CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Halvorsen Secret
A distant bolt of lightning cast subtle beacons across the bedroom ceiling. Elliott lay in the darkness waiting for each illumination and its thunderous sibling. Other spectators closer to the storm endured its savagery, but here the softer strokes prevailed.
Martha lay beside him, sedated by her multi-media day, oblivious to nature’s multi-media night. Her face turned toward him, scintillating in the bursts. Her lips tight and her face intense, she may have been refining some dream, condensing it, mixing applause, replaying the action, adding a laugh track, saluting the trivia. He wondered if he figured into her dream, or if it was reserved for her real family.
Another flash, then a longer delay. The flashes grew dimmer, the crashes rumbled longer and lower until they lost their discrete identities and merged into a single chorus.
This light show took him back to the Fourth-of-July fireworks displays he enjoyed as a boy. But this time, a blue explosion spotlighted Guinda’s eyes. In a green burst, he saw Guinda in her forest green dress with the single button undone. In a multicolored star, she stroked every part of him, slowly reviving the man who had lived in another century. Then a flood of other images returned, beckoning him to follow, drawing him in, and at the same time offending him. There were Halvorsen, Sherwood, the bouncing ponytails, the synchronous tits and peckers, the hype and gimmicks, the childlike followers, the fraud.
Elliott suddenly became aware of the silence. The storm had vanished, bathing the room in uniform emptiness and steady breathing. Images blended, then faded one by one into the darkness.
A few minutes later, Elliott found himself where he knew he would end up. He logged on to his computer at the lab, wove his way through the security labyrinth, and transferred the Halvorsen files to his machine at home. He logged off and began sifting through the mass of documentation. GAMES 46 was slightly more interesting than the nonsense he and Guinda had reviewed at her house. Some of the files were multi-media videos of various election game shows from recent years while others were transcripts. Elliott didn’t know what he was looking for, adding to the tedium. He watched several videos on double-speed, jogging through the advertising. He slowed it to normal speed for a while.
“Campaigns for $6000.”
“In 2036, a nationally aired videotape of Senator Ted Cassidy giving oral sex to the First Gentleman inadvertently began this now-common political strategy. … Yes, Gaff?”
“What is Blowing Your Way to the Top?”
“Right, Gaff, and you’re certainly blowing away your competition tonight. That puts you in a commanding lead.”
“Presidents for $8000.”
“Soap Digest has given this man the crown for the championship Presidential Erection. … Yes, Gaff?”
“Who is Bondo Longo?”
“Right again, Gaff, and you’re a long way ahead of the competition.”
“Drugs-in-Office for $8000.”
“First Gentleman, Darin Nightly, advised parents across America to give this drug to their teenage children daily. … Gaff?”
“What is hormone-atrol?”
“Right again, Gaff, and you certainly have control tonight!”
“You know, Alan, I have a confession to make. I still use hormone-atrol every day. It keeps me clearheaded under pressure, but the best part is it prolongs my orgasms. I just can’t say enough good things about it.”
“That’s some good advice and the end of tonight’s round. It looks like Gaff Trolley is well on her way to becoming California’s next senator. One more performance like this next week, Gaff, and I’m sure everybody back home will be convinced of your qualifications. After your spectacular career in the Soaps and MTV, you’re one of the best-known faces in America. Your political career will be just as spectacular … and rewarding,” Allen said with a wink.
The video portion of the multi-media file ended. An editor’s note appeared immediately:
“End of test clip 7. (6APR46) Trolley – no shadows.”
Elliott wondered what that meant. He’d zipped through similar notes, so he backed up a couple of minutes and replayed. Hmm, that’s interesting. There really aren’t any shadows on Trolley. I wonder how they did that. He froze several frames and inspected them. There were shadows on the others but none on Trolley’s face.
According to the note, this tape was made over two years ago. Trolley must be a senator in California by now with all that network hustle behind her. … I wonder. Elliott performed some brief magic with menus, and he quickly had an up-to-the-minute almanac on his display. US SENATORS he queried. Hmm, Trolley isn’t there. He tried HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Trolley wasn’t there. Then he tried SOAPS. Hmm, Trolley isn’t there either. How about MTV? … Nope. ENTERTAINERS? … Not there either. Strange. How could Gaff Trolley be such a superstar and not even appear in this almanac? They list thousands of entertainers. Maybe she didn’t get elected after all and just decided to retire with her billion dollars. Could be, I guess.
He registered the problem and continued, reviewing several more test clips in various game-show settings. Finally he happened upon a file called “test-clip index.” It listed nine test clips dating from 2045 to 2046, each with a cryptic descriptor like “Felter – eyes/lips synched” or “Wacker – without gestures” or “Wacker – with gestures” or “Trolley – eyes muted.”
Elliott sat back and stared at the screen in disbelief. Suddenly all those test clips began to make sense. “So that’s what those bastards are up to!” he shouted. “Could this be what got Halvorsen murdered?”
Elliott thought about the files he had left on his computer at the lab, the same files he was now reading. Maybe I ought to hide those things or put access restrictions on them, he thought. He reentered the lab computer and asked for a directory of his files.
ZERO FILES. ALL FILES DELETED 04:22: 36 JULY 23, 2048.
Elliott looked at his watch, 5:11. While he’d been watching Trolley and the others, someone broke into the lab computer and erased all his files. He wondered if they were totally gone or if he might retrieve them as he had done at Guinda’s.
He menued a command, and the computer responded: ALL FILES DELETED AND SCRUBBED 04:22:36 JULY 23, 2048.
The lab computer had a special SECURE DELETE command that wrote over the deleted files with random numbers to prevent them from ever being retrieved. The hacker knew how to use it.
Elliott queried the system to find out how this hacker had entered. The computer responded:
USER: FIELD SERVICE
FILE EDITOR: GNU-EMACS.
So that’s it, Elliott thought. He used the field service account and then got super-user privileges through the Gnu editor. I thought that bug had been fixed years ago, in fact decades ago. That was a classic bug when I was in college. What the hell good is our computer security department if they can’t close a simple trap door in I-don’t-know-how-many years.
The hacker knew what he was doing. Computer manufacturers frequently leave an account open that their service reps can later enter to debug system problems. In this case it had the tricky password SERVICE. Once into the system, the hacker used an old bug in an old editor program to gain privileged status as a super-user, that is, they could access any account in the entire system. Elliott was sure that his account with its stolen Halvorsen files was the target.
If the hacker could break into the lab computer, would it be possible to break into my computer here at home? That’s unlikely, but I am on a network.
Elliott quickly wrote a copy of the Halvorsen files on a portable optical disk. Then he decided to retrench to that archaic form of communication called paper. All the fancy electronic and optical data-storage media were fine for most purposes, but he would feel so much better now if he could just hold in his hands a pile of old-fashioned sheets of paper with printed words and pictures. No electronic necromancer would be able to
spirit that away from him with some digital wizardry. No more electronic cat-and-mouse. He transferred the files once more to the lab computer for it to spit out a copy on paper. It would be a considerable stack of paper, but it would be totally his, not subject to the whims of some cowardly hacker in front of an anonymous machine electronically snooping from a million miles away. Just to make sure, he disconnected his computer from the network as soon as he received the cue that the transfer to the lab was complete.
Now with the immediate crisis resolved, Elliott had time to reflect on the meaning of it all. He sat back and cupped one hand over his mouth as he stared beyond the computer display before him. COPE must have either followed him to Guinda’s house or had her under surveillance. But is COPE a human or a machine? The candidate fraud he’d witnessed a few minutes ago seemed like humans deceiving other humans. But how can you tell anymore? Whoever’s behind it, COPE knows about the Halvorsen files and Guinda’s theft of those files. They know about her collaboration with Elliott. The bottom line is that Guinda is in as much danger as he, but she doesn’t realize it yet. Elliott weighed various options.
His best option was to get to the safety of his office at the lab. There he would be able to warn Guinda undetected and retrieve the paper copy of the Halvorsen files. The security of the lab would provide him a safe haven from which to make his next move. He would probably have to get Guinda to the lab for her safety. He wondered how hard it would be to elude whoever or whatever surveillant was assigned to him today.
Elliott crept toward a window facing the front of his house. Without moving the curtain, he carefully peeked out the window and spotted a small gray car parked about three houses down. It looked bigger than the one he evaded the day before. This one, he thought, might contain one of those eight-legged robots that could run down somebody like me with four legs tied behind its back. He pictured a giant spider stalking him. He noticed his hand on the curtain draw rope becoming clammy. “It’s just a machine,” he whispered. “Don’t think of it as a spider, just one of Sherwood’s goddamned toys. Besides, it may just be another one of those silly cars.”
He wasn’t sure how to deal with this new spy. Was it the same kind he had easily outwitted before or a more advanced one that could handle stairs and sidewalks? Or were the robot’s instructions more malevolent than before? He knew a little about hit robots. Could COPE, or Sherwood, have such a fate in mind for him or Guinda, or both of them?
Elliott looked again through the hazy dawn at the little gray car. He pulled one side of the drapes back about an inch, just far enough to get a glimpse. But in that brief moment, he saw the car move, just a little bit, just enough maybe for it to get a better vantage point. Maybe it had to move just the tiniest amount for one of its sensors to zoom in on that curtain to maybe see who was behind it. But with the light so dim, maybe it hadn’t even moved at all.
The sudden, or imagined, movement, of the little car startled Elliott. He pulled away from the window, retreating behind the curtain that protected him from unseen sensors that must be continually scanning his house. Those marvelous sensors were focusing attention on him with a passionless commitment that no human could ever match. The wheeled spy was constantly on guard so not to miss even the slightest movement in his house, not a door opening, not a blind closing, not a secret glance toward it. Its vision system was superior to a man’s. It could detect the slightest change and then instantly zoom in on that tiny event to examine and record even finer-grain data. And all the while, it would maintain constant vigilance over the larger scene, looking for anomalies, searching for clues of any kind to keep ahead of its victim. And always seeming to be asleep.
Elliott imagined that the innocuous looking car could be much more than just a spy. It might contain a wily, impersonal killer, a killer whose actions would be difficult to trace back to its human master. He thought about Halvorsen—and her killer. Maybe his turn was next; maybe Guinda had already succumbed to this evil. He peeked through a crack in the curtain. “You’re perfectly patient and perfectly in control. For now,” he growled. “But you can’t feel anxious about an approaching struggle. You can’t prime yourself to do better than you’re programmed to do or give more than a hundred percent. But I can.”