by Greg Enslen
And after he told her, he didn’t expect to hear from Bethany again – it wouldn’t do any good, anyway. His pride had entered the equation now, and he wouldn’t back down now no matter how much sense it made to stay here with the woman he loved. Or had loved, or whatever. And his Aunt was busy thinking about her new place and planning the big move, boxing up things and throwing out others, and her mind was distracted enough for him to leave without feeling too bad.
David looked around his room and nodded. Everything was boxed up except for his personal effects, like his keys and stuff, and the bed where he would sleep for the next few days would go into storage after he left along with his other things. He had already arranged for a moving company to pick up the things early next week and deliver them to his Aunt’s house, where she could stack them with her things until she moved.
And the rest of his stuff, the clothes and jackets and sweaters that he was taking with him for his trip and for his new life in California, they were all in bags and a couple of old suitcases. He would live out of them for the next few weeks until he got to Long Beach and rented a place. He was already looking forward to picking out and decorating a place of his own in a town where they had never had snow or sleet. And a place where they had never even heard of Sheriff William T. Beaumont and the famous story of his death.
It would be good to get past all of that and get on with HIS life. David was tired of being compared to his father, tired of being told how much he looked like the old man, how in just the right light he could even pass for the town’s dead hero. He didn’t care - all he wanted was to be away from this town, in a place where no one knew who he was, and he could start over from scratch. A place where he could make his own stories, and not worry about the past.
The young woman reached the base of the mountain after what seemed to be several long hours of walking. She thought it had been several hours, but the sun hung motionless in the sky, unmoving. It seemed as if the sun had decided it should be late afternoon forever.
She had stopped twice along the way to rest, and there had been no sign of the fog coming out of the entrance to the forest. She had glanced back apprehensively for the first hour or so, expecting to see the fog come boiling out of the hole, searching for her, but nothing had happened.
When she had grown tired, she had laid down in the grass for a while, enjoying the softness of the prairie grass and the cool breezes that rustled the fields. The grass was softer than any bed she had ever lain in, and the moving winds cooled her, and the ever-present birds flying high above looked so carefree up there in the bright blue sky, floating on the winds.
Thirst and hunger never came, even though she had been expecting them. How could she be walking all this distance and not even need any water or anything? Her death theory was starting to look more possible, but she struggled to put that out of her mind.
When she reached the base of the mountain, she decided to sit down for a little while and collect her thoughts. During the walk, another option for her current situation had crept into Sally’s mind: maybe she was dreaming.
But how do you know when you’re dreaming and when you’re awake? She had pinched herself several times in a futile attempt to wake herself up, but nothing had happened.
She looked up and realized the mountain looked exactly like Mt. Rainier.
Something clicked in the back of her mind. Her parents had taken Sally to Seattle and Vancouver one summer for vacation when she had been much younger. It had been Sally’s first real vacation away from the oil fields and dusty plains of Tulsa, where she suddenly remembered she had grown up, and she was thrilled when her parents had told her that they were going to see the ocean on vacation.
Sally knew what an ocean was, but she had never seen one. She had seen pictures, and her family had driven down to Galveston to the Gulf of Mexico, but her Daddy said that the ocean was a hundred, maybe even a thousand times bigger than that. Her mind could hardly grasp the concept.
The memories came back like a tide, rushing in and overpowering her. The ocean had been bigger than anything she could imagine, and when she had gotten her first glimpse of it, she had simply stood there, staring at it, her little hands on her hips.
But the ocean had not affected her nearly as deeply as her first view of Mt. Rainier. The ocean was flat and huge and powerful, but to Sally it was still just a big lake. She doubted that her Daddy was serious when he said it was hundreds of miles across.
But the mountain, there was a different story. It was impossible to argue with the mountain as it stood there, mute and indifferent to her disbelief, as it had stood for a million years. She had gotten out of the car and walked over to the side of the road to look at it, and she had stared up at the huge, mammoth construct of stone, unable to believe that something, anything could be that massive. Snow, something she had only seen rarely, covered the top third of the mountain with a thin powdering, like sugar. Trees covered the slopes in green patches, and higher up the barren crags and rocky outcroppings, jutting sharp and gray into the harsh blue of the sky.
Her mom had gotten very concerned, and she bit her lip as the moments just dragged on, her little girl standing there with her hands on her hips, staring up at the gray and blue of Mt. Rainier. The expression on Sally’s face was one of wonder and awe and amazement, and her father had hesitated for a moment before breaking it by gently shaking her. He hated to bring anyone out of a moment of such pure joy, such amazement at the things which life had to offer.
If her parents could have seen her now, standing there on this strange grassy plain, staring up at the mountain, her hands on her hips, they would have seen the same expression on her face.
She snapped out of it and sat back down. She had remembered! They had taken her on a trip to see a mountain that LOOKED EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE. The slopes, the patches of trees and rocky outcroppings, the snow, they were all exactly as she had remembered from their vacation.
Trees and scrub climbed and spotted the bottom half of the mountain, and she could see many areas where the climbing rock leveled off and sloped into gentle grassy areas before it resumed its harsh angle upward. Above the sharp tree line, the mountain continued upwards for a short distance before the patches of gray and brown rock were blanketed with snow, glistening and jewel-like.
The building she had spotted before was out of her view from this angle, but she was sure that she had seen it before, but the memory would not come to her.
The white building had a wide front lined with thick, round columns, each massive and white and scalloped like a roman temple. The roof was flat, and snow dripped off of the top of it, hanging down in stalactites and piling up on the large slope of steps that led up to the temple.
She shook her head - she knew that whatever else happened, she had to get to the top and see Tommy and tell him something. She didn’t remember what it was that she was supposed to tell him, but it had something to do with why she was here. She took one more look up at the side of this massive, snow-covered mountain, and then she started up.
Julie was waiting when they brought the Cray in.
The Cray Mark 4 supercomputer, the only one of its kind in the world, actually came to the FBI Headquarters Computer Room loading dock in the back of a Brink’s armored truck. Julie, when she saw the truck pull up, had thought that someone had screwed up or something until they backed the metal walls of the armored truck up to the loading dock and the Brink’s security people had swung the big, gray metal doors open, revealing a boxy shape covered with packing material and heavy blankets to discourage shifting during transport. The Brink’s Company had been charged with the safe and insured transport of the actual mainframe unit, and two other Cray Corporation trucks had brought along the specially built Cray Platform and the technicians and their equipment.
The Cray was unlike anything else she had ever seen before. She had seen pictures of other Cray’s, but this didn’t look like any of those others. Where the earlier versions of the Cr
ay, the Mark 2 and Mark 3 generations, had looked boxy and utilitarian, this unit, the first of the generation 4 models, looked sleek and exciting. It was like comparing a clunky ‘78 Volvo with a ‘97 Corvette.
The top of the unit, which she saw first in the FBI Computer Room when the unit was being unpacked and prepared for installation, was rounded off at the top, looking almost streamlined. A row of winking, red lights were inset into the top of it, and other rows of lights dipped and swirled around of the front of the Mark 4, not seeming to form any coherent patterns but looking very pretty, just the same.
The Cray Room was a specially built room where the main Cray unit would be installed and where the technicians and staff of the FBI Computer Room would have limited access to the unit. The room had been built to attend to the computer’s special needs. Because the computer ran at such incredible speeds and therefore generated much more heat than could be effectively dissipated, the Cray Room and all of its contents had to be cooled to a chilly 40 degrees at all times to allow the computer to process information at its top speed.
The human end of the process was carried out in another room, known as the Input/Output or I.O. Room, built right next to the Cray Room. The contents of the I.O. Room consisted of a row of video screens and computer keyboards, all hooked into the batch processing systems of the Cray. It was on these terminals that the agents and technicians would interact with the Cray. The I.O. Room was separated from the Cray Room by a wall of glass four layers thick, designed to insulate the rooms from each other but allowing users of their terminals to look up and see directly into the Cray Room. If any stray humidity whatsoever were to be allowed into the Cray Room, the big window would quickly fog up, warning the users of a problem.
Against the wall opposite the wall of thick windows stood a long row of hard drives, floppy drives of several different sizes, and printers along the back wall behind the chairs and video screens. Most of the units sat on a shelf that stood about waist high, and these devices allowed users to download or printout information, as long as they cleared security.
Julie watched from outside as the Cray Corporation techs and the FBI computer engineers worked in concert to install the main unit. There was a virtual forest of cables, couplings, power cords, air ducts, and other mysterious connections to make, and the entire process would take over four hours. Julie watched all of this from the expansive Main Computer Room, where row upon row of terminals and video monitors and printers stood, all connected into the secure LAN, or Local Area Network, and each other. The LAN serviced every terminal in the entire FBI building, and secure landlines also connected the network to several other satellite offices in the area, the locations of which Julie was unsure.
The FBI techs used these banks of computers in the Computer Room to assist the Bureau in its myriad functions. The terminals were grouped together by function and separated off from the other areas by head-high partitions.
One group of terminals stood grouped together under a large hanging sign that said, simply, “Fingerprints”. This area, world famous, was where fingerprints were scanned into the computers and compared with all of the other registered fingerprints on file. This one small section of the Computer Room processed over 10,000 sets of fingerprints a year, and all of the prints were stored into one huge mainframe. That fingerprint computer would also be hooked into the Cray, once it was up and running.
Another large section of terminals was labeled with a sign that read “Travel”, and Julie knew that the technicians that worked in that particular area were primarily responsible for tracking the locations of different classifications of people: U.S. officials, upper-level government employees and their staffs, and military members; visiting foreign dignitaries and their embassy staffs; known criminal leaders in the United States and abroad; and a half-dozen other specific groupings of people. Some of the signs she did not understand at first glance: “cold”, “friendly”, and even one sign that read, oddly enough, “dead”.
She had plenty of time to look around the Computer Room while they were working on installing the Cray and powering it up, but a few of the sections were partitioned off and apparently inaccessible to her.
One end of the room had been cleared of terminals and the two rooms dedicated to the Cray had been built in the empty area. Above those two rooms was another large room that contained the air conditioning equipment and power regulators. This accessory room was accessible only by a narrow stairway that led up to a thin catwalk running along the front of the upper room, several small access panels allowing entry.
“Fascinating, huh?”
Julie turned around from where she had been standing, watching the installation from a distance, and saw a balding, short man in the uniform of a computer technician: blue pants, a white shirt that stood open at the collar, and a bland-looking red tie, loosened and hanging jauntily, a little off center. His face was older and round and almost jolly, and the eyes behind those ancient-looking bifocals danced brightly, animated. He was a little wider than he should have been for his short stature, and he had a dusting of very white hair on his head and above his upper lip, and Julie was struck with an immediate impression that she was being greeted by a balding Santa Claus. She wondered what it would sound like, if and when he laughed. She could easily picture him donning a red suit and a fake white beard and showing up at the Christmas Party, handing out gifts.
“What did you say?” she asked, lost in her thoughts for a moment.
The jolly-looking little man smiled, and the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place for Julie. He REALLY looked like Santa Claus. “I said, ‘it’s fascinating’, isn’t it?” I’ve worked here for many years, ever since they brought in the old Wang’s back in ‘78. Did you know that one modern desktop IBM PC is more powerful than a THOUSAND of those old Wang machines?”
The man chuckled for a moment, covering his mouth with one hand as if he were embarrassed to show his teeth while he laughed. “I spent years learning to program those dang things, and they were made obsolete by ‘83. Funny, huh?” His eyes sparkled and danced in a way that made Julie smile in spite of herself.
“Yes,” she began, “technology does have a way of plowing on, relentlessly. Were you here for the installation of the original system?”
He smiled, wide and jolly, looking as if he was about to burst into laughter again. “Oh no, dear, I’m not that old. The Bureau started using electronic computers and components as far back as 1961 or ‘62, about the same time NASA started using them extensively. But each generation outmodes the previous one, and some of technicians always leave or retire when the next wave comes through.” He leaned a little closer, as if sharing a very important secret. “I think they get tired of having to learn it all over again every four or five years.”
Julie looked down as he said this, and looked up again, demurely, when he finished. “I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you were old or anything. I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, miss. And you’re right. I’m not old.” He made a sprite little hop and managed to somehow kick his feet together in the air. She was surprised by this sudden movement, and she could even hear the coins jingling in the man’s pockets. “At least I don’t feel old, even at 62. Oh, and the name’s McIvey, by the way. Shawn McIvey.” He did a curt little bow as he told her his name.
She extended her hand and took his. “Julie Noble, new arrival. I’m supposed to be here representing the Team, but so far all I’ve done is stand around and watch other people work, and I’ve done my best to stay out of their way.”
At the mention of the Team, she saw Shawn’s brow darken slightly, and she could sense from a subtle change in his body language that the Team wasn’t high on his list of favorite things.
“You’re part of the Team, huh?” he asked, pointedly and not a little angrily.
“Yes, but don’t hold it against me, okay? I haven’t even met anybody else from the Team yet, and I’ve only spoken to P
eter Turner on the phone.” She hesitated for a moment and then continued. “I get the impression that you’re not too fond of the Team.”
Shawn glanced around. “Well, it’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that they do some awful mysterious stuff. It’s the rest of the computer staff that gets stepped on every time when the Team needs extra terminals or extra processing time or more personnel. I guess you’re lucky to be working with them.” He looked around again and motioned his head towards a petitioned-off area on one side of the large room. “They get all the breaks.”
She followed his gaze and saw a sign that she hadn’t noticed before. It hung above another large area, presumably filled with computer equipment, that was petitioned off with big, ominous looking panels, each gray and black and at least twelve feet tall. In place of one of the panels was a sturdy looking door, and a keypad and small monitor were inset into the petition beside the door. Above the door hung the small sign she had also failed to notice before: “Section 8 - Team”
“Is that where the Team works?” she asked.
Shawn’s answer was cryptic, loud enough to be easily heard by her but still sounding ominous to her ears. “Yeah. That’s where they do all of the secret stuff.”
She looked back over and pondered it for a moment. This must be where the Team actually does its computer work when they were here at Headquarters. Funny that no one had mentioned to her before. But what would she be doing for them? Obviously there were different levels of security in the Computer Room, and the members of the Team were evidently at the highest levels of security.
She’d forgotten her manners. “Oh, I’m sorry. What do you do here?”
Shawn smiled, and again he conjured up visions of old Saint Nicholas in her mind. “I work over there in ‘Travel’,” he said, pointing over at one sign in another section. She noticed that the finger he was pointing with was a little crooked. He was pointing at the “Dead” sign.