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Serial Experiments Lain - A visit from the Upper Regions

@LupinIII

Published in

Fan Fiction

· 7 Nov 2023

Serial Experiments Lain - A visit from the Upper Regions

This fanfic is based on characters and descriptions in a series distributed by Pioneer LDC. I make no claims on the characters from the series and do not intend to make any profit from this fanfic.

Ken Tashihara, FOTL and Koyashi were invented by myself.

IRC channels and networks,and NNTP newsgroups depicted herein are real and were taken directly from the internet. 3D video teleconferencing is possible but limited.

Acknowledgements are given to Distributed Computing, www.distributed.net and to its founder and President Jeff "Bovine" Lawson, who inspired a part of this fanfic. At the time of this writing, the RC5-64 encryption standard had not fallen, but all https browsers could use 128 bit encryption.

Permission is hereby granted to freely distribute this work by electronic means as long as it is done so in entirety, with all disclaimers and notes.

You may visit my website for this file and other works at www.geocities.com/bthies

Teisu

Teisu@my.host.net

Serial Experiments Lain - A visit from the Upper Regions

Lain moved effortlessly through the data stream of the Wired. What seemed like only days ago, the patterns and frequencies would have been considered breathtaking and quite beautiful if perceived by human eyes. Lain wasn't human, at least at the moment. She was only rumored to exist in the physical world, only three people had memories of her, and those were faint, vague, as if faded from a dream now forgotten.

Taro, the only boy to ever kiss her, caught a glimpse of her in the last e-mail she had sent him. Arisu saw a curious young girl and ran without realizing it towards her one-time friend. Her new husband had to dash to catch up. Then, facing the ageless young girl, she didn't realize who Lain was, or why she had reacted so strongly to seeing her.

Lain eased back from the flow and melded back into the upper regions. The act was more of a shift in concentration rather than actually moving, because she actually existed in both places at the same time. "Dad?" She sat comfortably at the kitchen table seemingly suspended in the air.

"The being was and wasn't her father. He looked like him, talked like him, smiled like him. He loved her, much as her real father did, and always was glad to see her. But this wasn't a physical being. This was Okami-sama, the creator of all things. His appearance at the table was only a tiny facet of his existence. Yet this was not an illusion. This was quite real. Lain appreciated the regard for her comfort.

"What is it, Lain?" The figure smiled and looked over his glasses.

"I've made a nice pot of tea, let's have a cup and talk about it."

"It's not that it's not nice here with plenty to do," Lain started.

"But I want some friends. I need people to talk to." She finished.

"Don't worry about it," he smiled. "I created this universe because I was lonely. I gave people free will, because to have a friend that can't be your true friend is pointless. You gave up your friends and your life to seek truth, heal the injured, and return life to those who were robbed. You destroyed the evil, which had invaded the Wired. You did not realize it fully, but you were doing my work. That's why I could not leave my child in the darkness," he explained looking kindly at her.

He looked thoughtful. "Seek friends out for us. Your place is the Wired."

"Where do I start?"

"Listen. Start with those searching earnestly for you. Listen to their hearts. They will tell you. Whether they are on a T-6 or dial-up at 110 baud, it doesn't matter. You can hear their heartbeats in the bytes."

Lain smiled at the words. "Thanks, Dad.

"Anytime. Don't stay away too long." The familiar surroundings faded and Lain re-entered the Wired.

The bank wire transfer manager looked grimly at his balance sheet. Although everything looked fine, he had the nagging feeling that the bank was being robbed. Transfers from Belize, Bahamas, Panama, Trinidad were few and far between, as a rule. But all were active in the same week, and for sizable withdrawals. The withdrawals were from major corporate accounts. Twenty-five million US dollars had flowed yesterday alone, to disappear into the vast cloud of the Wired. Sure, there were passwords, encryption standards, reverse name lookups, but an inside contact and a "man in the middle" scam could quickly drain the bank's resources. He had halted transfers, for a day, and was quickly re-assured that the codes were secure. The transfers and withdrawals continued.

Tashihara logged on to the system and linked to the Wired through the firewall.

"Copeland OS Enterprises."

"Networking interface."

"Connecting..."

Tashihara put on the goggles and headset and started the video conference. The goggles were transparent to the outside observer, yet projected a 3D image into the eyes of the wearer.

"Bovine." He spoke the single word into the headset.

A friendly face appeared. "Hey, Yen-man! Whatsup?"

"John, I know that you work closely with the major encryption companies."

"Yes, they make them, we break them." John chuckled. His loose knit group of computer users had done the seemingly impossible at times, breaking the "secure" structure of 40, 56,and 64 bit encryption algorithms.

This was done at the developer's own request. The challenge of the developer was to test the hypothesis of a determined government willing to spy on its citizens. There were also groups wanting to undermine a corporation.

The developers of the code systems offered various sums for anyone being able to decrypt a message without the key. The prize money from the various contests did not begin to cover the costs of running the non-profit organization. But the organization was well respected in the computing community, and used various sponsors to fund its activities.

"Have you come across any shortcuts? I seem to be having some suspicious activity at work."

"Industrial espionage suspected?" Even if Bovine knew the line of work, he would not say so.

"Just a hunch. The jerks upstairs have their heads up their asses, saying 'it's impossible'."

"That word is usually incorrect when used in the encryption business." John stopped smiling, knowing that this was a very serious matter. "Sorry, I haven't heard anything. But I'll put out a few feelers."

"Thanks. Contact me by placing an anonymous post in alt.messages.anonymous - attention yen-man. Use my PPG key."

"Just say 'use the usual method'." John grinned. "Keep cracking those keys!"

"Disconnected." The screen read.

"You are concerned that something evil is happening to your company?"

The words sounded clearly in his headphones.

"Damn, Security is eavesdropping on me again!" Tashihara checked the remote control daemon in the corner of his screen. "Inactive." It read. He checked the checksum himself and verified the executable against a CD-ROM archive. The file was clean.

"Has to be inside." He remarked, as he constructed a task list and looked for any suspicious activity. "Clean." It was not good that someone could take over his machine and the best antivirus and trojan horse detection programs just let it pass without a complaint.

"Yes, this is serious." He poised to close the daemon, then realized that he had better have a very good reason for doing so. Firing off a quick e-mail to security, he explained that he was troubleshooting a mild memory leak. The leak in this particular daemon was not common knowledge, So his explanation would be accepted when the patch came out in a week or so.

"There, whoever you are, you can't get in now." He remarked to the unseen presence.

"Well?" The voice responded. "You haven't answered my question."

Tashihara's stomach turned over. "Oh, shit!"

"A simple 'yes' would be more polite."

"Whoever you are, YES!"

"I am Lain." The familiar display faded and a picture of a young girl appeared.

"Sorry, I just realized that you prefer a more private conversation."

The goggles came to life and the screen reverted to the standard display, still displaying "Disconnected."

The colors and depth were flowing, swirling, and coalesced into the same form, now in three dimensions.

"Lain? I met you once." Tashihara recounted his wife's frantic pace to reach her. Then, there was the awkward situation of not remembering her.

"We weren't properly introduced."

"Sorry, Ken Tashihara." He bowed unconsciously towards the figure in his glasses.

"Lain Iwakura." The figure returned the bow.

"Miss Iwakura, you seem to have an exceptional knowledge of computers and networks."

"That is correct. I noticed that you seem to have a problem with someone pilfering though your bank."

"You?"

"A logical but incorrect statement, I am not interested in money."

"So why are you here?"

"I am looking for something."

"What would that be?"

"A friend. Are you interested in being my friend?"

"I am interested in you, but not quite sure I could be your friend, Miss Iwakura."

"Lain. Just call me Lain."

"You waltz onto my system uninvited, and tell me that my bank is being robbed."

"You invited me. Your heart invited me."

"Why should I trust you?"

"Listen very carefully. An account is being set up in your name in the Nations Bank in the Bahamas. The transaction is about to be sent to transfer five million US into it. The account will be drained, and one million left to implicate you."

"Can you stop it?" Tashihara paled.

"Yes, I am changing the passwords on the receiving bank."

"The transaction has failed verification." The apparition shifted colors to red in his goggles.

"You mind if I check?" Tashihara reached for the mouse and hesitated.

"Our meeting will not be affected."

He followed with some interest the consternation the failure had caused in the transfer room. All electronic transfers out of the bank were being suspended.

"So how?"

Lain shifted colors again and her image shifted to a green hue. "Your president is being blackmailed. He has cooperated with the blackmailers and allowed them to run various programs using the remote daemon. One of these extracted the password for your personal system. He then used that to gain access to your digital signature and PGP key."

"You mean?"

"Yes, he is aware of your suspicions and decided to remove you by casting the blame on you." Lain spoke in a childlike sweet voice. "My friend Arisu would be very unhappy if anything were to happen to you."

"Arisu has never mentioned you."

"That's because she doesn't remember me." Lain explained.

"You're a strange character."

"Yes, it does seem that way." Lain agreed. "You need to return to your duties, security will be here in moments. They will take your machine. Don't worry, your system is clean except for a personal e-mail from your wife. Leave it to give them something to find."

"How will I contact you?"

"Connect to the Wired. I'll be there."

"Thank you, Lain."

The scene faded from his eyes without any more words.

"Mr. Tashihara, please step away from the computer." The burley man spoke gently. "No problem, Koyashi." Tashihara carefully rolled back from the computer. "May I have permission to remove the goggles?"

"I'll do that for you." The giant was polite, and only used force if he was provoked. Because of this, even as a member of the "Goon Squad, he was well liked and respected. His large hands carefully stowed the goggles, and Tashihara was escorted to the security office.

"Just routine, have a seat." The secretary nodded. "Would you like tea? You may be here a while, so if you have a preference for lunch, let us know."

"Chinese, chicken lo mein," he answered. "Yes, tea sounds fine."

"Come in Ken," the security manager motioned him to sit down. "You have a remarkably well organized and up to date hard drive. I can only criticize you for occasionally reading your personal e-mail on company time. But that's not even worth a mention in my report," he acknowledged. "Thank you for your patience. Your company paid break is over."

"Ok, ok, I'm on my way back." Tashihara smiled.

A new machine sat where the old one had resided. "A new Navi?"

"I had just finished debugging the old one." Tashihara sighed. "Oh well, here we go again."

"Hello Navi." He spoke clearly.

"Identify." The system responded.

"Ken Tashihara."

"Please put on the video interface goggles."

Puzzled, but having no objections, Ken complied. "Goggles are on, Navi."

"User registered. Ken, you have new mail." The machine announced in a female voice.

"Open it."

"From: Digital Signatures, Inc. Dear Ken, your previous digital signature has been invalidated and a new one issued against the retinal scan submitted by you."

"Save or delete?"

"Save."

"From: Akagi Security internal." "Attached email folder from your previous machine."

"Save attachment." Ken smiled.

"Scanning prior to save. No viruses detected, folder saved." The Navi continued.

"From: Lain." "How do you like your new Navi?"

"Save or delete."

"Save." Ken commanded.

"Message deleted."

"Open trash." Ken said startled.

"Trash empty."

"You have no new mail." The Navi responded.

"Let's get the security daemon installed." Ken remarked.

"Installing." The Navi responded.

"Unable to comply." "Security daemon sideband program attempted to access user password files." "Security daemon flagged as trojan horse." "Security daemon terminated and uninstalled." "Security daemon removed from file server to quarantine directory."

Ken, sent a note to I.S. about the required daemon and decided to continue working.

"We have about 3 billion dollars US in transfers in the queue." The scheduler remarked worried. "If we can't transfer the money, We will have to pay about $500,000 in interest."

"Let me monitor, start transfers."

"High security engaged." The Navi spoke, uninterested.

"Receiver validated. Transaction completed." "Receiver validated. Transaction completed." The navi intoned the same sentence over and over for the next few minutes. "Packet spoofing detected. Transaction cancelled." "Transfers paused." The Navi awaited further instructions.

"Resume transfers." Ken spoke into the headset. "Receiver validated. Transaction completed." The next few hours were uneventful. "Good. We got almost everything except for the transfer to the Romanian Import/Export Bank."

"It was only four million. Only..." Ken shook his head.

"A rather touchy Navi, you have there." Ken watched the security manager through his goggles. The security manager looked concerned. "It refuses to accept the daemon. It also halted a transfer. The manufacturer says that there is nothing wrong with either the software or hardware. Maybe I should get your other one put back together." The man leaned to catch a comment from an associate. "Oh, it's already been imaged and is sitting on someone else's desk. So forget that idea. I need a report on why it cancelled the transaction," he added.

"Compiling transfer abort criteria report." The Navi displayed the words on the main screen. "Send, save, cancel?" "I anticipated your questions." Ken said nervously. "I can send you the report right away."

"Fine. I'll be looking forwards to reading it."

"End Connection."

"Send the report, Navi."

"Report sent."

"Ken, it's time for you to go home. Do you have a task for me to do while you are absent?" The Navi prompted him.

"Verify through Zurich about the transfer that did not go through. Verify whether the transfer request was a fraud or not." "Search, inquiry, and verification modes active," the Navi responded.

"Get the rest of the stolen money back." Ken remarked, mostly to himself as he pulled off his goggles. He did not notice the little box that appeared. "Script generator. Program name: recovery. Work station locked."

"Hi, Honey!" Arisu greeted her husband at the door. "What's wrong?" Arisu looked at Ken's strained face.

"Tough day. We had transaction problems. I was shut down by security, then I was cleared. My computer was seized, then I was given a new one."

"I think you would have enjoyed a roller coaster more," Arisu smiled at him. "Tomorrow will be better."

"Strange day. Not much could top it. Say Arisu, do you remember the little girl on the pedestrian overpass?"

"What was her name?" Arisu mused. "Rei. No, that's not it. Lain." She nodded her head. "Why?"

"I met her again today."

"Oh. Where?"

"On the Wired."

"Chatroom?"

"Hardly, 3D video with spatial sound, on a private channel."

"I don't follow, that's only for bank employees and approved contacts."

"That's right, but there she was, a most impressive hack."

"That's not something little girls are known for." Arisu looked worried.

"I can't figure whether or not she was internal or external to the bank's network." Ken thought aloud.

"What did she want?"

"Basically, a friend, and to help. And another thing, she remembers you."

Arisu nodded. "To help?"

"There are some bank problems I can't discuss, even with you." Ken looked serious. "Yet, Lain is fully aware of them. It's like she needs permission to do anything."

"Sounds funny, her knowing about the problems."

"I know. But I think she is really who she says she is. Without her intervention, I could have been in serious trouble."

"Well, you're fine. You want dinner now? It's lo mein." Arisu smiled at him, knowing it was one of his favorites.

Ken blinked. "Sounds great!" He remarked with enthusiasm.

---- The apartment was quiet. Arisu had kissed him goodnight and gone to bed. Ken did his research in the quiet of the late evening. A 10am to 6pm work schedule made the commute easier, but cut a little into their time together. Arisu was up at 5am to commute to the school where she taught.

Ken went into his study and booted up the PC. Checking the e-mail he groaned. "109 messages - only one legit! Damn spammers."

He had never given out his e-mail address, but Arisu had sent him a "Wired Postcard." The e-mail had arrived. He dropped it immediately into the trash, unopened, but the damage had already been done. Within 24 hours he was on at least 60 mailing lists for every conceivable porno site and get-rich-quick scheme on the Wired!

"This is not spam!" One message pledged.

"Yeah, you son of a bitch! So where did you get my e-mail address!" Ken argued.

In a few short minutes, he glanced through the messages and dumped about 80 of them. Flipping quickly through the remainder, he got to the one he was expecting. Bovine sent a false message on PPG which had been compromised. Ken applied ROT-13 to the garbage and read the text.

"From Bovine:

Nothing to report on any breakthoughs. Check with some of these hackers. Go to channel #2600 on Undernet, set your identd as COS VI and they'll let you on. Moo."

Connecting?

Welcome to Undernet. Type /motd for the message of the day. You have been invited to join #2600. #2600 is a private channel.

"/join #2600" Ken typed.

Welcome to #2600. "Hacker wannabees will be castrated and there(sic)pink nads will be canned and used for shark bait." "Imaginative insults." Ken thought.

Hotshot: "So yen-man, who are you, and what do you want?"

"Bovine gave me the key to the front door. I am someone who works for a bank. I want to know if the 128 encryption standard has been hacked."

Hotshot: "Well, the mighty cow's crew will probably break it in 3 to 5 years. But there are no shortcuts that we know of."

"Thanks." Hotshot: "NP."(No Problem) Hotshot: "We don't get a lot of visitors, Yen-man." Hotshot: "Meet anyone interesting on the Wired recently?"

"Well actually, I met a frighteningly efficient hacker who breezed through a firewall as if it didn't exist. Then she identified a problem on my hard drive, and left without leaving a trace."

Hotshot: "What OS?"

"Copland Version 7.1 Beta"

Hotshot: "Whew! That's one tough nut to crack!" The hacker acknowledged.

Hotshot: "The hacker leave a handle?"

I'm not sure if it's really a handle.

Hotshot: "It doesn't matter, name, label, handle."

"Lain."

Hotshot: "What channel?"

"Full video conference in 3D."

Hotshot: "You talked with Lain eye to eye." "Yes." Hotshot: "I think you're full of shit."

A separate window popped open. Doggystyle: "What did she look like?" "Brown hair, lopsided, tied funny with a white thin ribbon on one side." About 12 years old. And she changed colors a lot." The window closed.

"Doggystyle slaps Hotshot around with a large trout." The message read.

Hotshot: "Sorry, Yen-man, I just read your description from DS."

Hotshot: "Don't give her description in the open, of course." Hotshot: "You need anything, WE MEAN ANYTHING! You come back here and let us know!" "That's for your hospitality. There is something I would like." Hotshot: "Go for it!" "Get the stinking spammers out of my e-mail box."

The DCC window opened again. Unknown: "Ken, we'll consider it an honor." Unknown: "We don't reveal real names here either." "Thanks, I gotta hit the hay."

Ken closed the window.

Unknown: "Night night."

"/quit"

Ken felt the goodbye kiss from his wife in the early hours. He rolled over and waited for the alarm clock to sound at 8 am.

Ken ate his muffin and drank instant coffee with milk. He turned on the kitchen TV to catch the weather report.

"And the hacker group FOTL has interrupted at least 500 mail servers all over the country. The major spam entry points have been disabled through reprogramming of the devices called routers, key pieces of the Wired. Most Wired providers have been provided clear documentation via anonymous e-mail of how to prevent their systems from being used as 'spam relays'."

This informative document also contains 'How to avoid being an unwitting spreader of spam- the layman's guide.' It will be available on this station's website."

"Authorities are publicly outraged at this 'sabotage' of the 'free flow of information.' But privately, everyone this reporter talked to are laughing up their sleeves."

"In the communication from FOTL, they mentioned a new high priest, who was 'being spammed unmercifully.' They took it as an attack against their sect."

As business and personal e-mail is unaffected and the Wired is actually about 70% less cluttered today, it is unlikely FOTL will ever be identified, much less apprehended or prosecuted."

"FOTL." Ken smiled. "What sort of initials were those?"

"Checking e-mail." Ken yawned again. A morning person he was not.

"One message."

Ken opened the message apparently in gibberish. Applying the simple decoder, his stomach knotted at the message.

"Greetings most noble and chosen one. As per your most humble and reasonable request, we have stopped the actions of those who offended you. Per our charter and sovereign one, we have not damaged information, persons, software or hardware. We have simply reduced static.

Signed (One who pierces with fervent heat.)

"Hotshot." Ken smiled.

"Any idea what FOTL means?" The reporter on the TV was asking on the street. "Finding Out That Later." One interviewee suggested. "Freedom Of Time Liberation." Another, a businessman offered.

Click. Ken turned off the set.

The train into town was full but hardly the mad cram that occurred at 7am.

Arriving a few minutes early, Ken was getting settled.

"Mr. Tashihara. The comptroller looked grimly at his report. "We have an intial estimate that about 95 million dollars is missing from US corporate accounts in our bank. Naturally, we have replaced the disputed funds. We have traced the missing funds to various underdeveloped country banks, were it was laundered and transferred elsewhere."

"You kept saying that something was wrong, but we were not cautious enough." The comptroller added.

"I hear you averted another 4 million loss yesterday. I got your report from security. A nice piece of work." We're going to start tracing some funds today and see how much we can recover, but it appears that a very high official in this bank was involved."

"I agree, but I myself was implicated when my passwords, digital signature and PPG key were extracted from my workstation." Ken admitted.

"Extracted? How?" The comptroller had some computer security knowledge and knew that personal passwords were not allowed to be in the possession of anyone but the owner of the account. Even administrators were not allowed to set passwords to anything except the account default where they had to be changed on the next log-in. Using a workstation under a different user name was a termination offense, even for a manager.

"Running a shadow program in the security daemon." It runs every possible alpha-numeric combination against the password file. My Navi spotted this yesterday. I suspect that every machine in this control center has been compromised."

"Well there is one that hasn't - yours." The comptroller smiled sadly. "I am ordering the security daemon to be uninstalled from every machine in this corporation!"

Ken went back to his workstation.

He noticed the small box flashing. "Workstation locked." "Recovery program complete - script terminated." Ken donned the eye goggles and headset.

"Good morning Ken." "Good morning Navi."

"Would you like your morning report?"

"Yes Navi."

"Zurich bank in response to the Romania Import Export Bank." "The 'man in the middle' scheme was uncovered and the parties arrested in New York."

Next item: "The recovery program was completed and all but $300,000 was recovered."

"Recovery program?" Ken asked puzzled.

"At 6:02pm yesterday evening, you submitted a job to 'get back the stolen money'. Do you require operating parameters and final results of the submitted job?"

"Yes, please Navi."

The printer spit out five pages of a detailed report.

"Mr President." The head of security politely addressed the bank president.

"Yes, Bob."

"I have a warrant for your arrest. There is $300,000 missing from the bank. You embezzled it and used it to fund your mistress' lavish lifestyle. She left you anyway. Then, she and her associates threatened to expose you and send you to jail. So you were willing to sell us all out to save your precious coward's hide!"

"I didn't want to go to jail." The president admitted ashamed.

You could have come to us quietly and resigned, a man of your talents could have done fairly well, with non-negotiables. We could have arranged compensation for the bank. Now its too late."

"Who caught me?"

"Tashihara. He even got back all of the transferred money."

"Remarkable. Bob, I have one little favor to ask before I leave."

"If I can."

"Ask Ken to head the bank. His honesty was the only fault I had with him. He's young, but he understands the business."

"I'll speak to the board of directors."

"Thanks."

"Let's go." ---

Ken supervised the transactions with satisfaction.

There was a lull until the top of the next hour.

"Take a break." He announced to the shift. Keep one operator on with me until you get back. Then I'll take a break with him.

"Hello Navi." Ken spoke.