Redeeming The Golden Ticket To Life

After lunch, we re-assembled in the auditorium. The host once again walked up to the stage and talked on and on. 

Long story short, if the first round was the game of fastest finisher then the next round is a game of attrition. People have to really dig in there.

They called for the participants to step on the podium. 

I started to walk towards the podium.

"CEO Hu, are you getting down to the battlefield yourself? Let your coder handle it?" that annoying CEO from Zebra company blocked my path to the podium.

"Excuse me," I said and walked past him. He is really trying too hard to make himself more established.

I saw him smirking at me, as I walked by, from the corner of his eyes.

I ignored the middle-age man and made my way through the crowd to the podium.

Their other participants were establishing their technical accessories. I looked around for Cyrus, but he was nowhere to be found. I called him up. His phone rang, but no one picked it up. I called Ming Li.

"Where is Cyrus?" I asked as the call got connected.

"Boss, someone tried to play dirty with us. They tried to make Cyrus disappear. Don't worry about him, I got this. He is right by my side here, talk to him," he replied.

"Hello boss, I am sticking with Ming Li here, any way you are going to go up the stage for the next round. Amaze them, make them astounded by your charisma and glamour."

"Stop flattering me. Tell me, who did this to you?" I asked.

"The CEO of some Zebra company in tow with some government officials. Thank God that Ming Li appeared when he did otherwise you would find my innocent self behind the bars."

"Pass the phone to Ming Li," I said.

As I looked down to my watch, there are still fifteen minutes to go, to the start of the second round. 

"Hello, boss Ming Li here, what are your directions?" He asked.

"Nothing at the moment, just keep Cyrus out of trouble. Rest I will handle here."

"Okay boss. Go break a leg!" 

I ended the call and then finally moved to my station.

I start to check the provided system for any signs of tampering. I already suspected foul play but they crossed their boundaries dragging Cyrus into the muddy cesspool.

The system hardware is fine, I started to comb through the software.

After fine searching for any worms or parasite code, I found nothing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the battle begin," the host announced.

The timer started to run, I simply plugged in the pen drive that Bai Chang gave me and wrote a single line of command.

For this round, the organisers arranged a holographic representation of the complete uploaded code for the audience to look.

As I pressed enter, the holographic projector linked with my system started to display.

Thousand and thousands of lines of code started to bunch up together. For other people, their codes were still in the process of uploading so most of the holographic projectors were showing just lines after lines of codes.

Next, my projector started to display a wall made of codes, next a room made of codes, after that it developed into a castle made of codes, and finally it started to display a 3D image of a thirteen-century fortress. 

The codes always have coders mark in it, however small or big, if you search the dark web, no matter which coder you come across they all have their signature marked in the code.

Bai Chang did warn me before giving me the drive, she said, "You would be amazed and the world would be tongue-tied on the creation I made".

Now looking at the majestic fortress made up of only numerous lines of code, I find myself proud.

(I was feeling like a peacock, the only difference among us would be, that peacock flaunts his tails to attract his partner, while I was flaunting my wife's programming skills, which, I will later rub on all our hater's faces.

Yeah… Go Wifey!)

I look around and other participants have all finally uploaded their codes.

One of the projectors projected a 2D sheet pf code with an eagle letter mark.

Another one looked plain 2D sheet of codes, but if you look closely you would see every fifth line had a palindromic sequence of codes, repeating itself.

There was another one, whose projection showed a bunch of codes following an odd and even pattern throughout the coding sheet that was displayed.

Nothing came close to my wife's creation. She is unbeatable.

Other stations are furiously working on their systems to maintain their firewall integrity.

As this round, everyone can hack into other firewall systems to damage the actual code's integrity and also to prove to outlast their competitors.

I refrained from attacking, as they witnessed it from their first round, if The Hu Corporation starts attacking, then this round will end before it even starts.

It is virtual so any attack on the code leads to changes which could be visualised from the holographic projections. This also makes it easy to locate your enemies weak point.

The government and the participating companies would attack and defend alike.

I witnessed as the other companies were battling it out. Their codes changed literally at the pace of 100Hz per second. They had so much happening, while in comparison when you looked at our company projection, it stayed calm and absolutely still.

It was a fortress just as displayed. 

There were loads of activity happening behind the scene, on my monitor I could detect multiple attacks all multi-pronged.

They were literally coming after my code but they couldn't influence the code one bit.

Time passed by fast, people sitting in the audience finally caught onto the nuances of the battle that was being fought on the podium here.

People started to talk among themselves. 

There were loads and loads of people in various technical units tediously working behind their system to drag that fortress down. If not, drag it down then to atleast make a dent in the code.

Alas! They failed.

From the start of the timer till now, after typing the start codes, I didn't lay a finger on the keyboard.

I saw in one corner that I identified as a surveillance camera's blind spot, a small group of government technicians talked among themselves. It was hard to ignore them as their discussion was very animated, whatever may be the topic.

(Go! Go! Get Feling, while you are at it.)

I saw the press reporters pointing their cameras at me. I simply continued to look at the monitor in front of me.

As I was spectating other people's work. I witnessed the odd and even sheet of codes to get destroyed by a high-grade trojan horse.

Next, the eagle's flight was cut short. They were caught in their blindsight while they were trying to fix one end of their code by the palindromic sequence sheet of codes.

'Well that decides the finalist, I guess?'

The palindromic sequence was from that Zebra coding company.

'Why am I not surprised at that?'

I looked into the eyes of their CEO. The middle-aged man, looked quiet pi**ed.

If he could he would have murdered me.

But is it so easy to kill me? 

'I guess after not showing my claws in public for some time, they seemed to have forgotten the actual me. Should I reveal them soon?'

While I am contemplating my plans, the programmer under Zebra company was sweating buckets.

The organisers and the bidding committee was spectating the whole event from the control room across the auditorium behind a glass window. Even they were having an animated discussion. Finally, they stopped.

'It seems they concluded.'

Then discreetly Feling showed up.

I smirked to myself, 'You finally decided to grace us with your presence, huh?'

I avoided any direct eye contact with the man himself but I kept an eye to where he ended up going.

I saw him jacking up a spare system to the Zebra company's system and then the intensity of the attack changed.

On my monitor, I could see all types of worms and malware code, thrown at the fortress.

But the funny thing was, that it did not budge.

I tried to imagine myself in my opponent's shoes, and needless to say, it gave me creeps.

('I really don't want to end up against my wife's bad side for any reason whatsoever. She will crush me, just like how she is crushing them; even without being physically present here in the event.')

Feling was not messing around, there was attack after attack but no respite for him. Even though I felt bad for him, while inside, truly, I was gloating at him for trying to mess with my Queen.

"What happens when they actually meet opposite each other on a battlefield? Zhang Wei said that she is battle-ready, what did he mean?" I think aloud to myself.