"In a summary of the results of her three-year study on the island of Borneo, Dr. Talmus of the University of California at Berkeley reports that species repopulation efforts on the east side of the island, carried out over the past decade, have met with limited success."
As Janet prattled on, Raymond inserted a code hook in the hijacked subprocess that would allow him to remotely terminate the news feed and start the network-security-breach announcement via a signal from his wrist relay. He then walked quickly through the halls of the lab to Bob's office. He noticed his heart pounding and slowed down, trying to calm himself. He knocked on Bob's door, afraid his adrenaline rush would give him away, but it was too late to worry about that.
"Just a second," came Bob's voice through his office intercom. "Okay." The door opened, sliding noiselessly into its pocket.
Janet continued her high-volume reading of the news feed.
"Any idea what's up with Janet?" asked Raymond.
"What?" hollered Bob.
Raymond tried again, raising his voice to be heard. "Janet! Any idea what's up with Janet?"
"No, no. Very strange. What has you here this late?"
"Working on the version control audit, trying to figure out what the hell happened this afternoon."
"Great."
Janet paused, between stories.
"Listen," said Bob, "I hope I didn't scare you too bad when I blew up earlier."
There was an awkward lull, in which Raymond had the sense he was supposed to say something.
"You found anything?" asked Bob.
"Well, I—"
"Recent attempts," resumed Janet, "to reduce the Antarctic melt rate appear to be showing positive results, although debate continues regarding the possibility that this year's colder winter at the South Pole was due to natural climatic patterns."
Raymond walked into the office so Bob could hear him.
"They're preliminary findings, but there is no record of anyone committing a change. Yet I can pinpoint when the flushing code was brought back in. It happened at about the same time as some systems maintenance work. I can only guess that there was some systems fluke."
Bob nodded largely.
"The Argentine research team," continued Janet, "reported that by damming some of the Antarctic melt-off, they had increased evaporation and thickened local cloud cover. It is posited—"
"And what the hell is this?" shouted Bob, pointing at the ceiling. "I get the feeling our systems are all coming unhinged. I asked her to stop — no response."
"I'll look into it. I've never known a DIA to flip out like this. Could just be a screwed up filter."
His hands clasped behind his back, Raymond triggered his wrist relay. Janet's reading of the news story stopped mid-sentence. There was a pause. Bob and Raymond looked at each other with shared quizzical expectancy.
Janet's voice returned, this time at normal volume. "Please close any sensitive materials. A network security breach has occurred. I repeat, please close any sensitive materials. A network security breach has occurred."
"What the fuck!" yelled Bob. He switched on his terminal, which was partially visible from where Raymond stood, and hastily closed the various documents he had been working on.
"I'm on it," said Raymond. "I'll make sure our network is locked down."
Raymond raced back to his office, closed the audit report documents he had been working on, verified that his hijacked process had died, then busied himself with network analysis tools, pretending to hunt for a breach. The office door opened, and Raymond turned to see Bob. Visceral fear seized Raymond; it was very rare for Bob to enter his office. Bob walked in and stood looking over Raymond's shoulder.
"What do you see?"
"Um... nothing. I'm closing down all channels. I don't see any sign of entry."
"Isn't there a system log or something that can tell us what triggered Janet's message?"
"There should be, but I don't see anything. There has to be something."
"Janet?"
"Yes Bob," came Janet's voice.
"How did you find out about the security breach?"
"Please clarify."
"You announced a security breach a couple minutes ago. What made you make the announcement?"
"I have no record of making any announcements in the past hour."
"What?"
"I have no record—"
"I heard you, Janet. I meant... I heard you make an announcement, just a couple of minutes ago. Or rather... I heard an announcement made using your voice. Do you have any record of relinquishing control of your vocal program?"
There was a pause. Raymond sat frozen, staring at the speaker closest to him, stunned by Bob's move to take control of the situation.
"I have record," responded Janet, "of losing contact with a subprocess. The first failed attempt to contact the subprocess occurred 127 seconds ago. Loss of a subprocess sometimes occurs when the process is hostilely captured and terminated."
Raymond winced. Bob continued his line of questioning.
"Is this a common occurrence?"
"The statistics available to me indicate that this has occurred 44 times since I was last reinitialized, 238 days ago."
"So, that could just be some innocuous bug."
"According to quality assurance records, unexpected termination of subprocesses happened zero times during 710 hours of testing."
"But that's just QA," said Raymond to Bob. "Live usage is generally more problematic."
"True. So, either this is a bug that wasn't uncovered in testing or someone has been hacking our DIA on a regular basis. Shouldn't a central operating system be able to tell us whether one of Janet's subprocesses was taken over by another process, and who owned that process?"
"I don't think so," lied Raymond. "That much process monitoring would be a major drag on the system. And you would end up with a huge, unmanageable body of data. In a high security system you might be able to do that, but in a university lab, there's generally no point in dedicating those kinds of resources to process-level history."
"Janet, can you trace the process that killed the subprocess in question?"
"No. Historical tracking of inter-process interrupts is an unavailable function."
Unavailable because I yanked it.
"Well," asked Bob, looking to Raymond, "is there any other sign of someone hacking our network?"
"I'll keep looking, but I haven't seen anything. Even with all the security measures in software today, it can be nearly impossible to track down a good hacker. For every security measure there's at least one countermeasure."
"Listen, call me at home if you find anything, but don't stay here too late. Just make sure Net access is locked down. I plan to get someone in here to look into this breach and tighten things up. There's gotta be some comp-sci grad student out there who would be overjoyed to dig into this stuff. Oh—when do you think you can have that version control audit done?"
"Tomorrow."
"Good. Thanks, Raymond. I don't know what I'd do without you."
Raymond smiled and nodded.
So is that why you're kicking me off your project?
Bob left, and the door closed behind him. Raymond sighed with relief. The remainder of his night's work seemed easy, downright fun, after dealing with Bob personally. He slipped his hands into his manuhaptic gloves and blindly instructed Scorpio to signal him via wrist relay when Bob had actually left the building. Scorpio responded by moving Raymond's right thumb and index finger into an "okay" sign.
Raymond pushed away from his desk and leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, his hands folded over his stomach. He took a deep breath and let out another long sigh.
"Well, my ass is on the line now," he muttered.
What if Bob's new security person were good? A good security person would find his operating system alterations and rebuild the system with all standard logging and security features in place. It felt like his plan had back
fired. But Bob probably would have brought in a security expert anyway, after the simulated ALA break-in, to figure out how the ALA had caught wind of Molly's failed upload. In fact, this might actually be better; Bob now had every reason to believe that there was a network security breach. He might now assume that the information had been obtained by an outsider directly, where he might otherwise have suspected that someone on the team had leaked the story. Were Bob to suspect a leak from someone on his staff, he might initiate the staff reduction immediately.
Raymond was confident that he had covered his tracks well enough to prevent anyone from tracing security breaches to him. However, he needed to reel in all of his agents tonight, to be safe. Which meant he would no longer be able to monitor Bob's personal communications and workstation activities. It would also make it much tougher to dupe the lab's security systems, as he would be doing this evening. But did that matter? After tonight, he would have an NBC for Molly and one for himself—after tonight, his stealing would be done. He still needed more data to set up his own physiological simulation, but he had legitimate access to that. The next two weeks would consist primarily of preparing his motor home and bunker for life after upload. The only access to the lab that he needed now was up-to-date knowledge of the scanning equipment and access to the scanning lab on the day of his upload, both of which came with his position, while it lasted.
His wrist relay went off, indicating that Bob had left the building. He set about retrieving his agents, double-checking that his tracks were covered, and verifying that his robots were busy re-mapping the lab, to reconcile his false footage of the lab with the current positioning of chairs, doors, tables, and lab equipment. It was critical that—when the night was over—no sign of his activities remain. It occurred to him that he would also have to take his light helmet and manuhaptic gloves home. A security expert would see custom hardware as a red flag.
At 10:30, his relay pulsed three times—the false footage had kicked in. As the lab's security system recorded false video of Raymond leaving the building, the real Raymond made his way through dark hallways, pulling on a pair of silk gloves to avoid leaving any fingerprints. Motion sensors reported his movement to a deaf building-maintenance network node. Lights that would have normally brightened at his approach remained low. He was invisible to the system.
Exhilarated by his success, he broke into a jog. He entered the loading dock and opened the garage door, and his waiting delivery truck backed itself in and opened its rear hatch. Footage would show an empty loading dock and an empty driveway. Raymond grabbed two empty shipping boxes from the cargo bay of the truck, dropped them onto a nearby dolly, and took off through the halls with the dolly.
By 11:00 PM, right on schedule, the boxes were loaded and on their way across North Campus, one to Property Disposition and the other to his motor home. The deed was done. Raymond closed the loading dock, returned to his office, and filled his backpack with potentially incriminating personal items: helmet, gloves, surveillance gear, and a handful of memory cards. Fifteen minutes later, after making an unrecorded exit from the building, he hopped on his bike and headed off into the night, to Anya's.
Raymond chose to engage his bike's motors. He streaked down nearly-empty streets, reaching 50 miles-per-hour on the straight-aways. The thrill of speed and the rush of cool autumnal night air were delicious. He found himself craving Anya. A now-familiar fantasy flooded his mind—one that had moved from Agakhan to his own v-world, from moon-drenched beach to tropical tree-house. He imagined himself lying with her in a crude structure of rope and wood, amid the wet, sprawling foliage of an orangey Nuranian evening, pulling her close to him as a slammer-season storm faded into the distance.
Abruptly, the fantasy ceased, interrupted by conscious concerns—what was the likelihood of her joining him after he uploaded? He imagined her risking everything to be with him. Or spending nearly all of her time in her v-chamber, afraid to upload but unable to live without him. Delusions, he told himself—all delusions. One minute he would imagine her joining him, and the next he concluded that—once he uploaded—he would have to cut all ties, completely concealing his Net identity to prevent the authorities from tracing his communications and discovering his location. Even if she knew how to reach him and could join him, would she? Maybe once the technology had been proven, years from now. But not any time soon, and maybe never. He had to accept that. Should he even be seeing her any more? He pushed the bike faster, flying through the intersections of her residential neighborhood, such that the demands of keeping the bike under control conveniently displaced his capacity for reason.
He saw that the lights were on at her apartment and indulged himself in a sense of relief, a sense of home. He rang the bell. It was the first time he had shown up at her apartment unannounced. Fear of finding her with another man shot through him, but he subdued his imaginative jealousy, assuring himself that she had too little room in her life for another love interest. He wondered for a moment whether he should be looking into a video camera somewhere, then caught himself, remembering that she had an old-fashioned brass peep hole.
She opened the door. She was wearing the same cream-colored wool cardigan that she had worn to work that day. It made her look mature, he thought. He found the look to be very attractive, but it made him feel comparatively boyish, and it put him off.
"Raymond! Are you okay?" Her face was screwed up in a look of shock and concern.
He stared at her, nodding, puzzled by her reaction. There was something wrong with her eyes—they looked swollen. She stepped outside, drawing him into a long, tender embrace, the door standing open. He realized that she must still be thinking of Molly and the failed upload, and he remembered that he was supposed to be tired from a night of hard investigation into the source of the problem.
"Come on in," she said at last. "I'm so glad you decided to come over. I'm sorry I'm such a wreck—I've been crying all night." As she closed the door, he stepped past her into the living room.
"Oh... I'm so sorry to hear that," he said, working out how to carry himself and how to react.
"It's okay. I was just doing some reading. Some old articles that my father wrote, about famous setbacks experienced by scientists and technologists through the years."
"Your father? Oh, that's right—he's a science journalist, isn't he?"
"Uh-huh. He keeps claiming to be retired, but he can't stop writing. The one I was just reading is about some of Isaac Weisberg's early work."
"He was the designer babies guy?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he worried that Anya, a gene-job herself, might take offense. She didn't appear to.
"Yeah. He was one of the first doctors to practice genetic manipulation purely for the sake of aesthetics."
"Oo—this sounds bad."
"It is. There's actually a disease that was named after him. I don't want to go into it... it'll just make me cry again. But a bunch of his first babies, mostly done for movie stars back around 2015, turned out to have a severe form of schizophrenia. It was heavy on the hallucinations, and it showed up in children as young—" She started to break up. "As young as six. Can you imagine that? Six-year-olds, hallucinating?"
"Wow." Raymond had no idea what to say. He felt a twinge of guilt—he realized just how hard she was taking Molly's apparent death. He wanted to tell her what had really happened, but he couldn't. "He must have felt really bad."
"To say the least." Anya wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to get you more down than you must already be. How did your search go?"
"Not bad. I mean, I think something got screwed up during nightly systems maintenance, a while back. I can't trace it, exactly, but the flushing code wasn't there, and then all of a sudden it was. Audits showed no sign of anyone committing changes that would have brought the flushing code back into the build, so it looks like there was no human error."
"Then we still don't know what actually went wrong, and whatever happened could
happen again."
"Uh, sure, but now that we've seen that it can happen, it shouldn't be too tough to put in safeguards to prevent it from happening again. We can set up our own validity checks on the source code."
"Yeah, I guess. I just can't believe it happened. It's so sad."
"I know. And it looks like somebody outside the lab may have found out about it."
"What!"
"This evening, while Bob and I were still in the lab, there was a network security breach. It looks like someone has been listening on our network."
"Who? Data thieves?"
"Maybe. That would make sense, I guess. Since the ESW ruling, we've been spotlighted in a bunch of articles. Could be someone hoping to sell insider information. Could be subversives—Naturalists. Could just be some random hacker. Who knows?"
"And Bob was there? He must have had a fit!"
Raymond gravely shook his head, playing up the sense of drama. "He was not a happy man. I guess he was working late. Probably trying to figure out what to do after today's failed upload."
Raymond felt the urge, as he often did, to tell Anya about his ability to watch Bob's work, to brag about his skills as a listener. He wanted to tell her exactly what Bob had been working on, even beam a snapshot of his work to a terminal in her house. It was an urge that he was used to suppressing, but it seemed closer to the surface, harder to move past. He wanted to show off, to impress her, but he couldn't; this was not some harmless, mischievous hobby.
"I'm sorry," said Anya. "I haven't even given you a chance to take off your jacket. Hey, do you want to go for a walk or something? It might be nice to get some air."
"Oh, I would, but I'm really tired. I was actually kind of hoping I could maybe crash here... would that be okay?"
"Okay? You're so funny. I've had to beg you to stay in the past. Of course you can sleep here tonight. Take your jacket off. Sit down. Have you eaten?"
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