After learning about her parents' legacy, Sophie Dayton chooses to follow in their footsteps and become a secret agent. Meanwhile, she's back on the hunt for the truth about her expulsion from university.
This is Episode 9 in the Diary of a Detectress series. For previous episodes, please follow these links:
Episide 2 – Student record not found
Episide 3 – First steps towards success
Episode 7 – The explanation of a lifetime
Episode 8 – Tracking down a hacker
Dear Diary,
Oh god, I hope it doesn’t mean that I owe him a favour! Not a good start to my secret agent career.
Note to self: find more dubious underground celebrities and help them out so that they owe me one. Got to even this out a bit.
Anyway, at least I got what I went for. In hindsight, I should have also gone for a plate of that spag-bol. It looked and smelled amazing as it rapidly disappeared into Simon’s animatedly jabbering mouth (talking and eating simultaneously is apparently his personal superpower). But yes, I got what I went for. A Contact. I’ve yet to make actual contact with my Contact, but I have a name and a place to look. I would never have imagined myself attending a video game convention, but it turns out that’s where I’m heading tomorrow to find my hacker. On the bright side, it’ll be good practice for me, trying to blend into an unfamiliar environment and all that.
Change of plan. Layla asked me what I was up to this morning and seemed oddly excited when I told her. So she’s coming too, and that means that blending in won’t be an option if I’m wandering around with Miss Elfin Elegance in tow. I’ll have to go for a standout approach instead. Do video gamers have groupies? They do now.
Turns out I needn’t have worried about standing out. SO many people were dressed as (what I assume were) video game characters that I felt positively boring. Plus, Layla deserted me pretty much straight away, heading off into the crowd with her camera at the ready. She’ll probably have a field day with all of these avid faces and freaky get-ups.
I asked a couple of people to point me in the direction of “Ethan”. Simon didn’t give me a last name for this hacker guy, which tells me that Ethan must be pretty good at what he does.
I’m directed to a guy with messy brown hair, a small goatee and thick-framed glasses. When I find him, he’s standing on a mini stage with a controller in his hand, beating the crap out of the guy next to him in some retro, Mortal Kombat-style faceoff. The small crowd around is yelling for blood, and isn’t disappointed when Ethan’s avatar kicks his opponent in the head one last time and “Fatality” is declared. Ethan grins and turns to face them, raising his skinny arms in victory and revealing sweat patches under the armpits of his Supermario t-shirt.
As the congratulations and back-slapping die down, I manage to insinuate myself between Ethan and a guy with long, greasy hair who’s babbling away. Ethan seems happy to refocus his attention on a female fan. “I’ll see you later man, alright?” He claps the greaseball on the back and turns to me. “Well hello there!”
“Hi, great game!” I’m doing my best to look like how I imagine a video game groupie would look. “I loved that special move you did, with the kick and the, the thing…” I flounder. Darn it. Must do more background research before trying to impersonate a groupie of any kind.
His smile goes hard. “Yeah, thanks. So why are you really here?”
Busted! Oh well, I guess I should be glad he’s on the ball. No point trying to keep up the pretence. “Simon sent me. He said you might be able to help me out with a little, um… data retrieval problem I have.”
At the mention of Simon’s name, his eyebrows raise slightly. “You need a hacker, huh?” He looks at me speculatively. “So what’s in it for me?”
Shit, I should have thought about the question of payment. Let’s see, he’s probably not interested in money so I won’t bother offering. I grasp around, “Well…it’d surely be a test of your hacking abilities. I mean have you ever hacked into a university server before?”
He facepalms. I’ve never seen anyone do that in real life. He really is a super geek. “Oh come ON! The university? Not another ‘grade correction’ problem.” his fingers come up to make quote marks. This guy has definitely watched too many cartoons.
“No, actually I want you to find out why my student record was wiped from the system. I think it might have been done by another hacker but I need help finding the digital trail.”
He looks more interested when I mention another hacker. “Hmm. Ok, you’ve got my attention. Any idea who it was?”
“I only know a bit about who it wasn’t. For instance, I know for sure that the university didn’t have anything to do with it.”
He’s staring thoughtfully into space and stroking his goatee with one hand. He probably practised that pose at home. “Alright, I’ll see what I can find. Write me your student details and a contact number and I’ll look into it.”
Layla is on the other side of the hall surrounded by adoring Lord of the Rings fans (I know this because they’re kind enough to advertise their film preferences on their t-shirts). I wave and she bids them a hasty goodbye, coming over to join me. “Thank god, you saved me!” she hisses as we head out. “I thought they were going to kidnap me as a brood mare for their recreated elf village.”
“Serves you right for being stupidly tall, slim and pale,” I retort, and she slaps me on the arm, hiding a grin. “Did you get some good pictures?” I ask.
“Not sure yet,” she replies. “I can’t always tell right away but there might be a few that I can make into a display for my portfolio.”
Judging by the past projects she displays on her blog, she’ll probably come up with some fabulous montage that makes the convention look like a thrilling and magical experience. It can be hard living with such a stunning and talented girl. Makes me all the more determined to succeed in my own quest.
I don’t have to wait long before hearing news. The very next day, my phone rings with a call from a private number. I answer it to hear what sounds like a robot.
“Hi Soph-ie,” it drones. “I found your stud-ent acc-ount.”
I debate whether to hang up. “Is this a recorded message?” I venture at last.
There’s a pause. “Oh, sor-ry,” the robot continues. Then there’s a click, and Ethan’s voice comes over the line. “Sorry about that. I forgot to switch off the distorter.”
I decide not to ask why he has a voice distorter built into his phone line. Must be a geek thing I hope it’s a geek thing. “Oh hi Ethan. How did it go? Do you have any news?”
“Yeah I do,” he says. There’ a pause. “Um… Sophie, are you involved with some kind of international agency?”
I hesitate, unsure how to answer. Technically I haven’t yet been recruited by the agency that my parents used to work for. I still have to pass the challenges they set for me to become eligible for their training. But on the other hand, I’m already engaged in tasks they specified, so that could be construed as being “involved”.
Luckily, Ethan doesn’t wait for an answer from me before continuing. “It was tricky to find any trace of you in the system. Whoever deleted you really knew what they were doing. They replaced your record with a fake name in all linked systems and all back-ups for the whole academic year. I only found you at all because you attended some kind of pre-enrolment workshop thing that was attached to your record. Somehow the hacker missed that and your name was unchanged.”
That knitting workshop! Super boring at the time, but in hindsight I should probably thank my former foster mother for making me attend.
Ethan continues, “Once I figured out the alias they switched you for, it was pretty easy to find the rest of your record. You’re now a black guy named Cole Havers.”
“Oh my god!” that strikes me as hilarious. “But do you have any idea who did it?”
He hesitates. “Yeah, um… that’s why I was asking you about agencies. This looks like it was done by someone from the future.”
I don’t get it. “What? Someone from the future? Like a time traveller?”
He chuckles, “ok, that answers my previous question. No it’s nothing to do with time travel. The name of the organisation is “The Future”. Which, by the way, is a stupid name that they blatantly stole from that Cohen Brothers film. And they’re all a bunch of stuck-up idiots who do things because they think it’ll make them look cool.”
Hmm, sounds like Ethan might have a personal history with this agency. Interesting.
He continues. “But that’s not all. Before they replaced your record with the dummy one, it looks like they were trying to push you into a certain study route.”
I’m taken aback. “What?”
“Yeah, there are like, a million tags attached to your record stating that you’re not eligible for certain courses. Did you ever have trouble enrolling for things?”
Ethan carries on, “I can also see that your grades in some courses were modified to give you higher scores in the maths and engineering fields.”
“What!”
“Yeah,” I hear him typing some more. “Like here, your grade for Introductory Statistics was modified from 69% to 83%. My guess is that someone wanted to push you to do more statistics.”
I always wondered how in hell I managed to do so well on that exam. My head is spinning. “But why would anyone do that?”
“My guess is that the guys from The Future had plans for you. I don’t know what they are but it obviously involved you knowing a lot about statistics. But then again they could have just been messing with you because they could. I know those guys and that’s their kind of deal. The big question is why they picked on you as a target. Which is why I asked if you were involved with them in any way?”
At least I can answer this question in all truthfulness. “No absolutely not. I’d never even heard of them before now.”
“Yeah well, it was probably an random attack then. I saw in the record that you don’t have any registered family and that makes you an easy target. Like I said, they’re idiots.”
“Sounds like you know something about them,” I try probing for more background. Not that I really need to know, but now I’m curious.
“Yeah as a matter of fact they tried to recruit me, but I couldn’t see the point of aligning myself with such a bunch of dumbasses. I mean, I was already better than their best guy. What would be in it for me? And anyway, I prefer to be an independent agent. A lone wolf, you know?”
“That makes sense.”
Sounds like he’s typing at the other end. “So what do you want? I can undo what they did and reinstate your student record without any of the tags. But I can’t guarantee they won’t get up to the same tricks again. Plus it looks like you’ve already missed a few weeks of class. Do you wanna go back to studying?”
“Ugh, no!” This pops out more violently than I intended. But I have good reasons for not wanting my former life back. Things have been way more interesting since I became a detectress. And this piece of news has only thickened the plot.
He laughs. “Had a taste of freedom have you? I’ll leave it as it is then. You need anything else while I’m in the system?”
I imagine the fewer records about my past the better. “No it’s ok. Leave me as Cole. And thanks, I owe you one.”
Shit! Why did I say that? Not the favour thing again...
He sounds amused. “You bet you do. I don’t come cheap let me tell you.”
“Er… You never struck me as the cheap kind.” Omg am I flirting with him? Stop Sophie, stop!
“Actually there is something you can do,” he sounds serious now. “Um… are you any good at social media and all that stuff?”
This coming from a hacker? “You mean Facebook and Twitter? That kind of stuff?”
He sounds uncertain. “Yeah, I guess…?”
Where is he going with this? “Erm, I suppose I know some stuff,” I venture. Don’t want to promise too much before I find out what he’s asking.
He sighs. “Well, it’s like this. I want to get more exposure for my convention and, well… I might be able to hack things but I’m not so good at promotional shit…”
“Your convention?” I didn’t know he was behind that whole thing I attended.
“Yeah, as you saw it’s going pretty well. We get a lot of visitors, but I want to expand it even more, move into a bigger venue, that kind of thing.”
“And you think social media is the key?”
He sounds really uncomfortable. “I mean maybe we need some sort of Facebook profile, or an Instagram thing, or whatever. Look, it’s not really my thing and I don’t trust any of my geek buddies to know anything about it either, but you’re a girl and therefore you have natural instincts for social media stuff. You know…”
I’m not sure I agree with his stereotyping, but I can hardly talk after the way I’ve neatly pigeonholed him as a hacker geek. “Well Ethan, I’m probably not the best person to do that, but I might know someone who can help you. She even came to the convention and took some photos-”
“Wow, don’t tell me you’re friends with the Elf Girl?”
I sigh. Layla’s fame has apparently spread far and wide among the convention attendees. “Yes, as a matter of fact. But she’s not an elf, she’s a businesswoman and you’ll have to pay her for helping you. I can only provide the contact.”
It’s adorable how enthusiastic he’s become. “That would be great! And of course that’s no problem. I mean money is just another electronic balance these days.”
“Right…” Not even going to ask about that one.
After a short conferral, I hand the phone over to Layla and leave her to deal with the excited geek. Lucky that she happened to come along yesterday. I just dodged another favour owed.
So I have the information I need to complete the first task. Funny. I thought that when I found out why I was expelled, it would be a kind of lightbulb moment that would illuminate everything, but instead it’s only thrown up more questions. Why did the guys from The Future involve themselves and ultimately choose to end my studying career? Are they still watching me? Do my parents’ agency know about that? I need to talk to Smirk Guy again. He can answer at least some of these questions.
Note to self: This time, don’t forget to ask for his NAME.
This is an original piece, written for Steemit by @Victoria-Kelly. Thanks for reading!
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