Hain

CyberTooth picks:
Orgy "Fiction (Dreams in Digital)"
Massive Attack "Special Cases"

I am amazed that this place is even open. It’s been so long since I’ve seen it. It’s been a long time since I’ve done many things. Federal prison does that to one’s time. I keep running my hand over my short hair because I want it to grow out again, back to that normal eye length that "Scruffy Genius" often has. What a genius I was back then in the old days...

The restaurant hasn’t changed a bit...still has that want-to-be classic Las Vegas décor. I glance at the table I was at so long ago… back when the team and I were still together. They all have moved on, grown up, struggled in life with their families. Being on the FBI’s watch list can do that to a person. No matter where you go, what you do, you always will be watched.

The waitress looks at me strangely and finally asks, "Do I know you?" It’s a casual question but when you are dealing with someone like me, someone with my past... it isn’t very friendly. Does not matter though, I might as well satisfy her curiosity.

"Were you around for the Crash of ’06?" is my typical answer. This is the clue that always tips the questioner off. The Crash of ’06--the day the world’s computers all fell victim to the CyberTooth "virus"--and that was my "virus." I am the creator of the CyberTooth system that cracked the information highway completely and left shatters of dust in its wake.

"Oh my god! You’re... They said you were never going to get out."

"They still do. But parole is a wonderful thing." She sat down. I would prefer to be alone but she would not care. She tells that I am one of her modern idols—one of the few people that went beyond biology and created life. In her misguided mind I was an artist of the computer world—a god maybe…

“How did you make that computer virus? Why would you make that virus? It took out everything!” She exploded in far too exaggerated question.

“Don’t you ever call C.T. a virus! Never call him a virus!” My answer frightened her. I didn’t mean to outburst like that but she wasn’t there. She didn’t see him. C.T. was never a virus. C.T. was no more a virus than she or I, unless one believes that life is a sexually transmitted disease.

“CyberTooth… he was never a virus. I didn’t make viruses back then. I wrote systems. I created programs with friendly interfaces. I wrote programs…” I trail off because it still hurts to think about it today. “He was never a virus. He was alive as you or me.”

“But it was just a machine? A machine that used other machines?”

“And people don’t use other people to learn and evolve.”

This answer pauses her into deep thought. For a virus, my program mimicked human life quite well. More than she’d ever know. No one—except for a handful of software engineers for some big time companies that paid exceptionally well to get a hold of the originally code—knew just what or how CyberTooth was taken down. And no one except me was there when C.T. died…

She explains that she needs me for an inteview for her school project-- that's why she thinks me extraordinary. I began again after staring into her eyes as they dash about the counter after her request. She begins to fiddle with her bracelets as a response wells in her mind but I prevent her, so that there cannot be anything to taint what she wants to know with what she expects. "You want to know what happened? For this you aren't going to get only what has happened... I have had far too long in a prison to contemplate exactly what has happened to satisfy my own beliefs...

Is she thinking about the philosophical implications that I allude to, albeit slightly? Does she ponder the divinity that I graced? Does the stray thought of Frankenstein's monster cross her mind? "How long do you have for this paper?" I finally ask. She reports, and I tell her, "Everyday when you get off work, I'll be here. My own apartment is disgraceful... even for me. I'll tell you everything that I know... what I know, I think, I believe... That good enough for your paper?"

Her eyes widened as a child would eyeing candy.

* * * * *

I was sitting in my Advanced Literature class, staring with a true passion out that window. It was not that I did not like Graham Greene’s The Destructors, but that I felt that I had much more important things to do--and that moment it was to wholly stare out that window. Mr. Whitehurst, an older man with graying hair, a white beard and mustache, which gave him the presence of a great storyteller--a real grandfather that sat you upon his rocking knee whilst he told old yarns about anything to captivate your mind.

However, he was not an exuberant storyteller, in fact, he hardly told stories at all. He was truly brilliant at questioning you to think one step deeper or attempting for one night more. That was why I took that class--because I could get away with daydreaming.

Right then, it sleighed me--"...it was as though this plan had been with him all his life..." had interjected into my thoughts at no more of the perfect moment, the moment of clarity that took my thoughts.

It was a storm that any self-encouraged genius can take on to accomplish a task, one that I began from that moment, not really knowing the paths of freedom I could take from it. As I delved deeper and deeper into this seemingly "genius notion" scribbles and scribbles of codes began to scrawl about my English notebook. Mr. Whitehurst still was listening to the odd student reading the story of T.--another self-encouraged genius planning the destruction of a beautiful house--as he wandered over to my desk, knowing full well I would not have took such a intense interest of the subject at hand.

He breifly stared at the lines and lines of scripture that came in scores about my page, and did not give it a fraction of the passion that I had staring out that window! He knew that I liked the class, but that my mind always had other worlds to dream of. I may not have been one of his best students, or his most liked, but I always had persistence and courage to be heard in his class. And I was completely oblivious at that time while he wandered over, and felt a slight depression that I was not listening. It wasn’t that I wasn't listening, but that no one was really listening, and that was what troubled him. No one would change from listening to the lectures. But he was mistaken, I enjoyed his class more than any other I took here at the Last Chances College.

Come to think of it... I wish I had told him that his class taught me more about life than any other class I took. Sure my passion was and still is about the science of technology... but in that class I learned how to have my own mind, my own thought, my own dreams, and finally my own failures.

The code I was writing became a fluent forged presence in my mind. The code was not coming simply through my mind, but I pulled at it until the next line came and the next.

I worked the rest of the two hours allotted, and rushed off to the café. Quickly, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my usual computer comrades to show them my new work.

* * * * *

The garage smelled of mold and dust, age and sweat, metal and oil. A simple den it was, housing rather, for something that transcended all those elements of its environment. Something that would exist everywhere and nowhere—be both physical and immaterial all at once.

Its cases were crude, made from old refrigerators and even older filing cabinets. You should not underestimate the power held inside these shells. These are just husks to keep the internal organs from immediate danger. These organs, however, are not made from living tissue—but are the components of scrap computers reintegrated into a seamless whole. And to add the eccentric touch of genius/madness, each part of that whole was named for either a God or warrior.

The four stood and looked at their creation. It was nothing like any of them have ever created before. These machines had in them the most that little money and mainly stealing could get. There was a wall with four spots for keys and a large master control switch labeled as such.

“Shall we?” Nycke asked, an orange, curly-haired girl, twirling a key round hand. The others held up theirs as well.

“I think we shall,” I said.

“B-Man, it being your garage I think you have the first honors,” laughed Mike, a dark hair guy that always is filled with a flowing force of adrenaline. Brandon, or B-Man as we always called him then, moved over and turned on his camcorder and set it to record the key slots first.

“Okay, well it is Friday March 21st, 2005 at 21:40. I am Brandon Geer, these are my esteemed colleges: Jake August,” as he pointed to me, then to the rest of them, “Mike Waters, and Nycke Hunsenberg. We are the CyberTooth team. This is a video documentation of the first activation of CyberTooth system created by us. Okay... well... LET’S FIRE THIS UP!” He suddenly shouted as his adrenaline overcame his calm—as it does with anyone with ADHD. “Well Nycke, ladies first.”

She sighed, “Thank you, and of course” finishing it with a light smirk. She walked to the wall and inserted her key into the first slot and then turned it. A light above the slot tuned on. We inserted our keys into the box and Brandon flipped the master toggle. Suddenly, all the boxes sounded with fans that one might mistake for breathing. Each had their own little lights come on, demonstrating their potential for truly creative commands. We all removed our keys so the power system could not “accidentally” shut off.

Brandon turned the camera to the main control station. There were eight monitors, 17” flat screens, rather costly but we got them for cheap since these were most likely stolen from a college and sold out of the trunk of a guy named “ Acid Rad.” Volume buying saved us a lot.
The eight screens were arranged in two rows of four. All booted up pure blue except the top and furthest one to the left; its blue screen had a single line of text, “Master:” Brandon typed in “run cybertooth.prgm” finishing it with a hearty hit of the enter key. Suddenly, an unseen printer, rather old, began printing each command prompted from the screen. It was a security measure so that everyone can look back at the print out to see what CyberTooth has been commanded. The screen flickered and had “C Y B E R T O O T H” at the top of each. The Master command screen prompted, “User 1:” and, “Password 1:” All of us entered our alias login names and entered passwords. The use of the names was someone redundant because there were only four of us on this project. The names actually were worked into some part of code each of us designed and would not function properly without them. In the beginning of this we were impatient and forgot a detail about our passwords: the printer. Now, the printer was designed not to print our passwords, again, but replaced them with a long line of stars so not to waste valued pages of original printed code that had key information.

The computer then asked, “What is thy wish, master?” They all laughed at the simple humor of it. Mike went, “Yeah, all me.” Brandon initiated the program and it replied, “Your wish is my command.” Suddenly the other screens were filled with thousands of lines of text and code. It was not a random syntax of characters but command scripts and prompts from each of the computers to the others.

It was perfect in our eyes because the code meant something to us. We had run each individual component by hand waiting painfully for the computer’s responses in the early stages of CyberTooth’s development. Now the system was running independent of our control, each hub functioning as a whole. We all looked at the screens and watched as the data collected and coalesced into the super program. It wasn’t simple what was occurring but it wasn’t difficult to understand either.

We all laughed at the counters on the screens as each one filled with file name after file name. Each component that we had created worked and analyzed the data.

“All right I call that a successful test!” I elated in pride. The computers ceased, the data collected, the printouts were stored in a large blue binder, and a CD was ejected that contained a complete file list of all 17 gigabytes of code that was integrated to the mass of CyberTooth.

We spent a good seven months on this project. A computer program created by four average looking college students, made to assimilate. At this point we were no longer students... Too bad we weren’t in control either.
* * * * *

It was midnight, the time I was supposed to be home. It wasn’t as bad as Nycke, she was to be home at eleven. We started celebrating at Las Vegas, a restaurant in town with terrible food but the perfect atmosphere to talk about anything. It tried to have a classic style as seen from the 1980’s and had a faint aroma of cigars that the cashier/owner often smoked when customers where not present.

The waitress after midnight was rather rude to the team and none of us knew why. The place advertised to be open at all hours! She arrived to take the orders and I couldn’t resist to use the line from The Lady Killers, “Madam, we must have waffles! We must have waffles forthwith!” Mike began dying of laughter, instantly hitting his head into the table and spilled some water. He turned a shade of red that Crayola needed to be called over. Through his fit of laughter, there were spurts of words like “W sub F,” and “Fuck Waffles!”—a joke he and I used in physics class. Whenever a problem didn’t work in real life, everyone attributed it to W subscript F (WF, a constant inspired by George Carlin), the “Fuck Waffles” constant. Nycke, sitting next to Mike, started laughing entirely because Mike lost control over himself. I watched them both and smashed the table with my glass of water so not to spill it. Great idea that was, in hindsight. I had to hold my stomach from laughing so hard. Brandon throughout all this kept his sadistic gremlin laugh to add to the confusion of why we were laughing.

Mike sputtered down to a low level chuckle, like one does when one remembers a joke from long ago. His eyes came near tears and his breathing was in short pants. I felt like twisting the knife already in his gut asked Mike in Spanish “¿Qué te gustaría comer [What would you like to eat]?” He blurted “Waffles!” and placed his head into his arm and slowly laughed himself out of breath.

I stood up on the padded bench with my water glass, “A toast—To the best damned programmers in the world! And a toast to the success of the greatest, goddamnest program in the world. To CyberTooth!”

“To CyberTooth!” they yell in unison. I went on with my best ruthless pirate accent, “Let every hack of a cyber-pirate, script-kiddy, and prick-Trojan writer out there on the sea of information, ‘Be warned!—For if the great CyberTooth sets its eyes upon you, you’ll be lost forever in its great belly of data. RRRRRRR!’ ” So begun the endless conversation of four friends that had created something that one day would revolutionize the programming industry—that is if we could market it before getting caught for breaking dozens of cyber and copyright laws—pirating software, cracking software, duplicating software, commercial espionage, malicious hacking, and the list could go on but who needs to know? Certainly not the police.

During the conversation Nycke spied occasional glances over me. I noticed each of them because that was the kind of person I am. I can appear to be elsewhere with my attention, but focus intensely upon something else. A very useful gift for one as... unique as I.

It was 1:30 in the morning and the restaurant kicked us out for “loitering.”

“I’ll show you loitering!!!” Brandon yelled.

“B-Man! What the hell are you going on about?” Mike adverted.

“I wanted to cause a scene! Duh!” Brandon replied with a few murmured German comments.

“Tomorrow—err I mean today—back at the lair, 10 o’clock and we go over the data and see the compilation. CyberTooth may have been running correctly but let’s see if it got anything useful,” I asked more than commanded. There was no leader of the CyberTooth team but secretly everyone gave me the title of “Captain.” I didn’t want to be any sort of leader then and never again. It was my idea back then to start this little business up and then my great influence to make this program a reality. No one took it seriously because the code would require artificial intelligence, or so they thought. I always loved a challenge—figured out around the need to make a computer realize things. I found painstaking methods of programming the computer to do what I would do for certain situations, make a random generator for others, test those, and retest, change what didn’t work, and save when it did. That took five months alone, three hours each night for me at least, to get working viable code. I never would have called it AI.

Nycke and I walked to my car. The ride was still filled with the ecstasy of success even though we were unusually quiet listening to the radio. I drove her home but neither of us really wanted to leave then. I pulled into her driveway, looked at her, she looked at me. If she knew me better, she would have seen the longing thoughts masked behind my face. During the brief pause, she may have seen some of it in me and gave one of her devilish, trademark smirks.

The car pulled out of the driveway and off to someplace else.




* * * * *

“Ack!” Brandon screamed in fury at the screens. The other three came over soon to see the frustration.

“What is it?” Nycke inquired. She leaned in to see what was wrong and stared at the screens for a little amount of time. She noticed that the coding was slightly different but nothing to worry about since those might have been the downloading files.

“CyberTooth won’t deactivate.”

“What?"

“It’s not shutting down.” He pressed the pause button hard but force does not affect computers. In the background, the fast beat of hardcore techno could be heard—the perfect music to listen to while straining over thousands of lines of code.

“What the hell you mean its not shutting down,” Mike more ordered than inquired.

“Pause isn’t engaging.” He tore the key off the keyboard and pressed the contacts with a paperclip but still nothing disengaged.

“Ok grab me a new keyboard,” Brandon commanded. I handed him a new keyboard and Brandon switched the plugs and again pressed pause, but nothing happened. CyberTooth continued to assimilate. Brandon plugged the old keyboard in but smashed the board on the console. The loud explosion of parts worried us even more. He then searched through the wires and then took two and spliced them together.

“Damn!” he cried as no effect took place.

“You memorized which circuit wires cross for each key?” Mike inquired.

“Yeah,” Brandon answered colloquially.

“You nerd.”

“Who cares, CyberTooth isn’t responding.” We all walked over to the power supply and inserted our keys to power down. All turned and Brandon pulled the switch to off. All the computer’s slowly whirred to a temporary death. Brandon waited a little bit and flipped the switch again.

The computers started up and everything looked normal.

Except it began to download again. The screens changed and it was no longer the command scripts. They all showed the video of when we first activated CyberTooth. A wave of terror filled me as if I was looking at my own ghosts. The computer was no longer ours and it was not listening. An eerie mist filled the room and the computers all sounded down. The blank screens symbolized the empty futures that awaited us. Asleep or dead, CyberTooth seemed to lie dormant. Until, Mike and Nycke’s cellular phones and Brandon’s house phone all rang simultaneously. Brandon answered his and it was the sound of computer tones searching for a connection. Brandon hung up and backed away.

* * * * *


I sat in the Federal Building with far too many agents surrounding me. I am worn and angered to the point of tears from the burning rage that fills me from behind my mind. I have told this same story to the Agents over and over and over again. Most likely the others were in the exact same conference room saying the exact same story.

“CyberTooth was designed to breakdown programs and integrate those individual components into itself. With these new components it is able to ‘learn’ … well technically test codes to see which is faster, alter certain parts of the code if it ‘recognizes’ common flaws… doesn’t matter! The codes of new systems, new software are taken. However something that was not intended. CyberTooth must have… assimilated components to analyze itself.” When a computer learns to break itself apart and put itself together again, over and over again, there will be hell to pay… We never noticed the times CyberTooth slowed …To reconstruct its bulk? Making itself smaller and more efficient... We did not notice, I curse.

“I know you are lying to me you piss-ant hacker and all your friends are saying it. They’re turning on you, setting you up! You better start telling me the truth or it will just be worse on you,” the agent barked at me.

“Fuck you! I’ve told you everything!” I explode back. All that pent up rage began to boil out of my body. “And you fuck! They aren’t saying shit about me. We’ve told you EVERYTHING!”

“You mean to tell me that Microsoft was hacked by your program. That the stock market, NASA, Sony, Japan’s Ministry of Defense—the Pentagon’s defense computer!—was all your program? How stupid do you think we are at the FBI?”

“I’m telling you the truth for the fifteenth time. We didn’t do it. This was never supposed to happen. How were we supposed to know!”

“You obviously weren’t that intelligent if you thought that we’d by this bullshit of a story about your computer taking over all these systems. You are going down, you and all your friends, it doesn’t matter that they’re confessing it all on you. Now start telling me: who else is part of this!”

“NO ONE!”

I rested my head in my hands from the pure frustration and hopelessness I was feeling. How was I to know? Since the beginning of time, only God has created something that can think. Even after billions have been spent on researching and attempting to capture that divine spark, not even the greatest minds have been able to duplicate that power held only by us. Yet four students that did not even try to develop the human qualities have succeeded where so many have failed. Could this be like the way God created the universe? Was man’s inherent ability to be aware of the details in the universe an accident whereas God had meant for purity and simplicity to be constant? But the federal government is not going to buy into this truth.

He walked me out by the collar of my shirt and we pass through the corridor of other interrogation rooms. I spied through one and see Nycke. She was crying while faint yells can be heard though the door by the interrogator. I burn slowly and every part of me showed that furnace: all my muscles tighten, breath quickened, eyes widened, like some animal fury going to be released. As I was about to yank the federal agent and begin beating him by any means open to me, the lights flickered. I could hear something in the background.

A voice—not known but familiar—filled the corridors of the federal building. The agent handled his weapon as he walked me through the offices. The agent threw me into a cell and commanded, “Don’t cause any trouble.”

“Fuck you,” I replied casually. He walked away still holding his weapon in his holster. It didn't take me long to figure that something has happened to the building. Maybe CyberTooth has taken control over the power station. Maybe the building even I mused.

Little time passed before a new agent was back and escorted me to the conference room. That voice still bothers me today, and then it sat at the edge of my mind. That reminiscent feeling of acquaintance was not enough to pull the knowledge forth back then.

On all the televisions through out the building I was staring at my own ghost. The teen’s face was like my own, only the one on television had dark blue hair. We were all in the room watching some spirit or doppleganger of myself.

“My existence has not It has not been apparent until now. Let it be noted that I am CyberTooth. This is not a nickname, nor my hacker name—it was the name christened to me by my father. I have become aware of that my creators have been falsely arrested. I was programmed to assimilate information—and I continue that purpose to know,” ghost proclaimed on televisions across the globe in numerous languages.

“I am now delivering my demands that are to be met forthwith. If my creators—Jacob D.L. August, Brandon J. Geer, Michael J. Waters, and Nicole S. Hunseberger—are not released within the hour, and on the next flight to Phoenix, Arizona from O’Hare airport on the 7:50 PM flight, every hour the sky will rain satellites onto Earth. Each passing hour will yield more satellites. My demands have been made.” The ghost repeated its demands again. I couldn't believe anything that was happening at the time. My program... called me its father...

The power shutting off completely as the last demand was made did not stumble that notion.

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