The Journal: Raging Tide: (The Journal Book 4) (15 page)

“Where would I find Toth and Ki?” I
asked.

“Toth is sweeping floors somewhere and Ki is
in the kitchen.”

“They both have strong computer backgrounds
and they’re doing menial jobs?” I asked.

“Like I said, neither one is a team
player.”

“Can you have Toth report to me at 1100
hours? And will you show me the way to the kitchen? I’ll talk to Ki
on her own turf,” I said, standing with Kimberly Ki’s file in
hand.

*

“Cpl. Kimberly Ki?” I asked a young Asian
girl.

She looked up from chopping vegetables.
“That’s me. What did I do now?” She wiped her hands on her soiled
apron.

I looked her over. “Do you enjoy working
here in the kitchen, Corporal?”

“It’s a job. One I’m actually appreciated
for. Why?”

I opened her file. “It says here you
graduated from college at the age of seventeen with a degree in
computer science. How did you manage to do that?”

“I had a really good counselor in middle
school who let me skip a couple of grades. I was already in high
school when I was fourteen and started taking college classes along
with my regular ones. When I graduated from high school at fifteen,
I doubled up my college classes and was done two years later.”

“Isn’t chopping onions a waste of your
education?”

She sighed. “Permission to speak freely,
ma’am?” I nodded. “Yes, I know more about computers and programming
than anyone else on this entire base, but nobody wants to hear my
ideas and nobody wants to take a chance on this
kid
. This is
the Army, ma’am, and this is the good ole boy branch of it.” She
went back to chopping.

“Report to the EOC in room 11B at 1300
hours. I will have your new orders ready,” I said, then I turned
and walked out. I sure hoped I wasn’t overstepping my bounds!

*

At 1100 hours I heard the door open and
looked up. Sgt. Wilkes was ushering in a scrawny, gangly young man.
If this was Pvt. Toth, he looked fifteen— a lot younger than the
twenty-five his file said he was.

“Thank you, Sgt. Wilkes. Can you come back
at 1400 hours? I will have a list ready of supplies I need.” I
turned to this sullen boy. “Have a seat, Private. I understand you
have a knack for computers.” He snorted. “I’ll take that as a yes.
How would you like the opportunity to do some real work? Something
besides pushing a broom?”

He looked up. “Like what?”

“Like getting all these computers running as
a unit, maybe even trying to get us back online. Think you could
handle that?” I crossed my arms while we stared at each other.

“What happens to me when I’m done?”

“That will depend on you,” I said. “What do
you prefer to be called, Private? Toth? William? Bill? What?”

“What do you care?”

“Stuff the attitude, Pvt. Toth,” I snapped.
“I need you to make my job easier, and if I can make your life
easier at the same time, we both win.”

He looked on the verge of tears. “Billy,
ma’am,” he finally answered.

“Well, Billy, I want you to report back here
at 1300 hours and I’ll have your new orders ready. Be ready to
work.”

*

I knocked on Jim’s office door and peeked
inside. He was on the phone and motioned me to come in. I limped
over to a chair and sat, waiting for him to finish.

After he hung up, he said, “Good to see you,
Allex! What can I do for you? I’d take you to lunch but I’m
swamped.”

“Me too. Jim, I need some advice,” I said.
“I’ve got two new assistants, and I don’t know how to get them
transferred to me, or even who I should ask.”

“I could do that, although I would suggest
you go through Major Hogan, this
is
his command.”

“I want to get started as soon as possible.”
I paused. “Do you have any idea how long we’ll be here?”

“I was hoping for only a few days, though
now it’s looking closer to a week. I’m sorry, I know how much you
want to go home.” He stood and came around the front of his desk to
sit on the edge. “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m doing fine,” I said, pushing back the
memories of my time as a captive. “I don’t know if I will do much
good in the EOC, but I think I might help two lives.” He looked
askance. “I’ll explain later. Say, is there a chance to sneak our
wine in? I hate the thought of it closed up in a hot vehicle.”

“I will attend to that right now!” He stood
as I did. “I’ll come by to escort you to dinner at 1730 hours.”

I did a quick mental calculation: that was
5:30pm. I’d get the hang of this yet.

*

I stopped at Corporal Cook’s desk to make an
appointment with the Major. She wasn’t there, although the door was
open and I could hear her voice. So I gently knocked, and
waited.

She stepped out, steno pad in hand. “Good
afternoon, Lt. Smeth. Are you here to see the major?”

“Yes, if he has a few minutes to spare,
thank you.” I nodded knowingly at her, she looked flushed.

“Come on in, Allex,” the Major called out
from behind the half opened door. I walked in with only the
slightest limp. “You’re moving around better. Have you seen our
medic since you arrived?”

“No, sir, I haven’t. I think just not being
used as a punching bag has helped a great deal.” The major winced
when I stood with the two files in my hand. “I have a request to
make, Major. I’d like these two soldiers transferred to the EOC.” I
handed over the files for Ki and Toth.

“These two misfits?” he asked, looking at
the names.

“Yes sir, those two
misfits
are
geniuses when it comes to computers. I believe their unique skills
could be utilized - in a monitored situation - and they are exactly
what I need right now. If they don’t work out, they don’t work out,
and they can go back to sweeping floors and chopping onions.”

“Donna!” he called out to his secretary. She
stepped in immediately and Major Hogan handed her the files.
“Please type up new orders for these two, transferring them to the
EOC.” He looked back at me. “As soon as I sign them, I’ll have
Donna bring them down to you. Anything else?”

“No sir, thank you.” I turned to go.

“Good luck with those two, Allex, you’ll
need it,” he snickered.

His attitude made me a touch angry. Whatever
happened to ‘be all you can be’? These two kids weren’t being
encouraged to stretch their minds. I had to remember, though, that
I was going to be here for only a short time and to curb my
civilian
attitude.

*

Promptly at 1300 hours, Pvt. Billy Toth and
Cpl. Kimberly Ki entered the office. Their new orders had been
delivered and were sitting on my desk.

“Have a seat,” I said and they each leaned
against a desk, arms folded. “I’m going to spell a few things out
to you two. It’s only the three of us in this office, you work with
me and I’ll work with you. No goofing off, no being late,
understood?” They both nodded. “What we’re after here is simple:
information. Billy, do you think you can get us any kind of
internet connection?”

“Probably. The satellites didn’t fall out of
the sky, ya know. It’s just a matter of reaching out and grabbing
it,” he said, looking a bit interested.

“Okay, and how would you do that?” I asked.
When he gave me that ‘are you dumb’ look, I said, “Bear with me,
Billy, I have reports to submit, and I need a simplified
version.”

He reached behind him and powered up that
computer. “See here?” he said as the three of us gathered around
the glowing screen. He typed a few commands and moved the mouse,
typed again. “This says we have Wi-Fi right here in this building,
but the signal is too weak.”

“Can you boost the signal?”

“Do I have permission to do whatever I need
to?” he asked.

“Within reason, yes.”

He grinned like a kid in a candy shop. “I’ll
be back in less than an hour!”

“While he’s gone, Cpl. Ki, you and I will
figure out how many of these programs to dump. By the way, what do
you prefer to be called?”

“My friends call me Kim, ma’am. Are you
really going to let me clean up these programs?”

“Yes, Kim. Once Billy gets the internet
connected again, you can download what we need. I want an updated
word processor, Excel, multiple search engines, and reinforced
firewalls on all of these computers. I want to be able to surf the
net in safety. After all, this
is
a military installation.
Once we can establish our presence, I’ll need you to connect us to
Washington. Are you game?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am!”

“Now, we don’t know who used these computers
before, so no judgement, okay? Dump the games, dating sites, and
porno, got it? Once we’re all set, if you have a favorite game you
can put it on your station if you want. Personally, I prefer
Free-cell,” I grinned.

“My station? You mean one of these will be
for my use?” Kim asked, wide eyed.

“Yes. We will have work to do daily and that
will come first. Understand?”

*

Forty-five minutes after he left, Billy
barged back into the room. He went to the computer he had turned on
and connected to the internet with a stronger, though still weak
signal.

“What did you do, Billy?” I asked,
impressed.

“This building used to have legal and social
services on this floor, and shops and restaurants on the main
floor. The businesses installed their own server and their own sat
dishes. I got up on the roof and fixed all the connections that had
come loose and then realigned the dish. It’s also not state of the
art anymore, and I have some repairs I need to do. I’ll have to
reboot the entire system when I’m done and I can’t do that until I
have a whole day of power. That generator going down before I’m
done could blow the whole thing. And we might need to dump some of
their memory.”

“Why didn’t you do this before, Billy?” I
asked, dumbfounded.

“Nobody asked me to,” he said simply.

“I knew I picked the right two for the job.
Billy, will you need any help from the IT guys?”

He frowned. “No, they’ll just get in the
way. I can do it faster without them, mainly because I won’t have
to fix what they screw up.”

“You don’t like them much, do you?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t. The only thing they do
well is bully.” He pushed his glasses further up on his nose, a
nervous gesture with him.

“Why did you join the army, Billy?” I asked.
“Forgive me for saying this, but you don’t seem like soldier
material, you seem better suited to the private sector.”

“I joined to go to school. Initially, they
let me take all the further ed I wanted, which did get me…” he
mumbled the rest.

“What was that? Got you what?”

“My doctorate,” he said, embarrassed.

“You have a
doctorate
and you’re
sweeping floors? That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard yet.
Okay, so you don’t need IT, what
will
you need?”

“I keep my own repair kit, so there isn’t
much more I need, except maybe a dozen high capacity thumb drives.
If you let Kim give me a hand downloading the memory, that will
save a lot of time tomorrow when I do the actual repairs and
reboot.”

“How will you save the files that are on
there?”

“We’ll use my laptop and do a GIGO,” Billy
replied.

“What’s a GIGO?”

“Garbage In, Garbage Out. The laptop becomes
a port and will take it in and immediately transfer it out to a USB
stick. No information stays in the laptop. It’s really very
simple,” Billy assured me.

*

Wilkes came by at 1400 hours and I gave him
a list that contained the usual office supplies, plus the thumb
drives, a couple more chairs, and a small office refrigerator, with
a note next to it to
not
take it from the major’s office. He
walked out chuckling.

Billy, Kimberly, and I worked the rest of
the afternoon in relative silence, with a few expletives thrown in
from Billy. Soon I saw Jim standing in the doorway. I looked at the
wall clock. It was 5:30pm already!

“Okay kids, your day is done. Good job! I’ll
see you at 0900 hours tomorrow.”

“Dan warned me you asked for the two worst
soldiers on the base, but those two looked like they wanted to keep
working,” Jim said once they were gone.

“Those two are amazing. Geniuses, both of
them. The right people, with the right skills and the right
motivation, can do amazing things.”

April 27

I woke to the
humming of my new little refrigerator. After dinner last night, Jim
and I found the unit in the office on my desk and moved it into my
quarters. The generators start at 0700 and shut off at 2100 hours,
from seven in the morning to nine at night. There are ice cubes
freezing right now.

*

“Is it true, Lieutenant?” Major Hogan asked
with a scowl as he came into my office at 0830.

“Is what true, Sir?”

“That you allowed that insolent troublemaker
access to a restricted area and allowed him to tinker with the
machinery?”

“No one has informed me that there were any
restricted areas anywhere here, Sir. As for
tinkering
with
the machinery, Pvt. Toth made some major repairs and has the
internet running again. Limited, but running.”

“What? We have internet back?” The major
looked stunned. “How did he do that? Even my best IT guys couldn’t
do that.”

“If I may say so, Major, you
didn’t
have the best. Pvt. Toth is geeky, clumsy, and lacks social skills,
but he has a brilliant mind and is proving to be a tremendous
asset. Did you know he has a
doctorate
in computer
technology? I asked him to fix a problem and then let him do it his
way.” I stood to face the major so he wasn’t looking down at me, a
tactical stance. “I gave him a job to do and
trusted
him to
do it. He didn’t let me down. I’m lucky to have him, and so are
you.” I gave him a sincere smile. “Today comes the mainframe
repairs, for which he will need uninterrupted power to do the
systems reboot. If the generator even hiccups during this, it could
blow all of it.”