Waypoint: A Game of Drones

by C. F. WALLER

  I wake to three missed calls from Kara. I stare at the messages in the inbox, but don’t listen to them. There is a text from last night, sent when I didn’t answer my cell.

  KARA: Will have the computer up tomorrow. Call me if you need me.

  “Why does it feel like I do need you?” I mutter, feeling suddenly alone since arriving.

  There’s a Keurig in the room, but I can’t figure out how to work it. That’s not completely accurate. I don’t feel like figuring it out. I stumble down to the lobby barefoot in only jeans and a t-shirt. Complementary coffee is served from a pot at the end of the front desk. A young couple checking out glance at me briefly, then look away. My reflection in a mirror behind the desk reveals a wicked case of bed-head. It suddenly dawns on me why they supply Keurig’s the rooms.

  I sit on a couch watching CNN on a wall mounted flat screen. A woman pulling a rolling suitcase frowns at me. I have to pull my legs off the small glass table in front of the couch so she can pass. Everyday people wandering around like nothing is happening, while on the TV screen Chicago burns. What the heck is wrong with America?

  Hal calls and informs me that he and Elliot Weiss will be in San Diego tomorrow, although I try to explain the Four Seasons is actually located in Carlsbad. Clearly, our intelligence agencies are re-locating west in lieu of the civil unrest. When I ask about Weiss, he’s guarded, but reveals my deception that resulted in his capture was shrewd. Any further investigation by me is headed off by promises to see him tomorrow. I watch a Downton Abby Marathon on PBS all day, then fall asleep thinking only one thing. Lady Mary is such a bitch.

  Pounding on the door wakes me, a situation I am getting used to. I crawl to my feet, but am surprised when no headache assaults me. I’m temporarily confused, then realize there was no drinking the previous evening. I didn’t drink and still slept. Will wonders never cease. When I pull open the door, the blank face of Agent Katz greets me.

  “We are in 236. Freshen up and be down there in thirty,” she orders, then turns and walks away.

  “I really missed you while we were apart,” I exclaim, leaning into the hall, wearing only a t-shirt. “I hope we can catch up soon.”

  Katz never looks back, but a woman coming out of a room one door down nearly plows into me when I turn around. Her face freezes in horror when she realizes what I am wearing. Or not wearing in this case. Her husband enters the hallway behind her and I take the opportunity to duck back into my room. I use the majority of the time to shower, then swing through the lobby for coffee. Keurig be dammed. When I get to room 236, Katz is leaning on the wall outside.

  “I should have brought you one,” I frown at my cup. “Sorry.”

  “Inside,” she grunts, rapping twice on the door without taking her back off the wall.

  Another of Hal’s guys, I think he name is Barnes, opens the door from inside. This room is more of a suite, than a standard offering. There’s a living room area, a bedroom and a small kitchenette. Besides Weiss, only Hal, myself and Barnes are present. Weiss is sitting at a small table with two chairs just off the kitchen area. He’s bald down the center, with neatly manicured hair on either side. Square, wired rimmed glasses sit perched on the end of his nose. A laptop sits open, the sound of the cooling fan running audible from the doorway.

  “What’s he got?” I ask.

  “His copy of the game runs fine. I don’t know what that laptop is, but it’s not off the shelf at Target. He was waiting for you. Wouldn’t spill until you got here.”

  “Lydia,” I hold out my hand to Weiss.

  “I was expecting someone else,” he frowns, giving me a weak shake.

  “The Lady Grey.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was there when I posted my phone number.”

  “And now?”

  “Not involved,” I remark, taking a seat.

  “That is a shame,” he sighs, then leans back and crosses his arms. “I was looking forward to seeing her again.”

  “So, Mr. Weiss,” Hal plows ahead. “Just exactly how did your software wind up on the Quantum Cube?”

  Weiss stares at me, then glances at Hal. It’s clear he was expecting Kara. Will his cooperation lessen as a result of her absence? Maybe I should have brought her along? After a pause, he decides to speak.

  “One of your men acquired a guest pass for me on several occasions to visit the Talus facility.”

  “We already talked to Dr. Bishop.”

  “Yes, well, he needed some sample programs to load on the Cube. It wasn’t just me, he consulted all sorts of private sector software people.”

  “But you’re the only one who actually set foot inside the lab,” Hal indicates.

  “I wouldn’t know about anyone else’s access.”

  “Did you gave him Dynasty Evolved as a test subject?” I inject.

  “No, a few others, but never Dynasty. He would never have uploaded an intuitive program like that into a vacuum.”

  “A vacuum?”

  “The Cube was wiped after every test. Dr. Bishop didn’t want any contamination until he was certain the Cube was working as intended.”

  “What do you mean by intuitive program?” Hal asks.

  “The new version of Dynasty Builder was a free form simulation. Lots of games have that now,” he stops to think. “Grand Theft Auto, Sky Rim, these games are an open format.”

  “Meaning?” I ask.

  “The player can go in any direction he wants, rather than the old way in which you had to just do whatever was next on the list. A world that’s free to explore.”

  “Why is that dangerous?”

  “On a laptop or console, it isn’t. There’s not enough memory to stray too far outside the lines,” he lectures, then removes his glasses and rubs his forehead. “But you don’t want to put that in a vacuum with no operating system.”

  “Is that what happened?” I ask, feeling my phone vibrate in my blazer. “You indicated that he didn’t upload it.

  “No, no, I’m the one who overstepped. I couldn’t get Dynasty Evolved to run on a console. It was far too large, too big for most PC’s as well. I didn’t understand why at the time.”

  Hal and I wait, preferring to hear his story unfiltered. Hal nods for him to continue.

  “Dynasty Evolved would not run on a console because to do so, it had to re-write its own code as it played,” he sighs, then notices us looking stumped. “The game freezes because it grows as it plays, eventually crashing the system. Smothering it so to speak. I wasn’t aware of this until after I put it on the Cube.”

  “You indicated putting it on the Cube would be bad?” I suggest.

  “Dr. Bishop was called away for a personal matter on the last day I visited his lab. Security let me in, unaware that he had left the building. I didn’t know why my game wouldn’t work, but I thought the Cube might have a large enough platform to run it. I figured if it wouldn’t run on the Cube, I should quit my day job.”

  “Did it run?” Hal asks.

  “Yes, yes, it ran like crazy. I watched the code on a monitor, but then a funny thing started happening,” he reveals, pausing to swallow. “The program started rewriting itself, as if it was altering its own DNA.”

  Hal puts up a hand and we all freeze. He turns and points to Agent Barnes by the door, then waves him out of the room. Apparently, the conversation has reached a sensitive spot. Once the door shuts, the chat continues.

  “Wasn’t that expected?” Hal asks.

  “Expand, yes, but not crank out thousands of lines of code. At first I was lost in academic vanity. I pulled up a stool and started taking notes. It was amazing at first.”

  “At first?” I press when he pauses.

  “Then the code turned to this,” he frowns, turning the laptop a half turn towards us. On the screen are lines of code buzzing along the screen. It’s as if a typewriter was writing and an unseen hand was hitting the return bar. The letters pour out on the line, then pop down and start the next. It runs from le
ft to right, then right to left on the return trip. As if it was filling a glass with water. An entire page is written every ten seconds.

  “Are those Cyrillic characters?” Hals asks, leaning closer. “Or Mandarin maybe?”

  “Neither, the program is using its own computer language,” he declares, hitting a button and freezing the screen.

  The letters, if I can call them that, are more like ink blots than symbols. Some are thin, while others are thick. I can’t be sure which direction they are being read with them scrolling back and forth.

  “Then, what?” Hal asks. “You just left it like that?”

  “Of course not. I realized what was happening and hit the kill switch.”

  “Kill switch?” I ask, then feel my phone vibrate again.

  “Yes, there was a system shutdown protocol that ended the session and wiped the memory. I began the wipe, but it takes twelve hours to complete. I had to go or the guards would have come looking.”

  “So maybe it wiped, maybe it didn’t?” I complain, thinking the wipe might have only deleted the library card.

  “Clearly it didn’t,” Hal groans. “Did you warn Dr. Bishop that you left it in shutdown mode?”

  “He went on a medical leave and I never saw him again,” Weiss relates, eyeing Hal. “I wasn’t aware he was sick, but all of my calls went to voice mail.”

  “Well?” I turn back to Hal. “Your turn.”

  “It would appear that the military came for the Cube the following morning, presumably before the wipe was completed. They ran it out to North Base and dropped in the Tesla Drone.”

  “But what happened to Dr. Bishop?” I demand, watching Hal.

  “Yes,” Weiss inquires in an ominous voice. “What did happen?”

  “His mother had been ill. Which is why he was not at the lab when you came to see him. He was however, out at North Base that next day, but the Drone went AWOL and military security took him for an interview.”

  “Long walk on a short pier?” I joke. “Cement Galoshes?”

  “Very funny,” Hal snorts. “No, he’s fine, just staying out of the limelight.”

  “So, the version you have is taken from the Cube before the wipe, or did you just write a better one?” I ask, my phone vibrating nonstop now.

  “I requested a dump before shutting it down and this is what came out. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the Cube knew what I needed, and gave it to me.”

  “How nice for the both of you,” Hal groans.

  “Let me be perfectly clear,” he announces, then taps his finger on the laptop screen. “My program didn’t do this on its own. There had to be something already running on the Cube. Some combination of my software and yours has gone rouge, but you’re asking all the wrong questions.”

  “Enlighten us,” Hal nods. “What should we be asking?”

  “What did your military have on the Cube?”

  Hal glances over at me, then puts his face in his hands and groans. This is a very interesting question. I am just starting to get a feel for simulation gaming and what that entails, but what if a portion of the code is military?

  “If you don’t mind,” I sigh, putting both hands on the table and standing up. “I need to use the ladies room.”

  “Use the one here,” Hal frowns also standing.

  Leaving Weiss at the table, Hal picks through empty coffee cups on the counter by the sink. I look back at Weiss, who rubs his eyebrows with one hand, looking frustrated.

  “One last thing,” I pause. “Is there any chance this is A.I.?”

  “The singularity?” he smirks. “Not yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “The arrival of strong Artificial Intelligence is inevitable.”

  “Says who?”

  “Darwin,” he answers, turning in the chair and meeting my gaze. “Someday artificial intelligence will look back at mankind the way we look at Neanderthal skeletons . A primitive biped, living in the dirt with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.”

  “Is that your opinion?”

  “Mine, no,” he reveals, smiling at Hal. “Doctor Bishop however, was an ardent supporter of this theory.”

  “The Bishop who invited you to the lab?”

  Weiss chuckles, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You both are,” he shakes his head, then glances at Hal. “Does your government want to stop the Drone, or acquire it?”

  “Technically it’s ours already,” Hal grunts.

  “There is your answer,” Weiss wags a finger.

  “You’re just clouding the picture,” I sigh. Is it or isn’t it?”

  “No, I don’t believe it is. At least not yet.”

  “Darius is just a character from your game?”

  Weiss nods.

  “Okay, I am going to take a potty break.”

  “Use mine,” Hal points at the bathroom door.

  “I’d rather use mine,” I argue, then put a hand on my tummy. “Girl stuff.”

  “Sure, whatever,” Hal grumbles. “Send Katz in here. I’ll send her down to the Starbucks.”

  I nod and slip out. I decide to only share with Agent Katz that Hal needs to talk to her, not the mission at hand. After all, I have worked so hard to develop our close relationship. I flip through my messages as I walk. There are four more from Kara. I am absolutely going to have to come clean to her and admit to my own guilt in using her to get to Weiss. Once at my room, I notice there are also several texts.

  KARA: Where R U?

  KARA: The message board is gone.

  KARA: Where R U?

  I dial her number and wait.

  “It’s about time,” her voice assaults me without a greeting. “I’ve been calling you.”

  “Sorry, it’s been crazy over here. We have Weiss and my boss is talking to him now.”

  “Oh,” she pauses, sounding suspicious. “How did you find him so fast?”

  How to spin this? While Hal found him in part due to her participation, I’d prefer not to admit responsibility for drowning her laptop. How honest can I be without tipping the garbage cart over on myself?

  “My boss tracked him when he used the message board.”

  “How’d they know?”

  “I called them from Rat’s and explained your plan,” I spin. “They must have traced the Wi-Fi connection.”

  “Hmm,” she mutters, sounding as if she knows this is a lie. Well, I guess you don’t need me.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Your text mentioned the message board?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s gone. When I booted up the beta on my new laptop the connection tab was missing.”

  “Why would that happen?” I ask, relieved she didn’t see my posting.

  “Either Darius saw us talking to Weiss and cut us off,” she proposes. “Or Weiss deleted it after he realized the jig was up.”

  “Why would Weiss do that?”

  “Why do you think? Victor Frankenstein didn’t want anyone to kill the monster.”

  This resonates with me. Is Weiss stalling us or hiding something?

  “What’s he saying,” she goes on when I don’t speak.

  “He’s got a better version of the program. We have it running on his laptop.”

  “Sweet,” she purrs excitedly. “You need to get me on that machine.”

  “To do what?”

  “Hack in with the cheat codes and see what Darius is up too. Plus Weiss has to have a backdoor. There’s no telling what he might be able to show us.”

  “Backdoor,” I mutter. “Like some special password.”

  “Yes, he must have put something in there. The previous versions all had one.”

  “Interesting. I’m going to walk down and ask him about that. You mentioned cheat codes?”

  “Yeah, I can’t be certain they work on this version, but the regular game had all sorts of cheats built in,” she explains, but then seems to stall out. “You’re sending someone to get me thou
gh, right?”

  And there it is. What to do now? Hal won’t want her here, but she might stop helping if she thinks we are keeping her out of the loop. Should I ask Hal or not?

  “I’ll take your silence as the answer to that question,” she barks, then the line goes dead.

  Exasperated, I dial her back, but it goes to voicemail. I dial three more times before she answers.

  “Why don’t you—.”

  “Just wait a bloody minute will you,” I bark angrily. “Just put your attitude in neutral, and let me walk down the hall and ask him some questions. These need answering now. The clock is ticking on this.”

  “So you’ll call me after you ask?”

  “Absolutely Kara.”

  “If my phone doesn’t ring inside of twenty minutes we are done,” she warns defiantly, then hangs up.

  I’m flabbergasted at this. Isn’t her problem that she wants to be included? Why is she giving me an ultimatum that is likely to leave her on the outside looking in? I ponder this for several minutes before a possible answer dawns on me.

  “Oh, she’s smart,” I exhale. “The queen of Mickey Rat’s is playing hard to get.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I pause to freshen up, then head back to the room. I take my time, trying to decide on my next move. Should I just tell Hal and let him ask the questions? Wouldn’t Weiss be less prepared if I asked them? Agent Katz stands outside the door, arms crossed.

  “Back already?” I ask, assuming she made a coffee run.

  She doesn’t reply, instead simply slides her card in the door and holds it open for me. Apparently, Agent Barnes, who was stationed inside earlier, was not allowed back in. A conversation between Hal and Weiss ends abruptly when I enter. Hal cranes his neck, looking back to acknowledge my return, but doesn’t speak. What were they discussing? On the kitchenette counter is a cardboard carrier from Starbucks sitting amongst the rubbish. Picking the last one out, I read the name drawn in marker on the side.

  “Pita,” I chuckle, thinking Agent Katz does have a sense of humor.

  “We were just—,” Hal starts.

  “Ask him about the cheat codes?” I interrupt, deciding whatever the content of their discussion can wait.