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Cheat Code
Cheat Code
Cheat Code
Ebook210 pages3 hours

Cheat Code

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Alicia is your standard career hacker and a general smart girl. She was just doing a college project when a seemingly impossible accident suddenly threw her into a world she could never imagine. She was thrown into The Network.

The Network is like a universe of universes. Each universe on the network is like a computer in a huge network that interconnects them in ways that nobody could possibly understand. Alicia soon realizes that she's not the first person to break the ties of their world and enter The Network. And as with people in any dimension, the Network is at war. But the war turns out to be the least of Alicia's problems as strange things start happening.

Can Alicia come to terms with the situation? Can she survive what is happening in The Network? She soon realizes that her being there might not be as big an accident as it seems.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherMG Potgieter
Release dateFeb 16, 2014
ISBN9781311408099
Cheat Code
Author

MG Potgieter

I'm just a guy who sometimes writes some books. I also make gaming Youtube videos and would like to become a computer programmer some day, maybe even work on some big budget games! (eh, a guy can dream) Till then I'll just keep writing books and making videos.

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    Book preview

    Cheat Code - MG Potgieter

    CHEAT CODE

    MG Potgieter

    Copyright 2014 by MG Potgieter

    Smashwords Edition

    Table of Contents

    Chapter 1 – SCIENCE!

    Chapter 2 – Particles

    Chapter 3 – Blown To Bits

    Chapter 4 – A Hacker’s Paradise

    Chapter 5 – What is reality?

    Chapter 6 – Lifehacks

    Chapter 7 – REVENGE!

    Chapter 8 – The Game

    Chapter 9 – The Multiverse-Coaster

    Chapter 10 – The Wall falls down

    Chapter 11 – The War

    Chapter 12 – Girl Zero

    Chapter 13 – A Whole person now

    Chapter 14 – The Exchange

    Chapter 15 – Region Zero

    Chapter 16 – The Day before War

    Chapter 17 – The Battle for one-one

    Chapter 18 – A Solution from the Ancients

    Chapter 19 – Clash of Titans

    Chapter 20 – Ejected

    Chapter 21 – Aftermath

    Chapter 1 – SCIENCE!

    Alicia was sitting at her desk in the classroom, thinking about what she did the previous night. She had almost gotten into the network she was trying to hijack, when all of a sudden she was thrown out and disconnected. She still couldn’t figure out what had went wrong, she did everything right and all her safeguards were working perfectly.

    The professor was at the front of the class, explaining some programming concept that Alicia had mastered ages ago. She didn’t really know what she was doing in university. She knew that they were just wasting her time with all these classes. She already had all the knowledge she would ever be able to gain there and was really only at the university to earn a piece of paper to prove that she had all this knowledge. It was rather hard to get a job without that piece of paper.

    To the average onlooker she just looked like a stupid blond girl who dazed off in class and would never achieve much. She was staring into nothingness while twirling her golden hair with a finger.

    ‘I just need to get through this class, then my attendance percentage will be high enough to pass,’ she whispered to herself, trying to refocus her thoughts.

    ‘And finally, class, I just want to remind you to finish your research projects,’ the professor announced. ‘I need them handed in as soon as possible. Remember that finishing this is mandatory to get a passing mark.’

    Dammit, Alicia thought. She had forgotten about the stupid project and would need to conjure something up soon. They had to write a report on the use of software in high tech scientific experimentation. Of course, this wasn’t a scientific course, so they didn’t need to write anything vaguely scientific, but they did have to go to an institution of their choice and find out what software solutions they use.

    She made a mental note to go visit the local lab to find out what they were doing and started packing up the books on her table.

    Around her people were starting to leave one by one, making little groups near the entrances and rushing away from the classroom as fast as they could. She got up and left as well, all while mentally preparing herself for her lonely walk home.

    When Alicia got to her apartment, she dropped her bag on the couch in her living room, grabbed a bottle of coke from the fridge and went straight for her computer. She turned everything on and watched as the computer booted up almost instantly. She had just installed the new SSD a week ago and was already loving the amazing speed boost it gave to the computer.

    She sat down at her PC and opened up the special web browser that she made for herself.  It was based on an existing engine, but it had all her little hacks installed that made her life so much easier.  She didn’t have a problem manually hacking things, but this just went much faster.

    Alicia popped over to a Google search page and searched for scientific institutions near her.  She found an interesting looking one that had a miniature particle accelerator recently installed.  She browsed over to the Contact Us page and copied their email address.  She opened up her email application and quickly wrote up a little email about her project, asking if she could pay them a visit and have a grand tour of their computer systems.

    She decided that she would check back later to see if they answered.  She minimized her email program and popped back into the browser.  She browsed over to the website of the company she tried to hack the night before, but discovered that the website was offline. 

    ‘Maybe I actually broke something in their network,’ she said to herself.  She opened up her IRC client and connected to her hacking group’s secret server.  She joined the #failedOps channel.  She checked the list of users currently connected and smiled.  Her two friends were online there, waiting for her.

    Hi guys, what’s up?

    Not much, we’ve been spending the entire day trying to figure out what you did to that Power D Company’s network.

    Yeah, you must have done quite a number on it.  Its website has been down ever since and there hasn’t been a single bit of data activity from any of the IP addresses that belong to them.

    I honestly have no idea what happened there.  I was still mining for the files they asked for in the contract, when suddenly I was booted out of the network and my internet disconnected.

    You didn’t get the file for Mr X?

    No, everything died before I could do anything.

    It’s weird.  I think our friends over at Splinter2 might have had something to do with it.  They’ve been bragging on social networks all day long about how they took down a massive corporate network.

    I’ll ask DFS if he knows anything.  BRB.

    I really don’t think they have the capability to do something like that.  I’m going to check out my logs, there’s something last night that sort of bothered me, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.

    Yeah, report back here if you find everything.  I’ll try to explain the situation to Mr X.  I’m sure he could extend the contract until the network is up again.

    Okay, back in a few minutes.

    She minimized the chat and opened up her email app again.  There was a response to the email she sent them earlier.

    Hello.

    Thanks for the interest in doing your project about our fine establishment.  You can definitely pay us a visit sometime, we’re more than willing to show you how our systems work. 

    If you could come around tomorrow at 1 PM, that’d be perfect timing, since we’re planning a little test experiment in the accelerator.  It would give you an excellent opportunity to see the software used in measuring results from this machine as well.

    See you tomorrow!

    Lab X.

    She closed the email application and opened up her network logs from the previous night.  She remembered seeing some accounts that were logged into the network, but at the time she just thought that it might be some workaholic who stayed at work late.  The truth is it was close to 1 AM in the country where this company is situated and there really shouldn’t have been more than at most 2 accounts logged in. 

    She found the IP addresses in her logs and booted up her command line IP tracing program.  She copied one of the addresses from her log, pasted it in the program and pressed enter to run the trace.  It traced back to a random residential computer in Australia.  Closer inspection revealed that the link was made through it, not from it.  Someone had been bouncing their connection before linking to the network.  Something like that would take ages to trace and Alicia really wasn’t in the mood to do that. 

    Something beeped.  A message from Synergy popped up, telling her to get into the chat immediately.  She popped back into the IRC client so she could find out what was going on.

    What’s so urgent?

    Tell her, MKD.

    Well, I was asking DFS about the attack they claimed that they did.  He told me that they didn’t really do anything, someone sent them a strange message detailing a takedown and told them to take credit for it.  Not being one to miss an opportunity like that, the leader of Splinter2 went for it.

    They have no idea who sent the message?

    Not a clue. 

    Oh damn.

    Mr X, we have a slight problem.

    We don’t have any problem.  Thanks for the help last night.

    What are you talking about? 

    The file hunt was just a decoy, just so that you could break through their security for us.  We piggybacked on your connection and destroyed the entire system from there.

    Why would you need to destroy their system?  And who is we?

    We have our reasons, and you really don’t need to know who we are.  Just know that we appreciate your work.  Ali, if you look in your bank, the payment is pending, you just need to accept the transaction.

    Thanks, I guess.

    That was fucking weird.

    Let me check my bank to see if he’s telling the truth.

    Alicia opened up her browser and browsed to her bank’s website.  She connected to her security proxy and then proceeded to log into the bank.  She carefully typed Alicia Overton into the name field, entered her 13 digit account number and pressed enter.  A small window popped up asking her to enter her PIN and security phrase.  She did so and her bank account status page opened up.  There really was a payment pending from an account whose number was withheld.  She clicked accept and the money was credited to her account. 

    Alicia quickly made some payments to Synergy and MKD’s accounts for their cuts of the profit.  Synergy provided a botnet with which she weakened security servers and MKD was the contract negotiator.  She logged out again and disconnected from her proxy.

    Well they actually paid me the full amount.  Further than that I really don’t care much.

    Did you send our cuts to us?

    Yeah, you’ll notice it’s a bit more than what was agreed upon, that’s because X paid me more for some reason.

    Thanks.  You know where to find me if you need something, so I’m out.

    I have another job lined up for us, I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow night.

    Thanks, I’ll be here.  I’m out as well though, see you later MKD.

    She closed up the chat program.  Without a job to keep her busy and the lab only being able to accommodate her the next day, she decided she’d make it an early night.  She watched some TV for an hour or so and then went to sleep.

    Chapter 2 – Particles

    Alicia got up the next day feeling fresh and excited for the day.  The extra hours of sleep really did her a world of good.  Her bank account was filled to the brim, she didn’t have class and she was finally going to get the project out of the way.

    She strolled into her kitchen, turned on the coffee machine and grabbed herself a bowl of cereal.  At the moment that she was just about done with her cereal, the coffee machine beeped and started pouring her coffee into the mug she always kept ready under the faucet.  She grabbed the mug and quickly gulped down the sweet brown liquid, savouring the wonderful taste.

    After washing the dishes she had just made, she undressed and jumped into a shower.  She enjoyed the warm water rushing down her body and the foamy soap that she washed herself with.  After cleaning herself up she turned off the water and dried herself off.  She quickly brushed her teeth and returned to her bedroom to get dressed.

    After considering her wardrobe for a while, she pulled out some underwear, a purple tank-top and a pair of jeans.  She dressed herself and then walked over to her mirror to see if she looked okay. 

    ‘Exquisite, as always,’ she said out loud, admiring the image in the mirror.  She was blessed with natural beauty, her long blond hair always falling into a good style without much effort, with her deep blue eyes completing the package.  Her body was in good shape as well, and men usually swooned at the sight of her.  She didn’t pay much attention to those guys, she liked guys who looked past her beauty.

    The best part about her natural beauty was of course the fact that she never needed to apply make-up.  She looked perfectly fine natural.  Some people even thought that she does wear make-up.

    She spent the morning playing some computer games online.  She didn’t get much time to do that anymore, which was sad, because gaming was what got her interested in computers in the first place.  Hacking and school took up a lot of her time, so her other hobbies paid the price.  She was playing a first person shooter game when a camper killed her multiple times in a row.  She took a sharp breath when he killed her the fifth time and she had to seriously contain her herself.  It was hard for her to not start swearing, but she realized it was probably a young child and managed to control her temper.

    After that incident she quit the game.  It was nearing noon, so she packed her tablet computer into a satchel and locked up her apartment.  The lab she was going to visit was only a few blocks away, she had passed it a few times when she went jogging in the past.  That’s another thing that dried up for her lately, she hadn’t gone jogging for fun in ages.

    She arrived at the lab just before one and they were very eager to welcome her.  The place looked legitimate enough and Alicia was actually rather excited for the experience.  She had always wondered how particle accelerators worked.

    ‘Welcome to our centre of science!’ a guy with glasses in a white lab coat said as she entered the reception area.  ‘We are always excited to pass our knowledge onto the next generation.  Some places might frown on visitors, but here we believe science is all about spreading knowledge to everyone.’

    ‘Thanks for the opportunity,’ Alicia said as she shook the man’s hand.  He has brownish hair and she estimated that he was somewhere in his late

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