CHAPTER TWO
It was just one week ago, when I logged on to the remote chat server using my laptop in the usual way. Sitting cross-legged on my bed, snacks on one side of me, a bottle of carbonated drink on the other. The central heating on high despite the late summer sun shining warm rays through the gap in the drawn curtains. My fingers typed rapidly, I touch-type easily without having had a lesson, purely the result of many years of practise, online conversations via chat servers and writing pages and pages of code.
While I was browsing the messages, a chat box opened. My buddy in Portugal. One of us. We all used assumed names, I mean, who wouldn’t do that on the internet, right? You think the information you put out there is in any way safe or secure? Think again.
Portugal, aka Federico, aka anonymous, usually kept to one word messages, I presumed his English wasn’t very good. In that respect, this message was no different.
“Danger
Busted
RUN”
A man or indeed woman of few words. This was worrying.
I replied with “???”
Federico came back “They got Gunther + Xin”
Oh Shit. Gunther and Xin were hackers like us. They were no amateurs, so how could they have been caught?
Especially Xin, he was one of the best.
“How?” I asked.
Federico went silent for a few moments that felt like forever. I stared at the blinking cursor, willing it to move. Finally it did “No clue!!!” Then “Gunther DEAD. Xin DEAD.”
Quickly I typed “WTF?”
And Federico replied “FAKE suicide!!! DISAPPEAR. NOW dood.”
Ordinarily I might have corrected him on his spelling of ‘dude’, but this time the thought didn’t even occur. The icon showed that Federico was already offline anyway. I pictured him, or her, hurriedly stuffing clothes into a bag and going on the run, a fugitive, never stopping, always changing their appearance, their identity.
I tried to think logically about it but my brain was confused and losing focus. If Federico was right, and the others had been busted, no, Federico said DEAD. Then we were all targets. It would be only a matter of time before they came for us too. But, Jesus, how was I supposed to just ‘disappear’?
Despite my non-mainstream interests, I lived like anyone else. I had a bank account, credit card, rent account, mobile phone, family, friends, everything ordinary people have. Everything THEY would now be able to use to track and find me. Damn it.
In my mind I attempted to reason that this was England and it couldn’t happen here. It might be more believable if this was the United States or Mexico or somewhere, but not here.
On the other hand, two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand people go missing every year in the UK alone. Okay, I had to at least try and contact the others in the group, maybe Federico had got it wrong.
Logging into a chat server I put a call out to contact ‘sensible’ Harry in Canada. We were all equal within our group, there were no leaders among us and all decisions on any of our actions were taken democratically. We decided from the start that we all had to agree on the actions we took, none of us would go rogue, and if any one of us disagreed with an action, we ditched it altogether. But we all kind of looked up to Harry, the sensible one, the one I knew would set this thing straight. I knew very little about him, but often imagined him to be older, perhaps due to his apparent wisdom.
Harrys name lit up, and I straightened up - poised to type - but before I got to strike a key, a message appeared for me.
“Band split, no more music.”
Damn, so it was true! I began to respond but got cut short by Harrys next shocking coded message “X + G dead against it. Freelance now.”
I carefully typed “Sad news bro. Be safe. Heading out.”
And that was it. Gunther and Xin were dead. Federico and Harry were gone, and since I couldn’t get any response from Jack or Theo I guessed they’d also got a heads up and flown, or maybe they were already dead too.
Grabbing my rucksack, I stuffed a few things into it, all the time trying to think about where I could go to hide out until the heat was off, or until I could take on a new identity and live somewhere far from here. Shit! Was that really the length I would have to go to in order to stay alive?
I assumed they would be tracking me down, if they hadn’t already, and could arrive at any moment to pick me up, or murder me. I also had to assume that they knew who my family members were, and my real-life friends, the bars I hung out in, the shops I bought from - basically, every move I ever make - down to my preferred brand of toothpaste.
So the homes of friends or family were no-go areas, after my own flat those would be the first places they’d look. I wouldn’t be able to contact anyone to let them know I was safe either. Any contact was dangerous to them and to myself. My parents and my sisters were safer not knowing, though it hurt to imagine how they would be feeling when they knew I was ‘missing’. I physically shook my head to dislodge that thought. Right now I needed to focus and move fast.
My thoughts turned to what I should take with me, what items I could safely use, and what would be of no use to me in hiding. Anything with my name or photo on was of no value now. However cash money, the little I had, would be untraceable and therefore crucial.
The realisation really hit me then, that the authorities were on to me, the real me, not some anonymous pseudonym on the invisible web. Therefore it was the real me that had to vanish. I would have to become somebody else, perhaps quite literally for the sake of my own life.
Okay, focus. There was no point in taking my wallet, so I emptied it of the cash I had, threw the wallet, cards still inside, down on the bed and pocketed the cash. My mobile phone landed beside it on the bed too, it could easily be used to track me, I had to leave it.
I stuffed a few items of clothing into the rucksack, all the while thinking up a plan. I would have to live below the radar for goodness knew how long. It was autumn, not the best time for camping, and It would soon become much colder, so I would have to take warm clothes, waterproofs, as much as I could to help keep me from freezing. I dragged my old sleeping bag out from the back of the wardrobe, and located a gas stove, mess tins and other camping paraphernalia I hadn’t looked at since my teens when I actually used to go camping with my buddies.
From the kitchen I grabbed the tin opener and as many food tins I could fit into various compartments of the rucksack. I also threw in a single set of cutlery and a small plastic drinks beaker.
One final look around my flat from inside the front door, before closing it gently behind me. Later it would occur to me that I did this to try and avoid alerting the neighbours of my leaving. The less they could tell the authorities of my movements the better.
It was hard to leave behind some of my possessions, personal items that had meant a lot to me, but there was no way I could take it all with me and no time to pack it up and put it in storage.
I slipped passed my car in the driveway. Another pang of sorrow for leaving it, a vehicle would be useful, but my car was sure to be one of the first things they’d be looking for - of course they would already know the license plate and have it flag up if I tried to go anywhere in it - so it, and therefore I, would be too easy to locate. If I’d had a reasonable amount of money to offer up I might’ve bribed a local kid to drive my car away somewhere, I’d tell them to take a day trip, go far. But I didn’t have much cash and needed what I had for buying food and some water later on.
It was going to be difficult enough to dodge the multitude of CCTV cameras as a pedestrian, never mind the traffic cameras. I’d always been fairly aware of the presence of cameras, on street corners, in shops, at the top of free-standing poles. Apparently there is currently one camera for every thirty-two UK citizens. Always watching, spying, monitoring us.
For our own safety.
Not for mine. They could be used to help them to find and kill me. And for what, t
aking down a few websites for an hour or two? Those companies could afford their, to my mind quite deserved, financial loss. I rather suspected they incurred greater losses from a damaged reputation. Again, we should not be held responsible, since the damage occurred as a result of the very actions our group sought to highlight for the benefit of the masses.
In a parallel universe this might all seem too far-fetched, indeed I would probably be taking things less seriously if I weren’t aware of the fate of Gunther and Xin.
Nervously I looked up and down the street - half expecting to see squad cars screeching up at the end of the path like in the movies - and only when I felt the coast was clear did I slink away, keeping close to the bushes on the darker side of the street.
Thoughts turned to getting access to the internet without being traced. I had left my laptop behind with everything else. There had been little point wasting time deleting files or web history, if they were in my home looking at my laptop, it was foregone that they already knew who I was and what I had been doing. But I needed to get connected somehow to find out more of what was going on.
With my hood pulled up tightly across my face, partly to hide my features and also for reasons of practicality, guarding against the cold August wind, I made use of deserted back alleyways and side streets toward the closest internet cafe I knew in the city.