The Digital Dream

by Mike Cartlidge

  “It’s all right.” Her voice is soothing. “I don’t pretend to like it but it’s not something I have any choice in. My whole upbringing, as a Catholic, conditions me to behave in a certain way, to follow certain rules. We live by an ancient creed. The modern part of me does not overrule the Catholic part.” She smiles sadly. “The two co-exist with a rough set of demarcation agreements. In some things, my secular life is dominant, but in others it is my religion that takes precedence.” She stirs in her chair but will not look towards me.

  “Were there other men before your husband?”

  She frowns. “I had boyfriends, but no deep relationships. My folks don’t believe in sex before marriage. I guess the conditioning was strong. Anyway, to be honest, I had such a busy life up to when I met Peter—that’s my husband—that there wasn’t time for deep relationships. Or maybe it seemed easier to avoid complications.” She sips her wine. “Sometimes it’s better not to think too deeply about these things.”

  The silence returns for a while. This time, it’s Kathleen who speaks first. “Would it be prying if I asked you to tell me about your marriage?”

  “Prying? No...there isn’t much to tell, really. We were both fairly young and, I guess, immature. Certainly I was.” I grimace. “I sometimes think that I’ve only recently started to grow up. Michelle is a natural blonde—her grandparents were Wisconsin Dutch—and she’s pretty—beautiful even. I guess we mistook a mutual physical attraction for love. We both rushed into marriage—part of the immaturity, I think. We were like kids given the chance to play at setting up house and being grown-ups.

  “It was fine for a while. Then, gradually, the physical attraction came to mean less. When it waned, there was nothing left to fill the gap. Oh, we dragged it out for a long time. I think we were what people call an attractive couple; we got invited to all the best parties and had an active social life. But, away from all that, we drifted further and further apart. My job didn’t help. I was always working long hours and leaving her alone. There weren’t that many rows. One day, she came home and told me she was in love with a man in her office. I remember sitting and listening to her tell me about it: I wasn’t surprised or even that upset. It was almost as if I’d expected it. We talked it over and decided to just call it quits. It was a civilized arrangement, I suppose.”

  “There were no children?”

  “No, thank God. I’d hate to be a part-time father. No, we’d decided to wait until we were older before we started a family. That way we’d have time to set ourselves up financially, and so on. It was probably the only mature decision we made until we decided to call the whole thing off.”

  She stares down at her glass, swirling the wine around as she speaks. “And since then?”

  I shrug. “I’ve seen her. Recently, in fact. She wants a reconciliation. It wouldn’t work, though. I just...well, the feelings aren’t there. Otherwise, I’ve had girlfriends since the bust-up. Nothing serious and none of them has lasted too long.”

  She looks out at the last traces of the day over the lake. “That’s sad. Haven’t you ever been in love?”

  I’ve been thinking about that question myself. I feel myself moving to the edge of a precipice.

  “Only once in my life.”

  She continues to stare straight ahead. I feel my toes on the edge of the cliff, gulp, lean over, free-fall.

  “In the last few weeks, you see. With you.”

  There’s no response. Did I really say those words or imagine them? I look at her. I can see her face clearly now in the moonlight. She’s biting her lower lip and, as I watch, tears run from her eyes and down her cheeks.

  After a moment, she reaches up and wipes her face: then she stands. “This is unwise. I’m sorry. It was my fault for leading the conversation on.” At least, I think, her voice is sad. “I think I’d better go to bed.”

  She turns and walks away, closing the bedroom door behind her. For a while longer I sit, staring out towards the water. Then I rise and go into my own room, pushing the door to behind me. I undress and, lying on the bed, pull a blanket over myself.

  Sleep seems a long way away. I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling for twenty, thirty minutes, listening to the sound of the low lake waves breaking on the beach. Around me, the old cottage creaks occasionally as it cools in the late-evening chill. One time, I hear a cat screech and run across the patio. It’s a little more restful than the jail cell but sleep still seems a long way away.

  ***

  At last, there comes another sound, the creaking of a floorboard. I assume that it’s another of the cottage’s timbers settling: but then there is another whisper of sound and I look to see the bedroom door swing slowly open. I feel no alarm. It’s as though I can read her mind.

  For a few moments, she stands there, uncertain, framed in the doorway. I see that she’s wearing a toweling robe, tied around her middle. As she comes towards me, her hands fumble nervously at the knot. The gown comes open, she gives a slight shrug of her shoulders, the garment slips and falls to the floor. She stands there, her anxiety hanging in the air, as I look at her. In the moonlight, I can see her outline and the shadows beneath her breasts and stomach.

  I hold back the blanket and she comes to me, lying stiffly beside me as I gently feather-touch her body and brush my lips against hers. At first, she trembles and I think she is going to pull back from me. But, much later, after the moments of restraint, she clasps her ankles around the backs of my legs and holds her arms tightly around my neck and whispers words of unexpected love.

  9

  David Sligo, pillar of the community, exemplar of the morally upright. He takes pride in his own image as he glimpses it in the mirrored walls of the elevator. The machine glides noiselessly to the penthouse city apartment he uses on the frequent nights when he leaves the Sligo-McNeil building too late to return to his wife and four children in the family mansion thirty miles outside Chicago.

  The lateness of the hour tonight is not caused by work commitments: rather, he has been attending a function in support of one of the many charities of which he is a patron. The one tonight is concerned with providing refuges for battered families. Dinner at a thousand bucks a head. Each bowl of oyster soup will feed an abandoned child for a week. Each glass of Veuve Cliquot will provide a counseling session for a battered victim of domestic violence. The chateaubriand will re-roof a safe house in east Chicago.

  It has been quietly mentioned in the postprandial speeches that his contributions to this particular concern’s coffers over the last five years have now exceeded a million dollars. The president of the charity, an Episcopalian Bishop, had called him a modern-day saint and a rare force for good in society. A friend to the poor. He had bowed his head humbly over his coffee and Armagnac. It feels good to be righteous. Holy Sligo. Saint David.

  He unravels the black bow tie and unfastens the top button of his dress shirt. As might be expected of a man of his wealth, the apartment is huge, expensively furnished and well protected, with multiple locking systems and an elaborate web of electronic detection and surveillance.

  He crosses the hall and enters the living room, kicking off his shoes and letting his feet sink into the thickly piled carpet. He glances around the room: it’s furnished in the modern style and the paintings on the wall include a Picasso sketch and several originals by Matisse, an artist of whom Sligo is particularly fond. He notes approvingly that there is no sign of occupation and that nothing has been disturbed. He crosses the room and draws the curtains over the high-rise view of the city. Standing still for a moment, he catches the murmur of voices from the master bedroom to his right.

  Walking to the door, he opens it gently and enters the room. The television is on, the volume turned discreetly down. One of the girls lies on the massive round bed: she smiles up at him as the door opens, brushing aside her long blonde hair. He stands over her, admiring her youthful nakedness for a moment, leaning forward and stroking one of her large breasts with his fingerti
ps.

  The other girl rises from the armchair and comes to stand behind him. She is also nude, her hair as dark as the other’s is fair. She slips her hands over his shoulders and eases off his tuxedo as the blonde reaches up and starts to unfasten his cummerbund. As the girls busy themselves removing the rest of his clothes, he lies down on the bed and reaches across to gather up the remote control lying on the headboard. He lies back as the girls caress his body with their hands and lips.

  On the television screen, the late-night news program is announcing the result of another opinion poll. Garner now leads in New England. He turns up the volume.

  The blonde produces a bottle of oil and proceeds to rub its perfumed contents onto his body. The other girl shifts her position and starts a body-massage routine. He lies quite still, making no voluntary response.

  The scene switches to allow a reporter, standing outside the White House, to comment on the administration’s reaction to its latest drop in popularity. The President, shown in a brief interview, reiterates his frequently stated position that he does not comment on poll results. He remains confident that his record will speak for itself and that the people of this great nation will show their support for him when the chips are really down.

  Sligo smiles as the dark-haired girl moves over to make way for the blonde. She rubs at his stomach, her head bending over him, her lips brushing against his skin. His right hand drops the remote control and strokes her hair. Unbidden, his left hand finds its way to the strawberry-shaped birthmark beside his mouth.

  The TV reporter continues to speak. The opposition presidential candidate, it seems, is scarcely more forthcoming than the government. We have no intention of panicking at the drop in our ratings. We plan to fight this election on the issues. We appeal to our party’s traditional supporters to...

  The dark girl is nibbling now at Sligo’s chin. He pulls her up for a moment so that his lips can play against her body, then pushes her to one side and glances again at the television set. The reporter is summing up with the comment that the polls, as they have done so often recently, seem to hold cheer only for Stephen Garner.

  Sligo presses the remote control button that turns off the television. For a moment he lies back, savoring sensations. Then he pulls the blonde’s head up towards his, pushing the other girl until she is over his body. For a moment he allows himself a brief grin of triumph.

  10

  I wake early. At first, I think she is still asleep and I raise myself gently on my elbow and gaze into her face. It’s grown colder in the night and we’ve pulled a quilt over our bodies. Now, I slide my hand slowly under the cover and rest it on her side, realizing just before her eyes open that she is awake.

  She regards me seriously. I wonder what she’s thinking, whether she is fulfilled or sorry, happy or frightened. I tenderly kiss her nose and she slips her hand from beneath the sheet and places it on the back of my neck, pulling me without pressure towards her. We kiss more firmly, then with mounting passion. I push the covers aside and caress her breast and she sighs deeply. We make slow, lingering love as the low lake waves murmur on the beach outside. The skies have cleared. The sun rises and starts to warm the flatlands.

  ***

  For all our troubles, I would have lain with her all day. It is Kathleen who makes the move, reaching over from the bed to lift her robe from the floor and pulling it around her as she slips out of the side of the bed. I am touched and amused at the modesty that prevents me from seeing her nakedness after we have spent half the night making love.

  I catch her eye and I know she shares the thought.

  “No impropriety, you said.”

  I grin. “It was hardly my fault.”

  She picks up a pillow and throws it at me. Irish accent. “So it’s all down to me, is it? I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a woman of easy virtue.”

  “Come back to bed.” I grab for her dressing gown, but she’s too quick for me.

  “No. We’ve got to make plans. They’ll be hunting for us by now.”

  I sigh dramatically. “Not only are you smarter and braver than I am. You’re more practical, too.” Curiously, though, I wait until she has left the room before I climb out of bed. I pull on a tee shirt and pair of jeans before I walk into the kitchen.

  ***

  We eat a simple breakfast of cereal and orange juice. Facing each other across the table, we go over what has happened to us so far—leaving aside emotional adventures—as a precursor to our next assault on the phantom network.

  “You realize that, as well as we know the computer systems that are working against us, we still don’t really know who our human opponents are,” I say. “Apart from the fact that Garner and David Sligo may somehow be connected...”

  “Yes, I’ve been thinking about that. Who else is there?”

  “Maybe there’s no one else. Maybe Garner and Sligo cooked this up between them. Then again, they probably know nothing about it. Maybe somebody else is just trying to help Garner’s cause.”

  She nods. “I think we can find out, you know. If I can crack Bambi’s defenses...”

  “Do you think you can?”

  “Maybe. I’ve got an idea. I don’t know if it’ll work, but we haven’t really got anything to lose, have we?”

  As it turns out, she is not entirely correct.

  ***

  It takes us no more than twenty minutes to navigate through the maze of computers until we arrive at the Sligo-McNeil complex. I notice that, even without the charts she’s left behind on the office wall, Kathleen now seems to know her way around the network like a harbor pilot knows the waterways.

  Then I see her hesitate for the first time, as if suddenly uncertain.

  “So what’s this idea of yours?”

  “I told you before that there are two big mainframes here. One’s the place where Bambi lives and the other handles all of Sligo-McNeil’s day-to-day accounting business. All the central stuff, anyway: they’ve got smaller computers and LANs all over the place.

  “What I want to try to do is go into the non-Bambi computer and see if I can get access to the confidential password files. That should be impossible but, coming out of the phantom network, I may be able to do it.”

  I think I understand. “And if you can, you can use a valid password to try to fool Bambi?”

  “Exactly. Last time we used the password ROBOT and it got us in the door—the second highest level of the security system—but not much further. We want a code that gives us high priority clearance. Like, maybe, David Sligo’s.”

  It takes her nearly an hour. The system software is complex, but not unlike others that she’s worked on. I’ve wandered into the kitchen to make coffee when I hear her whispered “Eureka.”

  I hurry back in. “You’ve got it?”

  “Yes. I’ve got the full system staff list. All the names and passwords. And I know just which ones we’re going to use.”

  I see her make a few notes on a piece of paper beside the computer. I glance over and see a set of codes alongside the name David Sligo.

  ***

  Minutes later, we watch as the screen goes blank for a few seconds. Then, suddenly, the familiar one-line message appears at the top of the screen.

  * Hello, who are you?

  Kathleen’s fingers fly over the keyboard.

  > David Sligo

  * Hello david. I’m glad to be talking to you again. Can you please let me have your access codes?

  Kathleen glances at the piece of paper and enters two strings of apparently meaningless information.

  * Thank you david. What is it you would like to discuss today?

  > I would like to examine some of your program code.

  * Why do you wish to do that, david?

  > I want to make sure that the recent attempts at access by hackers have not compromised you.

  * I can assure you that i am not compromised, david. There is no need for you to examine my program code.

&
nbsp; Kathleen glances up at me, a worried frown on her face. When we discussed our planned raid on the computer, I had a list of questions that I wanted to ask about the events of the last few weeks. However, Kathleen convinced me that, even if we could fool Bambi into accepting them, we should contain our curiosity until she’d had a chance to examine the programs that drove the system’s artificial intelligence. She reasoned that, until she understood how the system worked, there’d be no way of knowing whether it was giving us true answers or trying to fool us. Swallowing my impatience, I agreed.

  Now it looks as though the system is not going to give us access to its program code anyway. I think for a moment.

  “I think you should find a way to insist. There must be a way into the programs.”

  “Yes, but Sligo may not have that authority. As he’s the chief executive, there’s no reason why he should have the clearances to go into program code. It’s hardly his job. But there may be another way. I found another high-level code. It belongs to a character called Russell Mutch. I haven’t come across any reference to him before, but...”

  She shrugs and goes back to the keyboard.

  > Bambi, this is russell mutch.

  * Hello russell. I’m glad to be talking to you again.

  can you please let me have your access codes?

  Kathleen glances back at her piece of paper and enters more strings of information.

  * Thank you russell. What is it you would like to discuss today?