Repairman Jack 04 - All the Rage

by F. Paul Wilson

  He glanced at the clock. Damn—almost eight and he had a couple of calls scheduled for late morning, plus he was delivering lunch to the staff of a group practice in Bay Shore.

  He hated quitting now, but if he didn't get a little shut-eye he'd be useless the rest of the day. But then, why should he worry about sales calls and feeding nurses and receptionists if sales had no relationship to his commissions?

  Good question, but it wasn't his style to blow off appointments. And besides, he had tonight and a three-day weekend ahead to complete the hack.

  Reluctantly he shut off his laptop and staggered to the bedroom. He set the alarm for nine-thirty, then toppled onto the bed like a falling tree. The sheets still smelled vaguely of Nadj. He dozed off with a smile on his face.

  3

  "See!" said Abe, jabbing a juice-coated finger at the Daily News spread out on the counter before him. "See!"

  "See what?" Jack said.

  Breakfast with Abe again, back in their customary positions on either side of the counter. Jack had brought a couple of papayas this time. Sipping coffee, he watched as Abe quickly and expertly began quartering and seeding them, amazed that his chubby, stubby fingers could be so agile.

  "Right here. More congested spleen being vented. It says some high school teacher in Jackson Heights tossed two unruly students out a second-story window."

  "Probably a physics lab and they were having trouble with the concept of gravity."

  "One's got a broken arm, the other a broken leg. Four cops it took to arrest the teach. Know what he said when they finally subdued him? 'They were talking while I was talking! Nobody talks when I'm talking! Next time they'll listen!'"

  "Somehow I doubt there'll be a next—hey, what are you doing?"

  Abe had just dumped a mass of black papaya seeds and their gooey matrix on the sports section of the Times.

  "What? I should dump them on my nice clean counter?"

  Jack wasn't going to get into that—the counter was anything but clean. "What if I wanted to read that?"

  "Suddenly you're Mr. Yankee Fan? A jock you're not."

  "I used to be a star hitter in Little League. And what if I wanted to know who won the Knicks game?"

  "They didn't play."

  "All right. The Nets, then."

  "They lost to the Jazz, one-oh-nine to one-oh-one."

  Jack stared at Abe. He believed him. Abe listened exclusively to talk radio. He'd probably heard the scores a dozen times already this morning. But Jack wasn't giving up. He rarely read a sports section outside of World Series time or Super Bowl season, but a principle was at stake here. He wasn't sure which one, but he'd come up with something.

  "But sometimes I like to read about a game."

  Abe had freed up the orange papaya fruit but left the crescents lounging in their rinds. Now he was cross-slicing the crescents into bite-size pieces.

  "You know the score already. You need more? For why? You're going to read some self-styled mavin's postulations on why they won or why they lost? Who cares unless you're the coach. Team A won; Team B lost; end of story; when's the next game?" He gestured at the papaya with his knife. "Eat."

  Jack popped a piece into his mouth. Delicious. As he reached for another piece, Abe gestured to where Parabellum was eyeing the gloppy mass on the sports section. The parakeet cocked his head left and right with suspicion, hungry for the seeds but not sure what to make of the goo.

  "Such a fastidious bird I've got."

  "You kidding?" Jack said. "You plopped that stuff down on George Veczy's column, and now he can't read the end."

  Abe fixed him with a silent, over-the-reading-glasses stare.

  Jack sighed. "All right then, hand me the Post, will you—unless you've messed up its sports section too."

  Abe's hand started toward it then stopped. "Well, well, well. Here's something that might interest you."

  "Something about the Mets, I hope," Jack said.

  "A different kind of sportsman—your preppy rioter friends are in the news again."

  "Sent to Sing-Sing, I hope."

  "Quite the contrary. They're walking—all of them."

  Jack's mood suddenly darkened. "Let me see that."

  Abe gave the Metro Section a one-eighty spin and jabbed his finger at a tiny article next to the lottery numbers box. Jack scanned it once, then, not quite believing his eyes, read it again.

  "None of them booked! Not one! No charges against any of them!"

  "Due to 'a new development' in the case, it says. Hmmm… what do you think that could mean?"

  Jack knew what Abe was getting at: Well-to-do guys, some of them undoubtedly with a connection or two in City Hall or Police Plaza, get a few strings pulled and sail home as if nothing had happened.

  And one of them was Robert B. "Porky" Butler. The bastard who'd damn near killed Vicky hadn't spent a single night in jail—wasn't even being charged with anything.

  "I've got to make a call."

  Abe didn't offer his phone and Jack wouldn't have used it if he had. Not with so many people using caller ID these days.

  Jack had retrieved Butler's phone number from his wallet by the time he reached the pay phone on the corner. He plunked in a few coins and was soon connected to the home of Robert B. Butler, alumnus of St. Barnabas Prep and attacker of little girls on museum steps.

  When the maid or whoever it was answered the phone and asked in West African-accented English who was calling, he made up a name—Jack Gavin.

  "I'm an attorney for the St. Barnabas Prep Alumni Association. I'd like to talk to Mr. Butler about the unfortunate incident Wednesday night and his injury. How is he doing, by the way?"

  "Very well," the woman said.

  "Is he in a lot of pain?"

  "Hardly any."

  Damn. He felt his jaw muscles tense. Have to fix that.

  "May I speak to him a minute?"

  "He's with a physical therapist right now. Let me check."

  A minute later she was back. "Mr. Butler can't come to the phone right now, but he'll be glad to see you anytime this afternoon."

  Keeping his voice even and professionally pleasant, Jack said he'd be over around one.

  Scaring Vicky, endangering her life, and then skating on any charges…

  He and Mr. Butler were going to have a little heart-to-heart.

  4

  Nadia sat in the sealed, dimly lit room and stared at the 3-D image floating in the air before her. The first thing she'd done upon reaching the GEM Basic lab was light up the imager and call up the Loki structure from memory: the Loki molecule—or rather its degraded form, which she'd begun thinking of as Loki-2—had appeared.

  Changed, just like her printout.

  OK. That could be explained by someone tampering with the imager's memory. But she had an ace up her sleeve. Before leaving yesterday she had scraped a few particles of the original Loki sample from the imager.

  She removed the stoppered test tube from her pocket and dumped the grains into the sample receptacle. Something about the color… she couldn't say exactly what, but it wasn't right. She sat back and waited, then punched up the image. Her mouth went dry as the same damn molecule took shape before her.

  The dry lab lightened, then darkened again as the door behind her opened and closed.

  "Are you a believer yet?"

  She turned at Dr. Monnet's voice. He stood behind her, looking as if he hadn't slept last night.

  She swallowed. "Tell me this is a trick. Please?"

  "I wish it were." He sighed. "You have no idea how much I wish this were some sort of hoax. But it is not."

  "It has to be. If you were simply asking me to believe that this molecule alters its structure during the course of some 'celestial event,' I could buy that. I'd want to know how the 'event' effected the change, but I could imagine gravitational influence or something equally subtle acting as a catalyst, and I could handle that. But what we've got here—if we haven't been flim-flammed—is a molecule th
at not only mutates from one form to another but substitutes its new structure for all records of its original structure. In effect, it's editing reality. And we both know that's impossible."

  "Knew," Dr. Monnet said. "That was what we assumed was true. Now we know different."

  "Speak for yourself."

  He smiled wanly. "I know how you feel. You are utterly confused, you are frightened and suspicious, yet you are also exhilarated and challenged. And the tug-of-war between all these conflicting emotions leaves you on the brink of tears. Am I right?"

  Nadia felt her eyes begin to brim as a sob built in her throat. She wiped them and nodded, unable to speak.

  "But it's true, Nadia," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Trust me. We are not being tricked. There's something here that challenges our most fundamental beliefs about the nature of the physical world, about reality itself."

  And that was what was so upsetting, making her crazy. What if the ability to reorder reality, along with the very memory of reality, were not confined to this one molecule? What if it were happening every day? How many times had she typed or written a word and then stopped and stared at it, thinking it looked wrong, that it was spelled some other way? She'd look it up and find most times that her original spelling had been correct, so she'd move on despite the feeling that it still looked wrong.

  "We must know how it works," Dr. Monnet said. "And the first step toward an answer is to stabilize the molecule."

  "How can you do that if you can't even remember what it looked like originally?"

  He pulled a vial from his pocket and held it out to her. "Because we have a new supply."

  Nadia stared at the tube for a heartbeat, then snatched it from him and with trembling hands began preparing a sample of the pale blue powder for the imager. When it was ready she fed it to the machine and waited.

  Finally the molecule appeared and she wanted to cheer when she recognized it. This was what had been erased from her brain. Now the memory was back and, disturbing though its shape might be, she felt whole again.

  "How… where did you find the unaltered Loki?"

  "From the source. It doesn't change within the source, only after it's been removed from it."

  She turned to face Dr. Monnet. "And are you still keeping the source a secret?"

  "For now, yes."

  Nadia wanted to scream at him to tell her. It had to be organic—a plant? An animal? What?

  "And the mysterious celestial event? Does that remain a secret too?"

  "I only held back on that until you'd seen for yourself the changes wrought by the event. The event itself is common, occurring a dozen, sometimes thirteen times per year: the new moon."

  Nadia wet her lips. "The new moon? When was that?"

  "Exactly eight-forty-two last night."

  The cycle of the moon, one of the primal rhythms of the planet. And the new moon… a time when Earth's celestial night-light was out, blind to what was going on below on the darkest night of the cycle.

  A chill ran over her skin.

  "I'd like you to get started right away," Dr. Monnet was saying. "We have no time to lose. The Loki source may be… unavailable after this, and then we will have lost forever our chance to unlock its secrets."

  "Don't you think we should get some outside help? I mean, if we've only got twenty-nine days…"

  Dr. Monnet shook his head vigorously. "No. Absolutely not. Loki does not leave GEM. I thought I made that clear."

  "You did, but—"

  "No buts about it." His face paled, but Nadia wasn't sure whether from anger or fear. "Absolutely no outside consultation on this."

  Nadia wanted to wail that he couldn't—shouldn't—put all this responsibility on a beginner like her.

  "You are going to help me, I hope," she said.

  "Of course. To save you time, I'll show you all the dead ends I've already explored. After that, I'm counting on you to come up with a new perspective."

  Uncertainty tickled her gut. "I don't know if you should count too heavily—"

  He held up a hand. "I never told you this, but before I hired you I put in a call to Dr. Petrillo."

  She stiffened. Her research mentor during her fellowship—the Grand Old Man of anabolic steroids. "What did he say?"

  "What didn't he say! I couldn't get him to stop talking about you. He was overjoyed you were staying in research instead of 'wasting' your talents in clinical practice. So you shouldn't underestimate your abilities, Nadia. I'm certainly not. But as an extra incentive: if you stabilize the Loki molecule within the next four weeks, I am authorized to offer you a bonus."

  "Really, that's not necessary."

  He smiled. "You shouldn't say that until you hear the amount. How does one million dollars sound?"

  Nadia was struck dumb. She opened her mouth but it took a few seconds before she was capable of coherent speech. "Did… did you say—T

  "Yes. A lump sum of one million. You can—"

  Pat, a middle-aged tech with salt-and-pepper hair, knocked on the dry lab door before pushing it open. Fluorescent light streamed in from the hall.

  "Excuse me, Dr. Monnet," she said, "but Mr. Garrison's on the phone."

  Dr. Monnet looked irritated. "Tell him I'll call him back."

  "He say's it's urgent. 'An emergency' was how he put it."

  "Oh, very well." He turned to Nadia. "I'll be right back. Nothing is more important right now than this project."

  I guess not, she thought. A million dollars… a million dollars!

  The words kept echoing through her head as she waited, fantasizing what she could do with that amount of cash. She and Doug could get married right away, put a down payment on a house, get his software company up and running, jump out of limbo, and start living.

  When a good ten minutes had passed and Dr. Monnet didn't return, Nadia stepped outside and signaled to Pat.

  "Where's Dr. Monnet?"

  She pointed toward the door. "He got off the phone with Mr. Garrison and hurried upstairs."

  Nothing more important right now than this project, hmmm? she thought as she returned to the dry lab. Obviously something was. She hoped Mr. Garrison's emergency wasn't too serious or personal.

  She stepped up to the imager and began rotating the 3-D Loki image back and forth, hoping the more she saw of it, the less discomfiting it would seem.

  I'm going to beat you, she thought, staring at the molecule. Not for the bonus… this is the challenge of a lifetime, and I'm going to show I can do it.

  But she wouldn't turn down that bonus. No way.

  5

  "We've been hacked!" Kent Garrison said as soon as the soundproof door was pulled shut and latcned.

  Kent, flushed, suit coat off, crescents of perspiration darkening the armpits of his bulging blue shirt, stood at the end of the table.

  "Not true," Brad Edwards said. Dressed in a perfectly tailored blue blazer, he sat hunched forward in his chair across from Luc, twisting his delicate hands over the mahogany surface. "They said they think someone got past the fire wall, but they're not sure."

  Stunned, Luc sank into a chair. "What? How? I thought we were supposed to have the best security available."

  "Well, apparently we don't." Kent directed a venomous stare at Brad who was responsible for the computer system. Kent tended to be full of bluster except when Dragovic was around.

  "I was assured we had a state-of-the-art fire wall," Brad said. His usually perfect hair was in disarray, as if he'd been pulling at it. "But that was last year. Hackers learn new tricks too."

  "Why aren't they sure?" Luc asked.

  "They found evidence of temporary alterations in codes that could have innocent causes." Brad ran a hand across his mouth. "I don't pretend to understand it all."

  Kent couldn't seem to stand still. He paced in an arc at the end of the table. "If it was some fourteen-year-old with too much time on his hands, I don't give a shit. He might have screwed up some data, but he'd never be able to mak
e any sense of what he found."

  "What if it wasn't a kid?" Luc said. "What if it was someone looking for something on us?"

  "Like who, for instance?"

  "One of our competitors. We're playing with the big boys now. Or maybe Dragovic hired someone. Or worse yet, a corporate raider looking for inside information before making a move on us."

  Finally Kent sat down. He rubbed his eyes. "Oh, God."

  Luc turned to Brad. "What countermeasures are we taking?"

  Brad perked up at this. "The software people are going to link up to our system and monitor it. If anyone breaks in, they'll know, and they'll trace him."

  "And then what?"

  "We throw the fucking book at him," Kent said. "Unless of course it's our friend Milos, in which case we'll say pretty please don't do that anymore because it makes us very nervous."

  Luc said, "But what if the hacker learns what we're doing with the money that's supposedly going to R & D?"

  Silence around the table. An expose would lead to an audit, an audit would eventually lead to Loki, and that would put them all behind bars for a long, long time.

  Brad Edwards let out a long, tortured groan as he shook his head. "I don't know how much more of this I can take. I did not enter into this venture to become a criminal. We started with a straight honest business—"

  "That was going down the tubes!" Kent said.

  "And so we got in bed with the devil to save it."

  "I don't see you hopping out of bed."

  Brad stared at his hands. "Sometimes I wish the shit would hit the fan. Then this whole ordeal would be over. Maybe then I could sleep at night. When was the last time either of you had a decent night's sleep?"

  Good question, Luc thought. If not for a few glasses of his best wine before retiring, he doubted he'd sleep at all.

  "Cut the crap, will you?" Kent said, his face now nearly as red as his hair. "If you go up, don't think you'll be doing your time in some federal country club! We're talking drugs, here, and worse. With what they'll have on us, you'll spend the rest of your life in Rikers or Attica, where they'll pass you around as an after-dinner treat."