Forever Begins Tomorrow (8 page)

Because he had long been a fan of role-playing games, it was easy for Trip to immerse himself in the simulation aspect of this lesson. As he stared at the screen, trying to make wise decisions, he could feel his pulse begin to speed up in response to the pressure. After all, thousands of lives depended on his choices!

Finally he typed in a list of the officers he wanted. He moved on to choosing his supplies. When he had finished planning his campaign, he ordered the computer to run the simulation.

A moment later he groaned. A full-scale mutiny had erupted on the screen!

When the battle was over, Caesar returned, covered with bandages and shaking his head sadly.

“What went wrong?” asked Trip.

“You ignored the fact that an army is a team,” replied Caesar sternly. “Each of the men you selected was a good fighter. Unfortunately, the group as a whole was an explosive combination of opportunists and malcontents—superb soldiers with no loyalty to any cause but their own.” Caesar paused, then asked temptingly, “Care to try again?”

The question was hardly necessary. Trip had about as much chance of quitting now as a moth has of turning away from a flame. When he finally stumbled to his bed, sometime well past midnight, his head was swimming and his arms ached from the hours at the keyboard. But if he was tired, he was also exhilarated. He had finally managed to out-think Caesar!

Along the way, and almost by accident, he had learned more about the Roman empire, Latin, military strategy, philosophy, mythology, and politics than he would have thought possible in a single evening—or even a single month.

He was asleep the instant his head struck the pillow. But all through the night he wandered the hills of ancient Rome, mighty Caesar at his side.

About the time Trip was tangling with Julius Caesar, Wendy was finishing her own “homework”—a project considerably different than refighting the Gallic Wars.

Humming to herself, the Wonderchild stretched a cord between her electronic tutor and the terminal that had been installed in her bedroom when she first arrived on Anza-bora.

“ADAM, meet Creepy,” she said, as she moved from keyboard to keyboard, typing in commands and making adjustments. “I think you two are going to like each other. After all, you'll have a lot to talk about!”

When everything was finally ready, she typed the command “Test” on the electronic tutor. When the menu appeared, she pressed a key, then sat back and watched the two machines begin to interact.

Soon the nearby printer began spewing out pages of perfectly typed questions and answers.

“Way to go, ADAM!” cried Wendy. “I knew you were one smart computer!”

Satisfied that everything was functioning properly, she sat down at her workbench and removed the head from a stuffed frog she was trying to program to dance with another robo-doll, Mr. Pumpkiss. Reaching inside the toy's body with her micropliers, she began adjusting the circuits she had installed the day before.

She hummed as she worked.

It was kind of nice to have the most powerful computer in the world do your homework for you.

In the secret room beneath the Brain Cell, Black Glove was playing for higher stakes than mere homework. Typing a command, the spy waited nervously to see how ADAM would react.

When the computer had made no response at all after several minutes, the spy shrugged and tried again. When you were building a back door, there was no point in getting angry or trying to hurry. It had to be done slowly, with the utmost caution. And you had to expect a lot of setbacks; mistakes were part of the process.

The problem was, they were also dangerous, since a big one could get you caught.

Black Glove typed another command, a more daring one. Beads of sweat broke out on the spy's forehead. Would ADAM accept this one? Or would the computer rebel, claiming the command violated previous programming?

If the command was considered too outrageous, ADAM might even raise an alarm…

The moment of silence while the machine dealt with the input stretched into another… and another. Without realizing it, Black Glove stopped breathing.

Suddenly a message appeared on the monitor:

“Input accepted. Is there any more?”

Smiling triumphantly, Black Glove stepped away from the keyboard. Though this had been only a small step, in many ways it had been the most dangerous one. A single slip here might have alerted someone to what was going on.

How quickly things could change. This breakthrough meant the end of the struggle to sneak information off the island—and the end of worrying about those annoying kids!

In just one evening I've gotten past all that
, thought the spy.

Much remained to be done. But the first link had been forged. Now, slowly, step by step, Black Glove would be able to bind the computer to his will as securely as a slave is bound to its master. The spy paused at the door to the secret room, halted by an astonishing thought.
I might not even need G.H.O.S.T. anymore
.

That was when the awesome truth struck home.

With the power I'll have when this computer is completely in my control, I won't need anyone. The entire world will be at my command!

 

The Doomsday Module

The next several days passed in relative peace and quiet. The gang continued to work on Sherlock, pouring information into the machine as fast as they were able.

“Do you suppose we're getting any closer to the Breakthrough Point?” asked Hap wearily after one particularly long and tiring session.

Roger shrugged. “Who knows? The whole thing is only a theory, after all.”

“You mean we might be doing all this for nothing?” yelped Hap. “The computer might
never
break through to consciousness?”

“That's the way science works,” said Rachel calmly. She took a sip of her coffee. “If you're trying to do something that's never been done before, how can you possibly be sure it's going to work?”

“I think I like motors better,” said Hap. “They do what they're supposed to. Treat them right, they work right. Something goes wrong, you know where to fix it. No surprises.”

“Sure,” said Roger. “No surprises—and no excitement. Not to mention that the guys who figured out how to make motors work in the first place went through just this kind of process. Now, if we actually do hit the Breakthrough—”

He was interrupted by the Gamma Ray bursting into the room. “I just ran into Dr. Weiskopf!” he shouted. “Wait till you hear what he's working on now!”

“I don't want to know,” said Hap. “After what we went through to get Euterpe into space, I don't care if I
ever
hear about one of his inventions again.”

Euterpe was a robot. Dr. Weiskopf had designed it to calculate and coordinate the movements of satellites around the earth. Launching it had nearly cost Hap, Roger, and Rachel their lives.

Recalling that project, Roger was reminded of his occasional fear that Dr. Weiskopf might actually
be
Black Glove. Trying to sound casual, he said, “Did you guys ever wonder about Dr. Weiskopf?”

“What do you mean?” asked Rachel defensively.

Roger shrugged. “What if he tricked us into launching Euterpe just so he could get a transmitter into space?”

Rachel snorted. “If that had been the case, he wouldn't have had to wait until the last minute to try to sneak it on board the way Black Glove did. Besides, he doesn't have black hair. Heck, he hardly has any hair at all!”

“And he couldn't begin to squeeze those hands of his into that black glove Wendy's mother found,” added Hap.

“I know, I know,” sighed Roger. He shook his head. “This thing is making me so paranoid that sometimes I feel like we have to wonder about
everyone
—even the people who don't match the clues! But you're right; it couldn't be Dr. Weiskopf.”

He didn't add that the main reason he couldn't convince himself that Dr. Weiskopf was Black Glove had nothing to do with their clues. The real reason was that he simply liked the man too much.

That's the problem with you, Phillips
, he thought crankily.
You're too sentimental. If you like all the suspects, how are you ever going to finger one of them?

He shook his head. It was a question he had been wrestling with for months, without finding a satisfactory answer.

His thoughts circled back to Euterpe, and he found himself wondering how “the old bucket of bolts” was doing out in space.

In its orbit 22,300 miles above the earth, the object of Roger's curiosity was using its far-reaching sensors to gather information on the thousands of man-made satellites sharing the crowded Clarke Belt.

Processing that information, Euterpe worked it into a harmonious pattern that could prevent collisions, near misses, and even the kind of close passes that often caused radio interference. The pattern would be enormously useful,
if
Dr. Weiskopf could ever get the owners of those satellites (which in recent years had come to include scores of private companies) to accept his calculations.

Of course, Dr. Weiskopf knew that it was hardly likely the nations of the world would be willing to coordinate the orbits of the weapons satellites that were also jamming the skies.

What he did not realize was that there was no need to get anyone to accept his calculations. Before his robot had been launched, the spy Ramon Korbuscek had planted a small but powerful device called the “Doomsday Module” inside the rocket.

Given the right stimulation, that device could transform Euterpe's calculations into digitized radio signals. Using a highly guarded technology recently developed by one of Eastern Europe's top scientists, the module could then merge those signals with Euterpe's broadcast and send messages that would override the control programs of the satellites being monitored—allowing Euterpe,
or whoever controlled it
, to direct the movement of nearly every piece of hardware in the heavens!

The government that had hired Korbuscek to install the Doomsday Module had not yet learned that their agent had hurtled to his death while interfering with the first attempt to launch Euterpe. With Korbuscek dead and Anza-bora Island under a communications shield, they were not aware that their device had actually been installed and launched.

So for the moment the Doomsday Module was inactive, quietly circling the world while it waited for someone to bring it to life.

It would not have to wait much longer.

The gang was still discussing the Gamma Ray's report on Dr. Weiskopf's new project—a method to increase the computer's ability to receive and interpret sounds—when Wendy came strolling into the room. She had a sheaf of papers in her hand and an incredibly smug look on her face.

“Well,
I'm
done for the year,” she said, dropping the papers onto the table.

“Done with what?” asked Trip, against his better judgment.

“My homework
—and
my tests. See?”

She fanned out the papers so the others could take a look.

Roger picked up a set that she had clipped together. “Mathematics: Test One” said the heading on the first sheet in the pile. “Score: 100.” He flipped to the last page, which said, “Congratulations. You have completed the course in record time—and with a record high score.”

He looked at the Wonderchild suspiciously. “How did you do this?”

“I cannot tell a lie,” said Wendy, grinning from pigtail to pigtail. “I did it with my little computer. And some help from my big computer.”

“You used the mainframe to do your homework?” asked Ray in astonishment.

“Yep,” said Wendy, barely able to contain her laughter.

“But that was cheating!” said Rachel indignantly.

“It was not! It was just a creative use of resources.”

“But you didn't learn anything.”

“Actually, that's not true. I learned scads about the computer. It wasn't easy making the thing do what I wanted it to. I haven't worked that hard in months!”

Hap chuckled. “You probably worked harder than if you had just learned the material and taken the tests.”

Wendy shrugged. “Could be. But I'm set for the rest of the year. I can keep using that program indefinitely—unless someone rats on me,” she added, glaring fiercely at Rachel.

“Come on, Wendy,” said Trip. “You know Rachel better than that.” At the same time he was recalling how much he had enjoyed the brilliantly prepared lessons he had been working through.
Should I tell her about that?
he wondered.
Nah. She'd only laugh at me. Besides, I know Wendy. She'd rather do it her own way
.

Thanksgiving came and went, feeling strange to the kids because of the reverse weather of the southern hemisphere. Other than a bizarre (but hardly unpredictable) incident with the mashed potatoes at the Gammand table, it was a quiet time.

That very quiet became worrisome. The gang began to fret because they had gone so long without detecting any sign of activity from Black Glove.

What was the spy up to?

Had he (or she) given up?

Or was there a new transmission device in place somewhere, causing unknown mischief?

The questions nagged at them. But try as they might, they could not pick up another clue.

At the same time they continued to work with the computer, concentrating especially on programming it with things that, for one reason or another, they thought might jog it into consciousness. It was on one of these late November mornings that Ray picked up a book from the stack Rachel was currently feeding through the optical scanner.

“The Bible?”
he asked in astonishment.

“From Genesis to Revelation,” said Rachel with a nod. “I'm also putting in the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Sayings of Confucius, the Elder Edda, the—”

“Okay, okay, I get the point. But what for? I thought we just wanted to give the computer factual material.”