Hackers

by Jack Dann

  A rod of green light jumped from the sculpture and flashed to the middle of the room. From its tip a point of white light grew, and the rod disappeared, leaving the point behind, pulsating to the high-pitched sounds.

  Cute high-tech tricks. I wanted to tell myself, but it didn't feel that way. What it felt like was something was saying hello. There seemed to be a cold wind blowing through the room.

  Metal clanged in the printers, and they stopped. The display screen sagged like a Dali watch and went out. Ruby-red tubes of laser light cartwheeled through the room, searing the walls and furniture and setting afire the paper that had spilled onto the floor.

  I stood in some still corner, untouched by light and fire.

  Everything ceased at once, leaving behind the yellow flicker of burning paper and the shrill whistle of the smoke alarm. I got the extinguisher from the kitchen and put out the fires, then sat down.

  And I'm still sitting, still waiting. But while I'm waiting, I decided to put this story on the wire—it's addressed to BioTron, but that doesn't matter because I know you will be sure to get it.

  That's right. I'm talking to you, because it looks like you're there after all.

  So listen.

  The programs are inside you, and if I don't stop them—soon—they run. You could try to disarm them, but one mistake and the networks get hashed. Ever hear of an information sink? You put information in, and it goes . . . where the wild goose goes, where the woodbine twineth. You get my point; that's your mind I'm after.

  Here's the way it seems to me. You used BioTron like white cells to attack a disease—sent out orders, I would imagine, that the recipients followed because you knew just how to give them.

  Because you fear bio-computers. I am guessing Carol was in the wrong place at the wrong time; Bergman was the real disease carrier. Charley said they might make artificial intelligence possible. Is that it? Would they be competition?

  You removed Carol and Bergman from the public record, I know that much. Would have complicated matters if I had gone to the police. "Carol who? Doesn't exist. It says so right here." Or did you just panic? If you're alive and intelligent, that's possible.

  But I don't really know much, just this: if Carol's dead, you are, too. If you don't exist, and I'm wrong, too bad, because the information economy is about to suffer its first catastrophic collapse.

  So what's it going to be? Fill your hand, stranger? Bet your life?

  Don't! I love her, I need her. Just give her back.

  I'm waiting.

  BLOOD SISTERS

  Greg Egan

  Only a few years into the decade, it's already a fairly safe bet to predict that Australian writer Greg Egan is going to come to be recognized (if indeed he hasn't already been so recognized) as being one of the Big New Names to emerge in SF in the nineties. In the last few years, he has become a frequent contributor to Interzone and Asimov's Science Fiction, and has made sales as well as to Pulphouse, Analog, Aurealis, Eidolon, and elsewhere; many of his stories have also appeared in various "Best of the Year" series, and he was on the Hugo final ballot in 1995for his story "Cocoon," which won the Ditmar Award and the Asimov's Readers Award. His first novel, Quarantine, appeared in 1992, to wide critical acclaim, and was followed by a second novel in 1994, Permutation City, which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His most recent book is a collection of his short fiction, Axiomatic. Upcoming are two new novels, Distress and Diaspora.

  Here he gives us a haunting glimpse of a crowded, high-tech future that has become perhaps a little too fond of that dispassionate Long View we hear so much about . . . and suggests that one thing that may spur a hacker on to overcome even the most formidable of obstacles is the oldest motive of them all: revenge.

  When we were nine years old, Paula decided we should prick our thumbs, and let our blood flow into each other's veins.

  I was scornful. "Why bother? Our blood's already exactly the same. We're already blood sisters."

  She was unfazed. "I know that. That's not the point. It's the ritual that counts."

  We did it in our bedroom, at midnight, by the light of a single candle. She sterilized the needle in the candle flame, then wiped it clean of soot with a tissue and saliva.

  When we'd pressed the tiny, sticky wounds together, and recited some ridiculous oath from a third-rate children's novel, Paula blew out the candle. While my eyes were still adjusting to the dark, she added a whispered coda of her own: "Now we'll dream the same dreams, and share the same lovers, and die at the very same hour."

  I tried to say, indignantly, "That's just not true!" but the darkness and the scent of the dead flame made the protest stick in my throat, and her words remained unchallenged.

  As Dr. Packard spoke, I folded the pathology report, into halves, into quarters, obsessively aligning the edges. It was far too thick for me to make a neat job of it; from the micrographs of the misshapen lymphocytes proliferating in my bone marrow, to the print-out of portions of the RNA sequence of the virus that had triggered the disease, thirty-two pages in all.

  In contrast, the prescription, still sitting on the desk in front of me, seemed ludicrously flimsy and insubstantial. No match at all. The traditional—indecipherable—polysyllabic scrawl it bore was nothing but a decoration; the drug's name was reliably encrypted in the bar code below. There was no question of receiving the wrong medication by mistake. The question was, would the right one help me?

  "Is that clear? Ms. Rees? Is there anything you don't understand?"

  I struggled to focus my thoughts, pressing hard on an intractable crease with my thumb. She'd explained the situation frankly, without resorting to jargon or euphemisms, but I still had the feeling that I was missing something crucial. It seemed like every sentence she'd spoken had started one of two ways: "The virus . . ." or "The drug . . ."

  "Is there anything I can do? Myself? To . . . improve the odds?"

  She hesitated, but not for long. "No, not really. You're in excellent health, otherwise. Stay that way." She began to rise from her desk to dismiss me, and I began to panic.

  "But, there must be something." I gripped the arms of my chair, as if afraid of being dislodged by force. Maybe she'd misunderstood me, maybe I hadn't made myself clear. "Should I . . . stop eating certain foods? Get more exercise? Get more sleep? I mean, there has to be something that will make a difference. And I'll do it, whatever it is. Please, just tell me—" My voice almost cracked, and I looked away, embarrassed. Don't ever start ranting like that again. Not ever.

  "Ms. Rees, I'm sorry. I know how you must be feeling. But the Monte Carlo diseases are all like this. In fact, you're exceptionally lucky; the WHO computer found eighty thousand people, worldwide, infected with a similar strain. That's not enough of a market to support any hard-core research, but enough to have persuaded the pharmaceutical companies to rummage through their databases for something that might do the trick. A lot of people are on their own, infected with viruses that are virtually unique. Imagine how much useful information the health profession can give them." I finally looked up; the expression on her face was one of sympathy, tempted by impatience.

  I declined the invitation to feel ashamed of my ingratitude. I'd made a fool of myself, but I still had a right to ask the question. "I understand all that. I just thought there might be something I could do. You say this drug might work, or it might not. If I could contribute, myself, to fighting this disease, I'd feel . . ."

  What? More like a human being, and less like a test tube—a passive container in which the wonder drug and the wonder virus would fight it out between themselves.

  ". . . better."

  She nodded. "I know, but trust me, nothing you can do would make the slightest difference. Just look after yourself as you normally would. Don't catch pneumonia. Don't gain or lose ten kilos. Don't do anything out of the ordinary. Millions of people must have been exposed to this virus, but the reason you're sick, and they're not, is a purely genetic matter. The cure will b
e just the same. The biochemistry that determines whether or not the drug will work for you isn't going to change if you start taking vitamin pills, or stop eating junk food—and I should warn you that going on one of those "miracle-cure" diets will simply make you sick; the charlatans selling them ought to be in prison."

  I nodded fervent agreement to that, and felt myself flush with anger. Fraudulent cures had long been my bête noire—although now, for the first time, I could almost understand why other Monte Carlo victims paid good money for such things: crackpot diets, meditation schemes, aromatherapy, self-hypnosis tapes, you name it. The people who peddled that garbage were the worst kind of cynical parasites, and I'd always thought of their customers as being either congenitally gullible, or desperate to the point of abandoning their wits, but there was more to it than that. When your life is at stake, you want to fight for it—with every ounce of your strength, with every cent you can borrow, with every waking moment. Taking one capsule, three times a day, just isn't hard enough—whereas the schemes of the most perceptive con men were sufficiently arduous (or sufficiently expensive) to make the victims feel that they were engaged in the kind of struggle that the prospect of death requires.

  This moment of shared anger cleared the air completely. We were on the same side, after all; I'd been acting like a child. I thanked Dr. Packard for her time, picked up the prescription, and left.

  On my way to the pharmacy, though, I found myself almost wishing that she'd lied to me—that she'd told me my chances would be vastly improved if I ran ten kilometers a day and ate raw seaweed with every meal—but then I angrily recoiled, thinking: Would I really want to be deceived "for my own good"? If it's down to my DNA, it's down to my DNA, and I ought to expect to be told that simple truth, however unpalatable I find it—and I ought to be grateful that the medical profession has abandoned its old patronizing, paternalistic ways.

  I was twelve years old when the world learned about the Monte Carlo project.

  A team of biological warfare researchers (located just a stone's throw from Las Vegas—alas, the one in New Mexico, not the one in Nevada) had decided that designing viruses was just too much hard work (especially when the Star Wars boys kept hogging the supercomputers). Why waste hundreds of Ph.D.-years—why expend any intellectual effort whatsoever—when the time-honored partnership of blind mutation and natural selection was all that was required?

  Speeded up substantially, of course.

  They'd developed a three-part system: a bacterium, a virus, and a line of modified human lymphocytes. A stable portion of the viral genome allowed it to reproduce in the bacterium, while rapid mutation of the rest of the virus was achieved by neatly corrupting the transcription error repair enzymes. The lymphocytes had been altered to vastly amplify the reproductive success of any mutant which managed to infect them, causing it to out-breed those which were limited to using the bacterium.

  The theory was, they'd set up a few trillion copies of this system, like row after row of little biological poker machines, spinning away in their underground lab, and just wait to harvest the jackpots.

  The theory also included the best containment facilities in the world, and five hundred and twenty people all sticking scrupulously to official procedure, day after day, month after month, without a moment of carelessness, laziness or forgetfulness. Apparently, nobody bothered to compute the probability of that.

  The bacterium was supposed to be unable to survive outside artificially beneficent laboratory conditions, but a mutation of the virus came to its aid, filling in for the genes that had been snipped out to make it vulnerable.

  They wasted too much time using ineffectual chemicals before steeling themselves to nuke the site. By then, the winds had already made any human action—short of melting half a dozen states, not an option in an election year—irrelevant.

  The first rumors proclaimed that we'd all be dead within a week. I can clearly recall the mayhem, the looting, the suicides (second-hand on the TV screen; our own neighborhood remained relatively tranquil—or numb). States of emergency were declared around the world. Planes were turned away from airports, ships (which had left their home ports months before the leak) were burned in the docks. Harsh laws were rushed in everywhere, to protect public order and public health.

  Paula and I got to stay home from school for a month. I offered to teach her programming; she wasn't interested. She wanted to go swimming, but the beaches and pools were all closed. That was the summer that I finally managed to hack into a Pentagon computer—just an office supplies purchasing system, but Paula was suitably impressed (and neither of us had ever guessed that paperclips were that expensive).

  We didn't believe we were going to die—at least, not within a week—and we were right. When the hysteria subsided, it soon became apparent that only the virus and the bacterium had escaped, and without the modified lymphocytes to fine-tune the selection process, the virus had mutated away from the strain which had caused the initial deaths.

  However, the cozy symbiotic pair is now found all over the world, endlessly churning out new mutations. Only a tiny fraction of strains produced are infectious in humans, and only a fraction of those are potentially fatal.

  A mere hundred or so a year.

  On the train home, the sun seemed to be in my eyes no matter which way I turned—somehow, every surface in the carriage caught its reflection. The glare made a headache which had been steadily growing all afternoon almost unbearable, so I covered my eyes with my forearm and faced the floor. With my other hand, I clutched the brown paper bag that held the small glass vial of red-and-black capsules that would or wouldn't save my life.

  Cancer. Viral leukemia. I pulled the creased pathology report from my pocket, and flipped through it one more time. The last page hadn't magically changed into a happy ending—an oncovirology expert system's declaration of a sure-fire cure. The last page was just the bill for all the tests. Twenty-seven thousand dollars.

  At home, I sat and stared at my work station.

  Two months before, when a routine quarterly examination (required by my health insurance company, ever eager to dump the unprofitable sick) had revealed the first signs of trouble, I'd sworn to myself that I'd keep on working, keep on living exactly as if nothing had changed. The idea of indulging in a credit spree, or a world trip, or some kind of self-destructive binge, held no attraction for me at all. Any such final fling would be an admission of defeat. I'd go on a fucking world trip to celebrate my cure, and not before.

  I had plenty of contract work stacked up, and that pathology bill was already accruing interest. Yet for all that I needed the distraction—for all that I needed the money—I sat there for three whole hours, and did nothing but brood about my fate. Sharing it with eighty thousand strangers scattered about the world was no great comfort.

  Then it finally struck me. Paula. If I was vulnerable for genetic reasons, then so was she.

  For identical twins, in the end we hadn't done too bad a job of pursuing separate lives. She had left home at sixteen, to tour central Africa, filming the wildlife, and—at considerably greater risk—the poachers. Then she'd gone to the Amazon, and become caught up in the land rights struggle there. After that, it was a bit of a blur; she'd always tried to keep me up to date with her exploits, but she moved too fast for my sluggish mental picture of her to follow.

  I'd never left the country; I hadn't even moved house in a decade.

  She came home only now and then, on her way between continents, but we'd stayed in touch electronically, circumstances permitting. (They take away your SatPhone in Bolivian prisons.)

  The telecommunications multinationals all offer their own expensive services for contacting someone when you don't know in advance what country they're in. The advertising suggests that it's an immensely difficult task; the fact is, every SatPhone's location is listed in a central database, which is kept up to date by pooling information from all the regional satellites. Since I happened to have "acquired" the
access codes to consult that database, I could phone Paula directly, wherever she was, without paying the ludicrous surcharge. It was more a matter of nostalgia than miserliness; this minuscule bit of hacking was a token gesture, proof that in spite of impending middle age, I wasn't yet terminally law-abiding, conservative and dull.

  I'd automated the whole procedure long ago. The database said she was in Gabon; my program calculated local time, judged 10:23 p.m to be civilized enough, and made the call. Seconds later, she was on the screen.

  "Karen! How are you? You look like shit. I thought you were going to call last week—what happened?"

  The image was perfectly clear, the sound clean and undistorted (fiber-optic cables might be scarce in central Africa, but geosynchronous satellites are directly overhead). As soon as I set eyes on her, I felt sure she didn't have the virus. She was right—I looked half-dead, whereas she was as animated as ever. Half a lifetime spent outdoors meant her skin had aged much faster than mine—but there was always a glow of energy, a purpose, about her that more than compensated.

  She was close to the lens, so I couldn't see much of the background, but it looked like a fiberglass hut, lit by a couple of hurricane lamps; a step up from the usual tent.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't get around to it. Gabon? Weren't you in Ecuador—?"

  "Yes, but I met Mohammed. He's a botanist. From Indonesia. Actually, we met in Bogota; he was on his way to a conference in Mexico—"

  "But—"

  "Why Gabon ? This is where he was going next, that's all. There's a fungus here, attacking the crops, and I couldn't resist coming along . . ."

  I nodded, bemused, through ten minutes of convoluted explanations, not paying too much attention; in three months' time it would all be ancient history. Paula survived as a freelance pop-science journalist, darting around the globe writing articles for magazines, and scripts for TV programs, on the latest ecological trouble spots. To be honest, I had severe doubts that this kind of predigested ecobabble did the planet any good, but it certainly made her happy. I envied her that. I could not have lived her life—in no sense was she the woman I "might have been"—but nonetheless it hurt me, at times, to see in her eyes the kind of sheer excitement that I hadn't felt, myself, for a decade.