The research I spent my time on was the region of the network where the new software was being designed, and it was not easy to breach. The sysops might not know the back door that Peter and I had found, but they certainly knew the old system leaked, and so the work on the new system was taking place off network. All the computers working on its design were disconnected from the rest of the computers in the Ark. For a day I despaired.
But human beings aren’t perfect, right? They even take pride in this. “I’m only human.” They say that a lot, especially when they screw up and want to be congratulated for it. So I found ways. A lot of these programmers took work home. They had to handcarry tiny little disks, and they were all very conscientious about erasing their work when they signed off. But it wasn’t hard to install little routines on their home computers—which were tied to the old network—that would make clandestine copies of everything that they erased. This close to the end of the project, many of them were debugging high-level interoperativity problems, which meant they had to install much of the finished software in order to test any part of it—and all parts were being tested. In three days I had assembled, in bits and pieces, a library consisting of, as near as I could tell, the entire network system.
How to get into it? How to hide? I could install a back door, of course, but it would be hard to make it unfindable. I had found the back door to the old software just by checking the routines that read keystrokes. If anyone started getting suspicious of me, that kind of back door would be easy to find.
I studied the plan of it, how the software worked, how it kept unauthorized users out, how it checked its own integrity. File sizes and parity checks were continuous; I couldn’t alter the code. Once it was running, I couldn’t access the underlying systems without leaving tracks.
So what I finally did was this: I wrote a little program that lived in volatile memory all over the existing network. It functioned only during hardware interrupts, and it hid its memory use and storage in unused disk space without telling the operating system it was there. If it was about to be overwritten in one place, it moved itself to another. It evaded all the software they used to check system activity. And when they made the benchmarks against which they would measure future system performance, my little program would already be there, so that from then on, “normal operation” would include whatever processor cycles it stole.
Besides hiding, what does my little sleeper program do? Why, nothing that anyone would notice. It replicates itself at every opportunity so it can’t be erased. And it checks keyboards for my own little entry code. Which I’m not going to write here because I don’t know for sure that this file can’t be found.
When it detects my entry code, my sleeper does something very simple. It allows me to replace sections of the operating system with my own altered versions. I can make new ones at any time, on any computer, and slip them into place. As long as I program well and don’t crash the system, I can replace any section of code that I want, and while I’m using it my little sleeper program will protect it from all error checking. Then, when I’ve done what I needed to do, my sleeper puts back the original network code and my special version goes back into hiding in secret unfindable places on disks scattered throughout the Ark.
Unfindable? Well, actually, nothing is unfindable. But it’s very hard to find, and my sleeper watches to see whether someone seems to be looking for it. If they are, my sleeper destroys all copies of my programs hiding on that particular disk. It won’t matter—there’s always another copy somewhere. And if by some miserable stroke of ill fortune they manage to find and destroy every copy of all my programs on disk, my sleeper will still be there, ready to let me in to write new ones. Because they can’t ever, ever get rid of my sleeper. Not unless they shut down every computer on the Ark. And if they did that, the Ark’s life support systems would cease and everyone would die before the computers could get back online.
I thought my solution was simple and elegant. It would work. Until the new network was put online, I would use the same back door that Peter was using. After that, I would be the only one with special access.
It took me five days. I’m really very good at this. After all, I’ve been enhanced.
Here I am, Diary,
It’s late and if mother sees the light she’ll hit the roof, just like she did on earth when we had to pay for electricity. Peter calls Mother a picklemouth and that’s tacky but she never smiles and she never wants us to have fun. She was really a picklemouth today, because I got a letter from Dad and it didn’t mention her and I was glad to get it anyway. It’s not my fault he didn’t mention her name, since she left him, or at least she didn’t stay behind when he decided to stay on earth. I wish he was here because we’ll be flying off soon and he’ll be dead and we’ll never hear from him again. Then I’ll be half an orphan for real, instead of half an orphan because Mother is here with us and Dad is by himself on earth.
Everyone else on the Ark has two parents, except Emmy and Lydia who get to live with the monkey. They have two parents and they used to have two grandparents only the grandfather ran away and the grandmother can’t tend the kids alone which is fine with me. Peter and I went there tonight to babysit because there was a square dance for all the grownups and Nancy is actually considered a grownup for square dancing purposes so she got to go so there was nobody to babysit but me. Peter was a human fart all night long, playing on the computer instead of helping me the way he should have after begging so long for me to let him go with me. But the little kids were really cute. Lydia plays just like a little mother and Emmy blinks her eyes and smiles just like a babydoll only that makes her sound like she’s stupid and she’s not, she can line up most of the alphabet blocks in the right order which isn’t bad for a kid that small. Of course, the monkey is even smaller and he’s megasmart but what do you expect, they put a robot inside him or something like that. I wish the monkey had been there because I wanted to talk with him but he was off at the square dance being a witness to all those old gomers having a “good” time. I wonder if he watched Mother and if she had a good time or if she’s a picklemouth around her friends just like she is at home.
Peter says the monkey is a sneak and a spy, and I said how do you know that unless you’re a sneak and a spy, too? To which he didn’t have an answer because he is Peter, The Human Fart Who Reads Other People’s Diary Entries Over Their Shoulder Drop Dead Yourself Flatulent Emanation Of The Universe!!!!
When I’m old will I think square dancing is fun, too? Or will that just be one of the things I pretend to like because I have to do it and I don’t want any of the other grownups to know that I hate doing it? Dr. Cocciolone (as Mother says I must refer to her at all times lest people think I was raised by baboons) is like that about square dancing I think. She did not seem to be looking forward to it when she left and she did not look like she had a good time when she got home. She was just pretending for her husband only I think he wasn’t exactly fooled, he knew it was something she only did because she had to.
Most of the things grownups do fall into that category in my opinion. I think if you left grownups to do what they really actually wanted most in all the world to do, every single one of them would lie down and take a nap for the rest of their life. I know this because that’s what every grownup does as soon as they’re alone. Even if they claim they’re going to read or watch a vid they always end up taking a nap. I hope I’m never so old that taking a nap is the most fun thing to do. I mean, how is that different from being dead, except for the air conditioning?
The gestation chambers are completely sealed off until we get to our destination. Then they’ll go like gangbusters for a few years until the new environment is stabilized, after which they’ll be useless again. Everything depends on them, since this is where Earth species of edible, employable, or ecologically necessary animals will be revived from eggs and frozen embryos. There has to be a lot of space because literally thousands of animals will be needed at
once.
I only needed one. And after all my planning, it was really pretty easy. I removed the single female capuchin monkey embryo from one of the icehouses, took it to the most remote gestation chamber, and got it started.
Of course there was more to it than that. There was the computer work: altering the inventory lists, making sure the backup software didn’t catch the discrepancy, and then rewriting the gestation chamber monitor software so that it didn’t report on the one operating chamber and yet still allowed it to run. That was the most complicated part of the task, but once my alterations were in and running, there was nothing more to it. Then it was a bit harrowing, moving through the air circulation system and crawl spaces, finding the right icehouse—one of forty square tubes, three meters on a side, which were always kept at —40°C—and then climbing down when nobody was looking to get the embryo. It was intense.
I found myself making mental speeches to that little chunk of ice in a tube as I carried it through the crawlspaces to the gestation chamber I had chosen. Come on, babe, stay cool, stay cool. We got a date in a few months. Got to get you prettied up for the prom. Got to raise you from a pup till you’re a full-fledged bitch. Oh, if only I had a voice, how clever I would have sounded, chattering away in my nervousness.
But I got to the gestation chamber without mishap and put her smoothly into the incubator I had rewired and reprogrammed. The robot machinery was ready to extract and thaw the embryo, then provide it with nutrients and the proper environment until it was mature enough to pop the bun out of the oven. All untouched by human hands. Or even mine. I closed the door, sealed it, and then told the computer to start. I got one minute of feedback from the computer, telling me that everything was working perfectly. Then, as my program was designed to do, the computer seemed to shut down. There was no visible outward sign that this one was any different from the hundreds of idle incubators. Only if you went around randomly trying to open doors would you find out that this door wouldn’t open. In the meantime, if someone tried to open the door I would be notified wherever I was on the network, and I would have to come up with some kind of plan to deal with it. But I wasn’t worried. My protection was that nobody had any reason at all to enter the gestation chambers. They weren’t even cleaned, since the atmosphere there was so perfectly controlled that there wasn’t any dust.
Just whatever monkey hair I shed while putting my baby in the box. Baby, baby, baby, baby, I need your lovin’. Baby I’m-a want you. Come to papa come to papa come to papa do. There had to be something vaguely pathological about that long phase of American pop music in which lovers spoke to each other as if one were a parent wanting to have sex with his or her little child. Sick as it was, with its implications of pederasty and incest, such song lyrics described my situation almost perfectly.
My baby, my girl, my date, my bride, my wife, my chattel, my property, my dumb little monkey bitch, my hope, my only hope, the mother of my offspring—she was in the pot, nine days old, and there was nothing for me to do but pretend to be a normal witness and trust to the machinery to bring my future to pass.
“Delays,” said Neeraj. “They’re having some unnamed trouble with the new network and they won’t even authorize final preparations for launch until they’re resolved.”
Of course I perked up at that. Was it possible that the unnamed trouble was my sleeper program? No, not likely.
“Delays are good,” said Carol Jeanne. “When we launch, our deadline becomes firm. We have to hit the ground running, and we don’t even know what the ground is going to be. So I don’t mind having time to come up with alternate strategies.”
“Delays are good for gaiology,” said Neeraj. “But as for my own self, my biological clock is ticking.”
Carol Jeanne laughed. “Men don’t have biological clocks.”
“Yes we do,” said Neeraj. “It requires us to fall in love with fertile women.”
Carol Jeanne fell silent. I knew what this was. This was a continuation of a conversation they had had in my absence.
“Well, there’s no shortage of fertile women,” said Carol Jeanne.
“But the discriminating male chooses the best available genes.”
“He also chooses the most nurturing female to raise the babies.” Obviously she had warned him that she wasn’t the most conscientious of mothers.
“Or perhaps he doesn’t give a damn about his biological clock and has simply fallen in love, mindlessly, hopelessly, with a woman that his parents would never, never have chosen for him, and who would never have chosen him for herself, either.”
“Not now, Neeraj.”
Oh, this was so stupid, her trying to keep this a secret. Did she think that I didn’t know?
So I popped up onto her desk and typed on her computer, “Eyewhay otnay ooze-yay ig-pay atin-Lay?”
She laughed. I liked that sound. It still filled me with pleasure, even then, when I had begun my rebellion in earnest. Such is the power of programmed love.
“Lovelock is telling us that he’s already guessed that there is an emotional connection between us,” Carol Jeanne said.
“I told you that all the subterfuge was unnecessary,” said Neeraj.
“I wasn’t worried about the fact that he would guess. I don’t keep secrets from Lovelock. It’s just that when I die…if this didn’t come to anything, Neeraj, I didn’t want it to be on the record.”
“Well now it is,” said Neeraj. “And the people who study our lives won’t be stupid, either, you know. They’ll figure out why there are gaps. So let’s just put it on the record. I want you, tall wop woman, in my life, in my house, in my bed. Whereas you want to be friends, because after all, you have a responsibility to your children, though in fact you don’t spend much time with them and your husband is by far the more nurturing parent. Plus you confess to a weird, perverted desire to miscegenate; a dark Dravidian whose name ends in J, mating with a Sicilian-American Princess whose name ends in a vowel.”
“That makes me a SAP,” said Carol Jeanne cheerfully.
“And what does it make me?” asked Neeraj. He turned to me. “Lovelock, sometimes I envy you. You get to jump on her shoulder and pluck imaginary lice from her hair whenever you want. You can climb right up her chest, putting hands and feet in territories where I have neither passport nor visa to enter.”
“Don’t talk dirty to my witness, Neeraj,” said Carol Jeanne testily. “For heaven’s sake, just because we’re not trying to hide it from his view anymore doesn’t mean you have to make us look like horny teenagers.”
“Why not?” said Neeraj. “I am a horny teenager. I want to get you naked and bounce around on a bed with you. But I’d settle for long embraces and heartfelt conversations far into the night.”
Carol Jeanne was clearly miserable. Neeraj was teasing, yes, but this was obviously a crucial time in their relationship. He was pushing for an answer. That was why he had hinted so broadly about their relationship in front of me, until I made it clear that it was now in the open. He wanted things to change.
And so did Carol Jeanne. “Do you enjoy tormenting me? I haven’t had an exciting moment, not even really a loving moment, in years. I should have backed out as soon as I met his family. I should have known that he would always be another woman’s property. But it was a chance for a…a complete life. How could I have guessed that I would meet you?”
“I surprise everybody,” said Neeraj. “I go through life having to see people with startled faces.”
“I’ve told you, Neeraj. If I were no longer married, then I would turn to you. But I’m not going to sabotage my marriage in order to have you. If I betrayed my husband for you, then you would spend the rest of our lives wondering whether I was betraying you for somebody else.”
“So what was that hint from Stef about other women in Red’s life?”
“It wasn’t explicitly an accusation,” she said. “And even if he is having an affair, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the marriage is over. The ch
ildren need a stable home.”
“I don’t get this double standard,” said Neeraj. “If he has an affair, that’s OK, the marriage can still be saved. But you can’t have an affair because it would wreck your marriage.”
“It would,” said Carol Jeanne. “Because I can’t lie. He’d know. And he would never forgive me. It would be the end of the marriage.”
“Whereas if he is having an affair…”
“It doesn’t matter, Neeraj. Because I’m not the kind of woman who has affairs.”
“That is such pure, highminded-sounding bullshit, my love, my darling, thou object of my erotic imaginations. You are precisely the kind of woman who has affairs—you are miserable with your unloving, disloyal, self-serving, manipulative son-of-a-bitch of a husband, and you are in love with a caring, sensitive, short dark Indian guy who does a great Gandhi imitation.”
“I won’t be the one who breaks up my marriage. And you wouldn’t be happy with an affair, anyway. You want a marriage, too. Find somebody else, Neeraj.”
“Personally,” said Neeraj, “I think Red is a homosexual who only married you because that’s what his mother expected. I think Stef is a homosexual too, who stayed with his loveless marriage because it absolutely fit his definition of what marriage was in the first place.”
“That’s why you’re a gaiologist, Neeraj, instead of a shrink,” said Carol Jeanne.
“Red’s affair right now is probably with a woman, but when his marriage with you finally breaks up—something that he has been longing for from the start, I might add—he will then break all restraints and finally have the longed-for relationship of his life—with a man. A very butch man, too, I’ll bet.”
“Damn you,” said Carol Jeanne. “This isn’t funny, not in front of Lovelock, Neeraj.”
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