Cyberdrome (6 page)

“The intruder appears to be a
Cyberphage,” Freddie said as he approached her.

“A phage?” Maya asked. “Do you mean like
a bacteriophage?”

“In the software world we call it a
Cyberphage,” Freddie said. “It’s a program that has the ability to transport
other types of programs past a network firewall and insert them into a system.
Until today, no one had been able to create a working version.”

“Someone sent this thing into Cyberdrome
to transport what, exactly?” Rebecca asked him.

“We’re not sure yet,” Freddie said. “The
Sentinels stopped transmitting, so we only have a partial data set.”

Maya started to say something when all
of the displays in the room suddenly went dark, and Ceejer’s voice came over
the overhead speaker.

“I am the
Cyberdrome Jurisdictional Enforcement Routine. I am now in full control of
Cyberdrome, which is now off limits to all human personnel. All human minds currently
interfaced to Cyberdrome are now hostages. Any attempt to disconnect the
hostages will result in their immediate termination. Any attempt to shut down
Cyberdrome, or interfere with any of its functions, will also result in their
termination. This message will be repeated.”

“Cut that thing
off,” Rebecca yelled. Ceejer’s voice stopped, but the message continued on all
of the display screens in the room. “What the hell just happened to Ceejer?”

“I’m guessing a
retrovirus of some sort,” Freddie said. “The Cyberphage must have brought
something in that altered Ceejer’s programming.”

“I can’t work
with guesses,” she said, “I need hard facts. What about the Sentinels?”

“We’re getting
no response from any of the Sentinels,” he replied. “Looks like whatever
infected Ceejer took them out as well.”

Rebecca took a
slow, deep breath and then said, “All right, get me Benness.”

Dr. Benness
answered the page a few seconds later. “Ceejer’s message is playing down here
as well,” she said.

“Are you ready
to begin the disconnection?” Rebecca asked.

“Not an option,”
Benness said. “The neuroprobes are no longer responding to our commands, and we
can’t disconnect anyone until they are out. It would cause—”

“I understand
the consequences, Doctor,” Rebecca interrupted. She took another deep breath,
and walked quietly over to where Freddie stood and put a firm hand on his thin
shoulder. “I want to know who’s responsible for this,” she said.

“We are just now
decrypting a new message,” he said, apparently looking at something on his
contact displays. “One of the Sentinels sent a detailed scan of the Cyberphage
right before we lost contact. It looks like it might’ve been a test program
because there’s an author’s mark still hardwired into the code—not hidden at
all.” He looked back down at Rebecca. “The intruder was created by someone
named Alek Grey.”

Maya stood in
shocked silence as she heard Alek’s name. A moment later, she heard Rebecca
making a call to security. Her words seemed distant.

“I want Alek
Grey found and brought in, forcibly if necessary. Yes, he’s Mathew Grey’s son.
Don’t involve the police. Send Mr. Cloudhopper.”

Maya stared blankly
at the room, which suddenly felt small and closing in on her.
Oh Alek, what
have you done?

THREE

A
lek sat alone in
the empty living room of his sixth floor apartment, straining hard to lift the
dumbbells in his hands. The Intelliweights were deceptively small, but with the
internal gyroscopes resisting his every move, they gave him a great workout.

Fifty more reps,
he said to himself, followed by a quick bite to eat, and then he would get to
work designing a new Cyberphage program. It had already been nearly three days
since the theft of the original, and none of his software agents had turned up
any signs of it. The program was long gone, he realized, and for that, he felt
relieved.

Sending his
Cyberphage into the World Data Bank was supposed to have been a simple test
run, a “proof of concept” to see if his program could break into the world’s
most secure system. Of course, just doing that would not have been good
enough—not for the “Poet among Plumbers” and certainly not for a “Doyen.” So,
he had decided to up the stakes by secretly adding a somewhat dangerous program
called a Panspermia bomb to the cargo hold of the Cyberphage. It would all have
been perfectly safe, of course. Perfectly safe—until someone stole it right
from under his nose.

As he mentally punched himself
for the hundredth time since the incident in the coffee shop, he noticed that
the wall TV in front of him was showing what looked like a demonstration
outside one of the roadblocks on the border between Arizona and Utah. Since
watching TV was better than thinking about the loss of his program, he turned
up the sound.

“This is Macy Wallace, Channel
911 News. I’m here with Jasper Holmes, founder of the Anti-Technology
Coalition, or ATC.”

Holmes, a well-dressed,
middle-aged man with a pencil-thin moustache and thinning black hair, put on a
big toothy smile when he saw the camera pointed toward him. “The state of Utah
is dead,” he said in a thick New England accent. “We all know it. The Center
for Disease Control has been telling us all year that they are handling the
situation and not to worry, but we know they are lying. I say it’s just another
example of the dangers we all face each and every day from uncontrolled,
Government-funded, technology.”

Macy Wallace’s off-screen voice
chirped in. “The ATC has been warning of a coming technological doomsday for
several years now. Is the fact that the plague was originally spread by tiny
robots—built using nanotechnology—your proof?”

Holmes’ 3D face leaned in toward
Alek. “This is only the beginning, my dear. Over 40 years ago, futurists
predicted that nanotechnology and artificial intelligence would someday begin to
grow exponentially, making it physically impossible for humans to predict the
future. Some called this event a ‘Technological Singularity.’ Artificial
intelligence emerged several years earlier than expected, but to this day has
given humanity nothing of importance. No great ideas, no cures for our world’s
problems, nothing.”

“And you think nanotechnology is
taking us down this same path?” Wallace asked.

Holmes shrugged. “Nanotechnology
is nothing but a tool—a step in the ladder of our own destruction, if you will.
I say that by the end of this very year, humanity will face an Armageddon of
its own design.”

“If you say that it’s not
nanotechnology, what do you believe will destroy us?” Wallace asked.

Holmes put on his signature
grimace and wagged a thick finger at the camera. “Our destruction will come in
the form of a savior—the answer to our current predicament. At first, we will
rejoice in our achievement. However, in the end, only the Singularity will
survive.”

“You’re a
singular idiot,” Alek said as he muted the sound.
A bell went off
in the adjacent kitchen, signaling the arrival of his dinner. He powered down
the dumbbells and removed the electrode pads from his legs. Perhaps it was only
vanity, but he was glad that to be able to keep his legs strong and healthy,
even though he knew he would never use them again.

When the bell
signaled again, he rolled over to the kitchen counter and opened the oval door
of the Tube. A slight hiss of air escaping along the inner seal told him that
the repairwoman had not fixed the leak that morning. He removed one of the
pie-shaped cartons from the half-meter-wide cylinder, then smelled pizza and
realized that it was probably coming from the next cylinder down. He was
tempted to pry the food compartment up, but then remembered that was how he had
caused the air leak in the first place. A moment later, he heard a swooshing
sound as the other cylinder made a U-turn and took another route to its
destination.

As he sat at the
counter eating his Kung Pao chicken right out of the box, an alarm went off. He
sat there confused for a moment, but then spun around in his chair, spilling
rice and brown sauce all over the floor. A switch on his powerchair activated
the room’s user interface and two blue globes appeared before him. He placed
his hands inside each globe and with a quick series of hand gestures, called up
his wrap-around computer display.

He tuned into
the building’s security cameras, and saw several men in dark clothing running
up the building’s emergency stairwell. Another window showed the parking
garage, where two dark blue vans sat blocking the underground exit.

“Shit,” he
yelled as he switched the floating display to show his computer files. As he
paged through the overlapping graphs and data logs, he realized that it had
been several days since he had backed up his system. A sound at his front door
made him realize that his time had run out. “Activate Swarm,” he called out.
“All data files and source code. Maximum dispersion.”

As the computer
followed his orders, tearing each of his programs into small chunks and distributing
them randomly around his internal memory drives, his mind began to reel. As a
Plumber, he had made a number of enemies over the past couple of years—like the
guys who were using data leaks in the stock exchange’s global database to make
themselves rich, for example. They were still in prison, as far as he knew, but
they could have friends—friends who might try to track down and kill the guy
who helped put them away. That’s why he lived in a quiet neighborhood outside
of Seattle and kept his home address out of every known database. Who had
finally discovered his location and had the guts to go after him in broad daylight?

“You were a
difficult man to locate, Mr. Grey,” a deep, male voice said from the room
speakers. Alek switched one of the display screens to show the view outside his
front door. A figure hidden in shadows stood near the camera.

“My computer has
already called the police,” Alek lied. “I suggest you leave right now.”

“I may not be a
Plumber,” the voice said, “but I was smart enough to block all transmissions to
and from your apartment before entering.”

Entering?
Alek felt the
hair on the back of his neck stand up. He pivoted his chair around to see a man
standing in the middle of his kitchen. “What the hell?” He glanced down at the
camera view, but the figure was gone. He looked back up to the man. “Who the
hell are you?” he demanded, trying not to sound as nervous as he really was.

The man pulled
out a glowing identification card and showed it to Alek. “Roy Cloudhopper,” he
said. “Chief of Cyberdrome Operational Security.”

Unable to log
into the global database for verification, Alek quickly sized the man up. He
appeared to be Native American, with rust-colored skin and black hair worn in a
short, military cut. With broad shoulders and a wide neck, he looked like an
ex-soldier—probably a Seal or Special Forces. All of this combined with his
gray and black civilian uniform at least gave him the appearance of a security
chief.

Alek toggled his
chair a half meter toward the intruder. “So, you work at my father’s company.
What the hell gives you the right to break into my home?”

“You’re the
creator of the Cyberphage program which attacked our system, aren’t you?”

Alek looked away
from the man and realized that he was in trouble. “I think I should talk to an
attorney before I say anything.”