Lottery to Haven Page 2
‘He says no worse than usual, but you know what he’s like. He’s been coughing like a peasant all week. It just won’t shift. I’ve been smudging the house to cleanse the air and boost his energy, but… nothing so far,’ my mother replied.
‘Mom, you shouldn’t be burning things around him. It won’t help his lungs,’ I chasten, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
‘Bah, you young people think you know it all! Won’t accept the wisdom of your elders; that’s the real reason the world’s in a state, oh firebrand daughter of mine.’ I hear my mother working up momentum. It was best to weather it until she blew herself out like a late-season typhoon. ‘I’ve been tending your father since the day I married him, and he’s outlived every one of his brothers,’ she admonished. She’d always taken my father’s longevity as a mark of pride. I can picture her in the living room warding off the spirits of my father’s family having invoked them.
‘He hasn’t gone out in this storm, has he?’ My voice conveyed my worry.
‘No. While he’s a fool, he’s not so big a fool as that. Anyway, getting away from the city will do him good. The sage is fresher in the countryside, and we’ll be able to visit the shrines.’ I hear pen scratching on paper in the background. ‘Your cousin chose a venue for her wedding by the way,’ my mother said with fake nonchalance. ‘She’s been engaged three months now.’
I closed my eyes in resignation. Here it comes. As with any conversation with my mother, the topic was inevitable.
‘When are you going to marry? eh?’ she demanded.
‘Mom, stop it. You know I’m devoted to my studies at the moment,’ I replied wearily. That was another lie, I couldn’t give two figs about my studies, but it was the only card I held.
‘Studies! Bah. Marry the right man and you won’t need your studies, will you?’ she asserted with confidence. ‘I was chatting with my hairdresser, and she told me her daughter just married a doctor! She won’t need her studies, will she? No,’ she went on, heaping derision. ‘She can focus on having a family. And she’s years younger than you!’
‘I won’t settle for being some rich man’s baby factory,’ I replied petulantly. I pulled free the charging cable from my laptop and pantomimed strangling myself with it. I wasn’t in a video-chat, so my mother doesn’t see, but this tiny act of impudence makes me feel better.
‘Headstrong, that’s your problem. Too caught up in a world of misery to create a little happiness for yourself,’ she pronounced sadly. I begrudgingly conceded that she may have a point there. ‘Are you even seeing anyone?’
‘Yes mom. I’m dating a nice guy.’ While not true in the slightest, I felt it was my daughterly duty to give her a little hope. I typically described Taylor and his various exploits whenever she pressed me for details. I toyed with the idea of hinting that I’d planned on bringing my fictitious man over that weekend to meet them, but that little bit of mischief would cause me untold trouble down the road. Instead, I kept my silence. Other than plutonic Tayler, who was allegedly in a happy relationship, there were no recurrent men in my life. There never had been. I’d always been massively introverted, and prior to university I’d devoted myself to the gāokăo, studying for up to eighteen hours a day seeking admission to one of China’s top universities. My academic prowess hadn’t quite been stratospheric enough to grant me admission, and it had cost me my interpersonal skills. The whole concept of dating remained foreign to me.
‘Well good. I was beginning to suspect you didn’t fancy men,’ she ploughed on with the subtlety of an elephant.
‘Pah, mom. Can we not?’ I replied, eager to deflect her from the subject. Given my mother’s one-track mind for marriage, remaining here was a recipe for disaster. She was rigidly traditional, and her views on appropriate relationships reflected that. My views, by contrast, were far more fluid. Her barrages had been whittling me down, building up a sense that something might be wrong with me. It never failed to provoke deep discomfort in my core. In truth, none of the men in my life had triggered romantic notions for me. Even idly picturing Taylor in that role just seemed silly. As a friend and confidant, he was perfectly suitable, but a partner for life? I think not.
I tried deflecting the conversation before I inevitably antagonised her. ‘Look I’ve got to go; I need to get organised for uni.’
‘That’s not the only part of your life you need to get organised,’ she replied laconically. ‘Oh, before you go, did you see they’ve announced a new lottery?’
‘What?’ I asked in confusion. I was wrongfooted that my mother would change the topic from marriage; it was unheard-of. My sleep dulled mind scarcely comprehended it.
‘Another batch of trillionaires are headed to the colony. This time they’re looking for five. Anyway, I wanted to tell you, don’t worry about submitting yourself. I’ve already put you in.’ She sounded smug.
‘What,’ I repeated flatly. ‘I don’t think boarding a one-way rocket to the new world is a responsible thing to do. There’s so much that needs doing here on Earth,’ I stated, annoyance radiating out from my words.
‘You’re young; full of idealism and worry,’ my mother countered. ‘If they choose you, you can let go of your worries. And who knows? Perhaps your idealism might have a use there. Besides, they’ve got a gender imbalance,’ she added suggestively. ‘Always more trillionaire men than women. Let your mother dream.’ She laughed down the phone.
‘You know,’ I ploughed on resolutely, ‘that the odds of me being chosen are more than one in a billion. I’m more likely to become a trillionaire myself than win a place in that lottery. How did you manage to submit me anyway?’ I’d been wracking my brain and scowling, not that my mother could see. A DNA sample was needed to verify every lottery submission.
‘I sent in your old toothbrush, along with the forms. You left it here last month. I figured it’d serve just as well as a buccal swab. Oh! You need a new toothbrush by the way!’ More laughter down the phone.
I shook my head, incredulous. ‘I swear, if New Worlds picks me, I’ll be the first person to ever turn them down.’
‘You will do no such thing Jennifer!’ All the levity had disappeared from my mother’s voice. ‘If you win the lottery, you’ll go and enjoy a blessed life. It would almost be as good as seeing you married. Almost. Now, I hear your father wheezing in the other room. I should go. I love you.’
‘Love you too, mom,’ I replied.
The call disconnected and my mother’s icon disappeared from my phone’s display. The wretched lottery. One lucky pleb for each departing trillionaire. All to maintain the façade of New Worlds’ corporate altruism. The trillionaires probably just wanted a group of people they could lord it over to maintain a feeling of superiority.
I took a few deep breaths to calm myself while still balled up in bed. The rational part of my brain assured me it was pointless getting worked up over it. Despite the liberties my mother had taken, my odds of being chosen were so astronomically long that worrying about it was a waste of energy.
Chapter Two
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I eventually managed to motivate myself out of bed. Stripping down and tiptoeing into my tiled shower, I kept to my meagre water allotment as I washed away the night’s residue. I emerged clean and ready to commence my morning routine. First, I systematically check the air filters covering each of my apartment’s vents. Once I’ve convinced myself they’re clean and secure, I set my air purifier to the maximum setting for twenty minutes to break down the night’s bad air. Passing the desiccated corpses of my three house plants, I’m reminded that I’m a serial murderer of greenery. Of course, only the hardiest plants have any hope of surviving today’s deteriorated environment, even when tended by the greenest of thumbs. I lack any such gift. Finally, I reach my study area, where I bend down and plug in my UV lamp. It bathes my surroundings in a harsh violet-tinted light. Anaemic in power, it provides only limited nourishment for my pasty complexion, but I must scavenge Vitamin D any way I can. It
’s been over a week since my skin felt the sun’s true kiss. Sitting at my desk, I apply foundation and makeup, purely out of habit. Eventually I deem myself ready to commit to the day.
Reawakening my laptop, I navigate the cursor to the most recent tutorial recording. With a double-click, I set it playing. The screen splits into an interface populated by the various functions of my bespoke snooping program. Within quadrants are mirrored displays showing the slave PC’s screen, a transcript of keystrokes logged by the user, and cleaned up recordings from the machine’s inbuilt microphone and webcam. In case I should need it, I have a second window open running another program that recognises login screens and harvests username and password information. These stolen credentials allow me to impersonate today’s patsy for the purpose of downloading files or problem sheets needed to complete the tutorial. Over the years I’ve gained access to around two hundred and fifty sets of student social media accounts, and even a handful of banking client numbers and passwords. It was genuinely surprising how infrequently people changed their passwords.
These days, multifactor authentication usually prevented me from directly accessing many of these accounts, particularly the banking sites, but in almost every instance my victims provided me with a wealth of personal information. More than enough to convince a mobile phone carrier to redirect their phone SIMs to me, gifting me all subsequent multifactor verification codes. It was fortunate for so many that I wasn’t particularly nefarious in my hacker ways. I was mostly in it for peoples’ kinks. Uncovering another’s secrets gave me a warm feeling of superiority and satisfaction. I’d never felt the need to take things further.
Getting back to the task at hand, I quickly found today’s tutorial dull. I had to wait for the halfway point for the meat and bones to arrive, and by then the only thing impressing me was how the subject matter could be presented with such banality. It was an overview of how to diagnose common vulnerabilities in a master control system used by automated industries. Nothing about it was especially different from what had been covered in earlier lectures. Towards the end, a few interesting titbits arose in relation to recent circumventions of standard security protocols. A new vulnerability that enabled data scraping from within an otherwise well-protected client server was outlined, along with the corresponding patch. A bit of theory followed, wherein the patch was thoroughly dissected and mapped out against lines of shoddily written code in the vulnerability.
Towards the end, an unintentional highlight arose, wherein my host student, whose name evidently was Sun Yue, received a notification prompting her to open her email. I watched as she clicked on a newly arrived email from the Dean of Research, a personage well beyond the sphere of influence of us ordinary students. After skim-reading the email, Sun opened the attachment, revealing a signed letter of recommendation in support of an unspecified job application.
Seeing the letter triggered an upwelling of revulsion within me. My idealistic side prayed that she was the Dean’s daughter, or the daughter of one of his close friends, or any other nepotistic reason that explained her receiving it. Most other explanations for securing such a writ were disgusting and exploitative. My guiding pragmatism grimly informed me that such was the way the world worked for girls like myself. Winding back the recording, I cast a critical eye over the Dean’s letter, assessing its language and context. It was generic enough that it could apply to any female student studying my course. Most useful.
I checked the data logger and confirmed I’d harvested Sun Yue’s authentication credentials. With those, obtaining a copy of said letter would be child’s play. One option was to simply break into her email, but that would leave metadata tracing back to my computer. The safer option would be to log remotely onto the university slave PC and salvage the copy of the letter stored among its temporarily files. Once I had it, I’d only need to substitute a few of my details for hers, and I’d have my very own recommendation letter from the Dean.
The rest of the day’s tasks forgotten; I spent the next few hours perfecting a duplicate of Sun Yue’s reference letter. It took me until just before dinnertime to complete the task, but finally, on my desktop, was a near perfect replica letter sent from the office of the Dean of Research to me. Everything about it appeared as authentic as the most modern ripping software could convey. Using the letter would always pose a calculated risk—any follow up call from a prospective employer to the Dean would unravel the ruse, but despite my initial assessment, the tutorial session had proven exceptionally productive.
Later, after eating a frugal meal from my dwindling supplies, Taylor phoned me to compare tutorial recordings and impressions. Given we each maintained unique slave computers, these check-ins allowed us to cover one another in case one of our machines was shunned by the student population. This redundancy was rarely warranted—poor student attendance wasn’t an issue for our over-subscribed course.
After exchanging greetings and briefly discussing the tutorial session, I confessed to Taylor what I’d spent the past few hours doing. The haranguing started immediately.
‘Jen, you can’t use that letter. Any decent employer will follow up on it,’ came Taylor’s opening salvo. ‘Imagine how that phone call would go. In what scenario do you not get caught?’
‘Well, maybe the Dean doesn’t know Sun Yue personally. Who knows how many reference letters he writes in a year? He probably just rubberstamps anyone he gets a call about, provided they have a letter,’ I countered, voicing it more confidently than I felt.
‘Or maybe he’s got one very special cousin for whom he wrote one bespoke reference letter. I mean he’s the Dean! He’s not wasting his time writing reference letters for students,’ Taylor shot back.
‘That makes it all the more valuable,’ I say, wiggling my finger frenetically on my laptop’s touchpad to awaken it. ‘Fine, I’ll stalk the girl and see whether she’s some close relative of the Dean’s. But I’m certain she’s not; the letter’s too impersonal.’
‘What’s your explanation then?’ Taylor asked.
‘I think she’s special, all right. I think she performed some illicit, X-rated service for the Dean that he’ll want kept under wraps, and the letter is payment,’ I replied with distaste. Taylor looked admirably disgusted. From his face, I could see he accepted it as a possibility.
‘Promise me you won’t use it while we’re enrolled,’ came Taylor’s compromise. ‘It could trigger an investigation that ends with IT finding our devices in the PC labs. If they’re discovered, it’s both our necks in a noose.’
‘I doubt they’re that competent,’ I retort while scrolling through keylogger data from the tutorial. ‘Is that why you’re being so negative? You’re worried about your neck?’ After cross-referencing my authentication capture program, I find the username and password for one of Sun Yue’s social media accounts. I copy them over to a blank Word document.
‘You ought to be more worried about your own,’ Taylor shot back. ‘You’re being reckless. This isn’t a meritocracy; being the best won’t save you. Worse, you’ll make an enemy of the Dean. What would that do for your reputation? He could arrange for you to be expelled and barred from higher education.’
‘You’re wrong. I have nothing to lose,’ I replied. ‘Do you know what I see looking at this letter? A breaching charge. A battering ram for any door that’s barred to me for lack of influence. The only person with anything to lose here is our beloved Dean, and only if he chooses to make things difficult.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Taylor replied flatly. ‘People like the Dean never lose.’ He gave me a frank look that made me feel foolish. ‘Urgh, let’s change the subject. I’ve decided to enter the lottery.’
‘Sweet and merciful Jesus,’ I exclaimed, facepalming, ‘I thought you passed statistics. You know you’ve got a better chance of digging up priceless treasure in the heart of Shenzhen, right? Why waste the submission fee?’
‘Look Jen, I’m not going to argue this with you. It makes me feel better kn
owing I have a slim chance to improve my situation. I’m willing to pay a fee for that.’
‘Oh, and what does your girlfriend think about you leaving Earth forever?’ I asked accusingly. Taylor looked momentarily uncomfortable and averted his gaze. Clearly, she hadn’t been consulted. ‘What about your studies?’ I pressed. ‘That’s how you’ll improve your situation. I’m the born cynic here, remember?’ I switched to English to provide my best Highlander impression, ‘There can be only one!’ It was admittedly rather terrible, though it drew a half smile from Taylor. Regardless, he pressed on.
‘Don’t use the letter until your degree has been awarded,’ Taylor implored. He terminated the call before I could reply and diffuse the situation.
The abruptness of his departure left me feeling troubled. It was uncharacteristic of Taylor to hang up first, let alone allow my actions to affect him. To my mind he was the eternal optimist. I vowed to leave my apartment to visit him and smooth things over when next I emerged for supplies. But, despite his pleas, I was not dissuaded from using Sun Yue’s letter.
Returning to my online sleuthing through Sun Yue’s social media, I uncovered numerous unsettling similarities between her life and my own. She grew up in a close-knit family in a medium-sized city and had elderly parents who couldn’t afford to retire. Instead, they eked out a meagre existence living day-to-day. After an hour’s perusal, I’d formed a solid conclusion: she was definitely no relation of the Dean’s. Poor girl, I thought, she’d probably traded favours of the body for better employment prospects. I dearly hoped she hadn’t been naïve about it—most arrangements of that sort failed to deliver on the promised benefits. But then again, who was I to judge? Maybe she’d be the exception proving the rule. Reflecting on the ease at which I’d broken into her social media accounts, I dearly hoped it was the case. She clearly wasn’t cut out for cybersecurity.
After backing up the polished version of my mocked-up letter to several secure digital locations, I downed tools for the day. There was still an evening lecture I’d snooze through, but otherwise there was naught to occupy me. I turned on my outmoded flatscreen television to banish the sense of emptiness pervading my apartment. An interview with Zhang Hui was playing. I’d joined just as she’d begun outlining her decision to relocate to the New World. This dredged up my contempt. Throughout her interview, the picture transposed to imagery of pristine wilderness; the kind that no longer existed on Earth. Inwardly I scoffed. I was certain no film footage had been repatriated from the colony. None approved for public dissemination, at any rate. No doubt prospective trillionaires were provided with detailed imagery of their destination, but that it would so flawlessly resemble Earth of old was laughable. Why should it? It’d been settled for less than thirty years—not remotely long enough for a redwood forest to achieve the impressive heights being televised.