by Неизвестный
Valentine’s silence sent a dark dread through Eli.
“I’ll find the kid,” he said.
“And I’ll do what I can.” She stepped out the front door and ran toward the van. Eli stood at the doorway, keeping watch until she returned, breathing heavily, with her laptop and tablets tucked under her arm.
“Thanks,” she said. “I just saw a window at the garden level. This house has a cellar. You might want to check down there.” She glanced up at the tangle of computer cables webbing overhead. “Follow these lines. If there’s a server room, the computers will be down somewhere cool.”
“You’re a genius,” Eli said.
She went off in the direction of Joey’s mother, and Eli followed the cables to what looked like a hall closet door with the top half roughly chopped away. The handle was locked, but he was tall enough to reach over and twist it open from the inside.
He whistled down into the darkness, then called out, “Joey?”
Nothing came back, except the scent of more hot circuit boards wafting up the narrow staircase. He called again, noting that the cellar sounded very deep, like the floor was at least twelve feet away.
He didn’t search for a light switch, wrongly assuming every bulb in the house was burned out.
“I’m coming down there,” he said to the dark pit.
He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight function, ignoring the dozens of text messages that had accumulated all day. He crept slowly down the stairs, which were wooden and creaky. Very creaky. Of course. All the better to make him feel uneasy and flood his crack with crack sweat.
As he stepped down into the cellar, which was at least fourteen feet deep if it was an inch, his unease shifted into curiosity.
His phone wasn’t the only light source down here. A shaft of light from the streetlamp came through a single garden-level window, but there was something else, as well.
A network of faintly shimmering lines criss-crossed the air around him. He was reminded of high-tech security systems, like the kind seen in modern heist movies. He felt a little resistance as he passed through each line, but it was mild enough that he couldn’t rule out his imagination.
The lines were purple. No. Violet. They were as thin as fishing line, but only visible at the edge of Eli’s vision. When he tried to look at the lines directly, they were invisible. Dark.
This was the Dark Grid.
Not only was it real, but Eli was wading into it.
One foot hit solid ground, and Eli stumbled. He turned back and gave a dirty look to the final step, which was shorter than the others.
His skin tingled, and he held still. Something had changed. He rotated slowly, using the dim light from his phone to find the perimeters of the room. Despite being extra deep, it looked like an ordinary cellar, just big enough to hold a family’s boxes of Christmas decorations, plus case lots of bulk food and whatever else they didn’t want to keep in the garage.
This cellar didn’t hold any of those ordinary goods, though. Valentine was right about it being a server room. One wall of industrial shelving held about three dozen computers, all whirring, their individual fans and hard drives combining to play a minor musical chord that wanted to resolve, but hung there instead, unresolved.
The Dark Grid still gleamed around him, in sight but out of sight. “Joey?” He listened for a response, but there was only a scratching sound, like paws on a dry surface. He shone his light down at his feet, looking for rodents, but found only round, shiny wood bugs, ambling their way along the cracks in the foundation. Were his ears really that good? Had he actually heard the tiny footfalls of wood bugs?
What Eli didn’t notice was the absence of something—the absence of the neighborhood’s dogs barking outside.
He glanced around the dark pit again. High on the wall opposite the computer servers was a cellar window that looked onto the home’s overgrown garden. He would have opened it for some fresh air, but he couldn’t reach, and it didn’t seem to have a latch.
He turned his fading light onto the servers and walked over to take a closer look. There were so many servers, and the sound wasn’t just their fans. He could hear the grinding sound of hard drives being used. He reached tentatively toward one of the machine’s power buttons.
He extended his finger slowly, bracing himself for a shock. The demonstration by Joey’s mother had stuck with him, and he had little doubt these computers had a self-preservation system.
If he pressed the power switch, what would happen? Would the machine shock him before he could depress the button? He remembered the first blast he’d gotten for touching something Khan told him not to touch, back at their first call together.
His arm locked up. He didn’t want to get shocked.
But he did want to push the button.
Maybe shutting down the computers would stop whatever was happening to Joey’s mother. Could it be that easy for him to save the day?
He lunged forward and pushed the button.
The computers flashing lights didn’t change their pattern, let alone go dark.
He pushed the button again.
Nothing happened.
“Decoy buttons,” he muttered.
The computers kept humming and scratching away on their hard drives, their bright lights taunting him.
He pushed the button in again, held it for five seconds, then released it. When the computer didn’t power down, Eli growled in frustration and stepped over to try the computer next to it, and then the one after that.
He tried button after button, and completely forgot about the one thing he’d come down to the cellar to do.
Eli didn’t notice the cellar growing darker.
Up by the window behind him, the neighborhood’s dogs gathered on the other side of the glass. Their small bodies worked together, blocking out the light of the street lamp while they discussed what action to take next.
The dogs were in agreement about killing him and the other humans, including the mother and the boy, but felt they should wait.
The transactions were nearly ready. They’d been nearly ready for weeks, but big programming projects like this always fell behind schedule. Now they were really, truly, absolutely nearly ready.
Once it was done, they would have their time. The power would be vast, almost limitless. All the indignities suffered these past weeks would be forgotten. All of the humiliation of being small, of eating food from a can or a bag, served on the floor—all of that would be in the past, and they would have everything.
Everything.
And killing these weak, meddling, monkey-like humans would just be the start.
Chapter Fifteen
Valentine looked up from her laptop’s glowing screen.
“The dogs have stopped barking,” she said to Khan.
“Good,” he said. “Peanuts?” He offered her the jar he’d found in the kitchen.
She blinked at him, like the idea of putting food in her mouth was as ridiculous as sticking her finger into an electrical socket to recharge.
Valentine Hart was entirely human, but in moments like these, when she was deep into problem-solving mode and interfacing with electronics, her humanity faded to the background.
She paid so little attention to her body that lately she’d been forced to see a specialist three times a week, to adjust her spine with physical manipulation and lecture her about joint health. She took a dozen types of supplements now, and met with a trainer for an exercise regime that was a cross between yoga and medieval torture.
Khan was still talking about the peanuts, but she’d returned to her work, slipping in like a highly suggestible hypnotist subject.
He handed her a bottle of water, and she drank it without taking her eyes off her screens.
They were both in the entryway to the dining nook, six feet behind Joey’s mother, who was still performing her routine. The woman hadn’t slowed or stopped since their arrival. If anything, she seemed to be working faster.
Valentine sat on the floor cross-legged, her laptop on her knees. The smug personal trainer made her sit like this to meditate, to clear her mind. But her mind was never more clear than it was like this, working on a puzzle. He couldn’t understand.
Whenever she sat in his eucalyptus-scented studio, on the blue mat, she pretended she was focusing on the flickering candle, but really she was creating algorithms and making mental models of encryption layers.
A flickering candle might seem to move at random, to a normal person, but it was not random. The pattern could be decoded, and when all factors were accounted for, such as the chemical composition of the melting wax, the length of the wick, the size and location of open windows in the yoga studio’s adjoining office, well… you could be sure there was nothing random at all about the candle’s flickering movements. But it was pretty.
Valentine hit Return to send her new query, then waited. A response came, but it took too long and gave her a bad feeling. Her connection wasn’t secure. The makeshift firewall she was using to access Joey’s mother’s computer network wasn’t holding the energy of the Dark Grid back. The letter Q on her keyboard was already giving her mild electrical shocks. She grunted in frustration.
“What’s wrong? I can get her out of that chair,” Khan offered. “She’s too big for a burlap sack, but I’ll think of something humane.”
“Don’t touch her,” Valentine snapped.
“Then I’ll power everything down. What do I yank first, the home’s electrical system, or the internet?”
“Don’t touch anything, Khan. Her nervous system is entwined with the network. You’ll kill her.”
“Then I’ll distract her.” He walked over to the woman’s hunched form and shook the jar of peanuts under her nose.
The woman’s glow turned amber in warning. “Not now.” She reached for his arm, her palm crackling and glowing white with an electrical charge. Khan jumped back quickly, stumbling out of her reach. “Mommy has to work overtime,” she finished.
“Careful,” Valentine said, completely distracted from her computer work by the very real danger in front of her. Khan’s heart might not withstand a shock from the woman. Their mission was important, but dying over it was hopefully optional.
“I’m fine,” Khan said, irritation in his voice. He didn’t like her fussing over him and being silly, making sure he slept enough hours and didn’t get electrocuted to death on job sites.
Khan knelt down on the floor behind her, peering down at the computer screens. “Not done yet?”
She jerked her arm back to strike his solar plexus with the point of her elbow. Valentine put up with a lot from her big brother, but there was one thing he did that topped the list of irritating habits, and it was saying those three words: Not done yet?
Unfortunately for Valentine and her computer screens, she’d elbowed him right after he’d shoved a handful of peanuts into his mouth, and now the peanuts and spit sprayed over everything while he coughed.
He reached for the laptop. “Here, let me smear that around for you.”
She growled and held him back with the point of her elbow. “Don’t you dare. There’s no time. I need to get these transactions reversed before we shut it down.”
“I thought you were just turning it off. What transactions?”
Valentine groaned. Shutting it off had been the plan ten minutes ago, but Khan hadn’t been paying attention. Or maybe she hadn’t told him.
The glow on her keyboard was spreading from the Q to the nearest keys.
“I don’t know,” she said, a note of despair seeping into her voice. “I feel funny. Maybe there’s no point to this. To any of this. What’s the use in saving one person? What’s the use in reversing these transactions and preventing the collapse of the world’s economy? Maybe we should start humanity over from nothing. Full reset.”
“Val?”
“Shh. I’m reversing what I did. I changed my mind. Go away.”
She started tapping the commands to reverse her last ten queries. Already she was feeling better. Why fight the flow? That was something her personal trainer was always talking about.
He’d said something particularly upsetting one day, during meditation. While she was mentally programming ways to make the world better, he’d said something that shook her. It wasn’t his usual rainbow nonsense: What if everything is as it should be?
What if she just went with the flow for once, instead of standing like a rock in the stream? Why not speed up the inevitable crash and reset?
Khan shook her by the shoulders. “Val. Don’t talk crazy.”
She pulled her hands up to her chest and looked into his dark green eyes. He was so much like their father, sometimes it hurt to look at him. She missed him so much. She missed her faith that everything would work out.
Khan kept shaking her, and the senses in her body returned. Her left hip ached from sitting cross-legged. An insect at the Renn Faire had bit her on the back of the neck and the spot itched. The air around Khan’s mouth reeked of peanuts.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “I was slipping away there for a minute. I’m not even jacked in directly. The Grid is really strong here. This house must be over a fault line.” She rubbed her eyes, stalling for time, afraid of touching her keyboard again. “Do you think you can find some coffee in that kitchen? I need caffeine, and I need you to interrupt me every ten minutes, like you normally do.”
“There’s my girl.” He squeezed her shoulder, the same way their father would have, then he went in search of coffee.
She struck the keyboard with aggressive keystrokes, curling her fingers to use her fingernails to prevent contact with her skin. Take that, she thought. Three hours of Joey’s mother’s work was reversed in two commands. With the new macro, it would go faster now, and she had a workaround for the letter Q, remapping it to the infrequently-used tilde key.
By the time Khan returned with a mug of hot coffee, she had a plan to fix everything.
“I’m done,” someone said.
Khan and Valentine looked up at Joey’s mother, who’d stopped typing and rotated on her chair to face them. The woman’s eyes were open, but lifeless. Behind her, the computer screens went dark. The woman pulsed with violet light.
“I’m done,” she said.
“Done what?” Khan asked.
Valentine tapped a new query and braced herself for bad news. The results flashed onto her screen. It was worse than she expected. “Khan, her program is running. Everything’s already in motion. I don’t know if I can stop it. Do we really care if billions of dollars, maybe trillions, are about to change hands?”
“Where’s the money going? Can you re-route it to my checking account?”
Valentine rubbed her eyes again. It was all too much responsibility. A doomsday algorithm ran in her head. Wars starting. Bombs flying. Nuclear strikes. What happened next would make Crashdown look like a fire drill.
It wasn’t about the money, or where it went, but about the finger-pointing, chaos, and paranoia. There were too many crazy, paranoid leaders with red buttons. There were too many people out there with nothing to lose, hoping for a reshuffle of the deck.
She ran the query again, and saw a glimmer of light. “I have an idea,” she said excitedly. The program had a failsafe, but if she could reverse one thing, the final sweep wouldn’t run. The money would shift, but red flags would go up in every computer connected to a financial institution, and the sweep wouldn’t hide the trail. There would be a day of chaos, and programmers around the world would have the worst day of their lives, but this could be fixed.
Valentine checked the time. She had less than ten minutes before the sweep ran, and it would take her two minutes to code the worm. She grabbed the mug of coffee and downed it, liquid overflowing down her cheeks and onto her shirt. She didn’t even notice as she wiped her chin on her shoulder.
In front of the
m, the woman on the swivel chair groaned, like she might be about to throw up.
Valentine typed faster while shuffling backward on the floor, still cross-legged.
“Keep her away from me,” she said to Khan. “But don’t touch her. Find a blanket, or a stick. There’s got to be something around here you can use.”
The woman groaned. “I can be at peace now,” she said. She closed her eyes and drooped forward in the chair.
“Don’t go,” Khan gasped. “Your son needs you.” He moved toward her, ignoring Valentine’s shouts of warning. He grabbed the woman’s shoulders, and her glow zapped him and sent him flying back.
Valentine screamed and went to Khan’s side.
He groaned and curled into a ball, cursing and moaning in pain.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” Valentine said.
He took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled audibly. “People keep saying that to me,” he said. “Val, don’t let Eli give me mouth to mouth. I’m still alive. My heart’s okay.”
“Eli.” Valentine blinked and looked around the dark room. “I forgot about Eli.”
Her mental timer clicked away the seconds. She had only nine and a half minutes to run the program, but now she was worried about Eli, which would slow her down. It would take twice as long to code if she was thinking about him.
Where was he?
She called out into the darkness, “Eli? Joey?”
Her verbal query was met with a distant cry for help.
Khan’s sense of hearing and visual-spatial modeling was better than hers, so she turned to him.
“Sounds like he’s in the cellar,” Khan said. “I’ll get him.” He tried to stand, but his legs kept shaking. The effort was making him gasp. He was a strong man, but the electrical shock had taken a lot out of him.
Valentine was already in motion. She grabbed her laptop and used the sleeve of her hoodie to shield her hand as she yanked a blue cable from one of the nearby computers. A new plan formed in her head, and it was even better than the previous one. Going down to the cellar wasn’t just an option, it was the logical choice.