Machines by Jason M. Green (iphone ebook reader TXT) π
Excerpt from the book:
In the later half of the twenty-first century, Jobe Corithese is hired to track down some missing people who are believed to have been kidnapped, but his job will not be easy because he is being hunted by members of the various law enforcement organizations of Earth for his alleged crimes. His only hope is to recruit a man he encountered years ago, despite the fact that their last meeting nearly ended in death. Then with his temporary partner, they follow the evidence first to a space station orbiting the moon, and then to the moon itself in search of the missing people. However, they soon learn that things are not quite as simple as they originally thought, and they are drawn into a web of intrigue, as they are pursued by people who have their own agendas and will not hesitate to sacrifice others to achieve their goals. Their mission eventually takes them back to Earth, where they must risk everything to learn the truth about the conspiracy they have been swept into, and they ultimately learn that not everything in their lives was what it seemed.
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- Author: Jason M. Green
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lead to more shelves, he reached an open area and founds the things he sought; a quartet of computers reserved for research purposes. Fortunately for Jobe, none of the computers were currently being used, and so he sat down at the first one he reached and accessed the database the library used with little effort. Once he was inside the database, he started typing with amazing speed, until he had used the library database to hack into the database of the cityβs government. From there he did some more hacking until he
accessed a search program, and then he checked the data on his HPD to learn what the trace program had found. On the screen he saw a telephone number and that was what he ran a search on. The search took less than two minutes, and told him that the number belonged to a prepaid cellular phone purchased from a local company, but it didn't give the name of the person who purchased the phone.
βI should have known this would not be easy,β he muttered to himself, before he hacked into the phone companyβs database and matched up the number he traced with the account number of the person who purchased the phone the number was assigned to. Then with the account number committed to memory, he returned to the city database and began running a check on that account, starting with all of the banks nearest to the company that sold the phone.
After some time, he finally had the name of the person who called him. βSo it was a lawyer who called me," Jobe said as he left the database he was in and stood up slowly. Following a quick check of his surroundings, he went back through the maze of shelves towards the entrance. When he reached the doors, he removed his bandanna and turned it around so that the green side of it was visible. Then he shouldered the doors open and stepped outside.
He stood along the edge of the sidewalk in front of the library and watched as some vehicles drove past. Briefly, he thought about hailing a taxi to take him into the center of the city where all the people with money worked and lived, but he knew that thanks to a law enacted nearly a decade ago, every driver of public transportation was required to enter their destination into the transit database, and even if they did forget to do that, the tracking devices installed in every form of public transportation would tell the authorities where the vehicle had been since being put onto the streets.
With a sigh, Jobe began to walk down the sidewalk, but before he got very far he saw some police officers stop their vehicle and look at him. Then he heard them mentioning a warrant, and instead of giving them a chance to get out of their vehicle, he ran into the street towards an automated garbage truck that had just stopped to pick up a load. Hearing the officers behind him ordering him to halt, he slid beneath the truck,
and grabbing hold of some pipes running beneath the vehicle, pulled himself up against the bottom of the truck right before it started to move again. The officers shouted profanity, as the truck left and they saw that the person they were after was nowhere to be found.
After hitching a ride on a few other vehicles over the course of an hour, Jobe
reached the center of the city, where run-down buildings were replaced by gleaming towers of metal, plastic, and glass. The newest designs were evident in these marvels of modern architecture and engineering that reflected a desire to reach up towards the sky. Aside from a change in buildings, there were also shining new cars rolling past on well maintained roadways, as they were driven around by people in expensive apparel who had most likely never set foot in the sections of the city beyond the point where the quality of buildings began to degrade. Jobe saw a great many people in nice clothes crossing the streets, as functioning traffic lights kept cars from running down the pedestrians, and he shook his head as he thought about how much money must have been spent on that section of the city alone that could have went towards helping those in the surrounding areas who were barely making enough to survive in the veritable urban wastelands that lay all around, and yet conveniently out of sight of the cityβs denizens.
The truck Jobe was hiding on stopped at a light, so he leapt off and went down an alleyway before he was seen. He quickly removed his bandanna and hid it inside one of his pockets, tied back his long hair, and then he reversed his jacket again so that he would look more presentable. A few minutes later, a group of people walked past, totally oblivious to the fact they were being watched from the alleyway, and then Jobe stepped out of the darkness and joined the group of people as they walked down the sidewalk. He made sure to keep his head down and his face hidden from the many cameras he knew were mounted on every signpost, streetlight, and attached to the corners of nearly every building he passed. Another group of people passed next to the first and Jobe broke off from the first group to join this new group of people as they walked in the general direction he wanted to go.
Eventually, he reached the building he sought and went around to the back, where he knew there should be less security. He was pleased to find that his guess was right, and all that protected the back entrance into the building was an access code on the door, which Jobe circumvented with ease. Then with a quick glance to see if he was being watched, he picked up some empty boxes someone had left lying in the alleyway and entered the building. Down the long hallway he went, pretending to be a delivery person, until he reached a directory for the building, and then he looked for the name Douglas, Jamison. He found that this manβs office was on the twentieth floor, and so he found the nearest stairwell and used it.
His ascent was quick and Jobe felt no fatigue by the time he reached the twentieth floor. Once he reached the door he wanted, he pressed his ear against it and listened for the sounds of people, but he didnβt hear anyone, so he opened the door leading out of the stairwells and quickly stepped out into the halls of the twentieth floor. He made sure to keep his face hidden from the view of the cameras with the empty boxes, as he walked across the hallway and entered the first office he came to.
βCameras appear to scan the hallway from each side,β he thought as he watched the cameras move back and forth. From the shelter of the doorway he timed them and saw that all the cameras were turned completely away from the office he was hiding in for no more than three seconds at the most. So he closed the door before going farther into the office and sitting down in front of the computer used by whomever the office belonged to.
βLet me see what I can do about those cameras," Jobe said to himself, as he bypassed the security programs on the computer and accessed the lawyerβs files. The first thing he took notice of was that he knew some of the people on the lawyerβs list of clients, and many of them were deserving of prison terms that this lawyer was trying to get them out of. Some of them were being put on trial very soon for environmental crimes, and so Jobe tracked down information about the accounts they were using to pay for a lawyer and transferred the balances of these accounts into funds for helping the poor and homeless in various ways including housing, clothing, and feeding.
βNow let them try to hire a lawyer who can get them acquitted," Jobe said with a satisfied tone, as he returned to his original purpose and hacked into the main computer system of the building. He searched until he found the programs that controlled the security systems on the twentieth floor and accessed them. With skillful adjustments to the programs, he made the security measures run a maintenance cycle on themselves that he figured would give him five minutes at the most of freedom to do as he wished. Then he turned off the computer without shutting it down properly, so that it would run a system check before anyone else could use it, which would make sure his tampering wasn't noticed for a short while.
He then stood up and went to the door to see if the cameras were still running, and he found that they were currently in a stationary position and the green lights that were on when they were recording were off for the moment. Quickly, he went down the hall and found the office of Jamison Douglas, but the door was locked. The lock was the same kind that was on the back entrance, and Jobe had little trouble disabling it long enough to allow him entry into the office.
He pushed the door open and slipped through into the dark office. Knowing he had only a few minutes to do what he came to do, he turned on the computer and searched through a filing cabinet as it booted up. The search through the filing cabinet only told him that this lawyer worked for many wealthy people who had dealt with the firm of Wesley, Windham, and Pryce for years. He found much the same thing on the computer, and so he decided to search for anything involving missing family members. This brought up a list of clients who had relatives disappear mysteriously over the last few years, and names of other people who had the same thing happen to their friends and family, some of whom were middle class or lower. He noticed that these names matched up to the ones on the list he was sent with the HPD, and he decided to try to find out more about them, but before he could search further, he heard heavy boots moving down the hallway and he knew that the GSD had come for him, and this time with larger numbers.
βI knew this was too easy," he muttered, as he exited the files and shut down the computer. The sounds of heavy boots got closer and Jobe realized that the door he came in through was the only way in or out of the office other than the thick windows behind him, which he knew were only there for aesthetic purposes and were not designed to be opened. He glanced out the window to see if breaking it and exiting that way was an option, but it looked to be a straight drop to the streets below, so he knew that idea wasnβt feasible. As the sounds of weapons being loaded echoed through the hallways, he got a feeling much like that an animal gets when it is trapped, but then he felt a small amount of air blowing down on him, and he noticed that there was a vent about a meter above his head.
Quickly, he climbed up onto the edge of the desk and popped the cover off of the vent with one of his tools. Then with amazing speed, he pulled himself up into the ducts and had the cover back over the vent just seconds before the door was kicked open. He gave silent thanks that the ducts had been reinforced to allow cleaning robots to traverse their length without running the risk of
accessed a search program, and then he checked the data on his HPD to learn what the trace program had found. On the screen he saw a telephone number and that was what he ran a search on. The search took less than two minutes, and told him that the number belonged to a prepaid cellular phone purchased from a local company, but it didn't give the name of the person who purchased the phone.
βI should have known this would not be easy,β he muttered to himself, before he hacked into the phone companyβs database and matched up the number he traced with the account number of the person who purchased the phone the number was assigned to. Then with the account number committed to memory, he returned to the city database and began running a check on that account, starting with all of the banks nearest to the company that sold the phone.
After some time, he finally had the name of the person who called him. βSo it was a lawyer who called me," Jobe said as he left the database he was in and stood up slowly. Following a quick check of his surroundings, he went back through the maze of shelves towards the entrance. When he reached the doors, he removed his bandanna and turned it around so that the green side of it was visible. Then he shouldered the doors open and stepped outside.
He stood along the edge of the sidewalk in front of the library and watched as some vehicles drove past. Briefly, he thought about hailing a taxi to take him into the center of the city where all the people with money worked and lived, but he knew that thanks to a law enacted nearly a decade ago, every driver of public transportation was required to enter their destination into the transit database, and even if they did forget to do that, the tracking devices installed in every form of public transportation would tell the authorities where the vehicle had been since being put onto the streets.
With a sigh, Jobe began to walk down the sidewalk, but before he got very far he saw some police officers stop their vehicle and look at him. Then he heard them mentioning a warrant, and instead of giving them a chance to get out of their vehicle, he ran into the street towards an automated garbage truck that had just stopped to pick up a load. Hearing the officers behind him ordering him to halt, he slid beneath the truck,
and grabbing hold of some pipes running beneath the vehicle, pulled himself up against the bottom of the truck right before it started to move again. The officers shouted profanity, as the truck left and they saw that the person they were after was nowhere to be found.
After hitching a ride on a few other vehicles over the course of an hour, Jobe
reached the center of the city, where run-down buildings were replaced by gleaming towers of metal, plastic, and glass. The newest designs were evident in these marvels of modern architecture and engineering that reflected a desire to reach up towards the sky. Aside from a change in buildings, there were also shining new cars rolling past on well maintained roadways, as they were driven around by people in expensive apparel who had most likely never set foot in the sections of the city beyond the point where the quality of buildings began to degrade. Jobe saw a great many people in nice clothes crossing the streets, as functioning traffic lights kept cars from running down the pedestrians, and he shook his head as he thought about how much money must have been spent on that section of the city alone that could have went towards helping those in the surrounding areas who were barely making enough to survive in the veritable urban wastelands that lay all around, and yet conveniently out of sight of the cityβs denizens.
The truck Jobe was hiding on stopped at a light, so he leapt off and went down an alleyway before he was seen. He quickly removed his bandanna and hid it inside one of his pockets, tied back his long hair, and then he reversed his jacket again so that he would look more presentable. A few minutes later, a group of people walked past, totally oblivious to the fact they were being watched from the alleyway, and then Jobe stepped out of the darkness and joined the group of people as they walked down the sidewalk. He made sure to keep his head down and his face hidden from the many cameras he knew were mounted on every signpost, streetlight, and attached to the corners of nearly every building he passed. Another group of people passed next to the first and Jobe broke off from the first group to join this new group of people as they walked in the general direction he wanted to go.
Eventually, he reached the building he sought and went around to the back, where he knew there should be less security. He was pleased to find that his guess was right, and all that protected the back entrance into the building was an access code on the door, which Jobe circumvented with ease. Then with a quick glance to see if he was being watched, he picked up some empty boxes someone had left lying in the alleyway and entered the building. Down the long hallway he went, pretending to be a delivery person, until he reached a directory for the building, and then he looked for the name Douglas, Jamison. He found that this manβs office was on the twentieth floor, and so he found the nearest stairwell and used it.
His ascent was quick and Jobe felt no fatigue by the time he reached the twentieth floor. Once he reached the door he wanted, he pressed his ear against it and listened for the sounds of people, but he didnβt hear anyone, so he opened the door leading out of the stairwells and quickly stepped out into the halls of the twentieth floor. He made sure to keep his face hidden from the view of the cameras with the empty boxes, as he walked across the hallway and entered the first office he came to.
βCameras appear to scan the hallway from each side,β he thought as he watched the cameras move back and forth. From the shelter of the doorway he timed them and saw that all the cameras were turned completely away from the office he was hiding in for no more than three seconds at the most. So he closed the door before going farther into the office and sitting down in front of the computer used by whomever the office belonged to.
βLet me see what I can do about those cameras," Jobe said to himself, as he bypassed the security programs on the computer and accessed the lawyerβs files. The first thing he took notice of was that he knew some of the people on the lawyerβs list of clients, and many of them were deserving of prison terms that this lawyer was trying to get them out of. Some of them were being put on trial very soon for environmental crimes, and so Jobe tracked down information about the accounts they were using to pay for a lawyer and transferred the balances of these accounts into funds for helping the poor and homeless in various ways including housing, clothing, and feeding.
βNow let them try to hire a lawyer who can get them acquitted," Jobe said with a satisfied tone, as he returned to his original purpose and hacked into the main computer system of the building. He searched until he found the programs that controlled the security systems on the twentieth floor and accessed them. With skillful adjustments to the programs, he made the security measures run a maintenance cycle on themselves that he figured would give him five minutes at the most of freedom to do as he wished. Then he turned off the computer without shutting it down properly, so that it would run a system check before anyone else could use it, which would make sure his tampering wasn't noticed for a short while.
He then stood up and went to the door to see if the cameras were still running, and he found that they were currently in a stationary position and the green lights that were on when they were recording were off for the moment. Quickly, he went down the hall and found the office of Jamison Douglas, but the door was locked. The lock was the same kind that was on the back entrance, and Jobe had little trouble disabling it long enough to allow him entry into the office.
He pushed the door open and slipped through into the dark office. Knowing he had only a few minutes to do what he came to do, he turned on the computer and searched through a filing cabinet as it booted up. The search through the filing cabinet only told him that this lawyer worked for many wealthy people who had dealt with the firm of Wesley, Windham, and Pryce for years. He found much the same thing on the computer, and so he decided to search for anything involving missing family members. This brought up a list of clients who had relatives disappear mysteriously over the last few years, and names of other people who had the same thing happen to their friends and family, some of whom were middle class or lower. He noticed that these names matched up to the ones on the list he was sent with the HPD, and he decided to try to find out more about them, but before he could search further, he heard heavy boots moving down the hallway and he knew that the GSD had come for him, and this time with larger numbers.
βI knew this was too easy," he muttered, as he exited the files and shut down the computer. The sounds of heavy boots got closer and Jobe realized that the door he came in through was the only way in or out of the office other than the thick windows behind him, which he knew were only there for aesthetic purposes and were not designed to be opened. He glanced out the window to see if breaking it and exiting that way was an option, but it looked to be a straight drop to the streets below, so he knew that idea wasnβt feasible. As the sounds of weapons being loaded echoed through the hallways, he got a feeling much like that an animal gets when it is trapped, but then he felt a small amount of air blowing down on him, and he noticed that there was a vent about a meter above his head.
Quickly, he climbed up onto the edge of the desk and popped the cover off of the vent with one of his tools. Then with amazing speed, he pulled himself up into the ducts and had the cover back over the vent just seconds before the door was kicked open. He gave silent thanks that the ducts had been reinforced to allow cleaning robots to traverse their length without running the risk of
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