Hospital Visits

*Beep*

*Beep*

After waking up from his anguish yesterday, James recollected what had happened. He was immediately driven over to Brigade City's hospital, which was where he was now. The car ride was nerve wracking, as he had no information about his father's condition, he didn't even know if he was still alive. Alex drove James over, but James told him not to stay. The car ride over was awkward enough, as Alex couldn't give condolences to someone who might still be alive.

The beeping of the monitor that showed his dads heart rate, signaled that he was still in fact breathing and living. What was yesterday's anguish was today's annoyance. Now that James knew his father had suffered little to no brain damage, and was completely fine, the anguish had become a price tag that would be taken out of his savings.

'F***,' James thought to himself.

James had no insurance and neither did his father. The whole trip would cost around 4000$, let alone the cost of the medicine. James was glad that his father was okay but he was overall much angrier that he had a new financial burden.

The hospital room was very dreary. His father had yet to wake up, so his breakfast was set on top of him in a TV dinner like tray. Yellow slop, apparently eggs, and bread was set upon the tray. The walls were white in color but were slightly tainted after not being repainted for years. It smelled of lemon cleaning products, but in a very overpowering way. Through the paper-thin walls, James could hear coughing, screaming, and puking all at once.

James was ready to leave now that he had learned of his dad's health situation. He asked the nurse for a piece of paper and pen. James wrote on this paper," Call me when you wake up, -James," he stuck this paper down on the breakfast tray and exited the hospital, opting to run home since he had missed his trip to the gym today, because of this. He also was excused from school because of the family emergency, so he had absolutely nothing on his plate today.

***

James had just arrived at his gloomy apartment. He threw his house key on the counter of the kitchenette and entered into his room. He quickly got changed into some non-sweaty clothes and threw his sweaty clothes into the laundry basket in his room, which was actually just a cardboard box he put his dirty clothes in, so that he could easily take them to the communal washer and dryer on floor 5.

A familiar dinging sound played; this was the sound of his computer being fully powered on. James immediately checked his notifications and saw that Boogle had replied to his bug bounty submission. The response was sent to James's B-Mail. He clicked the notification and immediately his laptop displayed a wall of text that was Boogle's response:

[From: Boogleteam@bmail.com]

[To: Me]

[Thank you for your hard work, we at Boogle thank you from the bottom of our hearts. It goes without saying that you will be rewarded for your efforts. You have found many small errors in our code, although this doesn't match the huge weaknesses we asked for in the bug bounty, it still helps us over here at Boogle a lot. We have wired a payment of 3,000.00$ USD to your attached PayFriend account. Thank you for your contributions!

Sincerely,

Boogle Support Team]

'Well, that takes care of most of the medical bills,' James thought to himself. He wasn't concerned with seeking out new bug bounties, as he already was content with the remaining 7,000$ he assumed he would have after paying for his dad's bills.

James went into his virtual machine. (The fake computer, inside of a computer I mentioned before) He quickly activated a VPN and went back to the empty domain. Using the list of computers he had found, he realized that there were only 5 computers that could access the information in this website. These computers, though, all were identified to be virtual machines, and not real computers after James quickly referenced their operating systems. (Windows/IOS, are examples of operating systems)

Basically, James realized that he might be able to gain access if he could spoof, or falsely, make his hardware match the computers that could gain access. That was easy enough, but sadly nothing in life that's worth it is easy. He would not only need to match their computer, but their exact location, and not just their exact location, but their exact IP address. This was nigh impossible, so James would need to find another way into the website.

Something that had intrigued him while completing the Boogle bug bounty came to mind, though, during this current situation. The website's code contained a link back to the blank domain. Showing that the two had relation.

James spontaneously got up and pinned a piece of paper to his wall. He wrote the two domains of the two website and put them on the wall, then drew a line connecting the two. Above the two pieces of paper he wrote in chicken scratch writing," The Web of Secrets." After James was satisfied with his handiwork, he got back to analyzing the first website.

***

After hours James heard his phone ringing, he had turned of vibration mode as he was expecting a call from his father. His phone display read:

[12:03AM, Tuesday]

[Incoming Call: Dad…]

James picked up the phone. He heard weeping from the other side. After minutes of silence and soft crying sounds James finally heard his father say

," I'm sorry James, I swear to God I'll quit this time, I'm quitting gambling and drinking for good."

James wanted to believe his father's words, but as he had heard this many times before, ultimately only his father's actions could decide the future. James felt his eyes burning, but no tears released themselves from the wells of his eyes.

James replied," Don't worry, I've taken care of all the medical bills, you just better never do this again or else it's you paying them back. I love you, I'll come see you tomorrow."

Brent replied back," No need, they're using a shuttle to drive me back tomorrow, since I'll be out by then. I'll see you after school."

James hung up the call after saying his goodbyes and proceeded to throw his phone back onto his mattress.

Before he was interrupted by the call, James was pondering upon what he had found on that empty domain. The "Web of Secrets" drawn in the corner of his room had increased in size, now totaling up to 4 pieces of paper. These had the names of 4 domains written on them as well as images of locks that were locked or unlocked depending on the different domains.

Previously, James had cracked through the encryption on the original website, it revealed to him a list of three domains, one being the one he used to bug test. The other two were hosted with .ru domains, this meant they were hosted in Russia. This was very odd to James, as Boogle was a strictly American company. He couldn't understand why they would buy websites hosted in Russia. This wasn't the weirdest thing about the domains though, they were all random strings of letters and numbers, seemingly having no real meaning or purpose except making sure that only people that wanted to reach these websites could.

Another weird part about the domains he found was that it seemed as though they were all hidden behind different levels of security. The bug test one had very low encryption, there was another domain that seemed to have an encryption level between the bug test one and the original domain. The fourth one though was like studying quantum physics versus normal physics, it couldn't be compared to the previous three with how difficult the encryption was on it. He had cracked the one he used to bug test and the original one, both of them revealed the same three domains, the only difference being that instead of including themselves they included the reciprocal domain.

At this point James was wondering if they were all just bug tests for a new encryption system, but then he remembered he had forgotten to check if there was anything encrypted behind this first level. Basically he unlocked the first lock, that didn't mean there wasn't anything hidden beneath this lock. If you break into a house, that doesn't mean the safe inside will be unlocked just like the front door was, for a simpler example.

He set a reminder on his phone, and then tried to sleep, whatever was hiding, or not hiding, behind that decrypted website could wait till tomorrow. James was very tired, so it wasn't long until he entered the dark abyss that is sleep.