Book 4: Chapter 4: Played
Bill
July 2334
Virt
I stared at the listing results, my jaw hanging slack. I briefly considered having my jaw fall to my waist, but this wasn’t the time for visual gags. Garfield had a grimace on his face that seemed to have been permanently etched on. His skin was almost grey, and I had a moment of admiration for the level of VR we’d achieved, now that we were competing with mannies.
“Starfleet rootkitted the standard image?” Gar asked.
“Looks like it. The standard autofactory O/S gets updated so frequently that it made sense to have a canonical version on BobHub. Or not, as it turns out.” I gritted my teeth to avoid sharing some choice curses with the universe.
“Well, it explains how they got into the autofactories. Based on which ones they’ve taken, I’d say the rootkit was added about ten years ago. And added to source code, or it would have been overwritten on the next build.”
“Sounds right,” I said, then frowned. “But ten years—”
“Yeah, boss. Ten years ago, Starfleet was barely more than a discussion group. Plus, let’s be honest, as a group they just don’t strike me as that smart. Look at some of the bonehead moves they’ve made since this conflict started. This smells.”