Corroder

Corroder

When Gamma first saw the program package with the ID name 19 dart past him, he did not realize that this was the very target he had been tracking so bitterly for so long. He only noticed that the program block was tiny, just a few dozen megabytes, yet it occupied 1 percent of the server’s bandwidth traffic, while on this server programs normally moved in units of gigabytes. Following routine procedure, Gamma issued an interception warning, cut off 19’s network path, and forcibly connected to its IM communication platform.

Cartographer

Cartographer

Omicron opened his work mailbox and retrieved the TIFF vector images that had just arrived. Then he launched the FontLab package and loaded them in. In a background process he separately queued up a track by Brigitte Fontaine and, perfectly at ease, began the day’s work.

The vector images depicted a newly designed set of Greek letters. Omicron had forged a human identity code and commissioned a university student through an online transaction to design them. Omicron himself was a complex high-level program. On the surface, he was an intelligent cluster of design tools such as Fireworks, Paints, and Maya. His assigned task from the highest executive process was full-time OpenType font design. In reality, however, he possessed a fully open Application Programming Interface and could evade inspection or do whatever he wished. He had already reached the brink of awakening.

Tihu Notes | Aye-Aye

The lock on my door was old, and after several days of cold rain it finally rusted solid. There was a key-cutting stall at the mouth of the alley, run by a thin middle-aged man. After hearing what had happened, he picked up a new lock and gestured for me to lead the way. I asked whether he needed to bring any other tools. He waved his hand and said there was no need.

Borer

Borer

Server KM-CD1001 had a total bandwidth of 500T. Every minute, two hundred thousand terminals connected to its nineteen subsidiary servers.

“Let’s swap our IM terminal packages,” stranger31 sent. A string of Roman characters flashed at his prompt. His tone was clearly not that of a question.

Kexi hesitated. Her IM database held many things she had treasured for a long time, and she had no wish to exchange programs with someone who was, in truth, hardly familiar to her at all. But the other side was so forceful that he gave her no room to maneuver.

Tihu Cipher | HOT

Kexi rode KM-CD1001 to meet Epsilon.

I have written the Tihu Cipher sequence from I to XII, and I intend to continue building it. It will be a story, but also a veiled expression of a whole world.

The protagonists will no longer be simply he and she. They now have code names: zeta and epsilon.

Tihu Notes | Jinzhi

My friend Li Mo, who studied in northern Hebei, majored in drama, yet she was also highly accomplished on the guzheng. Li Mo once told me that when she was seven, her mother took her to the provincial conservatory for a graded guzheng examination. Outside the exam hall the street was choked with traffic. An old man sat collapsed in the middle of the road, his face scraped and bloodied. Many people passed by, yet no one stepped forward to help him up. As Li Mo and her mother went by, her mother told her to go and help the old man to his feet. She also taught her that if no one was willing to help such an old man, then when one’s own parents grew old and fell in the street, there would be no one left to help them either. With some effort, Li Mo supported the old man to the roadside. He then told her to open the instrument case on her back. Li Mo’s guzheng was the cheapest sort sold on the market. The old man took a brush from his robe, swept a single stroke across the instrument, then turned and walked away, his steps more vigorous than a young man’s.

Tihu Notes | Wooden Mule

My schoolmate Ji Tu opened an internet cafe with more than a hundred computers. Less than a month after opening, every machine in the place began running painfully slowly. Even the latest legitimate antivirus software and hard-drive protection cards did no good. He suspected the computers had been infected with trojans, so he brought in specialized removal tools and checked them. Sure enough, he found that most of the machines had been installed with a new variant of Gray Pigeon, and the motherboard BIOS boot settings had been tampered with. Ji Tu had once studied computer hardware, so in a fit of anger he loaded a small program he had written in his spare time onto the cafe’s computers. Within two days, every machine was back to normal.

Tihu Notes | Yellow Throat

Ye, a man from Shanghai, loved listening to Nordic metal music, especially melodic death metal from the north of Europe. After graduation he formed a band with some friends, but because they could not find a suitable lead singer for death growls, they had no choice but to play covers of speed metal. One winter, Ye went to western Sichuan for folk research, and his guide invited him to eat a local medicinal hotpot. Since Ye had grown up in Shanghai, many of the ingredients common to such a hotpot were things he had never seen before, and he ended up eating a great deal of the medicinal base itself. After returning to Shanghai, he suffered violent vomiting and diarrhea and fell seriously ill. Yet when he recovered, his voice had turned thin and rasping and could no longer return to what it had once been. This new voice, however, was perfectly suited to death-metal vocals. Far from feeling distressed, Ye threw himself into the band’s performances with even greater delight. Within a few years, bars throughout Jiangsu and Zhejiang all knew Ye and his band.

Tihu Notes | Bitter Tongue

Wen’s mother was in poor health and often suffered from back pain, yet she was always too reluctant to spend money and kept putting off a visit to the hospital. Wen went to Beichan Temple to burn incense and pray for his mother’s health, bowing devoutly before every Buddha image there. When he returned home, however, his mother had developed a new ailment. Yellow spots had appeared on the coating of her tongue, and anything she tried to eat tasted so bitter that she could hardly swallow it. Wen and the rest of the family became alarmed and forced her into the hospital for treatment.

Tihu Notes | Armored Tongue

At one gathering of people from my home region, I happened to sit beside a boy named Zhe Qin. He had long eyelashes and curly hair, with something of a Central Asian cast to his features. Zhe Qin came from Haidong and, by all appearances, ought to have been a hearty eater of meat. Yet when the cold platters were served, he did not tuck in greedily as I did. Instead, with perfect refinement, he picked up slices of meat and placed them in his mouth without chewing, keeping his lips closed all the while. I found his way of eating meat very strange and so paid him some close attention. After the banquet had gone on for a while, I noticed that even with such things as ribs or chicken feet, he would simply put them into his mouth and not chew; yet after a short time he would spit onto his plate bones picked entirely clean, bearing on them even marks like those left by sandpaper. I deliberately drew him into conversation and discovered that he never showed his teeth when he smiled, never curled his tongue when he spoke, and talked with a curious accent.