Virtuality

by H. L. Wegley

  “And if we can keep the three stooges, and whoever else is after us, from knocking us off.”

  Scoggins raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to speak.

  “Don’t ask.” Jess blew out a blast of air. “We’ve had some unpleasant contact with some very unpleasant people.”

  Vince chuckled. “And Jess always gives nicknames to people she doesn’t like. That’s why I’m Vincent van Gogh.”

  Jess shot him a glaring glance. “That’s a categorical error, Vince van Gogh—I mean van Gordon.”

  “See what I mean, professor.”

  Scoggins smiled but didn’t reply.

  “I don’t think we’ve solved any mysteries,” Jess said. “We just muddied the waters about who wants to kill us. We’ve identified at least three components of the underworld who would want our technology and that doesn’t even include the upstanding members of our society who might be willing to kill, or commit other crimes, to become obscenely wealthy.”

  “Professor,” Vince said, “Do you have any idea what kind of money we’re talking here if video games suddenly morphed into an addictive form of virtual reality?”

  “If you add addiction to the mix, the first company to bring a product to market could make fifty billion dollars the first year and nearly 200 billion by the second year—that is if they can keep their software engineers from getting hooked on their own product and dropping out of the real world. I’m only extrapolating from the current market for video games. But, if the porn industry got involved, and the government didn’t stop them, they could make a trillion dollars annually, a few years down the road.”

  Jess looked at Vince. “Well, now we know what the discussion between Patrick and Walker was about. You know, cutting his pay to get more game time.”

  “That’s it, Jess.”

  “What’s what?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out how Patrick could fund his research and development. How he could misuse Army funds to develop these games where everybody gets to be king of their little virtual world—be an NFL quarterback, a Hollywood star, whatever a programmer can code into a scenario.”

  Jess folded her arms across her chest. “And?”

  “He’s cut his labor costs down to almost nothing by paying his programmers with game time. They code up a few games. Whatever suits their fancy. And Patrick lets them play. But I’d bet this is getting out of control, about now, and Patrick’s back is against the wall.”

  “Regardless,” Jess said, “I can put a stop to this … with a little help from you. But it will mean defaulting on our DOD contract.”

  “That’s gonna happen regardless,” Vince said. “We’ve got to tell the general what’s going on. He needs to know before he discovers it and sends me to jail.”

  “Even if you stop this project, eventually, others will do what Virtuality has done,” Scoggins said. “It may take a few more years, but the technology and the problems it brings won't go away.”

  The professor was right. The problem with this technology was not going away on its own. “And we're talking about the addictive equivalent of a drug so powerful it will be impossible for normal people to stop using it,” Vince said. “They’ll have no desire to do anything except play their games until they die of neglect. That’s the end of society as we know it.”

  “Maybe we can stop this if we can bring a convincing case to the government,” Jess said. “If they view this as the end of American civilization, they'll stop it.”

  Vince’s laugh sounded like a snort. “What if they view it as a huge increase in tax revenue?”

  Jess shook her head. “That increase in taxes will disappear when everybody stops working to live in their fantasyland.”

  “The amount of money involved, and the powerful people who will stop at nothing to profit by the technology, means the stakes are high,” Scoggins said. “If you want to stop this, you need to move quickly. The players will know that being first to market is paramount, because it could make them the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. Many will kill for a chance at that kind of power.”

  “Yeah.” Vince shook his head. “So we’ve seen.”

  Jess clamped her hand on his arm. “This is spinning out of control, and it’s happening way too fast. I can buy us some time by stopping Patrick's work. Once I've done that, it will get the Army's attention. Then we can call a meeting with the contract administrator, General McCheney, and let the problem escalate until we get the attention of the Secretary of Defense.”

  Scoggins dropped his fist on his desk “Count me in. If you need testimony at your meetings with the DOD, or at congressional committee hearings, I’ll make myself available.”

  Vince drained his lungs with a long sigh “One way or another, it’s going to come to that, congressional hearings. If I’m still alive, I’m going to make sure it does.”

  Chapter 24

  Vince and Jess had almost reached the truck and she hadn't said a word during their five-minute walk from Dr. Scoggins’s office. Had the professor's revelations upset her?

  Time for Vince to prod. “How do you plan to stop the work on the project? Patrick's not going to let you waltz in and power the lab down.”

  The blank stare his question drew was clear enough. Jess was deep in thought, INTJ mode, and didn't want to be disturbed.

  When they reached Paul's truck, Jess stopped in front of the passenger door and waited.

  Good. She wanted him to open her door. It was Jess’s invitation into her thoughts. She was ready to talk.

  He walked around the pickup and opened her door.

  “Thanks, Vince.” Jess tiptoed and kissed his cheek.

  Vince wasn't going to complain but … “You have a wonderful way of saying thank you. What do you want, Jess?”

  “Is that all you got? I don't bribe people to get what I want, like some people I know.”

  “And what are you insinuating, Ms. Jamison?”

  “Remember that time when—never mind. But I do need something.”

  He nodded. “See what I mean.”

  “You need to take me to Paul's—uh, to your house.”

  “Not gonna happen. The bad dudes, the stooges—whoever they are—know where I live. They might be watching.”

  “Do you want to shut down the project or not, Vince?” The look she shot him stopped his reply.

  “Look, my gun is in my purse. We pray they won't come, but if they show up, we can use it to hold them off and get away. The stooges I saw are cowards. They’ll run from a real firefight.”

  Jess read people well but … “And how do you know this?”

  “I just do.” She set her jaw and stared him down.

  “Okay. Now why do you need to go to my place?”

  “Let's get in and go. I'll tell you on the way.”

  Jess had always been willing to take risks. But generally, only carefully calculated risks. Vince listened for an explanation, while he pulled out of the parking garage and worked his way southward toward 512.

  He was still waiting when Jess placed her hand on his arm and squeezed.

  When he looked her way, she smiled. It wasn’t the bewildering, enigmatic smile that threatened mischief, but a warm smile that stirred Vince’s heart, bringing his deepest feelings to the surface. Jess could ask for anything she wanted, right now, and get it.

  The look in her eyes said she knew that. But Jess had never taken advantage of the sway she’d always had over him. Whenever it came to a war of the wills, she barked out commands. Jess never played the femme fatale. Will and logic were her weapons of choice.

  But why the change? Maybe everything really had changed between them after they swam the river and escaped the falls. Maybe …

  “Here's the plan.” She sat quietly, evidently waiting for his reply.

  “I’m listening, Jess. But you could probably pull this off by yourself.”

  The warm look in her eyes faded to a frown. “You need to listen. This will take
both of us, Vince.”

  “Okay. How do we shut down this operation?”

  Jess blew out a sharp sigh. “I coded all of Paul's algorithms. I created the high-level language code and the firmware that’s in assembly language. When we moved that code to the lab, I used Virtuality’s software configuration management tool, TeamTech, to compile and distribute the binaries and to update the embedded code. I also used their DBMS to—”

  “Their what?”

  “Database management system. It contains the nerve impulse data and the system configuration data.”

  “Does all that mean you know how to distribute software and data to the lab?”

  “Yes. I can do it correctly or incorrectly.”

  “What do you mean by incorrectly?”

  “Paul had a manual for TeamTech. It’s at your house. It has all the commands available from the command line when you’re not using the graphical user interface. I'll use that information to gin up a script that logs me in as administrator—”

  “Administrator? I thought you didn’t have direct access to the lab.”

  “I sort of, accidentally, got the administrator’s password.”

  He gave her his best attempt at an evil eye.

  “Vince, don’t look at me that way. I wouldn’t hack a Top-Secret lab.”

  “Oh? Isn’t that what you’re proposing we do?”

  “I’m proposing that I write a script that walks the code directory, randomly twiddling bytes, scrambling all their source code. But I will first, back up the code and data to my USB drive. Oh, I forgot to mention, the system design documents are also stored in TeamTech. So we'll rip off the entire working system, including its design documents, and scramble the source code and all the binary executables from the latest compilation. Then we’ll distribute the nonworking code to the lab, delete everything in the system and get out of Dodge.” She paused. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re gonna hack a Top-Secret lab. But, Jess … can't they use a system backup to roll back to previous working configuration?”

  “Since when does a writer know about software configuration management?” She gave him her bug-eyed stare.

  “Well, I do have to manage different versions of my manuscripts as we edit them to produce the final manuscript. It's not a million lines of code, but it is nearly a million characters. And sometimes I have thirty versions before a novel is completed.”

  I've never thought about that.” Jess poked his shoulder. “Maybe it does take a little intelligence to produce a novel. I just assumed wordsmiths were like blacksmiths. You know, they just pound on things until—”

  “You mean like codesmiths hack on things? Or should I call them geeksmiths?”

  “Touché.”

  “Jess, you still haven't answered my question about how you prevent them from rolling back to an older version and going forward again.”

  “There are probably periodic backups stored offsite. Maybe on some DOD server on the East Coast to protect against catastrophic events. Recovery from those backups would take a while and we would have time to contact the DOD to get this place shut down and locked up.”

  “Yeah. That works.”

  “Here’s something else, Vince … something I’m not sure Patrick has thought through. At least he hasn’t mentioned it to me.” She paused. “Now that Paul is gone, no one knows the nerve-impulse code or the algorithms. They're just like black boxes to the application programmers. They don't know what's in the boxes. It’s the most complex code in the system. They could never replicate the part of the system that I wrote. They can’t take the product forward. And they might not even be able to use it in production if the last DOD backup didn’t include my latest bug fixes.”

  Jess was probably right about her part of the system, but … “Jess, when I write a story, I start with a synopsis and an outline. It's like the design documents for Virtuality’s system. Won’t they have something like that?”

  “I told you the design documents are in TeamTech. They’ll be wiped out.”

  “Don’t they back it up to the cloud?”

  “No, silly. This is classified code and data.”

  “That didn’t stop some other people from putting stuff like that on the Internet.”

  “That would probably be a violation of some military specification for classified systems. Paul and Patrick would never do that. But here's where I need your help, Vince.”

  “Something tells me I'm not going to like this job.” He gave her a corner-of-the-eye glance from behind the wheel and signaled to exit from 512 onto 405 South.

  “You've wanted to pound poor Patrick several times. Well, here's your chance. But he’s a wimp. So, hopefully, it won’t come to that. You just keep him occupied while I make backup copies of everything in TeamTech and then distribute the crippled code to the lab just before I wipe out the entire repository of code, the data, and the documentation.”

  “And you can write a script to do all that while you’re at my house?”

  “It's not that complicated. A Perl script can be written at any level—even like a stream of commands given to an application from the UNIX command line.”

  “Whatever you said sounds fine, Jess. I just hope it all works.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith. I'll test it at your house. It's not that hard to do.”

  “But you don't have Virtuality’s system at my house.”

  “I don't need it. I'll have the TeamTech manual to give me the commands, and I can dummy up the directory structure on my laptop.” She paused. “My laptop. It’s at my apartment. You need to swing by and—”

  “And give the stooges another shot at finding us?”

  “We don't have any choice. The UNIX shell, my Perl installation, and everything else I need is on that laptop.”

  This was not a good idea. These guys had almost killed Jess and him several times. He changed lanes then looked at the major frown on Jess’s face. “I guess we’ll just have to pray they aren’t watching your apartment.”

  Jess leaned against his shoulder and gave him a side hug. “Pray? It's good to know that you’re doing that again. When you walked away from me, I thought maybe you walked away from …”

  “No, Jess. I didn't. And weren't we starting over again? Like the last twelve years never happened?”

  “We are. But are you praying and trusting Him again? More than you trust in Vince van Gordon?”

  “Yeah. Can’t trust that van Gordon guy. He did some pretty stupid things.”

  Jess gave him that look that knocked down all his defenses, the look that made total surrender his only sensible option. “Maybe sometime soon, you can help this girl understand why you really walked away. Because no matter what you thought, it wasn't what I wanted, Vince.” Her voice broke.

  But had she wanted him to stay as her best friend or something more? If he could only be sure, Vince could put the past completely behind him. “Sometime, Jess. But for right now … can we just say it never happened.”

  Jess turned away, looked out the passenger side window at the Bellevue traffic crawling down 405 and wiped her cheeks.

  He would give anything for a do over of those high school years. And since he returned home, the evidence suggested that he and Jess could have been married by now, living their dreams together. They still might have a shot at that if Vince could keep them both alive.

  “Back to the subject at hand.” Jess cleared her throat. “You've been dying to look inside the lab.”

  “Dying? That's a poor choice of words. But, yeah, I want to know what’s really going on in there. And I can force Patrick to open the lab door.”

  “Then you can kill two birds with one stone—see what's going on in the lab and keep Patrick occupied while I'm in his office copying everything, scrambling the executables, and shoving it into the lab just before I blow away everything in TeamTech.”

  “But, Jess, can they unscramble what you scrambled?”

  “It’s not l
ikely. I'm doing it randomly, and I update my seed from the system clock at random intervals. Unless they get some people from NSA to help them, they'll never figure out what I did before we have the DOD and the DOJ after them for fraud and breach of contract.”

  “How long do I need to occupy Patrick in the lab?”

  “Uh … you may have to occupy more than just Patrick.”

  “What do you mean? Who and how long?”

  “When I distribute the nonfunctional executables, programmers, and anyone else using the lab, will know something's up because things will start failing. You know, things like the games Walker might be playing.”

  “Great,” Vince said. “If they realize what we’ve done, they’ll be hopping mad. How soon can we leave after that happens?”

  “You should take my gun, because you may need to control the lab by force for ten or fifteen minutes so that no one can come into Patrick's office and try to stop me.”

  Vince moved into the HOV lane and sped up to near the legal limit. “Any other surprises?”

  “Let's hope not.”

  “You mean you’re hoping the three stooges don’t show.”

  “Yes. Let's pray they’re out somewhere looking for us and not anywhere near the lab,” Jess said. “And when we leave the lab, we have to make sure they're not following us.”

  “Last question—when do we do all this?”

  Jess pointed to the clock on the dash. “It's 6:00 p.m. It will take me three or four hours to write and test the scripts and about an hour to drive out and sneak into the building. We’ll do it around midnight, while it's dark. That gives us our best chance of pulling it off.”

  “And what if something goes wrong?”

  “Whoever sees it first notifies the other. Then … I guess we both jump in your pickup and head for that cabin in Alaska.”

  Chapter 25

  Jess glanced at the clock on the dash as Vince exited the freeway at North Bend. 10:45 p.m.

  “Are you sure your script will work, Jess?” It was the third time Vince had asked that question since she tested it over an hour ago.