From: Andrew McCallum <andrewm@zooid.guild.org>
Subject: Ambition              1/2
X-To: ALL
Organization: The Zoo of Ids
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 00:10:00 GMT

    This is a story that I did for English (Grade 12).  I thought I'd post
it here.  I got an A- on it, and I haven't edited it since I've submitted
it - just to see if anyone makes the same comments that my teacher did.
    I know that I didn't go into great detail about some things, and I've
really simplified some things down.

    Anyways, enjoy.  Comment.  Spew.

    (How about some more "Contact" stories?! (Or anything by Richard Rauser) I
was really getting into those..)



                              Ambition

     "This...... is more like it.", grinned Kyle as he leaned
back in his tattered chair and looked with pride at his branch of
the company's fat bankroll scroll down the screen.
     "And they said that I'd never move up in the world.  Bah!
It's as easy as 1-2-3!", Kyle snorted as he deleted the "$2,000"
next to his name and replaced it with "$7,000".
     "I better save this and cover it up quickly so that it won't
get traced back to me.  I better do a good job too.  The system
administrator is no idiot, but he'll be one of the first to go.
Then I'll be reasonably safe."
     Kyle exited from the payroll program and began the tedious
and cautious task of covering up his little hack.  It wasn't long
before Kyle heard footsteps in the hall to his right.  He quickly
reached for the power switch beside the terminal and clicked it
off.  He began to pick up his papers that were scattered around
the messy desk.  Darren, the office manager, slid into the
doorway.
     "C'mon Berman.  Get a life.  Don't spend all your time here
or you'll get even duller than you already are.  I have to lock
up anyways so you have to go, like it or not." said Darren.
     "Fine.  I was about to leave anyways." snorted Kyle as he
shoved his papers into a gym bag and shoved past Darren.
     "Loser." puffed Darren.
     "Pinhead." thought Kyle.
     Kyle pushed open the revolving doors at the base of the
tower that whistled with the change in air pressure between the
leaves.  The snowflake enriched winter air hit him in the face.
He walked several steps out and looked back up at the colossal
tower.

     "You're mine."




     Kyle turned on his modem and computer with flicks of
enthusiasm.  "I better call for pizza before I get on the modem.
Damn, I hate having one line.  But soon, I'll have 2 lines!
Hell, why not 6 lines!  Just for the godamn fun of it!".
     Kyle called the first pizza number that came to his head.
He knew them all.  He never forgot a number.  Never, and he
prided himself with that fact immensely.
     He had to search around the house a bit before coming up
with the money, but he eventually found enough searching under
the couch cushions.
     A ring from the computer alerted him that he had connected
to the company's mainframe.  He got up off the couch and sat down
in his chair.
     He had a couple of letters that he didn't bother reading,
and quickly began to scout around the mainframe for logs or
anything that could rat on him.  He didn't find any, so being
satisfied with that, he logged off.  He went back to the couch
and watched TV until the pizza came.




     Kyle studied the fish in the fishtank by the wall attack
each other.  He admired the orange-gold colour of their scales.
"I'm going to have fish.", he said.  "Some brightly coloured,
expensive ones."
     Gordon, the mailboy, was walking down Kyle's isle
distributing envelopes to the people sitting at their desks.
They were no longer working.  They just watched Gordon walk down
the isle, longing for their reward for their valuable hours of
service.  You could see that this made Gordon a bit nervous.  He
was a bit of a shy person.
     Gordon plopped a grey recycled paper envelope down on Kyle's
desk. "Thanks." said Kyle.
     He opened it up and took out his green paycheck,
anticipating it's inflation. "$10,000.  Isn't Technology great?"
he rhetorically asked himself.
     "Whadja get?" Ty said as he peered over his office divider.
     "Oh, the usual."
     "Yeah.  Me too. It never seems to change, does it."
     "Nope."
     Ty popped back behind the divider and resumed his noisy
typing.
     Kyle logged into his dusty terminal and loaded up the
bankroll program again.
     "Changing income is chicken feed compared to what's
possible."
     He raised the $10,000 to $20,000 and grinned.  Out of the
corner of his eye he saw Darren walking down the carpeted hall.
Kyle exited from the program and loaded up a spreadsheet program
and started to work.
     Darren passed by him without saying anything.  Kyle kept on
working for fear of Darren looking over his shoulder.  He could
always do what he wanted at home.




     5:00, and people were starting to crawl out of their
workholes and out the door.  Ty came out from his cubicle and
caught Kyle shovelling his disorganized papers into his gym bag.
     "I'm having a party tonight and I'm inviting a couple of
people over.  Want to come?"
     "Nah.  I'm going to be working tonight.  Thanks anyways."
     "Okay.  You should take a break once in a while.  It'll do
you good."
     "Sure.  Ok."
     "Well, bye."
     "Bye Ty."
     Ty waddled down the hall to the elevators.  Kyle finished
packing and left the building into the cold world.  He stopped by
an old beaten corner store where he bought a couple of expensive
microwaveable dinners and headed home.




     Kyle flopped down in his soft chair in front of his computer
and started to work.
     "The way to the top, is power.  That can be arranged."
     He knew a bit about stocks and bonds.  He knew that whoever
owned over %51 in a company, had a good say in things.  He went
to work finding out how to accomplish this.  It was easy to start
since everyone that was employed was given a certain amount of
stocks to begin with.  He would just... modify that slightly.



     "There he goes again.  Look.", said Mark pointing at his
terminal's screen. "That's him."
     "Who is it?" inquired Terresa, his manager.
     "I don't know yet.  He's using an account that's not his and
he's gone through several other networks.  It'll take some time."
     "Do it.  Have you notified the North American branches about
what's going on?"
     "No.  No one is there, but I've left Email to all the
system administrators."
     "Good.  Keep working on it."
     "Okay."
     Terresa walked off down the hall and turned down a corridor.
Mark turned back to his terminal's screen, took out some lunch,
and kept on working.
     He first caught on to this hacker when he was checking the
logs of some files a couple of weeks ago, looking for the name of
something that he forgot.  He noticed that the date was too
recent to be right.  He followed up on it, and it lead him to the
North American branch of the company.  The bookkeepers said that
there had been a leak, but they thought it was someone in Europe.
 He now knew that they were wrong, and he was going to bag this
sucker.
     "Let's get his attention." he leered.



     Kyle walked into his office in a new grey suit.  It was the
third suit that he had bought in the past two weeks.  He walked
down the isle with snotty confidence and people from either side
popped their heads out and tracked him down the hall to his
cubical where he disappeared with a turn.
     The mess of papers had been replaced by stacked trays, and a
pen holder with an assortment of pens, two of which were gold
Arrow pens with the name "God" inscribed on them.
     He put his shiny black leather briefcase on the oak desk and
popped it open.
     "Wow.  Another suit?", said Ty passing in the hall.
     "Yeah.  Like it?"
     "Yeeaahh....  You sure you can afford them?"
     "No problem.  I told you.  I just inherited some money.
That's all.  I'm treating myself, like you told me to.".  Kyle
laughed.
     "Yeah.  You're sure doing that.  I wish I had that kind of
money.  I know what I'd be doing.  I'd be doing some serious
computer upgrades, my friend, is what I'd be doing.  Like a
Cray!"
     "Done it." Kyle beamed.
     "You scum." Ty laughed back.
     Kyle turned back to his desk and turned on his terminal.  It
beeped to life and ran though the starup sequences.  Kyle logged
in and was greeted by something that startled him.
     "What's this? 12.385.  Let's see..  12... That's the country
code for Australia.. And 385... Hmm..  That's one of my scouts
that monitor bond transactions.  I better check that out."
     Logged out and logged back in with a bogus username and
began checking out his disturbing message.




     "He's going for it!" exclaimed Mark with excitement.
     "Good." said Terresa.
     Kyle grabbed a pen and paper and watched the screen
intently.  All of a sudden, he jotted down something.
     "I think I've got him.  Let me check it out first."
     "Okay."
     Kyle worked at the terminal for half a minute and then wrote
something down on the piece of paper and handed it to Terresa.
     "There.  That's him."
     "Good work.  He'll be out of there by the day.  Now let's go
home and to bed.  I'm dead tired."
     "Me too.  It feels like I haven't slept in ages.  Hmm...
This was kinda fun."
     "Yeah.  Get some rest, ok?" said Terresa as she walked down
the hall.
     "Ok.  I will."
     "Bye." she said turning the corner.
     "Bye."
     Mark sat there, stareing at the terminal's screen.  "Wow."
he thought.  "This was almost like real Cloak & Dagger stuff.".
The lights went off in the office and Mark started to turn the
terminal off but reconsidered.
     "Let's make this a memorable termination..."
     Mark began to type again with an enormous smile on his face
as if some new, hidden personality had just come out to play.



     "That about fixes it." said Kyle leaning back in his plush
chair.
     He went back to work on learning how to twirl his pen in
between his fingers.  He had been working on it for the past
little while and was just getting the hang of it.
     Gordon came walking down the hall at a sluggish pace looking
disquietly at pink slip of paper in his hand.  He folded it twice
and walked into Kyle's office.
     "This just came off the printers for you."
     "Really?  Oh.  Thanks.", said Kyle taking the piece of paper
from Gordon.  Gordon scuttled off quickly.
     Kyle unfolded the paper and read it under his breath.
     At the top was "IMMEDIATE TERMINATION OF EMPLOYMENT", and in
the middle of the slip was printed the word "Gotcha!".




     Outside in the street people ran over broken windowglass,
dodging airborne office equipment.

---
    .sig's are neat,                   | Andrew McCallum
    .sig's are fun,                     \ andrewm@zooid.guild.org
    .sig's tell where to flame someone.  |andrewm@terranet.cts.com

                                  Byte me.

Xref: sparky alt.prose:1722 alt.non.sequitur:992