Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction (15 page)

“We want to let the dust settle, that’s all.
 
I know you, Craig, and I know your work.
 
So does everyone else here.
 
And with the clearcut evidence you’ve uncovered, nobody is going after your hide.
 
But our investigations don’t usually end up with the prime suspect dead.”

“That wasn’t my fault—” Craig began.

“Just sleep in tomorrow morning.
 
You’ll keep drawing your salary and have all benefits, but I’m sending you away from the office, keep you out of sight for a few days.
 
Consider it a vacation.”

Craig’s heart pounded, his stomach roiled, oscillating between shame and anger and disappointment.
 
A prickle of sweat washed over his skin.
 
He narrowed his eyes.
 
“This doesn’t mean I have to hand you my badge or anything crazy like that, do I?”

“No, of course not.
 
Your file is clean.
 
No reprimand, honest.
 
For the two years you’ve been assigned to this office, your performance has been flawless.”
 
She sighed and leaned forward in the chair, smoothing her skirt again.
 
“I can’t say I understand how you feel—I’ve never been put in a situation like this before.”

“Like what, being put on administrative leave for something out of your control?”

June was quiet for a long moment, avoiding his gaze with her big, dark eyes, then she spoke softly.
 
“You’d be surprised at what I’ve been through, Craig.
 
The things I’ve been accused of doing.
 
You should have heard the whispers when I was appointed to run the Oakland Bureau.
 
Nobody seemed to consider the possibility that I might actually be
competent
, a good candidate for the job.
 
No, it was either because I was black, or a woman, or sleeping with someone.”

She drew air through her teeth, as if trying to keep her own reactions under control.
 
“No, Craig, I’ve never had a suspect shoot himself right in front of me.
 
But you do have plenty of support in this office.
 
I won’t blow any smoke past you.
 
Just take a little time off.”

Craig finally nodded.
 
Why did everything seem to happen at once
? he thought.
 
He was either on top of the world, or down in the dumps.
 
The last few years had been going pretty well.
 
He had graduated from Cal Poly with an engineering degree, then on to Stanford law school before starting as an assistant with a firm in patent law.
 
Being accepted as an FBI agent fulfilled a lifelong goal.
 
His relationship with Trish while she labored her way through med school had seemed rock solid.
 
It had seemed that nothing could go wrong.

Craig shook his head.
 
Time to get things back on track.
 
He had to step away and take control of his life, get a little perspective.
 
“Okay.
 
Thanks, June.”

“No need to apologize.
 
I understand.”

Do you
? he thought.
 
He studied her for a moment, and decided he couldn’t tell either way.

June Atwood smiled tightly, showing even white teeth against her red lips.
 
“Take advantage of it.
 
You know you’d never take time off to kick back and relax.
 
Doctor’s orders.
 
If it makes you feel better, we’re through with the backlog of high-tech investigations for the moment, so I wouldn’t have anything to keep you busy even if you did stick around.
 
I’d end up giving you some of
my
paperwork to do.”

Craig pushed up from his seat.
 
“No thanks.
 
Got to keep the bureaucrats busy back in Washington, June.
 
Better you than me.
 
Will you call me if something really hot comes up?”

“Promise,” June said.
 
“If we need you, your phone starts ringing.”

Craig walked out the door, somewhat numb but surprised at how relaxed he already felt, as if a weight had been removed from his shoulders.
 
He hated desk work anyway.

Strange how things worked out. All through school Craig had concentrated on subjects that demanded intense study—engineering, law.
 
And yet he found that he no longer enjoyed sitting still and reading.
 
Maybe June was doing him a favor, taking him off the paperwork for awhile.
 
Yeah, and if he clicked his heels together and said that three times. . . .

Craig stepped into the hall, dodging a secretary wheeling a metal cart piled high with legal briefs, dossiers, and case files.
 
Craig cringed at the sight.

He returned to his small office and slammed shut the metal file drawers he had left open.
 
With a long sigh, he surveyed the mess.
 
His desk was completely covered with triplicate forms and manila envelopes, scrawled notes to himself, an empty spot where Trish’s picture had been.

Time to get the hell out of Dodge, go home.
 
He hadn’t logged onto his computer bulletin boards for more than a week, and he needed to catch up with surfing the net.
 
If getting tossed out of the office was the only way to get caught up, then so be it.

Grabbing his lightweight jacket, he stopped by the sign-out board and wrote HOME in big black letters by his name.
 
Maybe by the time he returned, the paperwork would have evaporated all by itself.

CHAPTER 15

Wednesday

Building 433

T-Program

Gary Lesserec contented himself with the lap of luxury while Hal Michaelson wallowed in the armpit of politics.

Lesserec sat back in the ergonomic chair next to one of the workstations linked to the VR chamber.
 
He looked at his fingernails, polished them on his “Incredible Hulk” t-shirt, then reached forward to grab his second can of Diet Coke.

Hal Michaelson was the one full of thunder and bluster.
 
He hob-nobbed with Presidents and senators and industrial executives.
 
He grabbed the microphone every chance he got and won his funding more through intimidation than technical merit.

Michaelson knew all the right words, knew how to bully his squad of artists into providing the flashiest viewgraphs, the slickest videotapes.
 
He knew how to make his project sound Impressive with a capital “I”—but, Lesserec thought, Michaelson didn’t know
squat
about the real VR technology, about the sophistication possible through the nested realtime simulations and the suspended microspheres in the chamber itself.
 
He saw none of the broad applications of the hardware at his fingertips, only his narrowminded, cockeyed Defense Department scheme.
 
The International Verification Initiative—what a trumped-up joke!

If Michaelson had bothered to be there for the demo he had given the handicapped kids from the Coalition for Family Values, he would have seen for himself.
 
Though he had been annoyed at the time, Lesserec had discovered a whole new possibility for VR therapy, if only Michaelson would get his big, ignorant face out of the picture.

Thinking of the kids’ demo reminded him to call that Plutonium Facility technician, Duane Hopkins, to see if he had managed to get the material Lesserec wanted.
 
He hated to wait once he had an idea in his head.

On his workstation Lesserec punched up the status of the routine that T Program’s dedicated parallel computer had spent the afternoon concatenating.
 
Danielle, Walter, and Lil were busy debating the best method to set up the Plutonium Facility demonstrations, studying blueprints of Building 332.
 
The Laser Isotope Separation increment was the newest and cleanest looking part of the facility, though somebody would have to doctor up a bit of actual work to be done in the area, since that program had slowed down in recent years.

Lesserec cracked his freckled knuckles and rocked back in the chair, staring at the big-screen terminal.
 
The whole Plutonium Facility demonstration seemed a bogus and boring example of VR capabilities, but Lesserec supposed it was a viable example of the actual surveillance techniques the virtual inspectors could use in a foreign nuclear weapons fabrication facility.

Of course, that assumed Michaelson’s concept was not fundamentally screwed up . . . and it was.
 
Anyone could see that, except Hal Michaelson was too dense—no, too
proud
—to admit it.

Certainly, the microsensors and the sophisticated virtual reality technology made possible the concept of invisible inspectors, able to watch from a distance and see everything.
 
But of course that assumed someone else with sufficient skill and computing power couldn’t
alter
what the sensors showed.
 
Lesserec knew how to do that.
 
Michaelson could have put two and two together himself, if he’d bothered to understand the implications of his sales pitch.

Some of the T Program people chatted in their cubicles patching up the minor demo routines, enhancing the Yosemite simulation and the Air Force jet dogfight; but Lesserec worked alone.
 
He always worked alone.
 
That gave him the freedom to concentrate and to add his own enhancements without anyone watching over his shoulder.

Hal Michaelson took all the credit and made the headlines—but Lesserec had developed the core technology himself.
 
Sometimes Michaelson forgot about that.

And he needed to be reminded.

Lesserec had hoped to go up to his new condo with Sandra this weekend.
 
Spend a couple days up at Lake Tahoe where they could enjoy their place, sit in the Jacuzzi, or make love in front of the fireplace.
 
That’s the way it should be, now that he could afford the finer things.

The salaries of everyone at the Livermore Lab were a matter of public record; and Lesserec had checked on Michaelson’s earnings.
 
Though he was only a group leader, the big man was one of the highest paid employees in the entire complex.
 
Michaelson’s ability to bring in outside funding for enormous and prestigious projects made him indispensable.

But his salary was peanuts compared to what one could earn from VR patents and spinoff technologies.
 
The medical benefits, the entertainment possibilities, and a thousand other applications made it asinine to keep the technology locked up in tight security, devoted to a lame and hollow spy system.
 
Lesserec wondered if Michaelson’s overbearing enthusiasm had caused a slight case of brain asphyxiation.

Lesserec watched the progress on the terminal screen.
 
The entire file was enormous, maxing out the capabilities of the parallel processor.
 
He had been working on it for months, developing modules at home, fusing them at the Lab, creating something so absolutely mind-blowing it would knock Michaelson flat on his ass.
 
The big man wouldn’t know what hit him.
 
Lesserec smiled at that.

He was one of the few people who dared speak his mind to Michaelson.
 
The T Program leader intimidated everyone else, including the Lab Director and a number of prominent congressmen.
 
But Lesserec had been around since the program’s inception.
 
He had been one of the bright-eyed boys sitting at the table, kicking back on Michaelson’s farm, brainstorming what they could do.

Lesserec had been younger then, incredibly bright and talented—and wet behind the ears, his own enthusiasm unbridled by the bureaucratic reality of working in a government lab abiding by shelves full of DOE “Tiger Team” regulations and coping with managers more interested in timely reports than in actual progress.

Back then, Lesserec had viewed the entire Virtual Reality project as a thought experiment.
 
Given appropriate funding and appropriate talent, what is it possible to do?

He had not realized then that those two assumptions were practically impossible.
 
As a result, T Program preyed on the enthusiasm of starry-eyed students and new graduates—like Walter Shing and Danielle Fawcett—who came in, dumped their brainpower into the project, working incredibly long weeks.
 
T Program squeezed them dry and then tossed them aside to pick up another batch of bright young researchers.
 
That technique kept the project working at a frenzied level at all times, producing the impossible and gaining a grudging respect from those others who operated in a normal routine.
 
Nothing was truly impossible.