Overclocked

Overclocked Page 2

by K S Augustin

  “Arse­hole.” She beeped the re­mote sav­agely then tossed her bag onto the pas­sen­ger seat of her sleek little hy­brid sedan be­fore get­ting in.

  “When I get my hands on that low-down, schem­ing, mor­ally vacu­ous….”

  Gun­ning the en­gine, and glad of the light mid-morn­ing traffic, Tania drove to Rim­shot in a mood of ab­so­lute fury, not in the least re­pent­ant that she was us­ing pet­rol in­stead of the more eco­nom­ical elec­tric sys­tem. If it meant that she was closer to wip­ing the smirk off Carl Orin’s too-gor­geous, typ­ical blond-and-blue-eyed face, it was a sac­ri­fice worth mak­ing.

  It took ten minutes to get to work. Ten pre­cious minutes which already com­poun­ded the ini­tial two hours of delay. Don Novak, the dir­ector of the pro­ject, was go­ing to have kit­tens when she fi­nally turned up. And, in her haste to pack, Tania sud­denly real­ised that she had for­got­ten to turn her mo­bile phone back on. She felt like pound­ing the steer­ing wheel but con­ten­ted her­self with grip­ping it tightly and ima­gin­ing it was Carl’s neck.

  She stopped the car briefly at the com­pany’s se­cur­ity and mustered a small smile for Phil, the week­day morn­ing se­cur­ity guard. It wasn’t his fault the last six months of her life had sud­denly turned to shit. He raised the boom gate, gave her a cas­ual wave and she star­ted the hunt for a place to park.

  The Rim­shot cam­pus sat on top of a hill, with two levels of avail­able car space ter­raced be­low it. Mut­ter­ing a curse, Tania noted that there were no va­cant spots at all on the up­per ter­race.

  “Why should there be?” she said to her­self, resign­ing her­self to a longer walk up to the main build­ing. “Every­body else got to work on time.”

  She turned into the first empty space she saw on the lower ter­race, grabbed her stuff and hopped out of the car.

  “But no....”

  She crossed the tar­mac.

  “On this, the most im­port­ant day of my ca­reer....”

  She sprin­ted up the stairs.

  “The day when I ab­so­lutely had to be on time....”

  She entered the build­ing and gave the desk guards an­other tight smile as she strode past them and through an­other door, head­ing for the goods el­ev­at­ors.

  “I get fucked over....”

  She jabbed vi­ciously at a but­ton, strid­ing into the empty car the mo­ment the doors opened, and rum­ma­ging through her bag. At least she still had her se­cur­ity card! Tania flashed it at the reader and, when the panel pinged and the light be­neath the reader turned green, she hit the but­ton for Base­ment Level Five.

  “By the king of fuck­ing-over bas­tards.”

  Most of Rim­shot’s busi­ness took place above the ground floor of the build­ing. When the ma­jor­ity of its em­ploy­ees thought about the base­ment levels, if they thought about them at all, they dis­missed them as stor­age or main­ten­ance sup­ply rooms. They cer­tainly didn't ex­pect the kind of high-tech en­vir­on­ment that un­fol­ded be­fore Tania’s eyes when the lift doors fi­nally slid open.

  Tania took a deep breath, ad­jus­ted her top and jacket, then strode out, try­ing to ap­pear calm and un­ruffled.

  The floor of Base­ment Five was set out like an open-plan of­fice.

  Al­though each large cu­bicle was sep­ar­ated from its neigh­bour by a tall par­ti­tion, the screen was half-solid from waist-height down to the floor, fros­ted glass im­me­di­ately above the solid sec­tion, and clear at the top. Al­though such an ar­range­ment could not stop the feel­ing of be­ing a mouse in a maze, it mit­ig­ated it to a large ex­tent.

  Tania didn’t stop at any of the cu­bicles to ex­change so­cial niceties with their in­hab­it­ants. Nor did she stop at her own per­sonal patch of ter­rit­ory. In­stead, her shoes scuff­ing softly on the low-pile car­pet, she made a beeline for the sec­tion after cu­bicle-land. That’s where all the im­port­ant dis­cus­sions took place.

  She was stopped again by a large vault-like door. This time, her se­cur­ity card was not enough. She bent down to the large cir­cu­lar scope that pro­truded from the wall. It re­minded her of look­ing through a mi­cro­scope, ex­cept all she saw through the nar­row view­ing tube was a bright blue haze. After a few seconds, she heard an ac­know­ledging beep and the doors slid open.

  Tania stepped in­side.

  Chapter Two

  The area of Base­ment Five that Tania entered was very dif­fer­ent to the car­peted, of­fice-like at­mo­sphere she had left be­hind. The floor be­neath her feet was pol­ished con­crete, cool and gleam­ing. The walls, con­cave and metal­lic, sprouted slick and clean from the floor be­fore dis­ap­pear­ing into the ceil­ing.

  Turn­ing left at the wall that con­fron­ted her, she con­tin­ued to fol­low the curve, fi­nally com­ing across a series of doors. There was one door on the right, sev­eral on the left. She walked up to the single door to her right, took a deep breath and pressed her hand against the ti­tanium al­loy. With a sigh, the panel slid open. She stepped in­side.

  “He tricked you, didn’t he?”

  Tania blinked at the words and looked into the calm grey eyes of the di­vi­sion’s chief, Don Novak. He was stand­ing at the desk closest to the door panel, a half-amused, half-ir­rit­ated look on his face.

  Tania took one look at his ex­pres­sion and her strategy of ly­ing crumbled. She had pre­pared so many ex­cuses. My car broke down. I had to visit a sick friend. I got a sud­den toothache and had to pay an emer­gency visit to a dent­ist. What she most def­in­itely couldn’t say to Don Novak was that she had been tied up, de­li­ciously fucked and then played for a fool.

  She de­cided on a wry smile and hoped it didn’t re­veal too much. “Yeah, he tricked me.”

  Don held up a fin­ger. “I’d ask how but...I don’t think I want to know.”

  There was still the hint of a ques­tion in his voice but Tania shook her head. This was one epis­ode in her life she was go­ing to for­get as quickly as she could. If she could.

  “You really don’t want to know,” she as­sured him.

  There was si­lence. A little un­com­fort­able on his part, she thought. She tensed when she saw him nervously lick his lips. Did he know what had gone on in her apart­ment the night be­fore? Was she about to get fired?

  “I’m sorry Tania,” he said in a rush. “It was all-sys­tems go. The de­cision was made.”

  Without her there, present­ing her own ar­gu­ments, her own skills and ex­per­i­ence? Her eyes widened in hor­ror. “No!”

  After all this time, all the months of ex­haust­ing work, how could the board do this to her?

  “They made the de­cision?” No, this couldn't be hap­pen­ing to her.

  He nod­ded.

  “How, Don? We both weren’t here this morn­ing. The board wouldn’t have had a chance to ab­sorb the last round of res­ults.” She paused and stared at him be­seech­ingly. “The least I ex­pec­ted was a post­pone­ment.”

  Base­ment Five’s dir­ector didn’t say a word and Tania’s sense of frus­tra­tion rose.

  “Do you know what I’ve been do­ing this past week?” she asked, a hard edge creep­ing into her voice. “Be­sides the usual work­load, which would ex­haust a pla­toon of de­velopers, I had a look at the pro­tocol is­sues we’ve been hav­ing lately. I think I know where we’re go­ing wrong. If the board would only re­con­sider, post­pone their de­cision un­til I’ve had time….”

  Don shrugged, his lined and droopy eyes full of sym­pathy. Dur­ing the tri­als, he had treated her and Carl equally, al­though she al­ways got the faint im­pres­sion she was the one he fa­voured to take the first step into the un­known. But des­pite that, the board had gone ahead and Don hadn't stopped them. Had he failed her as well?

  “The meet­ing was set for this morn­ing, as you know,” he said. “Carl was here. The board was here. We waited for you but Carl was…very per­su
as­ive. As a res­ult, the spon­sors de­cided to give him first crack at it.”

  “So he’s in the,” she jerked her head to­wards the far wall, in the dir­ec­tion of the in­ser­tion rooms. She wouldn’t say the words. That would make her fail­ure too real, too soon.

  “Yep.”

  “Can I see him?” she asked in a tight voice.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Don smiled, a gleam in his eye. For a mo­ment, Tania was di­ver­ted from the main ob­ject of her ire. Be­neath the dir­ector’s care­worn ex­ter­ior, she thought she saw the dash­ing young man he must have been when he was cut­ting a swath through the field of com­puter sci­ence. She was aware of his back­ground, as any­body in the field would be. How he had jumped from one bleed­ing edge labor­at­ory to an­other, soak­ing in everything un­til he fi­nally ended up as the secret dir­ector to a secret de­part­ment in a secret loc­a­tion, floors be­neath Rim­shot’s cor­por­ate headquar­ters. Very few people in the world had a mind as sharp as Don Novak’s, coupled with the abil­ity to use it.

  Al­though she knew where to go, Tania let Don lead the way, men­tally pre­par­ing her­self for what she’d see. They walked through an­other, more solid-look­ing door and into the cent­ral lab. The light in the room was sub­dued. Ar­rayed in an an­gu­lar semi-circle in front of them were banks of mon­it­ors. Three tech­ni­cians skipped from one mon­itor to an­other, punch­ing com­mands into key­boards, set­ting up dia­gnostic activ­it­ies and watch­ing the res­ult­ant pulses on their screens with calm in­tens­ity. They didn’t even lift their heads at Tania and Don’s en­trance.

  Bey­ond the desks and be­hind a large panel of glass was a set-up that looked like it be­longed in a hos­pital. On the left side of the panel, cush­ioned by a heavy foam mat­tress and covered with a light waffle weave blanket, lay Carl’s body. Feel­ing a pull of curi­os­ity and won­der, Tania left Don to speak with one of the en­gin­eers. She moved for­ward to the edge of the glass, peer­ing in at its lone oc­cu­pant.

  Carl was hardly dressed, bare right down to his un­der­wear, ar­rays of sensors thread­ing un­ti­dily from where they were at­tached to his skin. Tania saw the ripples the wires formed as they snaked un­der­neath the blanket and emerged at the bed’s edge. Look­ing like strands of spa­ghetti, they rose to a metal shelf filled with one blink­ing rect­an­gu­lar box on top of an­other. The back of the boxes con­tained enough slots to re­ceive each wire, trans­lat­ing its sig­nals into crit­ical in­form­a­tion. Tania knew the sensors were there to mon­itor Carl’s vi­tal signs, but she didn’t real­ise there would be so many of them. It seemed that every twitch a muscle made would be re­cor­ded.

  In con­trast, the most im­port­ant piece of sensor equip­ment, the neural head­set, was com­pletely wire­less. It en­circled the top of Carl’s skull like a del­ic­ate hair net, each in­ter­sec­tion glit­ter­ing as sil­ver-white as a night-time star.

  And as for Carl him­self. Tania tore her glance from the head­set and fo­cused on his face. He looked…an­gelic. His face was hand­some and peace­ful, re­laxed in re­pose, look­ing like noth­ing less than a fairy-tale prince.

  “Wait­ing for a de­luded prin­cess to wake up his good-for-noth­ing arse,” she said to her­self. The breath from her words formed a small sheen of milky con­dens­a­tion on the win­dow.

  Don moved up next to her and Tania felt his warmth against her arm.

  “How long ago was he in­ser­ted?” she asked, her gaze not leav­ing the su­pine fig­ure on the bed.

  “About nine thirty.”

  “One and a half hours.” Her voice was tone­less.

  “Tania.”

  There it was again, that hes­it­a­tion. This time, caught by some­thing in his voice, Tania turned to face the older man.

  “What is it?” His ex­pres­sion mirrored the worry in his voice.

  He didn’t an­swer.

  “Damn it, Don. I told you some of the pro­to­cols needed fine-tun­ing.” Her tone was low and heated.

  “It’s more than that.” He pursed his lips then took her el­bow. “Come on,” he said, with a quick glance around, “I’ll ex­plain in the brief­ing room.”

  They walked past both Carl’s il­lu­min­ated cap­sule of space and an­other room identic­ally out­fit­ted but com­pletely dark. The third door, con­ven­tional tim­ber this time with a proper handle, turned at Dan’s twist. In­side, thick car­pet muffled Tania’s foot­steps.

  She twirled be­fore the door clicked shut, pre­mon­i­tion rais­ing the hairs on the back of her neck.

  “Some­thing went wrong, didn't it?”

  Don didn't an­swer her im­me­di­ately. He walked over to a poster that dec­or­ated one of the room's walls, eye­ing the mo­saic of pro­mo­tional im­ages for Rim­shot In­dus­tries as if he'd never seen them be­fore.

  “We gave him a vir­tual tether so that, in cases of ex­trac­tion and pro­longed non-com­mu­nic­a­tion, we’d be able to yank him out. It wasn’t meant to be el­eg­ant, but it was meant to work.”

  Tania nod­ded im­pa­tiently. “Yes, I know about that. If you re­call, I dis­agreed on the tether's ar­chi­tec­ture. I still think—”

  Don sighed as he turned and faced her. “We lost the tether nine minutes after in­ser­tion.”

  She couldn’t be­lieve what she was hear­ing. The tether, while not el­eg­ant, was the most fool­proof piece of soft­ware in the en­tire pro­ject. “Lost?”

  “Gone. Sheared away. We don’t know how.”

  That ex­plained his wait­ing for her when she ar­rived. It also ex­plained the tired ex­pres­sion on his face and the three pro­gram­mers scur­ry­ing around with an air of frantic fo­cus.

  “So if Carl wants to get out?” she asked.

  “He’ll have to come up with a method of con­tact­ing us him­self.”

  Tania’s legs trembled. Reach­ing for a chair back, she pulled on it and grate­fully sank into the up­holstered seat. Don did the same at a more sed­ate pace.

  What the Base­ment Five lab was try­ing to do, what Tania and Carl had com­peted for so fiercely, was to be part of the next step of vir­tu­al­isa­tion. The top-secret pro­ject was aimed at in­sert­ing a per­son—their thoughts, ex­per­i­ences, per­son­al­ity, the whole kit and ka­boodle—into the in­ter­net, with po­ten­tial ac­cess to every con­nec­ted com­puter net­work in the world.

  Right now, Carl could be trip­ping through the bytes at Cal­Tech or lost in waves of data in Ban­galore. And the way back home, the trail of bread­crumbs to safety, had just dis­ap­peared.

  Tania swore softly. “Shit!” She paused for no more than a heart­beat. “I know Carl and I have had our dif­fer­ences, Don, but you have no choice. You have to send me in.”

  The words were ripped from her be­fore her brain could catch up. It wasn’t what Tania had wanted to say, what her hurt ego was de­mand­ing, but it was the right thing to say.

  “No.” Don was vehe­ment. “Ab­so­lutely not. I’ve already lost one re­searcher in cy­ber­space. Do you think I want to com­plic­ate the situ­ation by throw­ing an­other per­son in there?”

  Tania took a deep breath. She had made a de­cision and was now com­mit­ted to see­ing it through.

  “This isn’t some­thing simple, like a data­base file or sort­ing al­gorithm gone wrong. We’re dis­cuss­ing an­other hu­man be­ing, a per­son, lost in an en­tirely un­ex­plored uni­verse. Damn it, Don, we know more about the sur­face of Mars than the data we pro­cess and store every day.”

  Don’s ex­pres­sion re­mained mul­ish. “I’m not go­ing to do it, Tania.”

  She sat back and bit her bot­tom lip, know­ing she would have to tread care­fully. When he stuck his heels in about some­thing, Don was eas­ily as stub­born and in­tract­able as Carl.

  “Carl and I were chosen for this pro­gram be­cause of our abil­it­ies,” she said.
Her words came out slowly as she gathered her thoughts. “I was chosen for my know­ledge of cloud ap­plic­a­tions and my work on the the­or­ies of data or­gan­isa­tion. Carl was chosen be­cause...be­cause of his broad tech­nical know­ledge and quick ad­apt­ab­il­ity.”

  Not to men­tion the abil­ity to charm every one of the board mem­bers straight into the out­stretched palm of his hand. Know­ing that this wasn’t the time to open that can of worms, Tania tried to keep the dry­ness out of her voice.

  “You and the board chose Carl be­cause he is ex­tremely ten­a­cious.”

  She thought about his single-minded pur­suit of her and al­most smiled, be­fore put­ting it out of her mind.

  “I’m sure,” she said, “that if any­one could have sur­vived a tether sever, it would be Carl.”

  Don nod­ded cau­tiously and Tania took a breath. That was the ground­work done. Now, for the meat of her ar­gu­ment.

  “But right now, he needs help. Help from someone who knows the ins and outs of cy­ber­space bet­ter than he does. Carl is good, but he doesn’t have an in-depth know­ledge of how data can or­gan­ise it­self in semi-an­archic en­vir­on­ments.”

  “But you do.”

  Tania let the words hang in the air between them, for­cing Don to re­cog­nise her skills and ex­per­i­ence.

  “You know I do,” she said.

  He sighed and looked away, shak­ing his head, be­fore pin­ning her with a glare.

  “Nice try, Tania, but no.” He threw his hands up in dis­may. “What do you ex­pect me to do? Cre­ate two zom­bies for the in­ser­tion rooms? What if the same thing that happened to Carl hap­pens to you?”

  Tania leant for­ward in her chair, ready to press the mat­ter un­til it broke. Or Don did. Her tone in­creased in ur­gency.

  “You know I’ve spent years re­search­ing com­plex data sys­tems,” she said. “I’ve pub­lished more than twenty pa­pers on the topic. Carl hasn't. It could be that he did some­thing when he entered the Blue. Maybe there was a data polling er­ror. Maybe he severed the tether by mis­take. And now he’s stuck there with no way back. What are you go­ing to do, Don? Wait un­til his va­cant body ex­pires of old age be­fore send­ing someone in to help him?”

 

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