Generator [volume 3] the tower

certain regions of the network. As a result, he had become very good at manipulating the system, seeking out and utilizing software tools to facilitate his exploration.

While searching for cleaner icebreaker code, Stephen had become aware of files which Jurgen Ernst had uploaded to one of the pirate boards he frequented. It was like discovering a message from a technologically-advanced alien species from a distant planet. In his lonely room, Stephen often occupied his time by solving complex mathematical and logic puzzles in his head. To be fortunate to discover computer code that was fascinating to him was like discovering buried treasure. He immediately began to deconstruct it, reverse-engineer it, and analyze its components. He spent weeks, happily understanding how it worked, then quickly began to find ways of improving it by eliminating extraneous code to make it more elegant. Once he had compiled the code, he was eager to test it out on the real world.

The compact instruction set was the key to unlock doors that had once seemed impenetrable. With the success of his initial experimental forays, he continued to find ways to adapt and modify the code, refining it and making it more robust. He created variations on the theme, customizing the keys to allow him to access specific domains.

There finally seemed a sense of purpose in his life. He had tasted the heady sense of invincibility which comes from being untouchable. He was one of the elite. He held the power. He could be dangerous. He could penetrate into the heart of any system; recovering hidden data by probing their most vulnerable areas. It was like surgery to move with skill and precision through an extremely complex system. Yet, it also took extreme care not to inadvertently damage the temporal data which was vital to the source. It could be so easy to destroy everything by causing a meltdown which could spread like an explosion from the core.

Once he had discovered his identity, by decoding encrypted data included in files from Jolly Roger’s pirate board, Stephen had traced Jurgen’s presence back to the Akademy in the Czech Republic, only to discover that he had already taken a job with a company called General Synthetics in Osaka, Japan. Stephen continued his search throughout the network, collecting new information about Jurgen’s past by hacking system files that were considered highly-secured and confidential. As a result of the effort he had dedicated to his persistent investigation, it had gradually seemed to become an obsession. Stephen had the time to dedicate to his research. It was his hobby, his passion. Jurgen had become a hero to him ~ He wanted to learn everything he could about him; who he was, what he did, to explore the developments that had occurred in his life, and discover every bit of information he could from his past. The more he discovered, the more he wanted to learn.

Stephen had discovered that Jurgen’s father, Kropton Ernst, was a moderatelyfamous author of science fiction novels, and he had even discovered the identity of Kropton’s step-parents. Most tantalizing was discovering the existence of Coraline, Jurgen’s romantic flame from the Akademy, who had become an architect of interna‐ tional acclaim. Stephen eventually tracked Jurgen to the Gensynth facility in Japan, going so far as to hack into their system in an attempt to discover further details of his