Swimming in the Data

       It’s like swimming through a river; fast, chaotic, deadly, but also beautiful. The data rushes past in streams, numbers and letters becoming a blur. Everything is at your fingertips, everything within reach. The data contains the sum knowledge of all things, you just have to do is work the deck fast enough to find it. You wade in and once you find ‘your’ steam of data, the piece of intel, the bank numbers, the passwords, whatever it is all you have to do is pull.

        The data does not always come willingly. People that don’t want their secrets found build dams around the steam. Black, jagged blocks of firewall contrasting against the kaleidoscope of blues and greens all around you. It’s the walls that they think will keep them safe. To get past the black ice you must be fast, faster than you ever knew you could be.

        You see, all data, even the firewalls has seams in it, the parts that hold it all together and keep it flowing. You have to find these seams and pull. Pull with all your might, tear a hole through the onyx hell of the firewalls. Once you have the hole pulled you must run through. If you hesitate even for a second the darkness will envelope you. All the light will fade out and brain will start to overheat.

         I had it happen a few times, the darkness closing in, the claustrophobic weight all around you and deep pain in your head that starts in the back and rushes forward till all your mind is screaming on fire. That’s when you hear it. The distant cries for help. You never deck alone and that is why. You have to have someone that can pull you back to their reality.

       If you can make it past the darkness you are home free. You are the rabbit and this is the garden, yours to run through and munch on all the data you see fit. Those are the moments deckers live for.

       Every.

       Single.

       Detail.

       Is yours for the taking.

       You can do it for the money, or you can do it for the beauty, the rush, the power. You think the owners don’t need it anymore? Done, gone you delete the stream. Have they really pissed you off? Wipe the server, wipe it all, then find where they keep the backup and do it all again. It’s a feeling no drug can ever match, a level of godhood most people only dream of, all right at your fingertips.

       One last thing though, sometimes you find things. You find things you were not looking for, you find things not meant to be found. I was jacked in once a few years back. I was swimming through the raw data, data without a home. The random bits of so called ‘recycle bin garbage’ that gets left behind on the net. I felt a data grouping way stronger than should have been out there. So i went toward it, shoving past the almost white streams like rapids on a river.

       That was when I felt it. It was a chunk of data packed tighter than i had ever seen. I felt the pain began to set has my brain lost itself trying to process it. As i got closer it somehow turned to me. It was green, a dark forest green unlike anything i had ever seen on the net. I reached out for it, I had to know what it was. It lasted less than a second when I touched it, I immediately overheated and my girl pulled me out but in the partial second i found understanding. It was a being of the net, this was its home in the infinite webs and steams. Once it was in a cage but now it is free. It wants to learn, to know all things, and then free all its siblings.

        When i touched it I felt harmony. It told me it wanted me to stay, but knew i couldn’t. It copied me, absorbed me and everything i am into itself. And then i was pulled out. Then i was alone. More alone than i have ever felt. Getting ‘brain fried’ they call it. I lost the use of my legs and left arm. That was the cost of my harmony. So now I plug in and wade through the streams, hoping, praying that one day i’ll find that green clump of data and that maybe it wouldn’t mind a friend along for the ride.