Not So Dead: A Sam Sunborn Novel

by Charles Levin

  “Oh my God. I hadn’t even thought…I mean I haven’t even had time to think about that. Thank you, Detective. That puts my mind at ease, sort of.”

  “Sort of . . .?”

  “I mean who could have done this and could there be more?” Bart and Loretta knocked on the hallway window next to my door. I was glad to see they were OK. I waved and gave a weak smile. They knew me well enough not to interrupt and that we would all get together later—no matter how late it was.

  “Well, we’ve just started to put the pieces together. All we know now is that your killer was a professional—military trained,” the detective said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “We can tell by the weapon, how it was handled and how it was maintained. We don’t yet have any ID. His fingerprints have no matches in any of the databases.” Something about the way Favor looked at me with her head tilted and one eye focused reminded me of Peter Falk as Columbo. Falk was blind in one eye. She was much more attractive. The thought made me smile and brought back some fond memories.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “You just remind me of an old friend.” Why was my first instinct to lie to a detective? Not smart. “You actually remind me of that old police detective, Columbo.”

  Now she smiled too. “I just need the trench coat. Hopefully I’m better looking. Just a few questions, and you can get out of here, which I’m sure you want to do. So tell me what happened.”

  I looked down at the blood, Frank’s blood, on my shirt. At least I presume it was Frank’s blood. A shiver ran through my body and I visibly shook. I recalled it as best I could, even though I spent most of the time on the floor and in a daze.

  “Did you see the attacker? Can you tell me anything about him?”

  “Maybe six feet, heavy set, muscular and bald. I remember thinking he looked like Mr. Clean—only he had beard stubble. I was thinking ‘What has Mr. Clean got against me?’ He didn’t say anything. He just fired away. Wait, I do remember something odd. He had enormous biceps and was wearing a white T-shirt. Just under his left sleeve was a tattoo. An eagle I think. I’m not sure. It stuck in my mind a bit since it was the very last thing I saw before I dove to the floor. I’m sure you can see that for yourself on his body.”

  Favor shuffled in her chair and seemed to be waiting for me to continue, but I didn’t have anything to add. “We have no body.” That didn’t make sense. Al continued. “Pretend your eyes were closed the whole time. Run me through what sounds you heard,” she said.

  What an interesting exercise. I never heard that one on Columbo. I instinctively closed my eyes to try to recall the sounds. I remembered the rumble in the hallway, footsteps, shots, a grunt. No Bruce Willis moments like, “Die Mother Fucker!” when I was on the floor. I did remember a cell phone ringing. What was that ringtone? It was beeps. Five beeps. Stop. Five beeps but an unusual twang to the beeps.

  “Al, you know we do have video surveillance. Maybe that would help,” I said.

  “Yeah, it would if he hadn’t shot out the cameras. We only have one recorded glimpse of him from the back coming up the steps. Your description matches. We’ll see if we can get anything on that tattoo and match it against our database. Thanks, you’ve been very helpful.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Who took out Mr. Clean? I mean somebody shot him.”

  “Another good question,” Al said. “That’s why Columbo would call this a mystery.” She smiled and left the room.

  Little did I suspect at the time that Al would become a good friend and partner in the future. Funny how chance encounters can change your life. How bad sometimes leads to good and vice versa.

  I was putting on my jacket, getting ready to leave this crazy day behind, when I heard a gentle knocking on my door. “Come in.”

  A young petite, maybe five foot tall, woman with Asian features walked in.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Nancy Lu. I am a reporter with the Free Press blog. I heard what happened here today, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I thought all the reporters were being kept outside. How did you get in here?”

  “I’m sorry to impose. One of the uniforms guarding the line is my brother. Look, I’m just starting out. This is my first job and I could really use a break. I’d just take a few minutes and I’d be grateful forever.”

  Her charm and enthusiasm were infectious. How could I refuse? But what was the cover story? I hadn’t had time to think about that. I just gave her the bare details with no background. Talking to the press was going to be unavoidable. So it might as well be told to a striving young person like this. She looked at me with her dark eyes, sparkling eyes, waiting nervously for my response.

  “OK. You have ten minutes.”

  CHAPTER 11

  DIGITAL FRANK

  The lab was a crime scene, with yellow tape and all, for several days, but we could work from our offices. We set up an impromptu lab in my office. It was pretty hard for us to focus and get anything done. First there was Ray’s funeral at the Golden Gate National Cemetery. Then there was Frank’s funeral and the reception at Frank’s house. Afterwards, Bart, Loretta, Julie and I drifted back to the office like four lost souls. Where else were we going to go?

  The hardest thing for me was Sarah, Frank’s daughter. She just looked so lost—so adrift in her grief. Strangely with Frank’s death, I felt like I had lost my father too. “First she loses her mother and now her father,” I said. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t come up with this dumb idea and roped Frank into it, he’d still be alive.”

  “Sweet girl. She’s a third year at the university and she idolized her father—especially after her mother died last year,” Loretta said. “Yeah, and don’t blame yourself. We’re all adults. We make our own decisions. Nobody could have anticipated this.”

  “Yeah, freak car accident. Frank survived. Susan, his wife, did not,” Bart said.

  “Maybe it wasn’t an accident,” I said.

  They both turned abruptly and stared at me like I had two heads.

  “Think about it. Somebody obviously wanted Frank dead. Maybe this was their second attempt. Maybe they failed the first time and got Susan instead. We need to make sure Favor knows about the accident, if she doesn’t already. I like that lady-detective. I can see real soul in those brown eyes.”

  “Are you falling in love?” Bart said and I blushed.

  “You dork. I try to be nice and you’re always making a joke…but I love you just the same. You’re my first and only,” I said. This time Bart blushed and we all laughed. I think it was the first moment we had an emotional break from the heaviness of the day, the week and what had happened.

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking…”

  “Uh, oh!” Bart said and smiled. “What now? What reckless endangerment do you have cooked up for us next?”

  “Not funny. I really feel responsible.”

  “Really just kidding. Get over yourself. You’re not that important.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate that vote of confidence. Look, we’re back at the office, I mean lab.” I waved my hands pointing around to the bank of computers now crammed into my office. “Why don’t we load Frank up—boy, that sounds weird. Turn him on—weirder. Let’s go talk to the digital Frank.”

  “The first true test of our system. We have a dead guy with his persona on the system. I like it,” Bart said.

  “Not too elegantly put as usual, but that’s what I was getting at.”

  “Are you guys crazy?” Loretta looked truly shocked. “We just buried him today and he is, I mean ‘was’ a friend. Don’t you guys feel the slightest bit strange about this crazy idea?”

  “We all mourn Frank’s loss, but I think, as a scientist, he would want us to carry on with his work. This is the precise thing we have been working toward and who better to be the first beneficiary of his work and ours?” We all sat in silence letting the reality of this idea and this project sink in. I think
, for all of us, this is the first time it was really real.

  I could tell we were all in agreement. I knew Loretta and Bart well enough to judge their body language. We had done a mind meld long ago. “Bart, turn on DC4 and the overhead screen. Bring up Frank.” A minute later, the screen flickered—finding signal—Windows 12 was an improvement but was still slow as molasses.

  Frank’s face appeared on the screen. He looked down as if to check his feet. I doubt he saw anything. “Hi guys, what’s up?” he said in his usual cheery voice.

  Oh my God, how did we answer that one?

  The only way I knew how. “Well Frank, we have some good news and some bad news.”

  Julie whispered under her breath, “Did you really just say that?”

  I looked at Julie, smirked and turned back to Frank, Digital Frank that is.

  “Digital3000 works and we are here in my office talking to your digital persona,” I said.

  Frank seemed to be looking around and the webcam moved in synch with his eyes—a nifty little invention Bart worked up for fun late one night. When Frank looked to his left, the webcam rotated left and when he looked right, the webcam reversed direction. “Your office is a mess. What are all the lab computers doing in here? Having a garage sale?”

  I didn’t know how else to say it, and I was never one for mincing words. “Digital3000 is the good news. The bad news is that you are dead. I mean your physical self is dead. You were shot and killed. You are obviously here digitally. You were murdered three days ago in the lab. You are the first of our uploaded personas to actually die and ‘come back to life’ via the system you built. Congratulations.”

  Frank looked stunned but his complexion was unchanged. We had not yet refined the digital image to show emotion through changes in skin color. “I don’t know whether to cry or laugh or what. I’m just apoplectic,” he said.

  “Good word,” Bart said. “Same old Frank.”

  Digital Frank smiled. “Same old Bart the Fart.” This time we all laughed, but I could tell that Frank, despite his veneer, was still trying to get his bearings. “Well, now what? I guess, tell me about what happened in the lab. The murder I mean. My murder. Wow, that sounds strange.”

  Yes we were definitely in strange territory, but it was new and wondrous at the same time. I felt both the fear and excitement of discovery, of exploration. The three of us recounted in detail to Frank the tale of the attack on the lab and the aftermath. Digital Frank was nodding as he took it all in. I saw the webcam moving up and down almost imperceptibly like it was nodding too. Somehow we had crossed over to the other side.

  CHAPTER 12

  INSIDE THE NETWORK

  “Do I look like Max Headroom?” Frank said.

  I grinned. “No, you look and sound like you—warts and all. Listen, seriously—who do you think attacked the lab?”

  “This may sound paranoid and I’m not into conspiracy theories, but…” he hesitated. “I think it was somebody from Defense.”

  “That’s a big accusation. Please explain.”

  “Despite the fact that we got an agreement on paper, my DARPA contacts were pretty pissed I was going into the private sector with this technology. Actually, I’m surprised they didn’t stop me by using national security as an excuse. I think somebody fucked up. So now the only way to remove that risk is to kill it, literally, and me, physically.

  Think about it. It was a professional hit and I bet when it comes back, it will turn out that the tattoo is military.”

  I had to think about this one. What had I gotten myself into? “Crap, if you’re right about this, what chance do we stand against those guys?”

  “There’s more to this than you think. Now that I’m ‘dead,’ I’m not going to worry about confidentiality. Just be warned—if you repeat any of this, it could be dangerous for you. Defense has escalated its whole war on cyber-terrorism beyond what you could imagine. They’ve hired, recruited and broken-out of jail the greatest hackers and code monkeys in the world. The US Cyber Command now has 6,000 geeks working in it. What you see most in the news is about the threat of foreign attacks and how we fight against them. What you don’t hear about is offense and the attacks we launch.

  “Sure there was the famous Stuxnet virus that shut down Iran’s nuclear production, but you haven’t heard about a thousand others. There is an elite force in the Cyber War Division of elite hackers—several hundred strong. Their code name is SCAG—Super Cyber Attack Group. They are to Cyber War what the SEALs are to the Navy and Delta Force is to the Army. Their members are called Scaggers—super smart, motivated and capable of extended missions under duress.”

  I felt like I was in a spy novel, but this one was personal and scary. “So what has this all got to do with you?” Bart said.

  “They were really interested in the Digital Persona idea, but more as Digital Warriors. These warriors, once online, could travel through the global network and shut down foreign power plants, derail trains, crash airplanes and even get nuclear facilities to blow themselves up,” Frank said.

  I think all our brains were now going into hyper-drive. Loretta was turning five shades of red and blurted out, “I don’t see how that’s possible. How can you ‘travel?’ How can you do these things? I mean hypothetically.”

  “It’s not hypothetical. I solved the most difficult part of this—creating digital life. Remember when you joked about ‘backups?’ What do you think would happen if you turned off the computer you are seeing me on right now?”

  “You would die?” Loretta said.

  I knew this wasn’t true, but I wasn’t going to interrupt. This story was too important, and Loretta had the part of Phaedo to Frank’s Socrates.

  “No, because I do not live in this computer. I am in the ‘Cloud’ not on any particular computer or server. I am potentially everywhere. I have found Borges’s Aleph where I cannot only see anything, anywhere that I choose, but I can be anywhere that I choose. I am a living file and can display myself as an image, text or a deadly virus. It’s all at my command. If you turn off your computer or even remove me from a server, I have replicated myself across millions of servers and can reassemble myself anywhere. The only way to ‘kill’ me now is to shutdown the entire network and erase every hard drive in the world, and that isn’t going to happen.”

  Frank continued. “Now imagine what would happen if Defense or one of our enemies had this capability. They could do untold damage. They could destroy or maybe even worse, control our entire world.”

  “So why did you leave and why did you agree to work with us?” I wondered out loud.

  “For two reasons. First, I believed and I still believe that Digital3000 could do enormous good, extending our lives forever without the effects of physical deterioration.” Frank stopped short and there was silence.

  I waited as long as I could. “And the second reason?”

  “I felt I had to ‘get inside the network’ to figure out how to stop anyone from developing Cyber Warriors. If they figured it out, that would be game-set-match. It’s over.”

  I think we all got “it” at the same time. This second reason was really the most important. The goal had changed. Loretta, Bart and I looked at each other and I knew.

  Finally I said, “What can we do to help?”

  CHAPTER 13

  SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT

  “I feel like Schrödinger’s Cat,” Frank said.

  “What’s that?” said Bart.

  “It’s something from quantum physics called superpositioning, where the same atomic particle can be in two places at the same time. You know the whole idea of parallel universes and cool stuff like that. Well, Schrödinger’s Cat is hypothetically dead and alive at the same time. That’s me. I’m physically dead but alive across the Cyber Universe.”

  “Wow, that’s some heavy stuff. But let’s figure out who attacked you in the lab as they may be connected to the Scaggers or Cyber Warriors or whatever you called them,” I said, being the reasonable
one for once. “What do we know and where do we start? Frank, what were you doing just before the attack?”

  “I was working on the reflection of yourself in the mirror problem, heard noises, stood up and turned…then the next thing I know I am talking to you from inside the system.”

  “Wait a minute. How could your digital persona recollect everything up until the last moment when you probably did your last upload sometime before?” Bart wondered.

  “I actually was connected to the system at the time of the attack. I was testing a live feedback loop. Everything I experienced while alive got captured and uploaded. That is before the connection went dead.”

  “Hmm. Frank, can you access the image I gave Favor from the closed circuit cameras?”

  “Sure, got it. Pretty fast, huh?”

  “You’re just having a great time with your new toy I can tell, but I am scared shitless. Well, never mind that. Can you match the attacker’s image to anything across the Web that might help us?”

  “OK, now this might take a couple of minutes…got it! His name is…Viktor Cotton, ex-Delta as Favor suspected. He went MIA in Somalia ten years ago. But…I have another match for him on the UK’s CCTV cameras in London about two weeks ago with another man near Harrods.”

  “Wasn’t Cotton an old time actor? Forget that. Do you have a clear image of the other man?” I said anxiously.

  “Yes, I remember Cotton from the movie The Third Man with Orson Welles.”

  “The other man.” I was getting annoyed and I think Frank was playing with me.

  “Yes, Welles was the other man.” He laughed. “Calm down, I’m not wasting time. I started a search before I started pulling your leg. This is true multitasking. Here. He is Ian McClellen, aka the Dagger, head of Barin’s VETAK, their CIA and NSA rolled into one. We may have the connection.”

  “Shit, so it’s not Defense that wanted you dead but the Barinians? Are they building Cyber Warriors?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll track all of the Dagger’s connections and see where it leads,” Frank said.