He? Who was this hypothetical he? I had this power now, no matter who else had it. I signed off as Carol Jeanne, then pressed CONTROL-A {[<^ SHIFT-BACKSPACE, and as far as the network was concerned, I was God, omnipresent, omnipotent, and invisible.
Now I could go look directly at the source code without arousing suspicion. As I suspected, the little routine that allowed the back door was completely undocumented. It didn’t show up anywhere. The sysops probably didn’t even know it was there, and the programmers who had created it for their own use while working on the program were no doubt all dead or at least retired. They probably didn’t remember the back door themselves.
So how did the hacker who sent the bee message find it? Surely there was no one else on the Ark who could plunge into raw code and trace it in his own mind the way I had done. Surely no one had such mindless tenacity as to spend weeks of his life pressing random sequences of keys until he happened on this unlikely one.
There was a part of me that already wanted to stop searching. I had already found the jewel beyond price: I could go anywhere and do anything, I could read any message, I could examine any data, I could alter any part of the code, and no one would even know I had been there. And yet this powerful jewel would be snatched out of my hands in a matter of days or weeks, when the new software went online. Whatever I would do with this power I had to do immediately, and yet I had no idea what to do with it. When it eventually slipped out of my hands, then I would see its uses with all the clarity of regret and frustration and despair. I had to think, I had to concentrate on what my temporary omnipotence was good for.
Yet my assignment from Carol Jeanne was to find out who had sent the message. I now knew how the message had been sent, but not who had sent it. I had to bring her a report. I had to, I had to, it was a hunger gnawing in me, a hunger that only intensified as I contemplated telling her nothing, saying that it was a hack that I couldn’t trace. Lying to Carol Jeanne? Unthinkable. I would have to tell her everything, especially the thing I wanted to conceal from her, this new power of mine. I had to tell her, I could hardly stand not to tell her, and the more firmly I decided that I would never tell, the more terrible the urgency to confess became.
It was like the proscription of sex. It was like my panic in freefall. I was out of control. They had stolen me from myself. I did not belong to me.
I leapt from the desk. I scampered to the door. Animal me, I thought, monkey me, scamper, leap, cavort while the hurdy-gurdy man turns the crank. Hold the cup as they toss in the money, and then give it to the human, give it all to the human.
I did not leave the room. I lay there trembling, going over the network code in my mind, mentally rewriting it to improve it here and there, coming up with encryption schemes with incredibly complex algorithms, doing anything I could to take my mind off the lie that I intended to tell Carol Jeanne.
And it worked. I calmed down. But I also surrendered, partly. I went back to the computer and began searching methodically for the hacker. If I brought her the specific result she asked for, I would not have to tell her the route I followed to find it out. I could keep it a secret, because I wouldn’t have to lie.
In the end, it wasn’t hard. I thought again about those original programmers. They were real live people, who lived in a less complicated age, a more trusting time. In the dawn of the computer age, hacking was a lark, and often the very people who wrote programs would get a great deal of pleasure out of hacking somebody else’s. Also, there was an ideal then that information should be free, that everyone should be able to know everything. Wouldn’t one of those programmers have shared this back door with somebody else, a hacker friend? Wouldn’t this back door have been known, somewhere, by someone? Or maybe it was just a matter of age. The programmer got old. He wrote a memoir. It didn’t occur to him that his software was still in use anywhere in the world. It had been so long ago.
I set one of the main network computers to work searching the library for the sequence {[<^. I was careful—I set it to use only ten percent of its processing time for the search, so that no one would notice a sudden degradation of computer performance that wasn’t matched by a corresponding entry in the computer’s automatic log. Even invisible men can leave footprints if they’re not careful. But I was careful.
It didn’t take long. It was a book on hacking written long ago, which included many anecdotes about particularly clever hacks. The author used the sequence CONTROL-A {[<^ SHIFT-BACKSPACE as a hypothetical example of a back door that would be relatively hard to come up with randomly. At no time did he imply that this particular sequence had ever been used.
But the author of the book had dedicated it to his dear friend Aaron Blessing, and it was a simple matter to verify that Aaron Blessing was one of the programmers who had created the networking software used on the Ark. Blessing must have told the author of the book, who then used the back door as a hypothetical example. It was an in-joke, just between the two of them.
Only three people had downloaded that book in the past year. Only one of them was from Mayflower village—the other two would almost certainly not have known or cared that Mamie and Stef were drones.
Peter Klarner. That nasty little sneak. I could just imagine him overhearing his mother, Dolores, complaining about the drones in Carol Jeanne’s family and how awful it was and how somebody ought to do something only there was nothing that you could do or say because Carol Jeanne was so important. But Peter knew how to say something. He created his little animation and attached it as a rider to the system circular and sent it on its way.
How long ago had he found the back door? What had he done with it? Did he know that it was soon going to be useless? I found myself wishing I could talk to him—bragging, perhaps, because I had found out who he was. But also learning from him, sharing with him. As his equal. As another person who seemed powerless to others, but who had found a secret source of power that no one guessed.
Peter must have been reading the book, came across the hypothetical example, and just as a joke typed it into the household computer. And it worked. It must have seemed to him like a miracle. A cosmic joke. Like reaching puberty all of a sudden, without warning. Look what I can do!
He had the wit not to tell anyone. And yet he couldn’t bear not to let somebody know. So he had sent that animation as much to demonstrate his power as to discomfit drones. What did he care whether Mamie or Stef had jobs or not? They were just the excuse for him to show off that he had access to the network that even the sysops didn’t have.
Maybe he knew already—of course he knew—that the new software was coming online. So it didn’t matter now if he let people know he was there. It would be kind of fun to strut a little, to show off, because in a week or two he wouldn’t have the chance anymore.
Carol Jeanne had already gone to the office. When she gave me an assignment she didn’t wait around for me to finish it—unlike Red, she didn’t actually believe that every single breath she took should be watched by her witness. It was part of Carol Jeanne’s fundamental humility. Her work was vital, so she accepted a witness in order to help preserve it. But her life was just a life, and she didn’t mind if her witness, busy on some assigned task, happened not to record a conversation or two.
Of course I didn’t knock on her door. I was her witness, wasn’t I? I simply jumped up, palmed the I.D. panel, and the door slid open. How was I to know that she would be sitting on the edge of her desk, tears streaming down her face, with Neeraj sitting beside her, his right arm around her, his left hand gently stroking the tears from her cheeks?
Apparently the foolishness with the coconut had been forgiven. Apparently Carol Jeanne no longer thought of Neeraj as an obnoxious little man. I will never cease to be amazed at the ability of human females to overlook their first, negative, and frequently correct impressions of human males. In this case, though, Neeraj was definitely an improvement over her husband. I was not surprised that he had won this much trust from her so quickly.<
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When the door opened, of course, they looked up, startled, alarmed. But then she saw it was me. “Oh, Lovelock,” she said. “Did you find out?”
If I had been a person, if she had thought of me as a friend, she would have explained what she was doing there with a man’s arm around her. She would have said something about how her quarrel with Red had made her cry and how Neeraj was just comforting her. She would have been aware of the awkward appearances and done something to dispel the gossipy conclusion that another human would certainly reach.
But I was just a slave, and so nothing had to be explained to me.
Instead, she explained me to him.
“That vicious little message I told you about, Neeraj. Lovelock must have found out who sent it.”
Neeraj didn’t take his arm from around her. But he winked at me and gave a little half-smile. I wasn’t sure what he meant to convey by this. One male letting another know that this female was well in hand? Or perhaps one friend of Carol Jeanne’s letting another friend know that she was all right? Either way, Neeraj was treating me as more of a person than Carol Jeanne ever did.
“Who was it, Lovelock?” she asked.
I clambered up to her computer. “Confidential,” I typed.
“Oh,” said Neeraj, “I understand.” He finally unwound himself from her and stood. “My own guess, you know, is that your father-in-law sent it himself.”
Carol Jeanne laughed and covered her mouth like a schoolgirl. “I didn’t even—of course, how delicious! How right that would be!”
Totally wrong, of course. But in her eyes, apparently, Neeraj was very very clever.
I knew Carol Jeanne better than any other living soul. Better than she knew herself. So I knew right then, long before she understood it herself, that she was in love with Neeraj.
And why not? He was everything that Red was not. He was tender with her and cared about her and understood her work. He did not place his mother ahead of her. He did not make her feel like an inadequate mother as Red so often—and so deliberately—did. He was also vaguely exotic, which would add to the adolescent excitement of an affair. Carol Jeanne was already showing him emotions that until now she had shown only in front of me—or, in her own mind, had never shown to any person at all. Her private barriers were falling.
She’s just like Stef, I realized. Here in a new world, where the old social role that she had grown used to on Earth could be challenged, could be changed, she was beginning to be restless under the burdens of life with Red. She was tired of the way Mamie used her, tired of the way Red criticized her. His little game this morning with the children must have sickened her—but it also frightened her, too, to realize that her children were so utterly under Red’s control that he could flip a switch on their affection for her. If he could switch it on, as he had that morning, then he could switch it off. It meant he had power over her life, and that’s one thing Carol Jeanne couldn’t abide, letting someone else control her. She had stayed with Red all these years because she fancied that she was still freely choosing to be with him, despite all the problems with his mother. But now it seemed possible that he could take her children away from her if he wanted to. And so her role in the family was no longer secure. She was under his control.
How long had it taken her? A few hours, and she had another man’s arm around her. Did Red think he could rule her? Think again, Red.
Humans are just as obvious and just as transparent as any of the other primates. It’s all about sex and power, and power is all about sex—access to sex, control of sex. It’s all about genes determined to reproduce themselves, and half of human behavior is nothing but those genes acting out their will to survive. How long before Neeraj would mate with Carol Jeanne? Days? Weeks? She would change mates and by doing so would bestow enormous prestige upon her new partner and deprive and punish her old one. She had the power, and Red would know it. This affair would not be secret for long. She would think it was an accident, but she would let something slip. She would find a way to flaunt this in front of Red. It was all explainable as basic primate behavior.
Behavior that I had been forbidden to engage in. She could do whatever she wanted to do with sex, but because I was needed as her slave, I was barred from ever, ever taking part in the great ballet of life. My genes were being murdered.
Neeraj left the room. I typed: “The hacker was Peter Klarner. Dolores’s son. He probably thought he was doing his mother a favor, and she probably has no idea of what he did. If you want, I’ll send him a message that will make sure he never does it again. I’m betting he only did it because he thought he could get away with it.”
“Fine,” she said. “Just so it stops. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble over this. The last thing we need is to have the whole administration aware that Mamie’s unwillingness to work is causing this level of resentment in Mayflower.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll send him the message right away.”
“Use your clipboard, Lovelock, I need the big computer.”
So I got out of her way as she sat down in front of the large screen and began calling up reports from the teams working on various aspects of ocean transformation and atmosphere maintenance.
My notebook was on a corner of her desk, but it was hooked into the network with a thin cable. She generally left it here these days, because she only used it for talking with me. Back on Earth she had taken it with her in her purse wherever she went, because she didn’t always have access to other computers and didn’t want to have our private conversations take place on other people’s machines, anyway. But here on the Ark, she was either at home or at the office, and either way she had complete access to computers that she could use with privacy. The clipboard was now for me alone. If only I were strong enough to lift it and carry it along with me. I could slide it along the desk, but that was all.
Because she was engrossed with her work and couldn’t see my clipboard’s screen anyway, I felt free to access the back door to the network right there in the office with her. I wrote a simple message to Peter, created a new user named God, had that new identity send the message through regular mail, and then deleted God from the system and removed every trace that he had ever existed as a network identity. Peter would know, when he tried to trace the sender of the message, that it was somebody with as much power on the system as he had—and, I was fairly certain, with a good deal more knowledge of how to use that power than Peter would ever have.
Dear Diary,
Peter is such an idiot, he was really upset and crabby after school today and do you know why? It was just a message somebody sent him it didn’t mean anything. “Keep your bees in the hive please” and they signed it God. I mean it was obviously just a joke and here he was working himself into a frenzy about it and saying “don’t tell Mother” as if I was insane or something. I told him it was just one of his stupid friends at school and he said that shows how much you know and I said “No it shows how much you know.”
I really hate sharing a room with him. I think we need a bigger house but the rules say children don’t need separate rooms until puberty so I guess it’s just wait for the tits or hope Peter’s little weenie grows or he gets a beard or something. Nobody thinks that children might need privacy. Oh, no, it’s only adults who get things like that. I can’t even keep computer files secret from mother or my teachers which is why I have to keep all my thoughts on you, dear diary, and hide you in different places all the time. And it isn’t easy you know. Finding hiding places on the Ark is like trying to hide a cow in a frying pan. But I will die before I let anybody read a word of you. I will burn you first. I hope you don’t mind, dear diary. I promise that you won’t feel a thing.
Now I’m getting silly so I better stop. Ta-ta for now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
INDEPENDENCE
After Stef drew the battle lines, there was nothing left to do but fight the war. But just as a skirmish couldn’t be fought behind closed doors, Stef’s
battle for independence would also be waged in the open. As soon as Stef walked out the door, the breach became a matter for public speculation.
Normally Mamie would have been delighted to find herself in the public eye, but Stef had committed the unpardonable sin of being the one who did the abandoning rather than the other way around. People would talk about that.
As for the drone message that triggered the whole thing, any one of Mayflower’s citizens could have put it on our household computer. Obviously someone already felt some hostility. How many someones, she couldn’t guess. For all she knew, the whole town could be laughing at her behind her back.
Mamie was accustomed to being a gossip, although she would have used Red’s euphemistic phrase: “other-centered individual.” It was the role of gossipee that was new for her. Avoiding shame had been the great motivating force of her life, and the idea of people sneering at her behind her back was a greater torment for her than the loss of a husband who had never been, as far as I could see, much more than a fashion accessory. Imagining the lash of a thousand tongues, she sequestered herself inside the house for several days. She didn’t even sleep for the first two nights, and because she roamed the house like a wraith I was denied my nightly excursion up the wall of the Ark. On the third day she got a prescription for sleeping pills; after that, I was able to resume my normal routine.
Her emergence came on Sunday, though she tormented the household for days in her back-and-forth should-I-go-should-I-hide debate. Finally she decided that staying home from church would make other people think she had something to be ashamed of, whereas if she strutted to church as usual, head held high, people would admire her courage and might even assume that she’d given Stef the boot rather than him discarding her. So on Sunday, she dressed in her finest clothing and jewelry, as if it were a day of celebration. Mayflower’s peacock had unfurled its plumage for all to see. I wrote a quick fashion critique and showed it to Carol Jeanne. She called me a bad boy but I could tell she loved it.
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