Human (23 page)

"She's saying, ‘please help me' in the dialect of our village. She's in pain. Isn't there anything you can do?  I hate to see my mother like this. I don't even think she knows who I am." Vakhrusheva said, carefully playing his role  until he knew he could confirm that this was his contact.

"I'm sorry, Mister. She has maximum amount of morphine the State allows. I wish we could do more. Alzheimer's is a terrible disease. I have some of her effects," she continued as she handed him a shopping bag, "she wanted me to give these to you for safekeeping."

"And you are?"

"They call me Alice," Alice said with a smile. "I expected you to be younger."

"I've gotten old, Alice."  Vakhrusheva said, again completing the code and confirming his identity for his contact. "I need to get the lay of the land. I've read the briefing folders. Can you get me in?"

"Maybe, maybe not. It won't be easy,"  Alice said. "There's a photo album in the bag I just gave you."  She waited for him to pull the album out of the bag. He handed it to her and she positioned herself near Selma Oronov's head. She motioned for Vakhrusheva to stand next to her. From this angle she was easily able to see out the open door and it looked very much like she was showing Selma's son some of Selma's photographs. She opened the photo album and continued speaking while pointing to the pictures in the album. "This is the visitor's and administrative employee's entrance. They call it the big door. There are two security guards posted right behind this door 24/7. Employees show their ID cards to the guards, as they pass. The guards all pretty much recognize everyone. Occasionally there will be a new guard who will check every ID meticulously, but most days its pretty slipshod. Everyone who doesn't have an ID card is supposed to sign in with the guards and the guards will call an escort to bring the visitor to whatever department he is visiting. If you don't have an appointment, the protocol is to foist you off on PR and they'll either give you a guided tour or get rid of you quickly enough.

"Over here, on the North side," she said, pointing to another photograph, "is the R & D entrance. To get in this entrance, you need a magnetic card. There are some labs on the first floor, but those labs are mostly for continuing stress tests on existing products. These are the labs that the tour groups get to see. But at the end of this hall," she said, pointing to another photo, "is a bank of elevators. These are accessible by biometrics only. No visitors allowed. The infirmary, Bayron's lab, and most of the computers that run Smith's brain are on the sixth floor. The sixth floor is off limits to anyone who is not directly involved in the brain project." 

She turned to the back page of the album which had a floorplan of the sixth floor spread across the two pages. "This is the infirmary. It's basically a hospital room. Very secure. This is Bayron's lab. This is the controlled environment room where the computers are. The lab is where Ashkot's brain scans were parsed. His scans are resourced as ‘Source Two data' on the servers, but for some reason all of the techs refer to him as Flat Stanley or Flat Stanislav."

Vakhrusheva chuckled a little when he heard his old colleague referred to in this way. How could these Americans ever understand the great power that lay in those scans. The power to destroy the world was somewhere on that floorplan. "Go on," he said.

"Smith maintains a separate office on the Executive Floor, which is the seventh floor, where he can interface with people without having to bring them to the sixth floor. He actually holds most of his meetings in that office, which is here. The executive offices are the only offices that are accessible from both the main entrance and the R&D entrance."

"Is there anything else that wasn't included in the dossiers?"  Vakhrusheva asked.

"Well, there is something that I am still working on. It has to do with a black notebook that Dr. Bayron took handwritten notes in. I mentioned this before. When he disappeared, I searched the lab and hospital room. I searched everywhere for that notebook. I think its very important-- I'm sure it has the information in it that Bayron didn't want made public. When Bayron came back to SmithCorp from the mental hospital, the notebook was not among his effects. I have a feeling, call it an instinct, that we wouldn't be able to replicate this project without the information in that notebook."

"Who else had access to it?" Vakhrusheva asked.

"That's the thing, Mickey," Alice replied. "Before he went missing, he never let that book out of his sight. After he went missing, I looked for it all over his office, but found nothing. Lot's of people would go in and out of his office though, so if it was there it could've been taken by almost anyone."

"Those are the only facts?"  Vakhrusheva asked.

"I'm glad you asked." Alice replied. "When I went to search Dr. Bayron's office, one young engineer came in looking very serious. It was very early in the morning, before most of the engineers come in and it was on a quiet day without much to do. This young man had been out of the office for several weeks and this was the first time I had seen him back. I know he caught me snooping around, but he never said anything about it. I haven't figured out a way to confront him without blowing my cover."

"What is this young man's name?" Vakhrusheva asked.

"Sarkis Ohangangian. They call him Sharky."  Alice replied.

"An Armenian,"  Vakhrusheva said with a hint of distaste. "I have his dossier. You keep your cover intact. I will confront, as you say, this ‘Sharky'. Let me spend some time with these ‘effects' and think about where the vulnerabilities are. I would like to meet again tomorrow."

"Bobby will make it happen," Alice assured him.

"I'm sure he will," Vakhrusheva agreed.

Vakhrusheva made the long walk down the hallway to the front entrance of the nursing home and noticed along the way that he had become accustomed to the smell that he had found so offensive before.

Bobby was waiting for him in his car. Vakhrusheva got in. Bobby knew that Alice, like himself, was a consummate professional, and he knew that Vakhrusheva now knew that too. "The best chicken wings in the world are not too far from here. I'm gonna treat you to lunch."  Bobby said as he drove, in the opposite direction from which they had come, past the University toward downtown Albany.

Vakhrusheva merely grunted assent. He was thinking.

             
Josey dialed Gonzales' secret red phone and Gonzales answered right away with a simple, "Yes."

"Marco," Josey said, daring to call Gonzales by his first name, "my boys and I have connected some of the dots. We should meet."

"I'll meet you at the Brandywine diner in 20 minutes. And one other thing..."  Gonzales replied,  "only my mother, may she rest in peace, ever called me Marco."

The Brandywine Diner on Emmet Street was exactly what a diner should be. Brightly lit, good food, friendly staff, no one to rush you away from the tables, and much to Gonzales and Cruz's preference, no security cameras anywhere. They settled into a corner booth on the far side of the dining room behind the service counter. Gonzales was actually hungry and had selected the Brandywine more for that reason than for any other. He ordered the meatloaf and an iced tea. Cruz ordered a slice of apple cranberry pie and a cup of coffee.

"We made some really interesting connections from the C.I.P.'s," Cruz said after they had placed their orders, "Check this out."  He pulled his laptop out of his briefcase and opened it on the table. It sprang to life and Cruz navigated to a particular page.  "This is tracking information from a parcel that was sent to SmithCorp almost a year ago."

SPNI.RU/petrovsky/collaborations/us/3dmodeling

Dr. Vadi Petrovsky

International Parcel, 10kg

011-7-812-499-4999 x. 209

"That is very, very interesting," Gonzales agreed. "I'm assuming that parcel was delivered to Dr. Bayron."

             
"Exactly." Cruz answered. He had already learned not to be surprised by the scope of Gonzales' knowledge or the speed of his deductive reasoning.

             
"The website?" Gonzales asked.

             
"Not much there. Technical mumbo jumbo, some indexed discussions. But here's what we figured out from it:  Dr. Petrovsky had a nearly complete 3d model of a human brain taken from a cadaver. He used an invasive technique to get his images, essentially destroying the brain by modeling it. He was trying to do exactly what Dr. Bayron did, but Dr. Bayron was dealing with a live subject and had to be careful not to damage any tissue in creating his model. So Dr. Bayron and Dr. Petrovsky agreed to cooperate. Dr. Bayron agreed to share his data and results in exchange for Dr. Petrovsky's images. To the extent that Dr. Bayron could not get an image from his live subject, he filled in the gaps with Dr. Petrovsky's image from his dead subject."

             
Gonzales leaned back and thought for a moment. "Tell me your theory on this Mr. Cruz, because mine just sounds crazy."

             
"I think that the dead subject was Ashkot. I think that Ashkot's memories ended up in Smith. I think that Mr. Smith's artificial brain knows the missile codes and I think that Kovaretsky and Vakhrusheva will stop at nothing to get that information out."

             
"It doesn't sound quite as crazy when you say it, Mr. Cruz."  Gonzales responded.

             
"There's something even more interesting about the collaboration site, Mr. Gonzales. The very last message from Petrovsky to Bayron. Petrovsky ran a simulation and it didn't work. He clearly suspects that Bayron has held something back."

             
"Then Bayron is a marked man. That's good."

             
Cruz was taken aback, "Good?" he asked.

             
"Yes, good."  Gonzales answered. "Now we know who they're coming for. That makes life easy in a way, doesn't it?  We put a tail on Bayron and they'll come to us. What else do you have?"

             
"This one is kind of interesting, maybe just corroboration, but it is interesting. We got this from one of the bugs at the topless bar. Listen:"

Cruz opened an audio player on his laptop and the two men listened to the recorded voices:

             
             
"Myra wants to meet you back at the office at two. I told her I'd deliver you sober. Let's go."

             
             
"What's it about?"

             
             
"Listen, She didn't tell me what it was about so, I assume its not something she wants to talk about over the phone. She just said its something Smith wants handled right away."

             
             
"As long as it isn't more lost Russians..."

             
"Lost Russians?" Gonzales repeated quizzically. "I recognize Kitty's voice. Is that Takahashi?"

             
"It sure is." Cruz said with satisfaction.

             
"Shit."  Gonzales said. It was the first time Cruz had ever heard him swear. "Shit," Gonzales repeated again. "Alright," Gonzales said after a lengthy pause, "I can only come up with three possibilities here. First is that Bayron was working with Petrovsky, had full knowledge that his images were of Ashkot's brain and that he intentionally and knowingly extracted that data. In that case, though, why would Bayron not give the complete data set to Petrovsky?  Second is that some information from Ashkot's mind somehow ended up in Smith accidentally and they may or may not know what it means. Third, dead and missing Russians have nothing to do with Ashkot. Where's Bayron?"

             
"Locked up tight at SmithCorp still." Cruz answered. "I'll have a guy on the door in 20 minutes. We also have 10-20's on Myra, Takahashi, Hermelinda, and Sharky. Hermelinda's at SmithCorp too. Myra and Sharky are at their houses. And Takahashi...well, you can guess where he is."  Cruz read from his smartphone.

             
"Takahashi can't talk without an order. He's an attorney. He'll be a stone wall. The others haven't connected themselves to Russians. What about Kitty?  She's close to Takahashi."

             
"We don't have a 10-20 on her, but we can geolocate her phone in about two minutes."

             
"And tell your boys to keep an ear on Hermelinda and Sharky's cell phones. They're the ones most likely to give us a bead on Bayron. Let's go find Kitty. Stop and get Julian on the way. At least lets have some pretense of a cover."

CHAPTER XVII.

             
Smith's duplicate data center had come together quickly according to the specifications that Smith had delivered to Takahashi. Takahashi had a friend in Mexico who was able to form a Sociedad Anonyma,  the Mexican equivalent of a corporation, literally overnight with the stated purpose of prospecting for rare earth metals, an endeavor in which vast amounts of capital could be lost with absolutely no return. Under Mexican law, an American citizen can only own 49% of a Sociedad Anonyma, but Mexican banks are always more than happy to hold the other 51% as a favor to large depositors. One of the bearer bonds in Takahashi's keep was cashed out and wired to Banco Republica DF, for the benefit of the Mexican company which owned the other 51% of the enterprise. Concurrently, Takahashi set up a Nevada Corporation, using all fake names and addresses, for the purpose of providing consulting and data processing services to the healthcare industry. He issued 49% of the shares of the Nevada corporation to the Mexican company, placing 51% of the shares in a charitable trust which he formed naming Kitty, Katherine O'Malley, as Trustee. The IRS issued Tax ID numbers for both the Trust and for the Nevada Corporation.

             
This setup allowed him, through Kitty, to direct all the corporate business without either of them having any connection to the corporation itself. All roads led either to Mexico, or to a trust that was empty save for the non-income producing corporate stock. The Mexican company was funded by liquidating the bearer bonds at the Banco Republica and placing the proceeds in the Mexican Bank account. The Bank would then wire the money from Mexico to the Nevada Corporation's account on an as needed basis. If anything ever did trace through to Kitty, she truly had no idea how the money moved or for what purpose. These transactions required occasional trips to Mexico, which Takahashi happily made himself. The beer was much cheaper in Mexico. Between Takahashi's trips to Mexico and the time he spent drunk at the Moviestar Bar, Kitty found herself overseeing the day-to-day progress of the building of the data center.

             
The plans that Smith had provided to them were quite detailed. For each aspect of the project, Smith had recommended contractors and suppliers who he was confident could execute their specific tasks promptly and professionally. He also made it clear that he wanted a replacement for every single cable, screw and circuit board stored in a shipping container at one of his warehouses.

             
Kitty chose a large space in an industrial park in Cohoes for the secret computer bank that would ultimately store an exact copy of Elijah Smith. The space was clean and modern, well ventilated, remote, secure, comfortable, and most importantly, already wired with fiberoptics capable of handling huge amounts of Internet traffic. It already had an office built in and Kitty ordered herself a big desk and a comfortable chair. She had a little sign made for the door that simply stated, KO Data Systems. Everyday she put on a stylish business suit and went to her office. When the contractors came to her to get their invoices paid, she wrote checks from the corporate account. The checks always cleared and accordingly, the contractors performed their work diligently and without too many questions. Every so often, she would walk through the computer room.

She saw when the glass dust proof walls were erected, when the industrial climate control system went in, when array after array of servers were mounted onto shelves. And then one day, the lead technician came into her office and said, "We're about to throw the switch, Ms. O'Malley."

She came into the computer room. It was very cold and clean. Someone lowered the lights and the tech called out:  "power her up!"  Kitty heard clicking and clacking first, then whirring, then some high pitched beeps and squeals. Then green, yellow and red flashing lights began to blink rhythmlessly all around her. She thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She heard a loud pop and then a sizzle and was at first startled. Then she realized that what she had heard was someone opening a bottle of champagne. "She's online, in her prime, and working fine, Ms. O'Malley," the technician said as he handed her a paper cup half filled with champagne. There were hand-slaps all around as the technicians and crew members drank their champagne.

Kitty realized that they were all expecting her to say something. She raised her glass and tried to imagine what Elijah Smith himself might have said in these circumstances.  "Gentlemen, I am very, very happy today," She said. "You all did an excellent job and I applaud your diligence and professionalism. My investors are going to be ecstatic. I will never forget you for making this all possible."  She was impressed with herself for finding these words. She raised her paper cup in the air and swigged the last gulp of champagne. The workers and technicians applauded her and began packing up their gear. After everyone was out of the building, the head technician came back in and said, "You've have a state of the art system here, Miss. I wish you the best of luck with whatever it is you are going to be doing, just promise me you're not going to try to take over the world." 

He laid a four inch thick, three ring binder on her desk. "These are all of the specifications for your reference," he said turning the page. "IP addresses, architecture notes, diagrams, everything you need to keep her humming and whirring is in here. I would recommend that you run the diagnostic routine every day. Its right here in appendix ‘A'. Of course, if you need anything, you can call me anytime. "

"I think you can expect that, Mr. Patel," she replied giving him a firm handshake as she walked him out.

After she shut the door behind him, she said aloud into the empty office, "now what?"

She called Takahashi from her cell phone to find out.

"You'll need to scan the specifications notebook and copy it onto a thumbdrive. I'll get it to Smith."  Takahashi told her.

"I think I can do that," Kitty replied. "The guy who installed the copier and office computer left me a cheat sheet for how to scan documents into files for e-mails."

"Okay," Takahashi said, "just make sure you don't e-mail it. I don't want it going out over the ‘Net. I'll take care of getting it to Smith. You just put it on a thumbdrive and I'll meet you later tonight."

"I can do that, Mr. Takahashi," Kitty replied.

She took the hundreds of pages of documents out of the three ring binder and put them in the feed tray of the giant copier/scanner/fax that had been installed in the office area. When she put the papers in the feed tray, the control panel lit up with three options: scan, copy, or fax. She chose scan. Double sided or single sided. She chose double. Scan to file: yes/no. She chose yes. She watched in amazement as the machine sucked the papers in and spat them back out. "I got this." She said to herself, then and there committing to read and understand everything that was in that binder even if it took her the rest of her life.

Bayron was less sure of what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He sat on the hospital bed where his former patient had died and been reborn as a technological creature.

"You did not sleep well, Doctor."  Smith said.

"Were you watching me sleep?" Bayron asked. "You told me you wouldn't."

"So sue me, Doug. I'm sorry. I just thought this was important enough to intrude."

"What is it, Elly?"

"I'm online already."

"I figured you would be."  Bayron replied.

"I wanted you to know. I know it frightens you, but, in the name of science, I thought I'd give you an anecdotal report."

"Elly. I want to go home."

"Only your nurse can authorize that."

"Is she here?"  Bayron asked.

"I can get her for you, if you want." Smith replied.

"How?" Bayron asked.

"Watch this," Smith said. "I came here to show you some of my new tricks. Check out the monitor."

Bayron turned his attention to the monitor and watched for a moment.

"Okay, almost got her... look! look! look.!"  Smith shouted enthusiastically through the speakers.

Bayron watched as the monitor screen lit up with a grainy image of a non-descript intersection. Suddenly, without warning, Hermelinda's car passed through the intersection and just as quickly disappeared off the monitor.

"What the hell was that?"  Bayron asked.

"Exactly what you were worried about, Doc. I was able to locate Hermelinda's cell phone through the GPS system. I then searched for a stop light camera and found one on her route. I accessed the camera and activated it just before she came through."

"You did all that in about 4 seconds."  Bayron mused.

"I did that in about a tenth of a second. The rest was just waiting for her to get to the intersection."  Smith bragged. "Watch this."

Bayron watched the monitor as a web browser opened up and dialpad appeared within it. The buttons on the dialpad appeared to be pressing themselves. The speakers rang once and there was a voice on the other end that was not Smith. It was Hermelinda.

"Hello?" She said.

"Herme," Smith said. "I'm here with Dr. Bayron."

"How are you calling me?" Hermelinda asked.

"I'm online. I'm using Skype!  I'm free!"  Smith said.

Hermelinda responded with joy. "Oh, I'm so happy for you, baby. That's wonderful news."

"Where are you now, Herme?  I want to see you and Bayron wants to ask you something."

"I'm almost there already, Elly. What does Doug want?"

"Hermelinda?  This is Dr. Bayron. I want to go home. Can I please go home?"

"We'll call Dr. Beedle when I get there, okay?  If he approves it, I'll take you."  Hermelinda said.

"I'll miss you Doc," Smith said. "I really, really want to show off my new legs."

"I want to go home, Elly."  Bayron said staring down at the floor beneath his feet as he sat on the side of his bed. A long silence hung in the room. "Elly?"  Bayron said.

"I'm still here Doug."

"Elly, you have a soul. I know you do. Your soul is a liability. Your humanity is a liability. You are still a man. But now you are a man with the power of a God. I know you know that. Please don't let it corrupt your soul."

"I won't let that happen, and neither will you, Doug. I don't need money, power, or sex in my present form. You have no idea how simple my pleasures have become. Taking over the world is not on my agenda."

"I trust you Elly. But as much power as you may have now, you're still only human. Maybe it'd be better if you weren't. But now I really want to go home."  Bayron said, never having moved his eyes from the floor.

"Well, as powerful as you think I am now that my tentacles are reaching into cyberspace, I have no power over that. You're under the care of Dr. Beedle and Dr. Beedle was appointed by the state. Hermelinda, at her own personal risk, had you released into her care and custody, and its their judgment that you have to rely on now. The same as I put myself into your hands, you have to accept that you're in their hands. Besides, I have a selfish interest in seeing you get healthy."

"And what interest is that?"  Bayron asked still looking down.

"Here's part of that answer right now," Smith said. The image on the monitor changed to a view of the executive parking lot at the SmithCorp Building. Hermelinda's car was clearly visible pulling into her designated parking spot.

Dr. Bayron looked at the monitor and saw what Smith was "seeing" through the security camera in the parking lot.

Smith continued to speak. "Accessing traffic and security cams is probably the most entertaining thing I've discovered since coming online. Most of them have no security at all, you just have to find the host and that's it. Even the ones that have security have terrible security. Because I can literally see in binary code, getting through firewalls is like picking a lock, from inside the lock. Did you know, doctor, that because I can visualize things from their pure data forms, and because my memory is flawless, I can literally watch and memorize the activities of dozens of cameras all at once?  I'm a veritable ‘eye in the sky.'"

"You're frightening me, Elly." Bayron said, now looking directly at Smith's camera eye.

"Then you're really not going to want to hear this. Want to see what the President is doing right now?"

"What?"  Bayron asked, although he had heard perfectly well.

"I was able to tap the President's personal webcam. Nothing in the oval office or anything like that, but the one he has in the office in the residential wing where he Skypes with his aunt and his old friends."

Bayron thought for a moment and then looked up and smiled into the camera, "You know what Elly," he said, "I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some kind of voyeuristic interest in seeing that."

"Attaboy, Dougy," Smith said as the image on the monitor changed again, this time to a view of an empty, but very neat office. "You know, this thing is done, you might as well let yourself enjoy it. President's not in. I also found the security camera inside the Moviestar club where that girl Kitty used to work. I didn't even know they had one. I don't think the customers are supposed to know that they're being watched. That one is usually a lot of fun. You want to see that?"  Smith didn't wait for Bayron to answer before he changed the image on the monitor.