell wasn't going back outside to deal with him. I looked back down at the website on my phone, hoping there were other links, other sources, any other lead I could find. Alex made a really good point, I won't lie, I don't necessarily need to dig this sort of stuff up, I could just let it be that Felis taught Felix about the rifts, maybe they were partners at Happy Infinity? But at the same time, it felt like this would open a whole new rabbit hole, give me more of an insight as to who Felix really is, what the Happy Infinity Company really did, this was more about trying to piece together the story of Felix's life more than it was about Felis, in a way. I grabbed my mug of tea from out of the brewer and took it to my room. I just wanted to get to bed, today had been just too much.
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