Three Days in April (12 page)

Which I recognize.

It's a schematic for a simple nanomachine, one that I've used as an example in my lectures. It's a temperature-­sensitive molecular cage, similar in its basic structure to a buckyball. You can put a small molecule inside it, and it will stay chemically isolated from its surroundings for as long as the cage maintains its integrity—­which it can no longer do after its temperature exceeds 36˚ C.

Charity slams the door behind her on the way out.

I know what these files are now.

Doug is definitely trying to get me killed.

“S
o,” Doug says. “What have you got for me?”

He's grinning. I am not.

“Well,” I say. “I'm pretty sure I know what these files are, and what they're for. I'd like to know how you got hold of them.”

His grin widens.

“Come on, Anders. I can't tell you that. Trade secret, blah blah blah. What are they?”

“Do you seriously not know?”

His left eye begins vibrating its way through a download.

“Do you have to do that?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“The eye thing. It bothers me when ­people do that. Shouldn't you be doing all of your downloads through your brain thingie now?

“My what?”

“Sorry. Your wireless neural interface. Shouldn't that be handling your downloads now?”

He shrugs.

“It does. But any visuals still get fed through my ocular. That's more efficient than trying to tap the optic nerve directly if you've already got one implanted.”

I run one hand back through my hair.

“Great. I was kind of hoping that the advent of brain thingies would end the whole lizard-­eye thing, but whatever. Anyway, do you really not know what you gave me?”

He gives me a drawn-­out, theatrical sigh.

“Did I not agree to pay your war-­profiteering consulting fee? Would I have done that if I already knew what was in the files?”

“I have no idea what you would or wouldn't do at this point, Doug. Where did you get these files?”

He shrugs.

“I jacked them from a server.”

“Right. Whose server?”

“Another jacker.”

“So you seriously have no idea what these are?”

“None whatsoever.”

I suddenly realize that I've let the heavy augmentation color my view of Doug for the last fifteen years. He is not, in fact, an intelligent man.

“Then how do you know they're important?” I ask, speaking slowly now. “Why did you agree to pay my fee?”

He smiles. Doug's smile is a very creepy thing.

“Because the guy I jacked them from had them locked up very, very tight.”

“So if I told you this was somebody's encrypted home porn?”

The smile disappears.

“I would be bitterly disappointed. Unless it was something really freaky, and we could associate it with somebody rich and closeted. Is it porn?”

I sigh.

“No, Doug. It is not porn. You did at least glance at the files, right?”

“I did not.”

“So you . . . wait, what? You didn't even look at them?”

“I did not.”

I'm not sure what to say to that.

“Don't look at me like that,” he says. “I thought there was a chance they might have come from NatSec.”

“And?”

“NatSec puts tracker bugs into anything that goes onto their servers. Anytime you open one of their files, the bugs pop their little heads up and check to see if they're in a NatSec environment. If they're not, they start screaming for help on any accessible channel. I've got containment systems, of course, but NatSec programmers are tricky. I'm not one-­hundred-­percent confident they'd hold.”

My stomach is suddenly churning, and I can feel my jaw sag.

“When you say ‘help,' ” I say slowly, “I assume what you mean is a crowbar?”

He nods.

“If you're lucky, yeah.”

I stare at the screen. Apparently, my earlier reassessment needs to be reassessed. Doug is not stupid. Doug is the devil.

“Come on,” he says. “You knew all this, right? Why did you think I agreed to give you hazard pay?”

“Hazard pay?”

He rolls his normal eye. The other one is in full-­on lizard mode.

“Six hundred an hour? I know what you make, Anders. Why would you throw out a crazy number like that if you didn't know you were putting your ass on the line?”

“It didn't occur to you that I was just being greedy?”

His face goes blank. Apparently, it did not.

“I'm really sorry, Anders,” he says finally, his voice dripping with mock sympathy. “I've been going under the working assumption that there's a brain inside your cranium. It would have saved us both a lot of trouble if you'd told me up front that it's just a big wad of hair in there.”

I open my mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, then close it again. He's right. A man who won't leave a two-­dollar tip to prevent a busboy from licking his pancakes agreed to give me an open-­ended six-­hundred-­dollar-­an-­hour consulting gig without batting an eye. I drop my head into my hands.

“Oh, buck up,” Doug says. “It doesn't matter anyway. You're working through Gary's system, right? He's an order of magnitude tighter than I am. That's one of the reasons why I approached you with this in the first place.”

This is probably not the time to mention that my original plan was to review his files in my shared adjunct's office at Hopkins.

“Look,” he says. “You're not currently being anally probed by a NatSec operative, and your house is not a smoking hole in the ground. So it all worked out, right? What have you got for me?”

I look up. The smile is back. He looks like a kid on Christmas morning.

Well, a kid who's been partially digested by his toys, anyway.

“First,” I say wearily, “these are not documents. They're configuration files.”

The smile widens.

“Bingo. Configuration files for what?”

“For a nanoparticle fabricator, Doug. They're formatted for a Siemens machine, I think, but I'm not positive about that.”

Doug pumps one fist in the air, and does a little dance. Calling the effect disturbing is a huge understatement.

“Score!” he crows. “What are they plans for? What can we make? Is it a weapon? It's a weapon, isn't it?”

I rub my eyes, then push my hair back from my forehead. I really, really need a nap.

“No, Doug. It's not a weapon. I'm actually only about ninety percent sure what we're looking at. I recognize one of the schematics, and I can infer what a ­couple of the others are intended to do, but the rest are still pretty much a mystery.”

“Come on,” he says. “You're killing me. Am I a rich man or not?”

“Well,” I say. “I'm not sure how exactly you're going to monetize this, but you've definitely got something of value. I'm pretty sure you've managed to steal the secret formula for the nano suite in BrainBump.”

Doug's jaw sags open, and for a moment he looks like he might cry—­but then he shakes his head, and the half of his face that's still made of meat smiles.

“Okay,” he says. “Right. I can work with this. There's gotta be a buyer out there for something like that. Pretty sure's not gonna do it, though. I need totally sure.”

I shrug.

“I don't have access to a Siemens fab unit,” I say. “I can run the files through an emulator if you want. You won't get any nanos out the back end, but it'll give you a full roster of whatever particles would have been produced if you provided the files to an actual fabricator.”

“Good enough,” Doug says. “Don't care about the actual particles. I just need enough proof to show a buyer.”

I glance up as I boot the emulator and feed it the config files. Doug's leaning toward the camera, almost like he's trying to look over my shoulder. I think about explaining to him that getting a forehead print on his wallscreen is not going to give him a better view, but he's back to the kid at Christmas thing. I start the production run. I'm expecting a return after twenty or thirty seconds. It comes back after five.

“Well?” Doug says. “What do we have?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Your files crashed the emulator.”

That gets me five seconds of awkward silence.

“Uh, Anders? What does that mean?”

I shrug.

“I don't know. I've never seen it happen before. This is freeware, but it's been around for a long time. Most of the bugs got ironed out years ago.”

He leans back away from the screen. The smile is gone.

“So what do we do?”

“I'm not sure. I've got source for the emulator, but the code is way too involved for me to debug. Gary might be able to work his way through it . . .”

“No,” Doug says. “I don't want Gary in on this right now. What else do you have?”

I think about mentioning the fact that if Gary wants to know what we're doing right now, he can find out without being invited, but I don't want to get Doug any more agitated than he already is.

“How about this?” I say. “I can feed the files for the different particles to the emulator one by one. Maybe it's just one of them that's causing the problem.”

“Fine,” Doug says. “But make it quick. I'm not paying you for downtime.”

I shoot the screen a poisonous glare.

“As near as I can tell,” I say, “you haven't paid me for anything yet.”

“Yeah, well . . . if you want that to change, figure it out. Chop-­chop.”

I fold my arms across my chest.

“Really, Doug?”

He stomps both feet and turns half around.

“Come on, Anders. You're killing me.”

“What's the magic word, Doug?”

“Ass-­monkey?”

I laugh. “Close enough.”

It takes me about ten minutes to parse out the files. There are plans here for five distinct particles, ranging in size from a huge bot that I'm guessing is designed to interface with a specific implant, to a modest neuro-­stimulator, to the little molecular cage. I start with the biggest one, reasoning that the more complex files are more likely to have fatal errors. The emulator runs for ten seconds or so, and then spits out reams of output data.

“Well?”

I shrug.

“That one ran cleanly. Let's try the next.”

I work my way through the files, largest to smallest. Each runs perfectly.

Until the last—­the friendly little buckyball. That one crashes as soon as I launch it.

“Well,” I say. “There's your problem.”

Doug scowls.

“That's what the guy who fixed my arm said, right before he told me that I owed him eight thousand dollars.”

I stare at the screen.

“This doesn't make sense,” I say. “I know this bot. I use the schematic for a molecular cage almost exactly like this as an example for dimwit rich kids. It's not that complicated.”

“So how do you fix it?”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Let me check something.”

I swipe open my course folder and search for the molecular cage config file. I'm thinking that maybe I can run a simple diff on the two files, but when I pull them up side by side, Doug's is over twice as large. I pop them both open. The schematics are similar. The spec files are almost exactly the same. I come to the ends of the files without finding any serious difference.

Except that Doug's is still twice as big.

“So?” Doug says. “Do you know what's wrong?”

“Yeah,” I say. “There's a whole lot of stuff in here that shouldn't be.”

 

11. TERRY

E
lise is gone.

She's not dead. If she were, I'd be able to contact her phone, and an avatar would say “Sorry, Elise can't speak with you at the moment. She's dead.” She has a cloud avatar, of course, but it has no more idea of where she is than I do.

The only thing I can think of that would cause every trace of her to drop off the networks would be if she, her phone, her house, and all her other networked gear were completely vaporized.

Which she told me very clearly two days ago is not, in fact, what happened.

Tariq said yesterday morning that they were going somewhere safe. It didn't occur to me to ask whether “safe” actually meant “on the surface of Mars.”

“House,” I say. “How many locations within sixty miles of Baltimore are completely inaccessible to any public networks?”

House has to think about that for a minute. She pops up on my kitchen wallscreen with one finger pressed to her lips. Her silver forehead wrinkles in concentration.

“Two known locations,” she says finally. “One suspected.”

“Where are they?”

“Known locations are the interiors of containment units one and two at the Chesapeake Fusion Facility. Suspected location is within the NatSec facility in Chantilly, Virginia.”

“Seriously?” I ask. “That's the best you can do?”

She shrugs.

“You asked for locations that are completely inaccessible. There aren't too many of those around these days.”

Okay. Elise is probably not in either of the known locations, and I somehow doubt that Tariq would have taken her to the suspected one. So where does that leave me?

“Fine,” I say. “Get me a connection to Dimitri. Vid to the wallscreen.”

She disappears while she pings Dimitri's system, then pops back up long enough to say, “Sorry. No luck. Here's one of his avatars, though.”

It's the bear.

“Terry,” it says. “So good to hear from you. Dimitri would very much like to speak with you, but he is sleeping at the moment. Can I help you?”

I glance at my chronometer. It reads 10:45:15.

“I'm not sure,” I say. “When do you expect Dimitri to wake up?”

It shrugs apologetically.

“I do not know. Dimitri has not slept well for the past three days. I have no interest in waking him any sooner than I must.”

“Can you have him contact me when he wakes?”

“I will. Good-­bye, Terry.”

“Disconnect.”

I walk into the living room, and drop onto the couch. I have some design work that I could be doing—­that I should be doing, honestly. My client is expecting a first pass for review at the end of the week. There's no possible way I'm going to be able to concentrate on color palettes and furniture layouts and placement of
objets d
'
art
right now, though. There's not much point in worrying whether or not you've got the Renoir placed in ideal lighting when the world is swirling the drain.

“House,” I say. “Vids. News. Local. Centrist.”

The wallscreen cuts to two men on low couches facing each other across a coffee table. The overlay identifies the clip as an interview with NatSec Acting Director Dey, livecast today at 09:00. I recognize the interviewer. His name is John Flaherty. He's been doing interview feeds with celebrities and politicians since I was in grade school.

The interviewer in this case is much more famous than his subject, who I've never actually seen before. Dey has only been in the job for a few months—­just since Director Stevens resigned. I know there was some sort of scandal around that, but it must not have been too interesting, because I can't for the life of me remember what it was about. Dey is short and thin, with dark skin and hair, and a heavy black mustache that curls around the corners of his mouth and almost down to his jawline. He's wearing a dark brown suit that looks to be a ­couple of sizes too large.

“Good morning,” says Flaherty. “We're here today with NatSec Acting Director Augustus Dey. Thank you for joining us, Mr. Dey.”

“It is my pleasure to be here, John,” says Dey. He has just a hint of an accent, somewhere between South Asia and a private British boarding school.

“Let's get right to business,” says Flaherty. “Two days ago, this nation suffered the most devastating terrorist attack in its history, with a total of almost fifty thousand casualties. What has NatSec been able to learn about this attack, and what are you doing to make sure that it cannot happen again?”

Dey smiles.

“No preliminaries, eh, John? Very well. First, although anti-­terrorism protocols have been implemented, there is in fact no hard evidence as of yet that what happened in Hagerstown was a terrorist attack. No group has claimed responsibility, and due partially to our own response to the strike, very little physical evidence was obtained that could be used to help explain what happened. We have several competing theories as to what actually caused the deaths of the good ­people of Hagerstown. So far, however, no proposed mechanism has been shown to be fully capable of producing the effects seen there.

“Second, we at NatSec are currently doing everything in our power both to determine who or what may have been the cause of this tragedy, and to ensure that such a thing cannot recur. Both our physical and virtual agents have been on twenty-­four-­hour duty cycles since Sunday afternoon, and they will remain so until this situation is fully resolved.”

Flaherty leans forward.

“I hope you will forgive me,” he says, “if I note that you have not fully answered my question.”

Dey's smile broadens.

“I will forgive you. I'm sure you understand that there are limits to what I can say in a public forum.”

Flaherty nods, but he doesn't look convinced.

“Of course, sir. On a related topic, in the past hour, accusations have arisen that NatSec agents may have carried out a number of targeted killings last night against leaders of the UnAltered Movement. Can you either confirm or deny that such operations may have been carried out?”

Now Dey leans forward, and his smile disappears.

“You surprise me, John. I will not dignify that question with an answer, except to say that the purpose of NatSec is to protect the lives of American citizens, not to end them.”

“Quite so, sir. However, you must have taken note of the feeds coming from the so-­called UnAltered Movement since Hagerstown. Many of them have been forcibly redacted, but my organization has been able to retain enough over the past two days to paint a picture that borders on incitement to terrorism. Is this not so?”

Dey leans back and crosses his legs.

“I cannot comment on any ongoing investigation. You know that as well as I do.”

“I understand, Mr. Dey. However, hypothetically speaking, if NatSec were to make a determination that an individual or organized group was engaging in incitement to terrorist activity using public feeds, would you not be obligated to take forceful action?”

Dey's face remains calm, but his voice takes on an icy tone.

“As you know, John, this is the United States of America, and the First Amendment is still in full effect. That said, there are laws governing public incitement to violence, and they have repeatedly been determined to pass constitutional muster. If we or any other law enforcement agency made a determination that these laws were being broken, it would be our obligation to take action.”

“And would such action include targeted killings?”

Dey scowls.

“I believe I already answered that question, Mr. Flaherty.”

“So you did, sir. So you did.”

I pause the feed. A tap, tap, tap is coming from my foyer.

“House,” I say. “What's that noise?”

She pops up on the screen, sitting on the couch next to Augustus Dey. She winks at me, and slings an arm around his shoulder.

“Someone is knocking on your door,” she says.

“Knocking? Who is it?”

She leans over and nibbles Dey's ear.

“Unknown. This person carries no traceable electronics.”

Which is why he's knocking, obviously.

“Can I get a visual?”

House hesitates. She leans away from Dey, and her face and voice become suddenly serious.

“No visual available.”

My heart gives an alarming thump in my chest.

“What?”

“No visual available. The entry camera is not functioning.”

The knock comes again. I feel a nervous stirring in the pit of my stomach.

“How long has the camera been out?”

“Forty-­five seconds.”

“Is the camera at the building entrance functioning?”

“It is.”

“So show me visuals for anyone who's entered the building in the last five minutes.”

House hesitates again. I really don't like where this is going.

“No visuals available.”

“So nobody has entered the building in that time?”

“Unknown. The entry camera for the building was not functional for thirty-­five seconds during that period.”

The knock comes a third time, slightly louder. Someone is at my door.

Someone with the power to ghost the panopticon.

I'm on the third floor. There is no back door, no fire escape. I'm frantically considering tying together bedsheets and climbing out the window when a muffled voice comes through the door.

“Terry, are you there? I hope I'm not disturbing you, but I really need to speak with you right away. Please open the door.”

It takes me a moment to process the voice, and another to check that I haven't wet myself.

“House—­” I begin, but my voice cracks. I clear my throat and try again. “House. Open the door.”

I get to my feet. My hands are trembling, and I can feel the adrenaline washing through my system. I hear the door swing open, and footsteps in the foyer.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I say. “What are you doing here, Tariq?”

“W
ell at least this is all starting to make sense,” I say. “You're gonna be my brother-­in-­law in a month. When were you planning on telling me you're with NatSec? Does Elise even know?”

Tariq shifts uncomfortably on the couch.

“I don't know what you mean,” he says. “I am certainly not with NatSec. I have not checked their hiring profiles, but I am fairly sure they do not employ performance artists.”

I laugh.

“Right. Performance artist. Is that even a thing? God, I feel like such an idiot.”

He puts a hand on my knee, then snatches it back when he catches my expression.

“Terry, please. I assure you, I am what I claim to be. If I were associated with NatSec, I would not need to ask for your help.”

I lean back, and run my hands back through my hair. The fight-­or-­flight is draining out of me, and I feel almost giddy.

“Look, Tariq. I said I feel like an idiot, not that I am one. If we're going to continue this conversation, you're going to need to explain some things to me. First, if you're really just a simple street performer, how exactly did you manage to ghost my building's security systems?”

His eyes slide down and away. I have no idea why NatSec would hire this guy. He's a terrible liar.

“I do not know what you mean.”

“House,” I say. “How is my entry camera?”

“Functioning normally.”

“How was it when Tariq was standing in front of it?”

“Not functioning.”

“And how was it before Tariq arrived?”

“Functioning normally.”

“That, my soon-­to-­be brother-­in-­law, is what I mean by ghost. You're invisible to the panopticon. That's not an easy thing to be, and as far as I'm aware, the only ­people who are able to manage it are NatSec agents.”

“Is it not possible,” he says, “that your camera is malfunctioning? Perhaps this is simply coincidence.”

I lean forward.

“So you're saying that my entry camera has a glitch, which happened to show up exactly when you did, and which spontaneously resolved as soon as you were no longer in front of it?”

He shrugs, but still can't meet my eyes.

“This is possible, is it not? Correlation does not prove causation.”

“And the fact that my building's entry camera had the same glitch sixty seconds earlier—­again, just when you happened to be passing in front of it—­is also coincidence?”

Tariq's eyes are fixed on the floor, and for a moment I'm reminded of the clerk at the Jolly Pirate.

“I have never claimed to be an ordinary man,” he says quietly. “I have made a career doing unusual things. But I swear to you, these things have nothing to do with NatSec.”

I draw a deep breath in and blow it out. Dimitri is the only person I know for certain is with NatSec in some capacity. He's never said so outright—­I'm pretty sure they're not allowed to admit it—­but he's never really denied it either. Tariq seems pretty sincere, and I'm starting to feel bad about badgering him.

“Fine,” I say. “You're not with NatSec. Let's just assume you're actually a vampire. What can I do for you?”

“I need your help,” he says. “But for Elise, not for myself.”

That gets my attention.

“Elise?” I say. “Where is she? Is she okay?”

“She is fine. She is safe. But . . . I must tell you that I have not been entirely honest about what happened in Hagerstown.”

I sit bolt upright, and cover my mouth with both hands.

“What? Tariq, I am shocked! Shocked! You certainly had all of us fooled.”

He scowls.

“I know you all think me a liar, and perhaps you are right. In truth, much of what Elise remembers of that day is correct. She did speak to a sentinel, and its sensors captured her face and her voice. It is likely that they also witnessed some part of her escape.”