The Path

by Peter Riva

  I’m being dragged to the street, through the automatic doors, now disabled. “Yeah, I am sure I did, I wanted to remember who he was, if I saw his tag again. But I never did, and I only got a partial.”

  “It’s not the tag, Simon, which we need. It’s the bogus program. If this guy’s so smart, Grade 9 or better, he wouldn’t have written Colis 6 code, it’s beneath him. He will have stolen it from somewhere, lifted it, copied it, notices and all. Find out where, and we have our first lead.” His enthusiasm was evident and infectious.

  “Okay, agent Cramer, but that still doesn’t explain how the parallel system got co-mingled with the primary, or were the files swapped?”

  “One thing at a time Bank. I can’t tell you that right now. Later, perhaps. For now, we need to find this son-of-a-bitch, stop him and the horse he’s riding on.” Colorful metaphors for a guy dragging me along Lex, his weapon banging me in the hip. At least he hadn’t shot me yet.

  Yet.

  He doesn’t need an excuse, he doesn’t need to let me live either, he can drop me when and how he wants, he’s licensed. Me? I am a grade 5 codifier, now way below the grade 9+ of some guy who has inadvertently given me the tools to foul up the system. It is reason enough. I was hoping I could prove ongoing usefulness, somehow. It was looking bleak.

  “Listen, if we get into the building . . .”

  “Easy.”

  “Okay, for you, but the dome will still be hot, no? What caused that fault? Not the PowerCube program because the update to the floor’s PowerCube happens at night and it had already worked fine when I was doing my job . . .” my voice trailed off. The entrance to the emergency stairwell was shut, it couldn’t open from the outside. I slowed, thinking he’d have to call someone for main access. He dragged me on around the corner. For a big guy he moved fast, I was out of breath. He hadn’t even started breathing through his mouth.

  “Yes, we need to re-boot that PowerCube. Obvious. It was set to kill you. Timed.”

  I stopped. The day was getting gloomier. I got one guy who can kill me without consequence and another who has tried already.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SCENE OF THE CRIME—MINE AND HIS

  He didn’t even have to palm the door, his RFID worked like a pass code for every door. He went over to the panel to the left of the elevator bank, opened it, peered in. “Ah, there it is.” He swiped his palm over the flat cube of the emergency power system and lights came back on. “We have maybe 20 minutes, offline until Control gets us more.” The elevator doors opened.

  No gas anywhere, no after-smell. A few years back I had inhaled that talc smell for weeks after a fire alarm in the apartment complex where we lived. It doesn’t fade that fast. The Security Net Division guys in Control were obviously monitoring progress via his sleeve beacon and relay. He didn’t report in to them. He didn’t need to. He had their full support, he was clearly the lead man here.

  45th floor. Empty. My office door was open. The dome hung above the toppled stool. It no longer crackled. Cramer touched it. Nothing. “Wait here.”

  He disappeared left out the door. A few moments later he was back with the spare dome, the one maintenance kept in the supply closet. “Hold this.” He thrust the dome into my hands.

  “System, deactivate 45.14.136.214. Respond.” No way, I thought, the system’s crashed and off, he said.

  The system responded with an affirmative.

  “But the System’s crashed, you said so.”

  “The emergency power, this is only the building’s power working, the pathways to Control are open, we’re routing through there to the mainframe System. The boys have got it up, I told you, and they’re working on that antivirus as you called it. You’re going in there to help them, pick your skeleton clean, remove your algorithms.”

  The thought of putting on that dome was making me queasy. It’s one thing to face death, that’s scary enough, but to willingly put that killer dome on my head, no way. “But it’ll kill me, you said it tried once.”

  “Listen you jerk, you’ll do this, or I’ll drop you, or you’ll die anyway soon enough. It may be the lack of food when the supply runs out, it may be the weather storms unleashed, it may be, heck, any number of things. It may be me. Any way you’re doomed. The only chance you have is to do your damn job.”

  I have always been practical. I didn’t really need the lesson from Agent Cramer, but I got some Dutch courage from it anyhow. He wasn’t all that angry at me, not that it mattered really, as he was still capable and willing, it seemed, to kill me. What did matter was that I had more questions than answers and answers seemed the only way out of this. But I had another thought.

  “Look, if I go in there and he does kill me, what will you learn? I may not be able to think a tag or message fast enough. There isn’t a machine or person around who can think like me. I’ve got 10 to the power of 100 neurons in my head. Each independently talking to the other. It’s called human uniqueness. My way is not, never will be, your way. You cannot trace my steps, but you can piggyback them. If not you, get someone in here who can.”

  “Control has 50 people watching your wake as you penetrate the system, they’ll know where you’ve been.”

  “Yeah, but they won’t know where I am. It’s where I am that action will take place, it’s where I am that he will reveal himself, not where I’ve been. Look, you’re a cop, do you want to catch this guy or simply know he’s done it?”

  “Okay, point taken. We’re running out of time. We can’t invent the piggyback system in the time we’ve got. I need more power time for that, time to train somebody.”

  “Mary did it.”

  “Mary . . . holy shit, those anomaly readings in your job data file aren’t you? You unbelievable turd, you gave her your pass code and allowed her access, didn’t you? No wonder Tom couldn’t figure out if you were schizo or not.” Ah, so that’s what Tom Makerman was doing undercover, he was checking out my anomaly data, a different hand in the soup, a different aftertaste for analysis. Makes sense. If I had known I was the only codifier re-coding, I would never have done it. “Look, idiot, every time you open your mouth you amaze me with your stupidity and highlight how little we know. We’ve been monitoring the Re-codifier.” I looked shocked. “Yes the Re-codifier, forever, is only one. The system can only learn from one human at a time, one human imprint. You were selected because your mind is devious, not for its stupidity. Get smart and get smart fast. What else have you done? How long did you take to train Mary?”

  “I never trained her. I showed her. What have I done? I made a piggyback harness.” I went out to Mary’s desk and palmed the bottom drawer open, my code only, and removed the harness allowing two domes to be attached to the primary and power leads.

  “Wait.” Cramer raised his voice. “System, reactivate 45.14.136.214 and check hardware. Control deactivate if anomalies occur. System report reactivation 45.14.136.214 and hardware systems check.”

  System report 45.14.136.214 operative and all hardware nominal. System reporting Control spotted no anomalies and power extension in place, 60 minutes to shutdown.

  “Simon, I’m going in with you. Let’s be clear here. We’re going in to determine what vestiges of your two programs are visible, running and double tag them, fore and aft, red. If there are spurs, we’ll tag those ends as well, blue. Control will remove them, you are not, I repeat not to remove them.”

  “Okay, but one thing, the piggyback is clumsy, I will not be as fluid as I would be alone, I get distracted, cannot always follow source code when I’m trying to let you have a look.” I was hooking up the harness now. “It’s like two people sharing one pair of binoculars, I can see okay, but I lose depth of field. And another thing, Mary knows my work better than anyone, her services would be useful here. She’s been in there with me, she knows what to look for, in case I miss anything.”

  “No way we’re bringing Mary in here.”

  I picked up the stool and sat down, ready. He could stand, damn
him. “No, I don’t mean that, I mean she should be connected to Control, ready to help, if I need it.”

  “Bank, Mary’s already there, she’s the one checking the System door we’ve opened here.” That was quick, Mary must have been picked up immediately as she left the building.

  No, wait, she left fast, way too fast for a hall fire monitor. She knew where she was going all along.

  “Mary’s at Control? Then she can hear me now. Okay, Mary, I know you left the building early. I trust you, even if you too were watching me. I know what you can do, to undo what I code and I know you’re a genius codifier. Just watch for the yellow tags I’ll leave, they’re not to be removed, just watched, there’s something there, but I’m not sure what.”

  Before Cramer could start to object, I dropped the dome on my head and watched, as the System opened the neural pathways, in slow motion, as he grabbed the dome and put it on. The last vision I had was of his face going slack, peaceful really, unlike the man I feared. We were in, portal opening wide.

  I was aware, unlike when Mary and I tried this, of a clumsiness about me, his inexperience on what to focus causing my direction to need constant advancing, slowing, turning, choosing. I stopped. I looked at nothing, did nothing. Oh, only a hundredth of a second or two, but in there that’s like a 5 minute break. He got the point. I could feel him stop doing anything. He’d have to learn to do nothing or this was a wasted exercise.

  I heard him. I felt him! “Proceed” came through clearly. You can’t do that, and yet he did. I spent some time wondering how and, again I heard it, felt it, clearly, a command: “Proceed. Anger” So I got going.

  What I was looking for was a suitable program in the System to tinker with, one that would lead me to my programs, so I could tag them for Mary and others at Control to remove. WeatherGood was obvious, but I knew that was expected by everyone, including him if anyone was coming in after him. I went to the FarmHands program. Access denied, the System offered WeatherGood. I tried again. Denied. Okay, let’s try the switcheroo I did with Tom’s data file. Accept WeatherGood, gain entry and switch to a commonality, say the display sub-routines. Ah, see the path shared by FarmHands? Follow that path. No resistance. I’m in.

  The damage of my little programs had to be obvious. Anything that grows that fast will create huge gaps in the structure of the code already there, I could go fast over the subsets, Colis is always wordy anyway, look for patterns, not specifics. If I spotted something, well felt something would be more accurate since I couldn’t actually see anything here, then I could slow down, back up and remove it. It was clumsy, I know, but with Cramer in here with me, anything I did would be clumsy, code bumped into everywhere. Traces everywhere. At least Control would have no problem seeing where we went. We were leaving a big wake.

  I’m starting the plunge, as I call it. Faster, steeper, avoiding the side subsets, if we find anything, I’ll go in there later. So far nothing except the small tricks I’ve left along the months in here are all gone. My Hansel crumbs eaten by some ogre, or just the crows at Control?

  Ah, here’s a growth of useless code. It’s the Grow code working. Seems quiet. Tagging the beginning and the end, red. The code length filled in something here, something’s missing, replaced. What was it? Extraneous code, tailings of what was removed . . . I’ll yellow tag those. No wait, I want Mary to watch these, pay attention and remove them. The program will sense a gap and reset itself that portion of the code from the master file or, at the very least, stop working until someone recodes it.

  What was bothering me was the traces left. That’s clumsy, too obvious. Maybe in those traces there’s the same reinstall program I did before with the water and power systems.

  Stop, look at the traces. How to know what’s original here, what’s been written? And if removing them will cause other subsets to activate? My Dad’s voice came to mind, as I said, it was one of those days. “Simon, what you see isn’t real just a reality created for you, turned around. You’ll see the same players tomorrow in different places and think they are vaguely familiar. Déjà vu, really, is only true.”

  Okay Dad, what’s familiar about these traces? I’ve tagged my Grow program and its replication . . . oh, wait. Thanks Dad. It looks different, but the reverse key is not quite hidden enough, I can see my Takeover key subset backwards, that’s my algorithm sequence which the reverse command will cause the System to read in the right order, but never check in the wrong order. I had one of those little Reverse programs, one of my six, but I hadn’t used it in months. This one isn’t exactly mine, but the effect is the same. Damn, probably it’s the aftereffect of mine, like clay cast of a key—a negative. Mary would recognize it and rat on me. Oh well.

  Okay, let’s decode this—but don’t touch—the bastard’s fooled with nothing except with the file implementation data, that’s changed, and he’s set the algorithm to halt instead of proceed. He’s using a new file name for my Takeover data and program coding, he’s wired it. If you remove these traces, you think you’re cleaning the system, obvious really. What you’ll really be doing is taking off the stop command from the Takeover program and it will then do exactly that.

  I got very still, 2 hundredths of a second. That should be obvious to Mary, this is important. I yellow tagged these, no red or blue. I mentally turned to leave . . .

  And couldn’t proceed. Cramer was stopping me. He’s seen the yellow tags, of course, and was studying them. I need to hurry. I can see the program becoming active in regions I don’t want to fool with. I don’t know why, but if that guy was in here with us, he could use that activity to mask his arrival and, in this vulnerable neuron-exposed state—do some real harm. Cramer clearly wanted an explanation for the yellow tags. He was holding us there, held fast.

  I hurried, I broke open the traces and showed him, by flipping the code, the Takeover sequence, coding set to “pause,” I yellow flagged either side of the new program file name. That should be obvious enough. He tried to red flag them. I removed the red flags. He put them back. I removed them. He put them back.

  Dammit, he’ll know we’re here and key them while we’re in here—killing us!

  I had only thought it. He removed the red flags. He could hear me? Do you hear me?

  Listening. Sensing fear. No flag red.

  Okay, I thought I would try and tell him where we’re going. We needed to go to the central files and look at that program coding to see how it was changed, to see how he had changed my little Takeover program, to find out how dangerous it was.

  I made a crash announcement to the System. It was a command really, like a bailout command you can make if you’re in trouble to stop the session. It had the effect of getting you where you wanted to go quickly, without trace (which was good) but it also usually shut the System access down after 10 minutes. I hope I didn’t need ten minutes in here, I was near my medical daily limit already. The crash announcement assumed you were “dropping out” for a while, taking a break. I wanted simply to escape this area of visibility—thanks to Cramer’s delays—and get to where the problem may be. If the System popped me off, then Cramer would have to reinsert us.

  The command I gave wasn’t out, but all the way in, to Central files. The absolutely forbidden region, the never-come-here-and-live Central library. Don’t touch or you die. That sort of thing. But I had been near here before, when I thought it was only a dummy system. Now I was beginning to fear the reality.

  Damn. Fear. Well, well, well, Cramer can feel fear as well, can he? He’s not going to like what’s coming, if I’m right. Where I have taken us is to the file for the program I had named Takeover.

  I’d never been deep in here before. Order and disjointed sequences everywhere. The System had heard my command and presumably Control had allowed it, given us full access. Maybe it was Cramer’s pass code level that permitted it, whatever it was, I knew now I was somewhere where I was not meant to be. No one came in here. The System would remove sets/files from here and expose them
to coding or codifiers for maintenance. Like fire in a library of old, the risk of damage to the whole System was greatest here, if any knowledge was lost, culture, society, the whole Nation could collapse.

  Then I realized what he had done. It was all a 3-card Monty game. This was the target. He was here. He had to be.

  He must be here; this is target, total destruction. Not programs, but what programs work with. If programs given faulty data, nothing work. He is switching data. Falsifying codes and access criteria. Meltdown. Total disruption.

  Agree. Bad in here. Danger America. It came across with a sense of idolatry. Ah, a patriot?

  I thought hard, trying to emphasize my thoughts, Cramer, how do we find him in here? Can Control see us in here?

  No Control. You find. I kill.

  I had to have a plan. The file for Takeover was there. I removed it and scanned it without detaching access for it from the System, so whoever he was, he couldn’t know I was studying his handiwork. The code I had written (and some I had lifted) was changed now, but all Colis 6, all new-age crap programming where you repeat every definition because you’re too damn lazy to make a glossary for the program to follow. Kind of like always explaining who you are, again and again, in a conversation with an Alzheimer’s patient. Okay programs are stupid, but not so stupid that it can’t be taught the basics upon which to build a series of actions. Colis 6 was supposedly foolproof of course, but for me it took all the inventiveness out of the job.

  The point is, why is someone with this intellect using Colis 6? Colis anything for that matter? Maybe there was a pattern to the stupidity I could exploit, a clue . . . I copied the program code onto my mental slate, a right brain left/brain thing, keeping them separate for a while, comparing them. I dropped all the repetitive code from the copy. What was left was my code. Just my original code, nothing else. The Colis 6 was useless, crap added. Why? I studied the command setting and found nothing unusual. The program, my program, it would simply follow orders given at the site of implementation. There was no ticking time bomb here. I discarded my copy and slid the still-attached code back in place.