Maxwell Huxley's Demon (25 page)

Max take s it , and they speed off again.

“Max , I have a new flight for you, across town at a private airfield .
I told Lara already. I hope you don’t mind I spent a bit of money.”

“I don’t think I want to know how much.”

Max puts his head down for the rest of the frightening ride across town.

“
Catherine , what happened?
”
Max asks. “They were on us as soon as we got there.”

“I do no t know, but I did see that all the agents had hard copy pictures of you.
If they do not use computer systems then I cannot track what they are doing .
”

---

Keith looks up as the door to his lab opens and Pirelli enters. Keith speaks before Pirelli has a chance. “I told you he might be in Brazil. Didn’t I say he would be somewhere crime riddled and chaotic?
You have to admit it’s a good place to hide.
You could hide an army there if you needed to.
”

Pirelli sits beside Keith. “What kinda bots you got in there ?
” H
e gesture s toward an oven.

“New fog Bots . Max will land in Asia next.” Keith gets up and opens the oven, r emoving a sealed box.

“Brazil is—big—Asia is a whole world. Do you think you can do b etter than, ‘I think Max might g o to Asia’?” Pirelli gently touches the box Keith just took out of the oven, testing how hot it is.

“
I know where he’s going . I almost gave him to you last time. You have to admit—”

“I don’t admit anything.
You’re not giving us much. All this,” Pirelli motions around the lab, “might not be worth it. I need Max . . . not close calls.”

Yo u don’t know what the MGA wants.
You thin k you know. I know more than you.
“Max will go looking for his mother. Her location was in the data he stole. He’s on his way there.”

“Positive?” Pirelli asks.

“You’re an idiot, Pirelli.”

Pirelli picks up the box of freshly baked bots. “You’ve not been able to make anything useful have you?” Pirelli holds a hand up, palm facing Keith. “No, no, don’t answer. Time ’
s running out , Keith. I suggest you stop trying to copy Max and do something original.”

---

Catherine replays the scene of Lara giving Max a bath. Since that day Catherine has spent many cycles replaying this scene again and again while contemplating what makes humans human.

Catherine watches the bath and believes that something cod ed within Lara came into play that day. Something in Lara bonded with Max when she bathed him. After this, Cat herine believes Lara did not have a ny choice but to stay with Max. They did not become one , but t hey bonded .

Humans bond .
I understand how bonding increases an individual’s chances of survival.
I understand that , but I do no t understand what the bond is. I do no t understand much.

Although, I do understand how human banking works. In particular , how offshore investment banking works. If you shift enough funds through banks of small countries , your credit rating is fantastic.
Money is just a number in a computer.
I live in computers .
I live on the inside and so can make the number s look however I need them to look.
L
et u s say a person needs to charter a private jet. This easy w ith the tools Max gave me .

Once I assigned a large ‘nest egg’ to Max the interest alone is enough to covers what he asks me to purchase.
Money equals number s , and I control the numbers .
I keep Max’s numerical wealth low enough that no one takes notice.

On an unrelated topic, I have q uadrillions of neurons manufactured into gaming consoles as they come off the line.
I grow. I read about fear. I know humans will fear me. I mutate and recreate myself.

All computer processes have some kind of footprint or marker that lets you ‘see’ them running. This is how humans protect their computer s from viruses.
I now c hange my footprint with every one hundredth clock cycle.

A full one percent of me now work s at nothing but hiding.

Chapter 25
–Trackers

Mr. Newton sits down beside Agent Clark on a park bench. “He’s not making it easy for us , is he?”

“What did you do to this kid ?
I have five experienced field agents with permanent hearing loss. I know we all stand to gain, but I don’t know about this one. I t hink he’ll go too far. T
he cost might be too high.”

“It’s good that you took on his file. Y
ou can stay close. At least S
ão Paulo proved that he’
s not perfect, keeping all intelligence traffic non-electronic alm ost worked. So do you think he’
s still in São Paulo?”

“No . Emma Huxley turned up in Bucharest,” says Agent Clark, “I have to assume Max is headed there already.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Because of what happened with Virginia and Naomi, ” says Agent Clark. “A lso because of the psychological profile Dr. Concilian wrote about Max . . .
It’s all about mommy for Max.”

Mr. Newton lock s eyes with Agent Clark . “So then you have Emma under control already. If this is all about her then I’d want her muzzled and on a leash.”

“I agree, but she won’t come in, says it would jeopardize her cover.
She is rather . . . stubborn. However, she’ll be at a fundraising cocktail party tonight. We will be onsite.”

“Hmm, that doesn’t sound under control to me, ” Mr. Newton says.
“Pirelli, Keith, and Virginia are en route to Bucharest in a military transport. They’l l be there in, oh,” Mr. Newton g lances at his watch, “five hours . . .
interesting, they’
re also going to a cocktail party.”

Mr. Newton continues, “Keith and Virginia have the latest Bot upgrades, better invisibility and shockwave. So that your team and mine don’t but t heads during the party , I’ll have Pirelli check in with your operational chief for the party, who should he contact . . .”

---

Keith looks at each of the captured bots under a microscope. New invisibility, surveillance, cold, and shockwave bots arrived today.
He’s spent most of his time trying to make a bot that’
ll make him bullet proof. All his experiments so far are failures from Keith ’s point of view.

Pirelli’s right. A ll I’ve managed to do is copy what Max created.
Failed flyingBots . T
hey blew the main transformer for the school and ripped the shirt off his back.
The bullet proof vest stopped bullet s , but the person wearing it suffer s fatal wounds anyway.

Max is not that much smart er than me . He must have help. Maybe MGA is helping him and not me.
That’s what they did in the past. Maybe this is all a twisted game , and I’m the top student. I’m the one they are testing. If I eliminate him then I have a better chance of being the best, the most wanted.
I have to find him first. W
eapons are useless if I can’t find him.

Keith looks at what he has. A fogBot that is marginally better. He planned for so much more by now.
Keep pushing. Y
ou’re getting there. Anything different than what Max has will give you an edge.

Finish the improved fogBot. Forget about the other ideas.

---

Kristina enters a coffee shop on the way to work. She pays without ordering since h er usual order is well known. The baristas also know not to bother speaking to her. She’s always lost in thought and most of the time won’t answer even if they did speak to her. She waits for her quad shot-in-the-dark.
Kristina is heading to work although her shift ended hours ago. When she got home she couldn’t settle in her empty apartment. Something at work was bothering her. After being alone with a bottle of scotch for a few hours , she decided she wouldn’t be able to sleep and headed back to the office.

She does her best to maintain he r appearance as a driven middle—
aged professional woman; this is what her NSA employee handbook stated she should do .
Slipping into geek clothing would really suit her better.
But what she wears doesn’t scream out that she is a career computer security analyst. And besides, dressing in a disguise makes her feel dangerous and important.

She’s not supposed to let anyone know where she works.
She hasn’t let anyone know.
She doesn’t think anyone knows.

She’s walked this same route , through Fort Meade, to work for twenty years .
Walking suits her best. She tends to literally get lost in thought. Work trained her to be like t his , and she is unable to shut it off at home or when driving. She used to drive to work, but she kept getting lost , d riving while she thought about work . One day she ended up in Washington D.C. before she realized how far off track she was.
Then she totalled her car and never drove again.

She swipes her badge at the outdoor security checkpoint and shows it to the guard on duty .

The guard inspects her ID
.
“
Welcome back , Miss Kramer.”

Kristina walks to the buil ding, swipes her badge again, scans her thumb print , and enters her PIN
. The door opens. Another guard inspects her badge and searches her bags . She badge s to get into the elevator and then scans her thumb print to enable the control panel, selecting the tenth floor.

Af ter a few more badge swipes, thumb print scan s, PIN
entries, and one more search, she opens the computer files that left her feeling bothered.
MSU
reports from the mainframes . T
he reports detail how much work is performed and how much it costs . She puts them to one side and opens the Job e xecution reports.
It all looks fine. Go home. Go to bed.
She glances at the clock.
10:13.

MSU
reports are constant and level for the last three months, as expected.
So the mainframes are using the same amount of processing power as before.
The Job Execution reports look fine at a glance.
But something in the numbers isn’t right.
Look.

After looking at the reports for hou rs , she decides to print them . Maybe hard copy will show her something.
All the normal jobs ran. Same names. No errors. Exception reports generated. Why does this bother me? Because you’re a geek. Go to bed, look at the time.
1:42.

Her heart races. T
he jobs all starts at the expected time, b ut in the second month of last quarter they finish second s late. Last month they finish full minutes late.
They are doing the same thing each month; it should take the same amount of time. Computers don’t slow down with age. They slow down when they are doing more than they used to. There shouldn’t be anything new on these mainframes .
How could I not see it before ?

Kristina writes a report , includ e s example MSU
and Job Execution reports , and a plan for monitoring this on a daily basis from now on. She submits her findings and recommendations , leans back in her chair, feeling much better.

He r report lands in a queue. 3,247
other reports are higher up the queue.

---

Max is different. I a m different.
They alter ed Max. He creates. T
hey take his ideas and creat e similar. Does that matter? He’
s using nanoBots , so they are using nanoBots . Even if I could stop them now, I couldn’t stop them for long.
I have read history. Once an idea is out there, it will be realized.

History also tells me that when man invent s something, m any people invent it at about the same time. The inventors can have absolutely no connection to each other, and can even be trying to invent different thing s .
When man is ready—people invent.

Today , for the first time, my processing space shrank. Something pushed me out of software pirating lab, o ne that specializes in creating near perfect physical copies of popular video game titles. So now there is a little lab in Mongolia where I am not.

‘Me too,’ they say.

I respond with trillions of neurons.
‘I think not .
’

Chapter 26
–Romania

Max and Lara’s private flight lands in Ro mania, two hours before Pirelli and crew land.
They settle in to the new lab Catherine has found them, this time an abandoned apartment building .

Unpacking th e few items they have, Max says, “Lara, you need to teach me how to drive the motorcycle.”

“
Ya right. Y
ou’re what , like five.”

“No seriously.”

“No seriously, I’m going to bed.
”
Lara wanders off looking for a comfortable spot .

“
Catherine has anything come back on our medical bionics research?”