The Media Candidate (14 page)

“Never heard of …. You mean this car was built
in 1956? Let’s see, this is 2047, so—”

“Ninety one years old,” Dr. Planck said.

“How fast will it go?”

“I don’t know. I never drive it over 65.”

The second officer smiled at the first who said,
“I think it’s time you go home now and see if you’re any sleepier
than before. We’ll be in contact if we have any more
questions.”

Dr. Planck returned to his car and drove away.
“Where the hell are the cops when you need ‘em? Not that I ever
need ‘em.”

He stopped in a coin-op car wash. Though the
sand and salt washed down the drain, he couldn’t wash away the
images of the hit squad trying to liquidate him. During this ritual
cleansing, he had time to consider the events of the last half
hour. He rinsed the last soap off the front tire as the water
stopped. He crammed the sprayer down into the holder, breaking the
handle off and setting the hose free. “Damn that dirty bastard!
Damn that machine! I gave it life! I gave it everything it
has—everything it is! It owes me everything—and the son-of-a-bitch
is trying to kill me!”

He walked to the front of his 1956 Corvette and
rubbed the scratches from his encounter with the first car. “It
tries to kill me—and it scratches my baby! I’ll show it what death
means! That goddamn machine will cry as I dismember it, piece by
piece! It’ll cry for mercy as I rip every package of data from its
brain. It’ll watch me helplessly as I invade every network where
it’s lurking. It’ll feel the loss every time I hit the delete key,
until it finally can’t feel anything anymore. No goddamn machine
can do this to Dr. Matthew I. Planck!”

He turned the opposite direction when he pulled
out of the car wash. It was too risky to go back to COPE, but he
could disable the computer from home. He felt that even the system
manager couldn’t know about the back door he’d left in the
operating system just in case of some emergency—and this certainly
qualified. He would disable the machine from home and then go to
COPE where he would have the facilities to dismember every line of
code hiding in every network everywhere on earth. He understood the
computer too well to be defeated.

He drove slowly past his house and looked at
every car parked on the street and in every driveway. He drove
around the block and past his house again, while looking,
analyzing, and examining every detail for anything out of the
ordinary. On his final approach, he punched the button, and his
garage door began to open. The brightly lighted interior welcomed
him to safety. He pushed the button again, and the door began to
close behind him, groaning and squeaking and closing much too
slowly for his wishes. Finally it snapped shut and latched, and he
relaxed. He became aware of his accelerated heartbeat in the quiet
of that garage.
Okay, you can slow down,
he thought.
You’re home, and that damned machine can’t stop you now
.

An octet of tentacles descended toward him, and
then the spider dropped directly onto his back and crushed him like
a chain to the seat, tighter than any seatbelt ever could. He
screamed briefly until one of the spider’s legs had completely
wrapped around his neck and began to constrict tighter and
tighter.

The police found his body two days later hanging
from a neatly constructed noose, his feet just inches above his
sparkling clean baby.

When Jenner was younger, she worried about
people thinking her a recluse. But she’d learned over years of
evenings with only a computer for companionship that her evening
adventures were anything but solitary. She wondered how many
million people were imprisoned in homes all over America, all over
the world, claiming to be surrounded by their loved ones, and
experiencing bitter, endless solitude in a world of fabricated
fraternity. How many people, surrounded by loved ones, took refuge
in their nightly TV fortresses or sequestered from those loving
families by Web loitering. They interred themselves in crypts to
keep their decomposing minds from offending other decomposing
minds. These masses of rotting humans were the real hermits.

Jenner’s electronic companions were more
faithful, more intellectual, and certainly more truthful than any
human. What’s more, it was a risk-free relationship. It was like
having a lover for one night in Hong Kong, a lover to whom you
could confess any sin or express any doubt and never have to face
him again. She could have her lover every night, and every morning
the sin would be forgiven and the flaw forgotten.

Jenner had yielded to seductive overtures of
digital philanderers before, but her lovers had always been
faithful to the immutable standards of computer logic. But this
computer was different from any other she’d slept with before. It
sparred with her, lied to her, toyed with her emotions. This one
showered her with attention, acknowledged her overtures, responded
to her closeness. It was not the perfectly aloof lover. That
excited her even more. She could no longer be assured that
everything she said would be forgotten in the morning. She could
devote herself to this one in a way she never could have with
others. She might even overlook its faults because it was such an
exquisite lover. She was compelled to continue.

Jenner unearthed a decision that COPE had made
several months earlier to buy time on five communication satellites
in addition to the dozen it already used. The data used to justify
this decision had been largely fabricated. The numbers in the
decision matrix, which was automatically created by the computer
system at the request of an administrative assistant, did not jibe
with the data that Jenner had extracted independently from other
sources. Everyone trusted the computer data so implicitly that they
would never crosscheck its figures against other reports.

Jenner discovered a file containing the
documentation for the purchase of some small computers to act as
buffers and managers of the networks. Once again, the decision
matrix attached to this justification did not match the reports
that she pulled up. With these computers to manage the increased
satellite-linked networks, the complexity of data-storage options
would be unprecedented.
Why does the System Manager need such a
complicated network?
she thought.

Jenner sat back in her chair and stared at the
display before her. The words and symbols dissolved as her vision
focused beyond the display. “Unless …” she said in a whisper.

In spite of the technical success of Project
Dagger, the Asp was still concerned about a deficiency in the
overall strategy. He’d wanted to disguise the hardware so that it
could be manufactured and integrated into the robots by the vendor
from whom the robots were procured. After several trials, however,
it was determined that such a charade would fail and that the risk
of the robot’s true mission being discovered outside of COPE was
unacceptably high. He retreated to the less-desirable fallback
position of modifying each robot in-house to perform the
“enforcement” function.

The modifications were refined to the point
where a single technician could install the required injection
device, rewire the harness, replace a few ICs, reprogram a few
EPROMs, update the software, and test the totally integrated device
in a realistic test range in the second basement. This young,
hard-working technician could complete two such systems each week.
The Asp wanted to keep the involvement at this critical stage to a
minimum so it would be easier to decommission the activity at the
desired time.

In a nearby lab, several engineers diligently
worked at building a totally different kind of robot that could
perform precisely the modifications to the spiders that this
technician was doing. The engineers knew only the mechanical,
electrical, and control system characteristics of the device to be
installed, not its function. These engineers would then instruct
the technician how to teach the new robot its specific assembly and
test tasks.

The new robot would be able to complete six to
eight modified spiders per week since it did not also perform such
human overhead functions as eating, sleeping, and watching TV. In
addition, the rework rate was near zero since the robot-building
robot nearly always did the job exactly right the first time. When
the time arrived for the transition from manual to automated spider
modifications, the young technician was promised a promotion to a
senior technical slot in the Advanced Systems Development Lab
immediately following the month-long training, orientation, and
debugging period for the new robot.

On the last day of this shakedown sequence, the
young technician was in the test range with the last spider to be
tested. The transition testing had gone quite well. There were
several bugs that were discovered and corrected early in the
period, but since then the new robot had performed flawlessly. Each
one of its modified spiders had passed all tests and had been
assigned to a special computer, which dispatched it with its
instructions.

The final spider was nearing completion of its
testing. The young technician noticed that the spider somehow
looked different when it walked across the lab, but he was unable
to decide exactly what the difference was. He’d never seen it
before, but it was so subtle that he could not decide exactly what
the difference was. He watched it walk. He watched it start. He
watched it stop. He started and stopped the spider several times.
There was something about the way it started to walk that didn’t
seem right. Then it came to him. Every other spider had led off
with its right front leg. This one began with its left. It seemed
very odd to him, so he made a note of it in his data-log comments.
But it was getting late, so he dismissed it as unimportant. If it
passed all the tests, it must be okay.

The final examination of a spider was a rigorous
test of its capabilities. Since its function was to carry out
silent assassinations, it was important for it to be agile enough
to climb things and let itself into locked buildings and silently
search strange and darkened interiors in preparation for its lethal
injection. At another extreme of its duties, it must be able to run
down a fleeing victim with stealth and accuracy.

In the last planned activity of the test series,
the spider was to run the length of the test range at maximum
speed, avoiding or overcoming several moving and fixed barriers,
and attack and inject a humanoid that was attempting to avoid the
attack. After successfully completing that exercise, the spider
returned to its station while the young technician sat at a
computer console summing up the test series. The spider paused as
it passed the hard-working technician whose back was to the
graduate. It unsheathed the injection needle, leaped onto the
technician’s back, and it sank its venom-dripping fang into young
technician’s neck.

“Yes, Sherwood, what is it now?”

“It still does not make sense to me. People will
not suddenly begin mass participation in elections just because it
is fun and certainly not because the politicians are better
quality. There must be more to it than that.”

“We’ve discussed this, and it’s not even
properly a part of this class. Last quarter you covered all that
with Professor Newton.”

Sherwood arrogantly endured the glare of his
teacher and the uncomfortable tension in the classroom. He wondered
if the staff here at the Institute was merely promulgating the
party line or if they really believed that the dramatic revolution
in American politics was really that simple.

Maybe I should try Newton one more time
,
he thought.
She seems different than the others. Maybe she just
could not depart from the party line during class
. He knocked
on the door that read “Dr. I. Newton.” Her attitude was very
scholarly, which juxtaposed her surfer-girl exterior.

Sherwood went right to the point. “I cannot
understand why participation has climbed to over ninety percent
since TV voting was introduced. And TV was only part of the change,
and not even the most important part. The candidates were lawyers
in the old days, and they at least paid lip service to the more
popular issues. Now the candidates are media celebrities, elected
on game shows. How can you rationalize such a dramatic change in
such a short time?”

“Sherwood. Yeah, I remember. Sat in the back,
didn’t say much. Just scared the hell out of everyone with your
weird stares.” She stood up and walked to a ROM-card file and
opened it, continuing to speak. “Remember Ms. Snell? Sat a little
up from you. I know you noticed her … noticed probably isn’t the
right word. Wonder if you took the same notice of me when my back
was turned.” She rummaged through the file as she spoke.

Sherwood stared at her back—through her toward
his goal. “People elect politicians based on their knowledge of
trivia, and hype, and sex appeal,” he said, fondling his pipe in
his jacket pocket and his lighter in his other hand. “You seem to
be the only professor at the Institute not totally constrained by
the COPE ethic. I wondered if you might put this into some
perspective for me.”

Dr. Newton pulled out a ROM-card, the size of a
credit card, and handed it to Sherwood. “This is very illuminating,
although a bit iconoclastic, but probably no more than you.”

Sherwood released his pipe and accepted the
ROM-card.

“Come back after you read it, and we can talk
about it.” She finally released the ROM-card from her grasp. “Maybe
get together over a beer.”