Deception ; Game of Lies

Chapter 001 - Exploiting The System of Truth

On the midst of the chaotic noise and scorching heat, Aigen pulls Einzig's blue sleeve while catching his breath. He breaks their awkward silence by complaining like a whining toddler. "The school is a bit far, why don't we just hop on a Jeepney or something?" With a vulgar laugh Einzig responds "Heh! I already spent all my money on the café. Deal with it, brother."

"But I can't...I'm too exhausted"

"That's because you're out shape. You should go to the gym sometimes. Aside from that, weren't you the one who asked me to come with you to the school?" Einzig releases an honest punchline that made Aigen thinking.

"Fine. This could act like a good workout, I suppose." Aigen said while both of his hands are resting on his own waist.

After a long walk, they finally reached the school campus. On the roof of its corn-colored mid-rise building, is a huge, round logo with College of Kalamansian, 1982 written on it. They were greeted by the guard with a smile. As it is summer, only the teachers, student council and other staff are the ones present and Aigen is one of them. His election as the Assistant Secretary of the Student Council gave them the privilege to enter.

They headed to the final onslaught, the Computer Laboratory found on the second floor of the building. Aigen grabs a set of keys from his jean's pocket, putting it on the knob and twisted it ninety degrees to the right to unlock the thick, wooden door. He points at the laptop resting beside a school's desktop unit.

"That's the laptop. Just hope that the battery's not dead, I don't have an AC adapter. Do you have one?" Aigen tells Einzig

"I use a desktop" he replies

Einzig booted the laptop. The device is a bit slow, taking at least ten minutes just to open. A login interface appears on the screen, showing a blurry portrait of a young girl the same age as they are. The username says 'xShirox'. He scratches his black-haired head in confusion.

"So...What am I gonna do with this, and who do you think is this girl?"

Aigen responds with a flick "Didn't I brought you here to bypass the encryption and know the secrets of that laptop? You said you were a hacker at the convention. We need to look at the files!"

"What the actual...I said I was a computer programmer and a life hacker, not a computer hacker. I'm good at getting away with things." Einzig laughs loudly like he's the only person in the world.

Einzig is a skilled computer programmer, but he is not a computer hacker. One thing that people commonly misinterpret and generalize is that being a programmer is being a hacker as well. They fail to comprehend that hacking is mostly reverse engineering something that a programmer has developed. Although programmers are creators, most of them fail to reverse engineer their own creations as they only use a programming language, which is then translated by a compiler to a computer language. Now, for them to reverse engineer, they have to understand the computer language, a language full of zeros and ones.

"Use your life hacking skills, perhaps?"

Einzig has stopped talking, using the silence as his advantage to think of a good idea. He simulated each idea on his mind, before suggesting them. However, all of them were either useless or impossible.

"How about we take the hard drive?"

"That would be impractical, we don't have a screwdriver, and if we do, the school's CPU cases are sealed anyways. Where would we put the hard drive? In addition, we need to see it right now or that hell of a walk we did will come in vain," Aigen counters his statement.

"Okay...What if we just ask the school's technician to help us?"

"No! No! No! What we're doing here is confidential, you baka. Military secrecy, 'kay?"

After a series of failed attempts to bypass the laptop's security, Einzig has finally managed to think of a brilliant idea. He reaches for his sling bag, grabbing a white flashdrive. He puts it at the laptop's USB port, then restarts it. As it rebooted he pressed a key, then a keyboard-controlled graphical interface flashes on its screen. It says BIOS, or the Basic-Input-Output System. It is the firmware of all computers. With it, he changed the boot order to be able to install a new Operating system using the flashdrive.

"Bingo! Good thing I have my Obuntu Genius 18.10 LT's bootable flashdrive with me. It has a feature that installs alongside other OS like Macrohard Vindows, allowing dual boot. To put it simply, we do not need to make a new partition. This way, we can directly access Vindow's files while using Obuntu Genius without needing to know the owner's password" he shouted excitedly.

Aigen opens his mouth in amazement, tapping Einzig's shoulder "You're a genius, bro! I freakin' hate you."

The only problem now is the slow processing of the device. The processor is so weak that the two have to wait for like a century just for the installation to be completed. It was a brilliant idea, but turns out it was inefficient. Each passing second is like a glass slowly shattering. They are wasting time to a thing that has no guarantee. That didn't matter to them, though. They waited patiently with no despair,like camping snipers, waiting for some enemies to come at their traps and be killed.

The two remained quiet for the whole duration. Only the sound of the laptop's stuttering fan can be heard. The long wait is finally over with the operating system finishing installment. Einzig drags his mouse to the left, a sidebard fades in. The Vindows and Obuntu partition are both displayed on it. He double clicks on the Vindows partition, taking another ten seconds to open.

"This will all fit in my flashdrive. Ha-ha-ha" Einzig says with a slow laugh

Aigen responds, not knowing it was a fallacy "Really? That's so cool! Your flashdrive is really useful, it can handle a lot of data. I've never thought we could actually come to that point in life. The future is now!"

"Y-You idiot, It was sarcastic. Do you have an external HDD or SDD there?"

"Sorry, I brought nothing with me today." Aigen nodded sideways indicating a sense of disagreement.

"Why are you always unprepared? This is bad luck then. Since we can't take that laptop home, we have to scan through all the files."

They surfed through the file library, starting with the pictures to get a hint about the laptop's owner. Several pictures depicted a young girl with glasses, then a picture of her with a group of people which looked like her friends. The girl's pale skin makes her standoud from the rest. She has a long, curly hair that looks bouncy. Her smile will quickly make someone fall in love.

"I think she is the owner" Einzig declares with indication of doubt.

"Einzig, Let's try looking at the documents. Her name is probably written in at least one of them."

Einzig drags the mouse cursor to the documents, and begins to read some of it. A lot were either school works or projects, and on their headers was a name written as 'Ailice Marahuyo'. Her grade level and section were also indicated as 'Grade 12-A' which means she was not studying there. College of Kalamansian orderly ranks their sections by numerals such as 'Grade 12-1'. He scans another document, but this time it was some sort of free-writing. It was not comparable to classical literary arts, but it was well-written.

It was already nightfall, and the remaining things on the laptop were the programs they didn't bother checking, so they decided to go home. Changing Aigen's mind, he finally allows Einzig to bring the laptop home.

~~End of Chapter 001~~