by Scott Bly
* * *
Gramercy Foxx suddenly screamed in agony, as if his insides had been torn out.
McCallum instinctively yanked the stick back and cranked the throttle. The engine roared, and the bird climbed. Evasive action.
Were they under attack? No.
Foxx writhed in extreme pain. He’d torn his seat belt off, and one arm braced his contorted body against the cabin wall. Is he having a heart attack?
McCallum reached for Foxx’s neck. Heartbeat? Yes. Breathing? Yes.
“Mr. Foxx? Can I help?”
Silence.
* * *
“Wow!” Geneva shouted as the test concluded. Charlie saw it, too. The code colors changed from yellow to red and green. It meant something. Callaya had been twitching.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Something big.”
“Are there more tests you can run?”
“A security probe could reveal vulnerabilities … if this is computer code.” She tapped a few keys on the analyzer. “We still don’t know. Let’s give it a shot.”
* * *
“Go!” Foxx gasped, finally able to talk.
“Back to the TerraThinc Building, sir?”
“Yes, yes,” Foxx sputtered, struggling to put on his helmet. He hoped it would insulate him from further pain. “Just go.”
“What happened, sir?”
“Psychic trauma,” Foxx gasped. “The dog … data overflow … feedback loop!”
Foxx wasn’t making any sense. McCallum focused on the bird.
Foxx didn’t care what McCallum saw or heard. His mind reeled. The dog’s dull glow in his mind’s eye had flared as bright as the sun. The blunt force of it might have killed him had the Hum been stronger.
How could two children have turned such a powerful weapon against him? Who was this boy the girl had found? Perhaps he was far more dangerous than Foxx had realized. If my connection to the dog has been compromised, can this affect The Future?
Foxx huddled against the passenger door. The glow still throbbed in his head. He wanted to get back to the safety of his office and its electromagnetic shielding.
“Look! Right there.” One moment they’d been watching huge green and red spikes of data, and now, suddenly, the screen was blank. “Crazy computers,” she grumped.
“What could have changed?” Charlie asked.
“I have no idea. There must be some variable we don’t see. Let’s rerun the tests.”
Curled by Charlie’s feet on the floor, Callaya had stopped whimpering the exact moment the images changed on the screen. Her ears had pricked up as if she heard something. At the same time, Charlie felt a light prickling sensation in his toes and fingers. I knew it. She’s been programmed with code — as we expected. But this is different. The Hum. It has to be. But a dog? How does she know?
Geneva ran her tests again, but Callaya didn’t whimper as she had before.
Nothing more happened. The tingling went away. Callaya closed her eyes and went back to sleep. He would have to pay more attention to the puppy.
While Geneva hunched over the computer screen, he quietly tried to do a simple exercise — shift something small in the room. A broken cup caught his eye, and he tried to slide it down a shelf. At first he was unable to connect, and it scared him. Have I lost the gift?
He emptied his mind, and when his thinking was clear, he felt the warm flow of the Hum. Relief at last. Peace and well-being. The broken cup moved half an inch. Then Callaya woke and watched. As soon as she did, the cup sped up and almost fell off the shelf.
“Can you feel it, too, baby girl?” She wagged her tail. Or was Callaya helping him?
“I repeated the tests, and there was no spike in activity. Just one little blip.”
“I just used the Hum to move that cup!”
“You think the tests picked that up?”
“Maybe. If they did, what’s next?” Charlie asked.
“I am,” she said simply. “We need to analyze my code. I want your help.”
Charlie was surprised how much of it he could read now, and he was stunned by what he saw. But some of the patterns would have been clear to him even back in his own mountain hamlet.
A ballet of abstract bursts of purple, blue, and scarlet opened and closed in a visual song that could only be a manifestation of the Hum. Both Charlie and Callaya moved closer to the screen, feeling the calm warmth of the Hum as comfortably as if they were sitting before a fireplace in winter.
The puppy watched the screen with fascination, as if she were reading and interpreting data, too. Or the Hum.
And maybe that’s what she’s doing, Charlie thought.
McCallum’s security squad carried the exhausted Foxx from the helicopter and up to his 200th floor office.
“John,” Foxx rasped. “Spare no expense. In five days, our security must be impenetrable….” He struggled to catch his breath. “You must protect us from every possible threat. The Future depends on you.”
McCallum watched Foxx try to keep his eyes open. “Yes, sir.”
“You must capture them — the girl and the boy. They are traveling with a dog. I need the robot and the dog alive.”
“And the boy, sir?”
But Foxx had already drifted into a heavy sleep.
* * *
Foxx was trapped in a deep, visionary state. If McCallum had shouted, Foxx would not have heard it. Memories. His sister. Always one step ahead. Faster, smarter, taunting her twin brother. He hid behind a tree.
His father’s voice. Your sister excels, but you are incompetent. What’s wrong with you? Why are you hiding?
He knew about the other side. Death. When she passed, he could feel her.
But even dead, she pointed out his inadequacies.
Animals loved his sister. And she, in turn, loved everyone. But she did not love him. Why should she? He disgusted her. And he hated her for it.
He could hear her chastise him in his head. Even a dog won’t love you! It’s little wonder the puppy chose a new master. In the end, you will get what you deserve, Callis.
But she had gotten what she deserved, hadn’t she?
I died with love in my heart, you fool. You will die with emptiness.
Die? I will never die! I have cheated death time and again.
But her voice was gone.
It’s all in my mind, he thought. He wanted to forget how she tricked him into traveling to a time from which he could not escape. But those memories refused to go.
With all her talent, his sister could never have invented The Future. She could never have accomplished such a feat.
His father would have been proud of him.
His success with The Future would finally silence her voice. Very soon.
It was still dark, but Geneva shook Charlie awake. “OK, you were right!”
Charlie opened his eyes. He had fallen asleep on the couch while she examined miles of data.
“My mystery code is connected to the Hum! It has to be!”
“Great! How did you figure that out?”
“I analyzed my code and the puppy’s. It’s the only logical answer. My code is not completely … technological, so the Hum code must be woven into mine. And there’s even more of it in the puppy — like five times as much! Crazy, right?”
“Amazing!”
“It has to connect. We just don’t see the lines that connect the dots yet.”
“Show me the code, will you?” Charlie asked. “I have an idea.”
* * *
“I see the Hum,” Charlie said quietly, touching the screen. His entire body tingled. “And I recognize some of the patterns from Foxx’s office that first night — the streaming numbers and colors and strands of fireworks.”
“But the real breakthrough is the nature of the code itself,” Geneva said. “Computers are binary. Base-two math, right? This is almost like quantum computers or something, but quantum computers are too unstable to be useful. I’ve never seen
anything like it in use, although I’ve heard of it. This code uses a base-four language.”
“Oh, like DNA,” Charlie said.
“What?” Geneva’s jaw dropped. “DNA? How do you even know about DNA?”
“You told me about it back when you were explaining the difference between a robot and a human. You said DNA is the building block of life. I remember thinking it sounded a lot like what you’d been telling me about computer code. DNA molecules tell each cell what its job is, which means the DNA is the instructions.”
Geneva nodded. “Like a blueprint for an entire person, or tree, or whatever.”
“DNA tells the cell how to work. And in computers, lines of code tell a program how to work.”
“Well, yeah.”
“So when you told me that DNA has four possible pieces for each segment …”
“Base pair,” Geneva said.
“Right. ‘A’, ‘C’, ‘G,’ and ‘T,’ so that’s four possibilities. Hum code. Simple.”
“I can’t believe the way your mind works sometimes, Charlie,” Geneva said. “And I have a computer brain!” She laughed out loud.
“Bear with me, Geneva, OK? I want to look at it the way I look at puzzles.”
“Good.”
“We think Foxx’s animal-robot experiments somehow combine computers, living animals, and the Hum … to make his final code.” Charlie got chills thinking about the possibilities. “And we know he wanted to combine a biological virus with a computer virus. So that has to be connected to DNA. Right?”
“Maybe.”
“What you just showed me is that combination. But it isn’t The Future. It’s Hum code inside the puppy. So I’m asking three things. One: What’s missing from this code that will be in The Future? Two: How do we stop him from releasing The Future anyway? We know we can’t hack into it. You’ve already tried that. Right?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Question Three: How do we use this code to stop Foxx? How does it help?”
Charlie picked up the dog. “We’ve come so far. I feel like the answer is right in front of me, but I can’t see it!”
He allowed his mind to step back and process the whole landscape. Like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, the elements began to make a picture in his mind.
“One of the more difficult things my grandfather taught me was to use the Hum to open my intuition about languages. I’ve only tried it once, but it allowed me to understand what he was saying in another language.”
“So you can translate?” Geneva asked.
“Something like that. Grandfather spoke French, which I don’t speak, but I could understand him. Not what he said to someone else — only what he said to me.”
“So, if you speak English,” Geneva asked, “and somebody else speaks another language, you understand each other? But just each other?”
“Right. When Grandfather taught me, I didn’t do so well. But it’s worth a try.”
“What do you want to translate?”
“You.”
“Huh? What do you want to translate about me?”
“If computer code is a language you understand, and the Hum is a language I understand …”
Geneva nodded.
“And if this Future code is made up of both computer code and Hum code, I might be able to understand it — because you can understand computer code, and I can probably understand the Hum code. Does that make sense?”
“If it makes sense to you, it’s worth a shot.”
“We still don’t have a way to stop Foxx even if we can translate The Future code. But if we understand the puppy’s code, maybe we can understand The Future code and think of a way to stop it.”
“What do you need?”
“I’ll need your code, since it’ll be like translating something you’re saying.”
She activated the Code Analyzer. He recognized the part that was Geneva’s computer code, and he felt the part that was the Hum code.
Nothing happened. The computer language in front of him was too strange to understand. “I’m sorry, Geneva. It won’t work. French was a lot easier.”
“Don’t give up. It’s a great idea. You can feel the Hum, right?”
Charlie looked over at Callaya. “Wait! The puppy!” He picked her up.
Geneva sent the code across the screen again, and Charlie immediately felt the difference. The Hum didn’t just tingle. It flowed. It rushed from his toes to his fingertips. This was it!
Charlie locked his mental energy on the lines of code. Within seconds, the nonsense shifted from a jumble to something more. The code was changing, translating into a language made up of computer code, DNA, and the Hum.
On the roof of the Texifornia Bank Building, Charlie shuddered. He’d had enough of heights after Foxx’s windows at the top of TerraThinc. The wind gusted.
Only a few buildings stood as tall as the Texifornia in the LAanges skyline, and TerraThinc towered over them all. Charlie had a great view. He used the camera on the VidCel to zoom in on Foxx’s brightly lit office.
Charlie was utterly alone. Geneva had left two and a half hours ago. He hadn’t wanted her to go back into TerraThinc, but she was right. The Future code would be complete. They had to break in to access it.
Geneva had given him a VidCel, a tablet, and instructions for texting, video chat, and email. He rehearsed the touchscreen moves. He just hoped the video chat worked. Geneva wasn’t sure how well it would function up here.
“Charlie!” Geneva’s hushed voice came out of his headset. “I’m in!”
“Great!” She can’t hear me. He hit the CHAT button. “What happened?”
“Some falling garbage and junk hit me, but I made it to the 198th floor.”
Since their previous break-in, Foxx had drastically increased security, but Geneva had found one vulnerable spot: the recycling system. Infrared and motion detectors had been installed, but they hadn’t been connected to the main security system yet. This was their last chance.
From the basement, she had climbed up the series of chutes to 198. Magnets tugged on her, but they were mainly an irritation.
“I don’t tire easily, but I stink. People really shouldn’t put garbage in with the recycling. I’ll hit you back when I’m ready.”
How can she be in such good spirits?
“OK, I’m on the move.”
Charlie hit the CHAT button. “Good luck.”
“I’m sending you the video feeds from the cameras. Keep an eye out.”
Eight video feeds and alarm indicators came up. Now he could see different angles of the TerraThinc Building from the inside. “Got them.”
“Watch 23. Closely.”
An empty hallway. Then a closed door slowly cracked open — just an inch.
“Can you see me?” she whispered.
“Yes, a little.”
“Do you think anybody will notice?” She had twenty yards of hallway to get to Foxx’s computer lab door. That was a long way to go, even camouflaged.
“I don’t know,” Charlie whispered. “But they watch a lot of cameras, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, unconvinced. “Here goes.”
The door opened two more inches. Charlie could just make out a glimmer of light reflecting from her eyes.
“Motion detector!” She froze. “They got me!”
Charlie saw it. The motion detector had triggered an alert.
“Is anyone coming?” Geneva only had a few seconds to get down the hall. It was too risky. She pulled the door closed again.
“I don’t see you now. What are you doing?”
“I have an idea. It’s either really brilliant or really stupid. Diversion time.” Then the video feeds went dead.
“Geneva!”
No answer. Her voice was gone.
* * *
Chaos!
John McCallum nearly threw his coffee across the room. After three all-nighters, he wondered if he was hallucinating: One second, all systems were normal. The n
ext, every alert lit up, every siren blared. Either they were under a massive full-scale attack, or all of the upgrades crashed. He hoped it was an attack.
Three supervisors were yelling at once.
“What happened?” McCallum shouted. “One at a time!”
“Every camera has gone down!”
“Two Unix experts say this is a directed, multifaceted attack.”
“Sir! All systems have gone offline.”
McCallum could smell the fear on his team. He needed a supervisor from Elite Group — Foxx’s private physical security — not these night-patrol clowns.
He had a thought.
“Bring it down,” he said quietly. “Bring it all down.”
Was it a serious attack? Or had the whole system crashed? Either way McCallum’s best bet was to shut the whole thing down and reboot. They’d lose a couple of minutes of security, but they would be functional again.
* * *
That’s what Geneva was hoping for. It had worked! By using raw electrical noise masquerading as real computer data, she had shut down the entire network.
Now she’d have two or three seconds of total power outage to get into the computer room — Foxx’s inner sanctum. She’d have full access to everything.
Three days until The Future. The code must be ready. Foxx wouldn’t cut it closer. And now she’d be able to read the data. I just have to get out alive.
* * *
McCallum knew it was coming. Foxx’s direct line rang.
“Yes, sir. Systems are coming back online now. We’re checking the logs, and … No, sir. I haven’t authorized any action since we don’t know …” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I’ll give the order.” He changed phone lines. “Full alert status,” McCallum barked. “Deploy security spiders throughout the building. Get an Elite team ready now. I want up-to-the-minute details on the spider-bot data.”
McCallum scanned video monitors for terrorists, corporate mercenaries, even a robot squad. Nothing. Whatever was going on, he hoped Geneva and the boy weren’t behind it. Foxx’s orders were clear, but “take them alive” wasn’t comforting.
Geneva sprinted into the computer room. Suh-weeet! It worked!
Emergency lighting came on. But the electromagnetic locks didn’t open. Luckily her access codes worked before the new systems kicked in. Click. She slipped into the beating heart of the monster’s deepest lair.