Back Next Contents. The new client intended to remain nameless, of course. He, she, or it presented an ur-self only through the administrative system acting on behalf of an account number at the Royal Hibernian Bank, which had an internet-protocol address that coded for someplace in the Caribbean.
No, when the job was done, my end was promised in good old, anonymous, transferrable, spendable bits and bytes, and the client certainly had enough of them. But there you are. Or rather, there ME was. The account was linked to another account in Zurich, which linked to London, which linked to Porto Velho β¦ in a daisy chain of automated transfers designed to discourage such snooping. Getting into the prison was a little harder. The human side of the facility probably had thick walls of reinforced concrete topped with razor wire, broken glass, revolving lights, and high-voltage circuits.
Every fifty meters or so, it would have watchtowers staffed with excellent marksmen who lacked all human compunction about shooting people on sight and in the back. And all of this would be very impressive if you were trying to walk inβor outβwearing a physical body. If you wanted a picture of the place, you could look up β¦ well, never mind.
But ME01 discarded the name in ASCII characters immediately after translating it and inserted in its place the bit sequence of the web address. The whole process took ME 1. It might be by name or numberβeither of which could be forged or fakedβor by his codis genetic identification, iris pattern, or fingerprint tracery.
So ME had to carry all of this data, in native digital formats, for positive matching. Once inside, ME occupied unused memory space in the main quad core processor and studied the operating system in all its functions. I studied its operation for three thousand cycles through its roster of checks on various functions: video surveillance, audio surveillance, cell and corridor locks, lock cycling and override, location and transit authorization for inmates, staffing of guard stations and rounds, electrical power grid, water and wastewater flows, in-line communications, radio-frequency communications, general supplies and deliveries, cookhouse deliveries and storage, housekeeping functions, weapons locker checks β¦ and back to video surveillance.
