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

Then a new thought struck him.

"All my money's in there," he said, his voice practically a whisper. "How will I pay the rent? Landlord
pulls it electronically from my Laguna account. How will I prove my digicard had five thousand dollars on
it when—"

Judy cut him off, "Look—all of my consulting money's tied up in the bank, too. If this guy wipes out the
system, thousands of people are going to be flat-dead broke."

Backups? Were the computer's backup systems sufficient to handle such a nightmare?

No. They'd restore only the transactions and accounts that existed as of last night. Better than nothing,
but hours' worth of transactions would be lost.

And it would take forever to unravel the mess.

The screen flickered. A fireball appeared, followed by the large red letters DNS, then ... nothing. Black.

Judy blinked. She shook her head, suddenly feeling dizzy. "He's gone."

The hacker had disappeared. Instantly, the system rolled over and rebooted back to multiuser mode.
Soon the fractals glimmered into view, a forever wonderland of infinite penetration.

Jose stared at Judy. He had to be thinking the same thing she was: No proof. There had been no
financial losses. No hard evidence of what had just taken place. Bank management would never believe
them. The attack, the takeover, made no sense.
Unless, it had been ... practice.

2

Nine in the morning, and still in yesterday's clothes. The wrinkled orange shorts with the bleach stains, the
faded lilac T-shirt over the blue bikini top. Same red socks that had padded aross the tiles at Laguna
Savings last night.

Judy felt like a soiled clown.

Except nothing was funny.

"How long will it take to fix the mess at Laguna?" Steve Sanchez perched in the blue velvet chair behind
his desk—fake-antique, oak-stained, laminated plywood. Kind of a bonzo desk foi a guy who owned a
Computer security company that was worth mega mill ions.

But then, Steve always told Judy that old-time, cozy home digs relaxed his customers —and cast the
illusion that Steve was an old-time honest businessman. That was the important part.

In Judy's opinion, there never had been such a thing as an old-time Honest businessman.

Steve pried the cuticles off his nails with a paper clip. His eyes darted from the clip to Judy, from the clip
to Judy. He was waiting for an answer, wanted a quick response, so he could get her out of the office