Little Deadly Things (46 page)

Now the item called out to me. I invoked a heads-up display and looked at the piece contained in that anonymous account. The image was of an antique lithograph, out of place in the ultra-modern sterility of Eva’s world. It portrayed a powerful three-headed dog, eyes bulging, mouths snarling and snapping. One massive paw clutched a human figure. In the lower left corner was a word, all caps: “HELL”, and below that, “Canto 6.” Why would Eva have it? She hated dogs.

I scanned the print with my sleeve and had the office pillar search for the print. In less than a second, I had the answer that had eluded me for hours.

My mother was still lying where she collapsed. Her colleagues stared at me as I passed by, heading back to the nanoscope. I had no time to stop. I’d found the key. The lithograph was by William Blake and it portrayed Cerberus, the guardian beast of the underworld. It fit Eva’s sensibilities perfectly.

Cerberus. That had to be the password. I moved her private journal from her pillar to my sleeve, invoked a display, and skimmed her notes. They were clear, precise, terrifying. The enormity of what she had done made me reel. First, the test cases. A water desalinization plant, disabled. A squad of UN soldiers rendered helpless, overrun. Then kidney dialysis, insulin regulators, terminated for hundreds of thousands, and medication ended for millions by a simple electronic command. What good is a miracle when it is controlled by a madwoman?

Eva’s attack was indeed launched from her home pillar. I ran for the street, ignoring the calls of those attending to my mother’s body. I would grieve later, but now I need to get to Eva’s home as fast as possible. People were dying and I had no time to spare.

I looked across Boylston Street toward Commonwealth Avenue. Four blocks to Eva’s home. An easy jog. But it would be surrounded by emergency workers. I doubled back into my mother’s office and found an NMech military-grade skinsuit with cloaking capabilities. I donned the suit and ran back across Boylston Street and the short distance to Commonwealth Avenue. I turned left and headed west, one long block to Clarendon Street and then a few feet further to Eva Rozen’s home. Six minutes had elapsed.

I was able to avoid police and emergency workers, but not the view of a pyramid of bodies. It was an angry canker on the street. My heart lurched and my gorge rose. I turned away, and scanned the front of the building. There was the fourth-floor window, my father’s passageway to the concrete below and my destination. I slipped in the front door and hurried up the stairs to Eva’s workspace. There was a pillar. I was gambling that it was the one that had launched Great Washout.

I approached it cautiously, scanned with my sleeve and found a data sensor. I triggered a burst from my sleeve, a software cue. The pillar demanded a recognition code. My sleeve emitted a single word, Cerberus. The pillar’s status light turned green. My sleeve pinged.

I was in.

I scanned the programming, afraid that gaining access was the easy part, that Eva’s programming would be incomprehensible. But she was an economical coder, well-organized. She had created an elegant application. It was exactly as Denise Warren had described: there was a sub-routine in the accounts receivable programs that had shut down customer accounts for non-payment. This was an outcome for which Denise had prepared me. I pointed my sleeve at Cerberus and another data burst travelled to Eva’s pillar and deleted the rogue code. Each account’s payment status changed to current. It would take several seconds for all of the accounts to reset, and it would be too late for hundreds of thousands of victims. But millions of others would live.

Emery Miller, Sergeant Mike Imfeld, Nancy Kiley, and Jagen Cater, may they rest in peace. Kiley’s staff survived because the threat posed by region-wide rioting ended when their desal filters came back on line. Kidney patients regained their bearings and backed away from renal failure. Diabetics found their insulin levels returning to normal.

My parents were dead; Colleen Lowell was dead; the Eva Rozen I knew was dead and so was her
doppelganger.
I was alone.

___________________________________________

DEAD MAN’S SWITCH

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MARCH 4-7, 2045

T
wenty-one point eight seconds after Eva Rozen plunged to her death from her Boston brownstone, an electronic Presence awoke. It had been programmed to lie dormant unless a signal from Eva’s datasleeve ended. It was a dead man’s switch, triggered by Eva’s death.

The Presence, a sub-routine within Eva’s home datapillar, reached out with electronic senses. It noted human biological signatures in the Rozen mansion. Immediately, it returned to dormancy. The detection cycle went unnoticed, lasting a mere two milliseconds. The Presence repeated its cycle of animation, search, and dormancy until there were no indications of any complex organic life forms in the dwelling, some three days later.

Finding itself alone for the four seconds required to carry out preprogrammed instructions, the Presence sent hundreds of data-burst signals. Most of these went to financial institutions around the world. Three found human targets and sent pulses to their datasleeves.

One found the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, slipped through her sleeve’s security and pinged an urgent message. The second reached a newly-appointed Special Prosecutor. He was in a press conference and would not see the message for seven minutes, during which time all hell would break loose in the governor’s office.

The last signal activated software that had been downloaded days earlier, when Eva Rozen pushed gently, one final time, on Dana Ecco’s forearm. Dana’s sleeve accepted this last inbound transmission without notifying the preoccupied scion of the Cruz-Ecco family.

___________________________________________

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MARCH 7, 2045

S
uffolk County District Attorney Sean Doyle, elected to the first of the public offices he coveted, had progressed in the years since Jim Ecco’s trial for assault and subsequent conviction for disorderly conduct. Doyle rose steadily through the legal system and he won the DA’s office by a comfortable margin two years earlier. Now the legal and political powers that controlled the Commonwealth of Massachusetts believed that the best choice for a Special Prosecutor in the matter of the Great Washout was Sean Doyle.

Granted, there was the small matter of determining exactly whom to prosecute, but Sean Doyle would be the People’s Champion once again.

Doyle kept his trademark navy pinstriped suit, changing only the material to a lustrous nano-silk befitting his enhanced station in life. His red and blue striped club tie still formed itself into a perfect Windsor knot which never loosened or came askew. He no longer needed enhancements: the gray hairs that salted his blond curls fit perfectly with his image of energetic maturity. He strode with purpose into the State House and walked to a podium to greet the media. The event was important enough that the reporters attended it in person, rather than in virtuality.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a brief statement. First, let me thank all of the emergency personnel who helped avert an even greater catastrophe than we might have suffered. My staff is working with governments around the world to ensure that water and medical supplies will not be interrupted again. We restored service to NMech customers just hours ago. Now it is time for an accounting and I can assure the public that we are doing everything in our power to bring those responsible for this vicious act of terrorism to justice.”

“Three persons of interest were killed during what is being called the Great Washout. We believe that they may have had knowledge of how this catastrophe was committed. We have pledged every resource to learning exactly what happened so that we can prevent another attack. The combined resources of the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States government have been placed at my disposal to ferret out the truth and take appropriate action.”

“I will not take questions today. Again, let me thank the emergency responders who prevented a much worse tragedy, and the valiant efforts of those, who, under my direction, stopped the Great Washout. We have begun to restore normalcy to the world.”

___________________________________________

GRAY GOO

FROM THE MEMORIES
OF DANA ECCO

T
he family home was now mine although keeping it would prove to be a challenge. My parents’ estate, including the house and their NMech stock had been held in a trust. Their wealth was to transfer to me upon their deaths. On paper, I was one of the richest people in the world.