The next day they headed back to New England. All the way back, they talked about their battle plan for the best-case scenario, which was a partnership with the Anchor 44 Group.
EDITOR’S NOTE: ENJOY ALL PRIOR CHAPTERS HERE
“Did you know that Deacon Fredericks actually wrote a book about the whole Lilliworx thing?” Shawna asked.
“I knew about Lilliworx,’ Terry said. “Charlie told me about it. I understood the programming. That’s really all we talked about. He told me the lady who created it lived down in Virginia somewhere. But he never mentioned a book. Was it good?”
“Yeah. I read it as part of my Master’s research. It was quite thoughtful. They were really and truly in love, Deacon and Penny. They had twins about a year after they sold the rights to Apple. They named the girl Lilli and the boy Daniel.
“That was a big deal sale. Biggest thing Apple ever bought at the time.”
“Yeah, and Penny and Deacon created a huge foundation with the money they made.”
“You want to do something like that? I mean, if we get that big?”
“I don’t know what I want, Terry. My dad always told me to keep my dreams to myself. That way if they don’t come true, you can always just say, oh well, it was just a dream. Let’s wait and see how this works out.”
They slept late the next morning because it was a Saturday. Shawna drove into the office to spend some alone time with the Bloodhound software, to see if she could find any glitches before they, hopefully, brought the program down to Washington and to also do a security check on The Human League server.
It was then that she discovered the hack. Someone had sent Judy Stoneman, one of the Human League programmers, an email. It looked a little odd, so Shawna took it apart and sure enough found a small Trojan Horse embedded in it. The Horse would give the user access to any and all information that was on the server. It was hard to tell what, if anything had been downloaded, but Shawna didn’t care. This was an invasion of privacy and she was totally pissed. Since very few people actually knew about the Bloodhound program, she realized that Judy Stoneman must have inadvertently, she hoped, opened the email and unleashed the hacking program.
Shawna called Judy, and told her what had happened. She wanted to see her reaction and figure out if it was just a mistake or not. Judy was genuinely upset but Shawna calmed her down, and told her that she was on top of it.
‘Hacking a hacker’, Shawna thought to herself, ‘Now that’s a bonehead move.’
Shawna spent the next half hour finding and then tracing the origin of the hacker’s email. She ended up with a location in Boston. She opened her Google Maps and saw that it was a row house in the north end of the city.
She then called Terry and explained what had happened. “Do you know any tough guys, guys that would put the fear of God into anyone?”
Terry thought about it for a few seconds. “Sure. Artemus Briggs.”
“Call him, and ask him if he’s up for a trip to Boston.”
Artemus Briggs was a childhood friend of Terry’s. They hung out all through high school. The Nerd and The Hulk was how they were known.
Artemus didn’t go on to college, because he had other plans. He became a bouncer for a local club in Providence, then he started dealing weed, which was on the cusp of being legalized. Arthur told Terry about his plan to open up a weed shop in Providence. He wanted to call it. ‘Ya Put Yer Weed In It.’ He remembered it from an old Mike Meyers movie called Wayne’s World. Terry loved the idea and loaned Artemus three hundred thousand to get started.
Since then, Artemus had gone on to open stores in Brockton, Worcester, and Marlborough. He was slowly and steadily paying Terry back. So when Terry called him and asked him if he’d be willing to trade the last fifty grand he owed Terry for a trip to Boston with him to just to be there, Artemus jumped at the chance.
On the way up to Boston, Terry told Artemus the story of the hackers from Virginia Tech. Arthur slapped him on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, my son,” he said.
“Yeah, well I kind of knew who I was dealing with. But this is a bit of a mystery.”
“Hackers are hackers, Terry. The reason they’re hackers is that they’re more like you than they are like me.”
“Good point.”
They got to the house around three in the afternoon. The neighbourhood was nothing to write home about.
“Good old Boston,” Artemus said. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
They knocked on the door. There was no answer, so they walked down the street to a driveway and up into the laneway behind the houses. They climbed up onto the back porch. They looked in the rear window and could see all the way through to the front of the house. They saw the computer screens glowing in the shaded front room.
“Oh yeah,” Artemus said. “Nerds live here.”
Artemus tried the door. It was locked. So he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather wallet. He extracted a couple of lock picks and went to work on the lock. Fifteen seconds later the lock clicked and in they went.
Artemus kept an eye on the front door while Terry looked around on the computer. It didn’t take long for him to find the Bloodhound file. He deleted the file and emptied the trash. He then looked through the hard drive to see where this creep kept his hacking software. He finally found a folder labelled HCK. He opened it and saw at least a dozen hacking applications. He trashed those as well. He then looked for a cloud server but it was password protected.
Just then the front door opened and a tall, thin man who looked to be in his early twenties came in carrying a bag of groceries.
Artemus grabbed him with his vice-like hands, led him into the living room, then sat him down on a chair.
“What’s your name, kid?” Terry said. Trying out his tough guy voice again.
The kid, and he was a kid, was petrified. “Who the fuck are you?”, he asked.
“We are the Better Business Bureau. And we have come to revoke your hacker’s licence.” Terry said. “Are you familiar with a program called Bloodhound?”
“Oh fuck.” the kid said.
“Oh fuck is right,” Terry said. “What do we call you? And no bullshit.”
“Josh. Josh Devlin.”
“Well, Josh,” Terry said, keeping his voice even and firm. “You have stepped into a pile of shit.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Me, I’m not gonna do anything. But all I have to do is say the word and my friend here will hit you harder than you have ever been hit before. And he will keep on hitting you until your little hacker brain is forever scrambled.”
Josh Devlin looked up at Artemus who just nodded.
“So now,” Terry said, “You are going to give me the password to your cloud server and I’m going to put you out of business. You can start over again, and you probably will, but I would think twice about it, I really would, because we’re not that far away, Josh. And I would hate to see you turned into a vegetable. But at the same time, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it either.”
Terrified all to hell, Josh coughed up the cloud server password and Terry proceeded to delete everything there.
Terry went over to the computer with a fine-toothed comb and deleted everything he saw. Terry then took one of Josh’s business cards from a little cardholder on the desk.
“Get a job, Josh. Use your skills to help people instead of ripping them off.”
A few seconds later they were crossing the street to Terry’s car.
“Did you smell something funny?” Artemus asked. “I think he might have crapped his drawers.”
Terry just chuckled.
“Where’s you learn all that tough guy talk, Terry?”
“Humphrey Bogart movies. Full of world-class tough guys.” Terry said as he started the car and pointed it toward Plymouth.
