Fool's Experiments (21 page)

An orderly appeared in the VIP lounge with a coffee carafe. Go away, AJ thought, glowering. The young man slipped back through the curtain.

Coffee wouldn't help. Sleep wouldn't help, either. It could only bring AJ dreams.

Guilty dreams.

No one had died in the late-evening collapse of the physics building, but that was the last miracle. Forty-one dead in traffic accidents, including twenty-two church kids on a bus for a weekend retreat. Three hundred-some dead in an air traffic control disaster. Twenty-eight dead in the riots, with the tally climbing hourly. AJ couldn't begin to imagine the financial toll. It wouldn't be only the physical wreckage, either. What did it mean to shut down the West Coast? His only point of reference was the '03 East Coast blackout. That had cost billions.

AJ squirmed uneasily in his chair, his rear end paralyzed, trying not to disturb Bev. He recoiled as though from a flame when his shoe accidentally brushed the canvas satchel slumped on the deck. The bag contained hardcopy and backup tapes of the experiment.

An experiment gone horribly awry.

Something was wreaking mayhem across California.

Somewhere in his satchel was a copy of
it,
or of its recent ancestors, anyway. The polite but insistent Army captain who had come for him, who had now graciously retreated to the rear cabin of the jet to leave them in peace, had been told that AJ should bring all available information. Now. AJ had scarcely been given enough time to collect his files from the lab and arrange for a neighbor to look in on his daughters.

AJ had refused to come without Bev.

"Don't blame yourself," Bev kept saying. "You're not the one who let it loose."

No, AJ thought, but I created it. I designed the lab containment that was not up to the task. I approved the fail-safe timer that failed. A virus got into
my
lab, apparently goading the thing that evolved in
my
experiment until it ran amok. The virus got in because
I
forgot to reset the combination on the lab cipherlock.

Young Ferris' role was the one thing AJ did know. Campus security cameras caught Jeff and a friend running from the Artificial Life Sciences Building at exactly the wrong time. AJ couldn't manage to care if Smithfield expelled the little suck-up.

Hundreds dead and billions in damage. A monster on the prowl. Don't blame yourself.

Who else was there
to
blame?

The predator knew nothing of Hollywood or Wyoming: not the names, not the locations, not even the concept of geography. It knew nothing of moviemakers or leveraged buyouts or humanity.

It
did
know how to recognize an opportunity and act upon it.

The predator had taken refuge in a computer in what a human would describe as the basement of a neighborhood public library. Budget cuts had closed the modest branch library for three days a week, including that day. No one had thought to shut down its links to the Orange County library system.

No one had thought to shut down the library system's experimental links to selected local schools.

No one had thought to shut down the Dogwood Junior High School's temporary link into the online movie collection of Hodgkins Enterprises. After all, the digitized movies were all stored safely on WORMs: "Write Once, Read Mostly" optical disks not technologically much different from DVDs. Besides, one had to encourage young cinematographers.

When a pathway opened temporarily from Hodgkins Enterprises in Los Angeles through Trans-America Railways to an Internet-accessible office in Casper, Wyoming, the predator had no idea where that route would take it.

Except beyond the tightening cordon.

Heroically large overlapping triangles in translucent primary colors filled the eight-foot-square frame facing Jim Schulz. The small brass plaque beside it—at least the label was tasteful—declared: Untitled #4. As far as Jim could see, Untitled #1 through #10 differed only in trivial details of triangle placement.
Untitled
as a title? That said all that needed saying about the artist's supposed creativity.

Eateries came and went here in Old Town Alexandria, but (his gallery thrived no matter how arcane the so-called art. The long, low brick building abutted the Potomac, and had begun life as a torpedo factory. The name had stuck.

Jim turned to Doug, who appeared as puzzled as Jim felt. "There was some reason you
wanted
to see this stuff? Dare I ask why?"

"Cheryl said she'd heard the exhibit was interesting. I'll admit I don't see the attraction."

Ah, Cheryl. "You entered a building she mentioned? That seems a bit forward for you two." And did it ever cross your mind she might be hinting for an invitation?

"I'll have you know, smart guy, that we have an actual date tonight. Racquetball and dinner." Doug smiled. "And yes, she does know. And no, we're
not
coming to your place for that dinner."

Tempting as it was to give Doug a hard time—how long had it taken to reach this point?—Jim rewarded the progress with a subject change. "So how's life at the forum? Is there any danger you'll go back to BSC and resume work on prostheses?" They sidled over to Untitled #5 as he spoke. "What are these dumb triangles made of, anyway? Colored plastic food wrap?"

"I wish," Doug said. "I came up a while ago with a virus defense that I think will work, but I can't get approval for a formal test." There was a bit of a furtive look. "I'm sure it will work."

"So what's the holdup?"

"Same as it's always been, Jim. NIT research relies on government funding. Until the forum blesses a test protocol, and then declares a rigorous test sequence to have been successful, the feds aren't about to reopen the spigots. Nor should they, until they are sure."

A docent between tour groups stood reading
The Washington Post.
Doug gestured at the headlines, all about riots and disasters in California. A shaded sidebar discounted al-Qaeda boasts about their cyberscimitar. 'To be fair, the colonel may have other things on his mind."

"So why aren't you on duty?" Jim asked.

"In fact, I offered. The boss says it's under control." Shutting down California was being in control? Je---sus. "Back to your test planning. Downtime came out of nowhere just yesterday. You've been awaiting go-ahead for weeks. So what do you really believe is the snag?"

"Honestly, Jim? I don't know what to believe. But for now, anyway, I have something happier to think about."

The ability to learn from experience is a survival characteristic. Quick reflexes are another. The predator had some of the former trait and an abundance of the latter.

It processed the recent experiences of attack and counterattack, of confinement and escape, of its total failure to discover the unseen Power, of repeated near extinction. It learned. It reacted.

It laid low.

It cruised the nearly unbounded network, blessed with an advantage never before enjoyed by a predator: Ultimately, it had no need to attack. The programs all around it had the most curious and structured simplicity, so it had only the most minimal need to compete for resources. Ever more millions of computers beckoned to it, their still-unsampled presence made known by the predator's examination of every Internet directory that it encountered.

It explored. It learned. It began to experience serenity through the peaceful acquisition of knowledge.

It was not given the time to discover wisdom.

Inoculation of the national network was swift and straightforward.

Inoculation took the form of phages, custom-crafted modules of software whose sole purpose was to seek out and destroy any and all copies of AJ's escaped creatures. Initialized with code snippets from the experiment's backup tapes, the phages would, in theory, recognize and attack only recent- generation maze runners.

Pittman dubbed his tiny creations silver bullets. Glenn Adams likened the counterattackers to smart bombs. AJ wrung his hands and called the phages useless.

AJ was right.

Examining the new assailants, the predator inferred something of vital importance: These creatures had been crafted specifically to attack
it.
The predator had no concept of a bloodhound, but there was no mistaking the scraps of its own code that the phages used to identify their prey. To identify
it.

It could learn. It could react.

If even a quiet existence without offense could not convince its curiously slow-acting Opponent to leave it alone, its course was clear.

The predator would attack, and attack, and attack again. It would devastate and destroy for as long as it took to flush out its Adversary from wherever it hid in the vast network.

Whatever resources the unseen Foe most valued, most closely guarded—these were what the predator would attack.

The Chocahootchie River had been for decades both blessing and curse to Cormingham County. The county's farms had long depended for irrigation on its stately flow. Every few years, the river would gently overflow its banks, enriching fields with fertile black topsoil from upstream counties. Occasionally, however, the flow would become rather more enthusiastic than stately, and when that happened the county seat, also named Cormingham, would get mighty wet. In due course, the Tennessee Valley Authority set out to tame the mighty Chocahootchie. Thus was born the Ballston Hydroelectric Dam.

Sunlight sparkled this day on Lake Cormingham, sportsman's paradise and the most visible symbol of the project's success. Sunlight glinted, too, from the tall and spindly steel towers of the high-voltage power-distribution network. The cheap electricity carried over these wires had brought heavy industry and ever-growing prosperity to Cormingham County.

The sun shone as well on less visible manifestations of the project. Dwarfed by the spindly towers, a line of phone poles marched across the countryside. Three cables snaked from pole to pole. The top cable brought basic phone service to the dam's control center. Most of this cable's capacity was used by people talking to other people, but two circuits provided DSL service to computers in Ballston's main control room. A separate circuit connected the computers with IBM's remote diagnostic center; another line tied the dam's computers to those of the county agricultural extension service for irrigation control.

The middle cable connected the dam site with the Federal Telecommunications System. Sensors arranged in a grid in the riverbed below the dam continually measured water turgidity and tested for lubricant discharge from the hydroelectric generators. The sensors fed data into one of Ballston's computers, from which it was periodically retrieved by the EPA's regional data-processing center over the FTS circuit.

A satellite dish sat atop the dam, its white paint also glistening in the bright sunshine. Antenna and satellite together provided a high-speed, highly reliable data link between the control centers of Ballston and the Southeastern Regional Power Cooperative. SERPC members bought and sold electrical power from each other to meet peaks and valleys in customer demand. Trading messages through the satellite, co-op members auctioned excess power every few seconds, or, rather, their computers did. These power sales were big business, too important to let mere technical difficulties interrupt. Heavy rain could interfere with the ground/satellite radio signals, so SERPC used the last of the three cables, a leased line from AT&T, for backup.

The Chocahootchie River had been, for decades, both blessing and curse to Cormingham County. Since the coming of the dam, however, the Chocahootchie River had been nothing but a blessing. Perhaps the natural balance had been denied for too long.

The many data paths into the control room, the several alternate escape routes, were about to turn the Chocahootchie once again into a curse.

AJ sat staring at a blank screen.

Bev had turned off the TV, but the pictures and sounds kept replaying in his head.
Floodgates gaping. The engineer sobbing at the dam, body racked by shudders, babbling of controls and backups and fail-safes that had somehow all refused to work. Torrents gushing through the sluices. The towering wall of water, viewed from an
Eyewitness News
helicopter.

The town of Cormingham, from the same vantage point, as the wall of water approaches. Sirens wailing, people running to their cars and pickups only to be trapped in what must be the only traffic jam the sleepy county seat has ever seen. The wall of water breaking over everything. The normally glib newscaster struck speechless as everything
—
people, cars and trucks, buildings, trees—is swept away irresistibly by the deluge. Bodies bobbing obscenely in the rushing waters, limbs twisted and bent.

The silent hotel-room TV now spared AJ of the guilt, at least temporarily, for the other disasters being reported: a factory explosion in Chicago, an oil-refinery fire in New Jersey, tons of molten steel spilled in a Pittsburgh mill, a commuter-train collision near Omaha.

He also failed to hear that, with little fanfare, the nations of the world were dropping all electronic communications with the United States.

Pages flipped at a rate only a bored child can achieve. The book closed with a slam. "Can I hear the radio?" a petulant voice asked from the backseat.

Doug cocked his head and listened carefully. "I don't think so, hon. It isn't on." He fancied that he could hear Carla shaking her head in disbelief.

Dramatic, long-suffering sigh. "
May
I hear the radio, please? One-oh-one-point-seven FM?"

Probable call letters: WPUK. He glanced at his front seat-mate. Cheryl shrugged: Your car, you decide. Chicken.

How bad could five minutes of—what? worst case, heavy metal?—be? He diverted all the sound to the rear speakers before tapping On and tuning in Carla's station. His presets were all programmed for news, traffic, and oldies. "I'm glad the kid is over her stomach bug. You're sure now she's up to spending the evening with your friend?"