After a little thought, she wrote up a detailed summary of their status and put it on the “Linda” webpage. She hoped he would be able to view it.
Cara and Wilson came back together. “What’s this?” Cara asked.
“Cameras,” Linda said.
Linda’s telepathy was fast in picking up Wilson’s anger. She could almost always access mood, although specific thoughts came about once a day. Before she could comment that he was overreacting, she realized he was angry with her. He didn’t say anything, but she recognized her stupidity. She let the watchers know she was tapping into their computers. She blushed at her error and was annoyed with her blush. Wilson put his hand up to his ear and moved it back and forth. Finally catching on, she shrugged, indicating that she had no idea if there were microphones. She suspected there were, but couldn’t find them.
Linda took a handkerchief and cleared off the camera-covering spots. If she was very lucky, no one noticed it. There were cameras everywhere and she doubted most were monitored. The pictures were sent to the Plict, which meant the Vigintees might not even know about them.
She had a moral dilemma and wanted to talk to someone about it. Twice in the past, she hacked into computers in unacceptable ways. The first time was when a very annoying English teacher told her he didn’t care how important her father was, she was getting a C. She never asked for a grade because of her father, but she thought she did B work. She arranged it so whenever he signed onto the high school computer, the computer made a rude noise. The second time was when she heard a rumor that football players had grades raised by the provost at her college. She arranged an email to be sent to the press if it ever happened. When it was discovered, her mentor, Takeuti, sent her an email, saying her behavior was not a worthy application of her talents, which suggested that not everyone was fooled.
Her summer internships gave her ample opportunities to hack in a socially acceptable manner, but she wanted to know what was the right thing to do. She had no problems destroying the usefulness of Vigintees’ computers. They kidnapped her and her father, and killed her mother and the passengers on her father’s flight. They also messed up American communication. It would be fitting to mess up their society with a similar attack.
Yet she wasn’t a soldier, and people could die. But she wasn’t a pacifist either. She knew her computer skills were probably a better weapon than the gun she carried in her purse, she just didn’t know if bringing down their computers would be a good idea.
The real issue was Plict society. She knew nothing about the Plict, and had no idea what would happen if she introduced her destructive program into their computers. If it were like Earth, a virus checker would be reprogrammed in days to find her code, leaving relatively minor problems occurring due to corrupted data. But if they didn’t have such things, her code could be very disruptive. Possibly it wouldn’t work, just as viruses for Windows didn’t attack Macs. The Vigintees machines might be primitive in comparison to the Plict machines.
Yet, there was a very sophisticated AI program in the computers. She might be able to adapt it to her needs. Self-modifying code was frowned upon by computer scientists, but it was an interesting challenge.
The question was not just could she do it, but should she. She longed for someone to help her make the decision, but with the likelihood of eavesdroppers, she realized she had to make it herself. The Plict supported the Vigintees and appeared to know what they were doing. She remembered Wilson’s earlier attitude, and thought he would approve.
No, that was a copout. He just approved of snooping, not of doing damage. The decision was hers. She looked things over again, as if the code could give her an answer.
She spent the next several hours refining things. She barely noticed Wilson and Cara return to share a meal with her. Wilson took some tools and did something to the door, but she neither knew nor cared what it was. What if things went wrong with her program? She built a model to test it, but it was a small-scaled test and wouldn’t really mimic what she planned.
When Wilson and Cara came back to sleep, she stayed up. They couldn’t claim the lights bothered them, because the lights were always on, unless something went wrong. She ignored their pointed comments about her refusal to sleep and her not doing her share of the work. I’m doing it for them, too, she thought, although “them” primarily meant Wilson.
Hours after Wilson and Cara went to sleep, Linda suspected someone was tracking her. She might be shut down at any time, thus had no more leisure to agonize over the morality of it. There were many clues that she was tracked, and the computer in question would be perfect to use to get her program out. She set things in motion. She also put a copy of the program on the “Linda” webpage with instructions to Dad on how to use it.
Afterwards, she went to bed, feeling there was no more she could do. When she woke up, Cara and Wilson were gone. Linda’s body was a bit stiff from inadequate movement, and she needed a shower. She decided to exercise first and spent half an hour on the machine. She was finishing getting dressed when they returned.
“Care to join us for some work?” Wilson said with more than a hint of sarcasm.
His annoyance stung her, and she realized she deserved it. Not because she wasn’t working, but she didn’t make it clear to him that what she was doing was more important. Or was it? Where did her priorities lie, helping the Vigintees or trying to escape? Saving lives or getting on with our lives? Putting it that way made saving lives important, but they were The Enemy.
“I’m free.” Well, I have free time. I’m actually a prisoner, she thought.
“Want a trip outside?” Wilson asked both of them.
“Not me, I’ll rest, I’m tired,” Cara said.
Now that the intensity of the work on the computer wore off, Linda’s feelings for Wilson came to the surface. She wished she could stop looking at him. She loved the way he looked and the way he moved. She even enjoyed watching the change in his appearance as his beard grew and his shaved head filled out with curly black hair. His voice alone thrilled her. Although she was a bit jealous of the time Cara spent with Wilson, Wilson’s vibes were not sexual when they were alone together. They became sexual sometimes when Linda was there, but not always, and if he had as much control as John had, he could be thinking about Cara or someone she didn’t even know. Explicit thoughts were rare, and the headaches no longer came with them.
“Why do you want to go up?” Linda asked him.
“To work on my tan,” he said. Linda looked at his dark brown skin and was about to push for a more realistic answer, but Wilson put his hand near his ear.
Wilson explained when they were through the decontamination. “I don’t think they’re monitoring this area,” he said. “You know you shouldn’t have revealed you were aware of the cameras.” His voice was gentle, and a bit condescending.
She was in the wrong, and there was no point in denying it. “Sorry. I should have thought.” She realized she hadn’t told him enough of what she learned. “It’s not just us. There are cameras everywhere. They’re set up to take advantage of the mirrors in some cases. I haven’t found the microphones, but I’m sure they have them.”
“Any sign they’re monitoring the truck farm?” They were slowly wading through pepper plants headed toward some bushes.
“No, but I haven’t found everything. I didn’t have time.” She made the last statement with a bit of resentment, which Wilson ignored.
Wilson walked slowly enough so Linda had no difficulty. He could step over the plants with an easy motion, but they constituted a larger barrier to her. She considered herself an indoor person, but found she missed the sky and the wind. Even temperature, which was just a few degrees warmer than indoors, was a pleasant change.
“Why do they monitor their own citizens so closely? You would think we’d have caught some hint of it on all the shows we watched. There must be hundreds of people watching all the monitors.”
“They don’t have any,” she
said.
“Huh?”
“The cameras have feeds into what’s labeled the water purifying plant.” She paused and looked around, noting the position of the sun. It was no good, she didn’t even know what time of day it was here, or for that matter, what hemisphere they were in. She didn’t even know if it was summer, which the plants suggested. It could be winter and the summers were much hotter. She saw some bushes, whose presence made it unlikely that there were unreasonably hot summers. It’s spring, she thought. I don’t know the hour or the location, but it’s summer. “Are we going toward the water purifying plant?” she asked.
“I don’t have a clue. We’re going toward some bushes, which are the only hope anyone would have of concealing something.”
“I’m wondering if there is another entrance, something the Plict use. Even if it’s not visible, there should be a landing site next to it.”
Linda started to reach down to pick up a strawberry, but Wilson said, “I wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not worth antagonizing them over it.”
“They wouldn’t know.”
“Are you sure?”
She wasn’t. She wanted to reach for an M&M from her purse, but she was saving them and she didn’t want to show her weakness for food to Wilson. There was little temptation to overeat the bland bars that constituted their food supply.
They found a likely candidate for a landing site in a section surrounded by thorny bushes Linda suspected were either raspberry or blackberry. Behind them were taller bushes, which Linda deduced were blueberry, because that was one of the fruits mentioned on one of the shows she saw earlier. Although there were small paths through the bushes for the SCIMMs, they were too small for someone to crawl through without being torn by the thorns. The SCIMMs had retractable arms that could be pulled back to go under the bushes. Linda might venture through if covered with leather, but not in the thin Vigintees clothing. Her blue jeans might be strong enough, but she would need something for her arms. The thorns would tear her winter jacket to pieces, but it might still protect her.
Wilson was not looking down to the tunnels the SCIMMs used, he was looking up. “I’m not tall enough.”
Linda thought he was tall enough. His driver’s license said he was 6 ft. 2 in.
“Come here.” He got on his hands and knees.
She was not sure how he managed it, but somehow, she was sitting on his shoulders while he was standing up. She allowed herself to enjoy the necessary physical contact in spite of the fact that she didn’t need telepathy to realize Wilson’s mood was not sexual. He wanted to know what was behind the bushes, and she was his tool.
“I can’t see much, but it looks like a clear space is there. It looks big enough to land one of those ships.” Linda took advantage of her position to look all around. Suddenly, she saw people coming toward her. “We’re looking for more of the SCIMMs,” she said. “The machines we used to deliver handkerchiefs,” she explained.
From Wilson, she felt momentary puzzlement, then he looked around and spotted the people coming toward them. “They may have gotten stuck in the bushes,” he said.
He knelt and helped her off him. “No, they’re too good for that. But they may be doing other tasks here. Pruning or fertilizing. We’ll tell them we think handkerchiefs are a higher priority.”
They were taken to Judit, who was gaunt and weak, but obviously recovering. Cara was already there. “We are lifting the quarantine. There’ve been no new cases for five days. We see that you have been taking advantage of your freedom to invade our privacy and are confining you to quarters without computer access.” This was a possibility Linda considered.
Cara protested, “We needed the computers to help you, and it’s too early to lift quarantine.”
“Take them away,” Judit said, before Cara finished speaking.
Back in their apartment, with the computers gone, Wilson looked at Linda and said, “You don’t look upset.”
She put her hand to her ear, to signal unseen listeners, and said in Vigintees, “I’m not upset because I’m not surprised.”
Wilson and Cara were both staring at her. She didn’t need telepathy to interpret their surprise at her calmness. “You warned me this might happen,” she said to Wilson.
“I thought they would limit what we could see on the computer, not eliminate our access entirely,” he replied.
The power went out.
“We can talk now,” Linda whispered. “They’ll be using electronic devices, because probably only a few of them speak English. We have ten minutes before the power returns.”
“How did you get the power to go out now? We might still have been outside,” Wilson said.
“Someone sent a message saying we’d been taken into custody. These computers have great AI systems, and I used them.” Linda briefly wondered if Cara or Wilson knew AI stood for artificial intelligence.
“We still can’t get out, or go anywhere if we did get out,” Cara said.
“I’m not trying to get out,” Linda replied, feeling her way to a chair. “Actually, the only thing I need to do is talk to you. There are going to be more power failures, until I give the code to the computers. Even that is a temporary fix. I couldn’t correct it completely, if I wanted to. If something happens to me, I’ve set it up so each of you can give code phrases to control things, at least temporarily, but if they keep all of us prisoner, they’ll have a hard time stopping things without wiping the computers first. I don’t think they’ll do that.”
“What’s our codes?” Wilson asked.
“I’ll tell you each separately.”
Cara started singing in a loud voice. Linda was glad Cara figured out how to avoid hearing and help confound any unseen listeners. She found Wilson by feel and whispered, “Veronica under the bridge.”
“How . . . Jesus, I’ll never keep anything secret from you.”
“Well, you were thinking about her a few days ago.”
Cara stopped singing, and Linda whispered her phrase while Wilson sang.
Linda lay down on her cot while Wilson and Cara carried on a conversation in English about some psychological aspect of catching criminals. She amused herself by translating everything into Vigintees. Learning languages didn’t come easily to her, and she was worried she would lose the Vigintees if they removed the translation disk. She took enough Arabic to get through college, working harder for her B’s in Arabic than she did for her A’s in all her math and computer courses.
After Mom disappeared, Dad persuaded a colleague, Takeuti, to work with her on computers. Dad helped the colleague’s daughter on her thesis. Linda didn’t realize at the time the help given was an exchange. It wasn’t until she started graduate school that she realized she’d been taught by a world-renowned expert with a surprising amount of patience. One of them, and she wasn’t certain if it was Takeuti or her father, arranged for her to have an internship with a company that contracted to the government to legally hack computers. She started small, on police cases, but graduated to terrorists’ websites.
Linda wanted to talk to Takeuti about the computers, because they were ternary, rather than binary. Her first thought was that it was related to the Plict having three fingers on each hand, but she eventually realized the hardware dictated the system. Everything had three states, rather than the two present in Earth computers. She had no idea about the physical device that made this efficient, but the logic was fascinating. She found some old code that used a binary when doing bit manipulation, suggesting that a conversion was made when the hardware changed. If “bit” stood for binary digit, what would a ternary digit be? Tet or tit?
The lights came on, and Linda realized she’d lost track of Wilson and Cara’s conversation and hadn’t told them what they needed to know. “You’ve got to record the times and durations of the blackouts. Here,” she said fishing her blue marker out of her purse. “Write on the mirrors.”
For two days they took turns
staying up to record the blackouts, but they weren’t in one of the five key patterns. They were all awake when there was an unusually long blackout, causing Wilson to ask her with annoyance, “What’s this one mean?”
“They’re rebooting.”
“You’ve lost control then.” His voice gave away his annoyance, and telepathy confirmed he wasn’t acting.
“Maybe. Maybe not. You haven’t heard of Little Bobby Tables, have you?”
“What?”
“They probably are using the old database for names of people, entertainment menus, and so on. I put code in the database as names, which they won’t see unless they go through by hand. They won’t do that because there are something like 60,000 people here.”
“Less now,” said Wilson. Linda forgot about the deaths.
“It doesn’t matter. I hid thousands of copies of the code. If someone watches a show, the code will activate. If the computer tries to update the list of names, ditto. They can wipe the computers all they want, but unless they erase their database, it’ll still be there.”
“They could go through by computer and find the code.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. It never occurred to me they might use a computer. We are doomed.” She realized they didn’t know if she was serious or not.
On the third day without computer access, someone came to change clothes. “Things must be getting back to normal,” Wilson said. But brief random blackouts started up again in a few hours.
The next morning, while looking over the times Wilson listed, Linda asked, “Are you sure?”
“It means something?” he asked her. She wiggled her ear with her hand and he talked about something else.
When the power went out again, she whispered to them, “Five blackouts of five minutes each with ten minute breaks, means there are more cases of the flu.”
Lost Past Page 14