Dark Obsession

With moonlight beaming down from a cloudless sky and shining against his chocolate-colored skin, Max looked down at his watch which read 4:30 a.m. He stood from a crouched position behind a long row of shrubbery and crept down the small knoll toward the house. Dressed in all black, like a Ninja, it was easy to blend in with the shadows of the night. Nothing had been overlooked. Everything was perfect.

He’d waited for this moment for years. Long ago, his beloved Eva had been savagely taken from him, but now the time had finally come to correct that terrible wrong. Some had said that he was insane, but little had they known what he’d recently discovered. Now the entire world would tremble before the terrible power of what was to come.

Being a rather large man, 6'3" and weighing about 230 pounds, he moved very fast and was also very agile for his size. No doubt all those years of martial arts training were

finally paying off. It would be an easy job to scamper up the side of a wall or down a chimney. Whatever trick that was needed to get into the house would be no problem. Besides, he already had all of the equipment that was needed for this job.

He moved up to the fence surrounding the house and looked both ways. There was

no sign of the two dogs. The drugs slipped into their food earlier that evening would surely keep them under for at least another couple of hours. The electric current in the fence had also been shut down when he’d shorted out the transformer box to the house. Now everything was dark around the old place.

He climbed over the fence, jumped down onto the front lawn, and scanned the

area again. There were many security cameras. They were hidden in the trees, on the corners of the house, and two more on the roof. Their movement also indicated that they were powered by an outside system, maybe an off-grounds generator. No matter, he’d never be recognized in this disguise.

After slipping a black ski mask over his bald head, Max dashed across the lawn and up to the porch. He again looked both ways and saw that everything was still clear. Good! Ahead, the front door was shielded by a steel gate, but this was no problem. He was fully prepared Quickly, he withdrew a small hand-held cutting torch from his utility belt, flicked it on, and placed it against the lock. The torch’s three thousand degree flame cut through the metal like it was butter. Five minutes later the lock fell to the ground and the steel gate swung open. Then, with a well-placed kick to the front door, he was in. No internal alarms went off and the place was still dark. Everything was proceeding according to plan.

He again reviewed the blueprints of the large house. This was the master ballroom. Good, the computer center was just down the hall. It wouldn’t be long now. With his flashlight cutting through the darkness, Max looked about the large room and saw expensive furniture, silverware, plush carpet, and many other items of leisure. The big man had built an empire off of the Internet. Unfortunately, this man had used other people’s ideas when building this online empire, but had not given any of them the credit for their work. The common man meant nothing to the great Rick Summers. But tonight, Rick Summers would get a taste of his own medicine.

Max hurried through the large house until he reached the computer room, which was located in the center of this maze. Along the way, he’d tossed small, electronic sensors across the floor and then closed the door to the computer room. These marble-sized transmitters would detect motion if some unexpected visitors came his way. Always play it safe and let nothing interfere with the main plan was his motto. After weeks of planning, months of suffering on trivial jobs, and after so many years dreaming about this moment, the master plan was about to start at long last. Nothing would stop him this time.

"Hmm, where do I start?" Max sighed, looking about the large room. The place looked more like the inside of a computer factory. Two mainframes lined both sides of the thirty foot wall, and several smaller units were connected to the monitor on the table near the back of this room. A dozen or so wires were connected to the keyboard in front of that monitor. Oh yes, everything was already hooked up and the computer was probably on too, he figured.

He walked up to the keyboard and touched a key. The monitor snapped on and the words "password needed" appeared in an icon box in the center of the screen. This was it, Max smiled and placed a CD disk in the "A" drive and hit enter.

The ingenious program on the disk was truly a masterpiece. It had been used to crack open databases all over the world. By simply running through every possible combination of both letters and numbers in the ten digit space code, it could easily come up with the correct password within minutes. Being able to zip through a billion individual combinations a minute, no standard computer’s security system could block its access without becoming overloaded. This program was fail safe ... a new electronic lock picker for the 21^st century.

Within two minutes, the monitor changed colors and a very long list of files scrolled down the screen. He was in the master database. There was no time to select individual files because there were thousands of them. He’d just have to copy everything on the hard drive.

He took out the first disk and replaced it with a steel-plated CD that could hold thousands of times as much information as a standard CD. This was a little invention he’d once killed for. That dead fool at MIT would never have used his invention for anything of any value anyway, Max mused. Working as a terrorist for the last several years had made him conscience of the more practical uses for such inventions.

After hitting the enter key, he waited, allowing the computer to download all of the files of this massive program. A few more minutes would not matter. He’d waited for almost sixteen years for this moment. Now all these years of living in the shadows, fighting against the oppressors of the world, and battling personal demons were about to come to an end. Just a little more time and he’d be on his way. The ultimate treasure would be his at last.