Rusted Chromeby Karlos Allen |
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Day One
part 4 of 4 |
“I... don’t have an avatar.”
“Bull. You’re wearing a cap right now. I would say that you probably wear it all the time. You would have to, since every time you took it off or put it on you would be taking the chance that one of your devoted followers would discover that their fearless leader isn’t as pure as she would like them to think she is. Now that we’ve established who’s honest and who’s a hypocrite, let’s get down to business, shall we?”
She looked down at the table for a moment, “I’m not a hypocrite, Detective, my staff is fully aware of the cap and they know why I have it. You’re right, though; the rank and file membership would have a hard time with it, even though it is legitimate.”
“Really?”
“Yes, do you know how hard it is to avoid Mental Interface? That voice-only communicator is just about on its last legs and I don’t know where we’ll get a replacement when it goes. In fact, communicators, laptops, and wearables are all phasing out. The problem is, how does the organization stay in contact? So we made a compromise. The cap is set to the minimum transfer rate and is used only for official communication. We don’t use offices or any kind of three-D interface, it’s text-only. So, you see, I really don’t have an avatar.”
At that moment Ernie appeared. “Are you ready to order?”
O’Leary looked at Christine, “Are you? I already know what I’m having.”
“Please go ahead, Detective, I’m not quite sure yet.”
He looked up at Ernie. “I’ll have the New York Steak, blood rare. On the side I’d like a baked potato, heavy on the sour cream, no chives.” He could see Ernie and Christine both wincing as he rattled off the order. He grinned at her. “Ready?”
She looked up at Ernie, “Why yes, I’ll have the goat curry, please. The Detective here tells me it’s excellent.” She smiled back angelically. O’Leary shuddered. Ernie smiled broadly and left.
“The goat curry. You had to order the goat curry. I’m not going to be able to eat.”
“Considering what you ordered, I’m probably doing you a favor.”
“At least I can look at what I eat. You know what curry looks like to me? It looks like chunks of meat floating in green vomit.”
“Thank you for the mental image, Detective. I will treasure it always.”
“I hope so.” He paused, “Can we go to first names? This ‘Ms. Porter/Detective’ business is giving me a headache. My name is Charles but I go by Chuck.”
“Very well Chuck, you can call me Christie. Light banter aside, what exactly did you want from me?”
“All right. Do you know of any reason why people in your circle would want to bomb a server farm? I would imagine most of those kinds of attack would be electronic, not physical.”
“Why us? Why do you assume it has to be people who are concerned about the effect of the Web on society? It could be anybody. For all you know there could have been data on one of those servers that needed to be destroyed.”
“That’s a possibility,” he conceded, but not much of one. Aloud he continued: “People trying to destroy data usually write a bot or a worm. They don’t physically destroy computers; the data has a way of moving around on you. I’m not picking on you specifically; I will look into that possibility. But if it was an anti-tech act, why? And why now?”
She paused for a moment. “I don’t know. We don’t bomb server farms for exactly the reason you mentioned, it wouldn’t do any good. There are a few bills floating through Congress that we aren’t happy with, and of course there’s the insidious spread of MI.” She smiled wryly and tapped her wig. “I can’t think of anything that would move us to desperate action though.”
“OK, maybe not the mainstream movement. What about the fringe? That’s usually where ‘desperate action’ gets started. Any rumors, urban legends, conspiracy theories? New ones, of course.”
Christie thought a moment. “There is...”” She paused as Ernie appeared and set their orders on the table. She looked at the steak, still pink and floating in red juice, and shuddered. He did the same looking at her curry. “There is the ‘Bio-server Project.’”
“What?”
She shook her head. “Nobody in the ‘Mainstream’, as you put it, takes it seriously. The rumor goes something like this: the Powers That Be are secretly studying how to use the caps to take over people’s minds.”
He shrugged and said, through a mouthful of raw meat, “That’s not new. Your receptionist answers the phone with that one.”
“Not quite. She’s talking metaphorically. The bio-server legend states that people’s brains would be used to operate the Web against their will and without their knowledge. It makes a kind of sense. The human brain has enormous capacity. If they could tap into it, one person could probably replace that entire server farm. It’s certainly the ultimate example of the evil the mainstream is fighting.”
“But you,” he paused to swallow, “you don’t believe it yourself.”
“No, I don’t think the technology is there yet. And why should they? The chip makers are still pumping out new chips, and the Web is getting more sophisticated all the time. We don’t need a ‘bio-server’. Moore’s Law is doing just fine.”
“Moore’s which?”
“Moore’s Law. It’s an old electronics dictum. Basically it states that the computing power of new processors doubles every eighteen months. It’s been doing it since the 1960s.”
He shook his head, “Seventy-five years and still going strong?”
“Yes. And INT-AMD doesn’t ever miss a chance to remind us of it.”
“But some people might believe it?”
“Yeah. It has the fringe pretty riled up. When I pointed out that my leverage was threatened by this kind of meeting, that was what I had in mind. They aren’t mad anymore, they’re scared clear through. If you think an angry fanatic is dangerous, you ought to see a scared one.”
“I have.” He looked down at his plate and then at the clock on the wall. “Bio-server Project huh? I’ll look around and see who seems to be worried about that.
“Meantime, I hate to eat and run but I have a good friend who’s still in the hospital from this morning. His wife’s up there and she’s worried sick, so I have to go up and provide a little moral support before turning in. Thanks for your time, Christie, I’ll take care of the bill on my way out, so you can enjoy your uh, food.”
“Hope I could help. At least now you know that we aren’t all psychos.”
Miko was waiting for him in the lounge area. “He’s asleep right now, Chuck. I’m glad; it was getting tiring saying the same things over and over.”
“He isn’t any better than he was this morning? What has the doctor said?”
“Nothing. At first he wasn’t all that worried. He ran some more tests because I insisted on it, but I doubt he even bothered to analyze them.” Her eyes narrowed angrily. “I’ll bet he tries to charge for them though.”
“You said ‘at first’. He started taking it more seriously later?”
“Yes, he came back late this afternoon with a couple of other doctors. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could tell from their body language that they were worried. After you called, I made him promise to come back around eight. I wanted to talk to him and I wanted you here to make sure I didn’t forget anything he said. Also, I don’t think he takes me seriously.”
“Chauvinist?”
“Maybe. It could also be just that he thinks I’m a non-professional. You know, a homemaker.”
“Well, you are. A homemaker, I mean. He can’t possibly know that you dabble in endocrine therapy on the side. Why don’t you ask him what he thought of the last gene-therapy conference? Rattle off a couple of papers you wrote. You don’t need me to set him straight.”
“No, but I might need you to keep me from decking him, if he starts talking about his Professional Opinion again.”
“That I can do. In fact here he comes.”
The doctor came in with his screen under his arm and a cap on. Briefly he looked down at the screen and O’Leary saw it begin filling up with notes. He looked up and saw them and then glanced at the clock.
“Ah, Detective, Mrs. Okawa.” He nodded to them both. “I’m afraid I don’t have much time. I believe you had a couple of questions for me?”
Miko looked at him. “Doctor, I’ve been looking over the literature on global amnesia, especially where there was a seizure involved but there is no visible trauma. All of the literature agrees that the symptoms are supposed to be temporary.”
“Well, Mrs. Okawa” — O’Leary could see him trying to hide the patronizing tone — “temporary is a broad term. It could mean anything from a few hours to weeks. I’m afraid the articles in the lay literature are not detailed enough to be useful. I can assure you that the professional literature is more helpful.”
“I agree, Doctor. I saw no reason to waste my time going there at all. I was referring to a couple of articles I read in the Proceedings of the Institute for Neurotherapy. I was gratified to find that my access gave me clearance to an area so far outside of my specialty.”
The doctor looked a little glazed. “Excuse me?”
O’Leary stepped in, “I’m sorry, Doctor Okawa here specializes in prenatal genetic therapy for endocrine imbalances. She doesn’t practice right now, but she does do a lot of consulting.”
“I see. Pardon me, Doctor, I didn’t mean to be patronizing. What I said is still true. ‘Temporary’ can be quite a long time. I can’t say any more than that.”
Miko nodded. “Are there other cases having the same issue right now?”
“Yes.” He set the pad down and pulled off his cap, absently scratching his head. “The cases are falling into about three groups. About seventy-five percent of them were absence cases. They blanked out for a bit and then came back. They don’t seem to be having any problems now. About twenty percent were seizure cases that followed the normal progression. They should be back to normal, except for some periodic observation, by tomorrow.”
“And the remaining five percent?”
He shook his head. “They’re all pretty much like your husband. No visible trauma and no blood pressure changes of any kind and no ability to form new short-term memories.”
“Have you considered monitoring for unusual brain activity?”
“Yes, we’ll be scheduling functional MRI’s for all of them tomorrow. That’s really all I can say, Doctor.”
“Thank you, Doctor. It was most helpful.” Miko bowed slightly as he left.
O’Leary poked his head into Okawa’s room for a minute but he was still out. “Well, Miko, I’ve got to get home. The forensics team is uploading their analysis of the bomb fragments, and I need to have a clear head to understand them.”
Her eyes widened, “Bomb?”
He shook his head, “I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you. We’ve figured out what caused this.” He filled her in on the story. “So I’ve got a full day ahead of me. Tell Bill hi for me when he wakes up, will you?”
Copyright © 2010 by Karlos Allen
