Nearly a Year (approximately one Earth millenium) before Kumo’s string of psychic computer hacks, there was a series of similar similar crimes. And then there’s the list.
Date: 19.4.150.8
In the early Winter of Year 19, the mainframes of Shusa, Atosa, Hitonen, and Hladdat were attacked. The gigantic warehouse-sized buildings filled with analytical engines, or ordinators, were the pride of the cities, especially of the governments, research institutions, and corporations. Information; processed with an infinite amount of rods, cogs, and wheels along with an army of coders and spools upon spools of data; was not cheap.
Very few people had the tools to access the mainframes by remote. With a keyboard, an elegantly clunky monitor, and a cable attached to the engine lines, a coder could transmit and read sheets of data with ease, though the upload/download speeds would be excruciatingly slow by late Year 20 standards.
The telegraph was a more common way of transmitting data to the engines. Telegraph operators, more ubquitous than coders, were often hired to upload the coder-written data. The executive decision makers of the engines often found it cheaper to outsource to telegraph firms. As a result, some operators became as competent as the best coders.
The heist of data, from time to time, became a serious problem. Telegraph operators were often suspects. Rogue coders or those from competing engines were more truly to blame, though they were more difficult to find.
The honor code of the coders complicated things even more for law enforcement officers who tried to pursue these crimes of the wire. No coder would ever accuse or testify against another, regardless of affiliation.
In Shusa, the mainframes, especially in Downtown and the South-Eastern Quadrant, were used by the Itanese government, military, and banks. In large, metropolitan cities like Hitonen and Hladdat, banks shared them with industry in the industrial districts. Out in the interior plains of Atosa, close the reservations of the non-aligned ‘Tanesh tribes, a compund of ordinators served as a cyberspace factory, provding data for public consumption throughout Itan. One could subscribe to information services and download them from remote access terminals. Also, any person or business who needed to rent engine service could from the Atosa compound.
When the engines were attacked, the operators and the coders were rounded up as it was the most amount of heists to occur as long as ordinators have been in existence, which was half a season or 120 Terran years.
Nothing could be traced back to the telegraph companies. The coders suprisingly cooperated with the investigation, which yielded nothing.
The real culprit was a rogue priest who was once served as the National House of Wisdom’s ordinator specialist and liaison to the mainframes of Shusa. He could code with the best of them, and he was a Level 7 telepath.
He had managed to extract information from his telepathic heists and then disabled the engines afterwards. He visualized a wire that took him right to the ordinators and saw the cogs, wheels, and rods turn with data. The Shusa mainframes were easy—he was familiar with them, afterall. The finance engines of Hirtonen and Hladdat were difficult, but the art of the crime is seductive in any era. The ultimate challenge lie in the great engine compound of Atosa.
Where the official channels failed, the School of Wisdom caught up with their prodigal priest, but with some difficulties in the pursuit. The Evek’s chief of security was badly demolished beyond coherence in Hladdat. One of the Wisdom operatives was crushed to death in a chambered cairn (which was larger on the inside) when the rogue broke the dimensional transcendence that was created 10 Years (or 10 Terran millenia) ago. A Level 7 master finally caught heister at the Atosa compund, barely surviving the conrontation.
The Evek created a dimensionally transcendent sphere the size of a soccer ball and had the apostate imprisoned inside. Inside, all his needs would be provided for as he’d spend the rest of his natural life there. A psychic damper would prevent him from telepathic activity of any kind. His Holiness then gathered the priests in the garden of the National House of Wisdom and they teleported the sphere to orbit the world.
The School of Wisdom covered up the heist from public knowledge, lest anyone should try it again. And the sphere’s orbit decayed in 50 Decades (about 52 Terran years) and crashed into the collapsed cairn, leaving a gigantic crater. The site has been avoided by pilgrims since.
Tags: analytical engine, Computers, Fictional history, steampunk, technology, telegraph
