"Lois Gresh - Termination Node" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gresh Lois)

1

Judy Carmody's legs ached. It was three in the freaking morning, and here she was, still staring at some
stupid computer screen in an office hellhole. The room left a sourness in her mouth. Not enough air
circulation in this dump.

Certainly not enough for the beefcake hardware that controlled the money of half the population in
Laguna Beach. This kind of beef-cake required sterile living quarters,

Not dust on the tiled floors.

Not gray fabric walls enclosing it in a ten-by-ten prison.

She stroked the top of the monitor. Warm, too much heat. Beneath the desk, the disk drives whirred,
emitting a nice low technothrum that rose to a whine, A sonata played on a broken instrument.

"These babies are at risk." Her voice came out scratchy, the wordy all frazzed.

"Could be," Jose said, "but, you know management, they won't spring for better digs unless I'm a grade
fourteen. Like that'll be the day."

Jose Ferrents. Senior security programmer at Laguna Savings Bank. One of Judy's best customers. She
was stuck here until he was satisfied that she'd thoroughly checked the computer for security leaks. New
passwords had been granted to marketing guys the day before. Like passwords would matter to some
hacker. Jose was one paranoid quack.

He leaned back in his chair, waiting for her to finish the job. Thick black hair streaked with green
Etch-o-Oil. Red lines painted beneath bloodshot blue eyes. Jose went in for the Dracula look.

The monitor flipped to the screen saver: swarms of infinitely regressing cubes and triangles, a neon blaze
set against black. Dracula got off on the forever realm of fractals.

"Look, can we finish up? I'm really tired, Jose," It was creepy being cramped next to Jose in his lair, the
gray walls plastered with posters of microchip circuits and lanky blondes in goth bikinisтАФlike he really
knew anything about circuits or bikinis. Duh .. .

"Sure. I have more important things to do, too." Jose graced her with a little smirk. She knew better. Jose
never had anything more important to do than play with computers.

Judy shut her eyes, brushed her long, auburn hair out of the way, rubbed her neck. Damn, she was
getting cranky. It was just too late to have to deal with Jose. She'd had one hell of a long day, grinding
Internet security code for Steve Sanchez, fielding hysterical E-mails from that programmer at Widescreen
DVD. But as a computer security specialist hanging five hundred dollars an hour, Judy could cope with a
stiff neck a little longer and put up with Dracula.

He touched the screen. The fractals disappeared, replaced by the log of Internet transactions that had
been executed by the bank's corporate customers.

Jose had done a good job on the bank's World Wide Web site. A customer entered a password, then
processed debits and credits against authorized accounts. All transactions were encrypted before