Hendrix

Hendrix is an Ultor system admin who switches sides and helps Parker & the Red Faction.

Attributes

 * Team:        Ultor
 * Role:        System Admin
 * Sex:         Male

Biography
Growing up, I never heard anything negative about Ultor. Mom and Dad gave their lives to the corp, in more ways than one. They blamed the Plague on bad luck, a Martian virus, bad air -- anything but Ultor. When you're in the belly of the beast, you shy away from wondering if it has your best interests in mind. They wanted to keep me out of the mines in the worst way. They pushed me to excel at my studies and glowed with pride at every achievement. As long as I did well in Ultor's schools, I could stay out of the mines. If my grades dropped, I'd be down in the tunnels with my parents. It was good motivation.

I took all the tech courses I could. Not just the mechanical stuff that Ultor pushed on all of us, but compsci, physics, chemistry -- everything they'd let me into. It was a world beyond the gritty, machine-oil-and-red-dust place I lived in every day. My studies took me above all that.

Ultor had me pegged for a technician slot from the time I was 12 years old. They claimed tests showed I didn't have the aptitudes for more advanced studies. I never believed that they told the truth about the test results. It was all so easy for me. When they stopped letting me into certain classes, I just borrowed the tapes from someone who was allowed into the classes. I suffered through the mechanical and applied courses during the day, but I lived for my nighttime studies.

That was when I first realized that Ultor's rules could be bent, even broken. This opened a whole new world for me. I started looking for ways around their regulations. The deeper I got into my clandestine compsci studies, the more I wanted to start hacking into Ultor's systems. I knew I had to be careful though. I'd seen what happened to people who got caught breaking the rules. One of my best friends when I was little was Danny Curtis. He was born on Mars, too. When we were nine, his Dad supposedly stole something from the machine shop where he worked. He got caught and the whole family just disappeared overnight. The supervisor of the apartment complex said that they'd been sent back to Earth. I was young, but I wasn't stupid. I could tell my parents didn't believe her either, but they looked at each other and at me and didn't say anything.

So when I started hacking, I made sure I wouldn't get caught. I broke into unimportant systems, like the lock controls for our apartment. I cracked the code for that after a few nights' effort and then amused myself for a week messing with it. I'd change the keylock combo just before my parents came home and monitor the system while they uselessly punched in the keycode a few times. Then I'd trigger it after they'd given up, and the door would slide open. I started to feel guilty after the first few times I did it, though. My parents were so worn out after eight hours in the mines that they barely had the energy to open the door, let alone puzzle out why the lock was acting up.

I wormed my way into other systems for our apartment, too. Within a few days, I could make the lighting, climate control, and cooking subsystems do anything I wanted. I didn't do it while my parents were around, though. Too much frustration in their lives already.

It took me a long time to get up the courage to crack a system outside our apartment. I kept picturing Danny and his family. I finally screwed up my nerve and started to hack into the grading records for our complex's school. I figured security would be pretty lax there, all things considered. It took me about two weeks of cautious trial and error, but I finally got in. I made sure I just looked around, didn't mod anything, and got out quick. When no one came knocking at our door over the next few days, I went back in and made some small changes to test scores for a couple of my friends. I was afraid to do more, as the teachers might notice.

That was the start of what makes my life here tolerable. For years, I stayed within the boundaries Ultor set for me. I took all the courses they felt a mid-level technician needed. When I finished the tech program at age 15, they put me to work in the robot maintenance division, working on bot electronics. For the past 10 years, I've worked long and hard at it, rising from maintenance to SciLab support and now to security technician.

All that time, my real work has gone on at home. One of the first subsystems I looked for was Ultor's snooper/tracker programs. By watching them work, I figured out how to avoid detection on my nightly forays. They're not that smart, so it wasn't hard. I learned to mask my terminal's network ID and to slip in and out of nodes across the complex. I felt safer then and began to explore farther. I cracked hundreds of Ultor systems, never touching data or code, never leaving a trace (at least I hope not). Over the years, I've broken into almost every important system in the mining complex.

The exceptions are certain areas within the SciLabs' computer subnetwork and the medical facility subnetwork. All files within these areas are surrounded by incredible security and layers of complex encoding. When I first encountered the SciLab section of the network, over two years ago, I took one look at its cocoon and immediately broke contact. It scared me to death. Every three months or so since, I get up the courage to probe the SciLab or medfac subnets again, but I've always been scared off by the thought of finally getting caught. I’m not even sure I really want to see what's inside anyway. I've got a bad feeling about it.

Those network sections are under the personal security of Dr. Capek, the head of Ultor's Science Labs. I used to see him every so often, lurching through the labs, when I worked in the SciLab tech support division. He's the scariest person I've ever met. He looks like he's half robot, with implants all over his body. I think most of my fear of the SciLab subnet centers on running into Capek, even in a virtual arena.

Everything I've discovered during my explorations is in my head. Mom once found notes I had written and asked me about them. I convinced her they were for a computer systems class, but it taught me a valuable lesson. Just as I was careful not to leave a trace in the virtual world of Ultor's computer network, so I also couldn't afford to leave physical evidence in my apartment or workplace—no password lists, notes, or records of any kind.

For years, I've existed in two worlds. The physical world that I share with everyone else here is the daily drudgery of this hellish mining complex. But the virtual world of Ultor's computer net is mine alone. I've never talked about it with anyone, and I've never spotted another human presence among the autonomous programs that run the complex.

The irony of my current position doesn't escape me. Here I am, a security technician, entrusted with observing and maintaining a roomful of security monitors and data analysis equipment. I can watch activity in dozens of areas throughout the mining complex. I can also switch a monitor to show the view through any miner's helmetcam, giving me a choice of thousands of mobile cameras. And yet, I might be Ultor's single greatest security risk.

With what I know about the systems here, I could probably bring the entire mining operation crashing down. But they'd be sure to find me then, and I don't even want to think about that. I can help out anyone who wants to fight Ultor, though, whatever I can do without much risk. Maybe keep the rebels one step ahead.

There are some miners who're willing to start a revolt against Ultor. The one making the most noise right now goes by the codename Eos. Her group has been posting flyers urging miners to rise up against Ultor.

I know who Eos is. Worse yet, Ultor knows too. That's how I found out—by looking through Ultor security files. I want to warn her, to tell her that Ultor's on to her and is biding its time for some reason. But I can't bring myself to contact her; I can't risk exposure. They're watching her and they might catch me.

So I sit and watch too, hoping things turn out OK. I've been watching for years now, as things slowly fall apart, as the miners and Ultor get closer and closer to a final confrontation.

That's the way I've always dealt with the world—by sitting and watching. Even when my parents died. They both seemed like they'd live and work forever. One day, a little over a year ago, we had just finished dinner when Dad started shivering and twitching, more violently every second. He flopped onto the floor before Mom or I could reach him. His face was bulging and stretching like it was made of rubber. Lumps were moving around under his clothes too. Mom freaked out. I called the medics, but he was dead before they got here. They said it was the Plague and had no idea what caused it.

I'd heard of the Plague, of course. Lots of people on Mom and Dad's shifts had been hit over the last few years. It always struck suddenly. Sometimes the victim died within minutes and sometimes he was still alive when the medics took him away. None of the miners taken away ever came back, so I'm pretty sure they died too.

After Mom got over the shock of Dad's death, she got mad, really mad. Dad had been in for his annual checkup at our section's medical facility just a week before and she thought they should have found it then. She railed on and on, night after night, about the medics' incompetence and how they could have cured him of the Plague. She went in for her annual four months later and came back ticked off all over again. Turns out she gave them a piece of her mind the whole time she was in there. Three weeks after that, my supervisor came into the monitoring room and told me Mom had collapsed in the tunnels and died before they could get her to a medfac.

My annual checkup is in two weeks; I'm not going.

Since Mom's death, I've gotten bolder about probing the subnet defenses. I'm not going to sit around and watch things happen anymore. I don't care as much now if I get caught. There's nowhere near as much to lose. The apartment's so empty with just me here.

Sometimes, late at night, I wonder if what happened to my parents was my fault, somehow connected to my journeys into the computer net. In the light of day, it seems ridiculous, but I can't shake the feeling. Maybe something worse is going to happen to me if I don't stop.

When people whisper about escaping Mars and going back to Earth, I can't picture it. I don't want to leave; I want Ultor to leave. When I tell that to my friends, they either laugh or get scared that someone might overhear. Everyone's been brainwashed that Mars is Ultor and Ultor is Mars. When I think of not knowing why my father died on our kitchen floor, or my Mom out in the mines, I can imagine Mars without Ultor. I'm starting to believe it's worth dying for.