by Tom Clancy
But the instant he slapped the program against one of the file drawers, a nerve-shattering alarm erupted from all around him. The power of the neon lights grew excruciatingly intense, and the file cabinets disappeared. The file room walls were bare. From Leif’s point of view, the biggest concern was that the door had disappeared. He could log off, of course, but he’d undoubtedly be traced. He hadn’t taken precautions against it—he’d thought it wasn’t necessary for something so simple. Wrong, Leif. And he hadn’t even found a single useful piece of information.
Busted, he thought. And I don 7 even know what I did.
It took some fast talking—and some expensive talking from a lawyer Dad sent over—but the paper wasn’t going to do anything to Leif for trying to access their restricted files. He did find himself on the receiving end of a few well-chosen words from his parents.
At last he sat alone in his room, facing his computer console. Of course, according to his parents, after this he wasn’t supposed to use it for anything but homework until further notice. He leaned back in his computer-link couch, entered veeyar … and went straight for his drawer full of Cool Stuff.
One program took him on a course through the Net like a hyperactive pinball, making sure he couldn’t be followed. It left him at what looked like a small generic office building— home to any of a million Net sites offering anything from salvation to sexy underwear. Leif entered, heading upstairs. Most of the enterprises were open to the public, but Leif’s destination was a bit more selective.
He arrived at the end of the hallway and produced another program icon. It opened the door. Leif headed into a small office filled nearly to the bursting point with a cutting-edge computer console. Of course, it was a virtual device. But it was almost an exact duplicate of the computer Leif had used to enter cyberspace.
“Deja vu all over again,” Leif murmured, turning the virtual machine on.
The hologram projector on the computer came to life, displaying a face that looked as though it had been drawn by a three-year-old.
“Heard you got nailed at the Post.” The voice had obviously been mechanically altered.
“I told them I got the access codes from a public bulletin board that doesn’t seem to be there anymore,” Leif said.
“Well, at least they didn’t follow you here,” the unnerving sketch-face told him.
“Do you always communicate through cutouts?” Leif asked.
“Safer,” the crude drawing told him. “Especially when you’re selling things that might annoy other people.”
Like proxies that could ruin someone’s virtual party, Leif thought. Or access codes to supposedly secure newspaper archives.
“I don’t think you have anything to complain about,” the hacker told him. “Your little stunt cost me money. They’ve changed all the codes at the Post site. I’ve lost a product. Why did you go after the MacPherson material? The papers are super-paranoid about hacking on those files, ever since the killbot thing.”
“Killbot?” Leif knew what they were—programs released on the Net to track down data on certain subjects—or people—and erase it. “Luddie MacPherson sent out killbots to wipe his personal life off the Net?”
The sketchy face nodded. “They’ve erased a lot of files— even in HoloNews. The papers and news services haven’t got a word on him that isn’t related to his business. I hear some places they’re keeping the MacPherson file in hard copy only, and data’s still gotten lost. The data fields that told people where the printed files could be found were erased.”
“Is that legal?” Leif asked.
“It is, most places, if you’re willing to pay enough for the privilege, or, failing that, willing to sue to keep the information out of the papers. Luddie was. You won’t find an unofficial word about him in any searchable file on the planet.”
“All that for a little privacy,” Leif said.
“It was a sore spot for Luddie, suing to get out of his family. I knew the guy when he was working like a dog to raise money to get his sister loose. The father was a real piece of work—he wouldn’t let the kids have neural implants put in when they went to school!”
Leif remembered the form his parents had to sign—he’d always thought it was a formality. “So Luddie’s father really is Battlin’ Bob MacPherson?”
The sketch-face nodded. “Head of the Manual Minority. Look at what he named his kids! Luddie is named for the Luddites, an antitechnology movement from the 1810s—hand-weavers who destroyed weaving machinery. Sabotine gets her name from the saboteurs.” The hidden hacker paused. “She was born to Battlin’ Bob’s second wife, a French woman. He married her because he thought Europeans were less obsessed with technology. But she left him, too.”
Leif, however, skipped back to the phrase that interested him. “You actually know Luddie MacPherson?”
“Knew him,” the hacker replied. “There was this group of hackers who used to hang around in this chat room. We all thought we were budding geniuses. But MacPherson was the real thing. You ever see this trick?”
A grid of twelve dots appeared in the holographic display:
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“Now you’ve got to link the dots with only unbroken lines, one leading into the next.”
“Okay.” Leif stared for a moment, then extended a finger, leaving a line of fire as he went from dot to dot.
“That’s one way,” the hidden hacker approved. Then the connections Leif had drawn disappeared, leaving only the dots. “Now, using the same rules, can you do the same using only five lines?”
Leif frowned, staring harder at the pattern, tracing imaginary lines back and forth. “Can’t be done,” he said.
“But it can.” A line of fire suddenly appeared, slashing through the bottom row of dots, running off the grid, then angling back to catch a few more dots, extending past the gridwork again, and veering back. When the hacker was done, there were indeed only five lines, but they made a weird pattern:
“I should have caught on when you said this was a trick,” Leif said in disgust.
“It just illustrates a way of thinking,” the hacker replied. “I can do some pretty cool things with a computer. So could the other guys in that chat room. We could connect the dots. But Luddie—he thought beyond the dots. And that led to some pretty amazing things.”
The hacker sighed. “Even back then the ideas that came out of his head… We would hang around, talking, just blowing off electrons. Luddie would play with an idea, thinking out loud. Some other guys picked up on a couple of those—let’s call them original suggestions—and made a heap of cash. I think that’s when Luddie suddenly turned into Mr. Cutthroat. Or maybe it was the fight for his sister. He got seriously into making money, and the more he made, the more secretive he became.”
All of Leif’s previous dealings with this sketch-faced guy had been strictly business—and he’d been tough as nails. So it surprised Leif to hear a wistful note in the hacker’s voice.
“I miss those times—getting together with an honest-to-God genius. When you think of what Luddie had to overcome … what could he have been if he’d had a normal upbringing. …”
Leif smiled. “He might have ended up in the Manual Minority. You said it yourself—kids turn out to be the opposite of their parents.”
Kind of like a self-made billionaire fathering an aimless playboy of a son.
But Leif kept that thought strictly to himself.
The hacker got a bit more businesslike before they ended their meeting. Leif agreed to compensate him for his lost product, but the figure they agreed upon wasn’t an outrageous amount. They both wanted to be able to deal together again in the future.
Leif cut out of veeyar and found himself back in his room.
Well, he thought, thanks to those killbots Vm obviously not going to discover much about Luddie ‘s family life on the Net, unless Vm willing to break the law instead of merely bending it. And Vm not. But maybe I can pick up a little on his old man.. ..
&
nbsp; He went to work.
Leif’s Net search found plenty of information on the elder MacPherson. Battlin’ Bob had started out as a professional wrestler, but left entertainment sports for an initially successful career in politics. He’d become an advocate on issues of privacy, which led in turn to the media, computers, and, finally, technology in general. MacPherson brought all his celebrity into the fight against machines, as well as a colorful personality and an unruly spirit which never gave up.
He needed all those assets to survive the jokes aimed at him. He was killed politically by cracks like “Jump on the MacPherson bandwagon—it’s the one with stone wheels.”
Battlin’ Bob never got a lot of voters to back him, but he was embraced by the Manual Minority. Over the years he’d raised a lot of valid issues, led a lot of demonstrations, broken a few laws—and a few heads.
Leif was surprised to discover that the national headquarters for the group was in New York City. He’d have figured they’d go for some rural paradise. Then again, New York was still media central. Leif noted the address. It couldn’t hurt to take a short walk in that general direction.
The next afternoon after school Leif strolled down Sixth Avenue. The Manual Minority’s offices were located in a high-rise that had been the top of the line twenty years ago. Now it was going to seed, like so many office buildings in a world where most people telecommuted to work on their computers.
As he rose in the elevator, Leif wondered how many of the building’s floors were empty, or simply given over to computer equipment-Net servers. From the way the car jerked and chugged up to the twenty-third floor, it might have been a better idea to check out the group from cyberspace.
But then, Leif didn’t expect a big Net presence from a group that advocated getting rid of computers.
The elevator doors opened onto a reception area whose wooden paneling had seen better days. The wall behind the receptionist had a collection of drill holes and glue stains, leftovers from a succession of different company names and logos. It was currently empty of logos. Apparently, the Manual Minority felt no need to advertise.
As for the receptionist, well, she was pretty in a fierce sort of way, her burning brown eyes framed in a tangle of light-brown curls.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“Is this the Manual Minority?” Leif made his voice sound especially timid and hesitant. “I’ve heard a little bit about this group and would like to learn more, if someone could answer questions.”
“I think Mr. MacPherson is free,” the girl said. “He always likes to talk to young people. Hold on a minute.” She actually got up and went to check. Her desk didn’t even have an old-style phone or intercom on it.
Leif couldn’t believe his luck when the young woman returned in a moment and led him down a corridor. “He’ll be right with you,” she said, opening a door.
The office was empty, the carpet worn and faded except for rectangular sections where desks or computer consoles had once stood. There were holes in the walls, revealing wiring or plumbing or something.
Leif turned from his inspection as the door opened. A big, burly man entered, his blond hair going thin on top.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Anderson?” the man said.
Leif stared at MacPherson’s craggy features. He hadn’t given his name!
Leif took a step forward—then dropped to his knees, his hands gripping his temples.
Minority uses a lot of the technologies it’s supposedly against,” Leif said grimly.
“How dreadful.” MacPherson’s voice took on a mocking tone. “We monitor who logs on to Manual Minority Net sites—or runs data searches on Manual Minority people. We always check such curious people out, especially when they’re rich or famous.” He paused. “And when we find somebody playing junior investigator for Net Force, we give them a warm welcome.”
“And you use computers to do it, machines which you claim to think are instruments of the devil.” Leif looked the big man in the eyes. “And you use them to intrude on people’s privacy—that’s also something you personally find… nasty.”
MacPherson shrugged heavy shoulders. “Unfortunately, I find this the sort of fight where I have to use the enemy’s weapons against him. You complain about what I did? My actions were possible because of the society which you and the rest of your so-called majority have created.”
“I think it’s a little late for everyone to scrap all machinery and take up hunting and gathering,” Leif said sarcastically.
“Some of the more radical members of the Manual Minority feel that way,” MacPherson admitted. “Call them a minority within the minority. Most of us simply feel that we aren’t merely being bombarded by technology anymore— we’re being stampeded. You’re technically up to date. Between your father’s company and the Net Force Explorers, you probably see more up-and-coming technology than most. Don’t you feel it’s a little much sometimes?”
Sometimes Leif did feel that way, when some sort of advance suddenly made class material from a year ago totally obsolete. He didn’t say anything out loud, but the big man must have read the answer in his eyes.
“You know, only a century ago, most technology could still be repaired at home by a reasonably handy amateur—the Model T Ford, the crystal radio, the electric lamp. Then machines were taken out of the hands of the average guy—the next generation of machines could only be repaired by trained service personnel. And in the nineteen eighties technology got so complicated people could hardly use the working machines in their homes anymore. You ever hear about the old VCRs?”
“The magnetic recorders for flatscreen TV,” Leif said.
“Users had to set a clock inside each box if they wanted to record programs automatically. In many houses those clocks blinked endlessly at twelve midnight, because the owners couldn’t figure out how to set them.”
“The beginning of the Manual Minority,” Leif said.
“More like a majority. Then came computers, and a tremendous publishing boom in guidebooks with words like idiot or dummy in their titles. The same thing goes on now, except it’s software.”
Leif nodded. Some of his father’s fortune came from marketing so-called “dummyware” instruction programs. “Technology causes a problem, so technology solves the problem.”
“Or, to put it another way, we’re being pulled along in a flash flood of technology without ever getting a chance to stand still and evaluate how this is shaping our future. Would people have rushed to embrace the automobile if they’d known in advance what suburbs would do to cities and small towns, or how extended families effectively vanished because people scattered all over the country? Television created the couch potato, and it’s only getting worse with computers and veeyar—and I haven’t even begun to talk about what’s happened to people’s privacy.”
“Would we be better off using horses and books?” Leif shot back. “The automobile was originally hailed as a solution to urban pollution. Think of what enough horses to handle current transportation needs would do to the streets and air of most cities… . And do you know how many forests were chopped down to print books, newspapers, and catalogs over the last two centuries before virtual reality made print on paper mostly obsolete? Technology isn’t all bad. And we’re not the only country in the world using it, you know.”
“Oh, yeah. When you’re faced with a tough decision, blame the global economy.”
Leif began to see how Battlin’ Bob got his name. But the big man went on.
“That argument has put big business more and more in charge, not just of our economy, but of our lives. Especially now that we’ve turned information into a business product. People worried about credit and government borrowing— thought it was mortgaging our future. But we’re giving that future away to large corporations who determine what we hear, what we know, and who tinker with the very food our farmers grow just so they can slap a patent and a logo on it.”
“Your son is creating a whol
e new take on computer technology—and he certainly doesn’t have a large corporation,” Leif argued.
Bob MacPherson’s face went stony. “Luddie MacPherson’s creation is more subversive than most technology—I think it’s more powerful than even he understands. And all I can do is hope he’s not crushed as the big boys fight to take it over.”
There was nothing Leif could say to that. It had the ring of sterling truth to it.
Maybe David’s lucky that he messed up the end of his interview, he thought. From what I’ve seen of the family, they seem to be living examples of what a thin line separates genius and insanity.
David Gray stared in astonishment at Luddie MacPherson’s hologram image.
“It’s your turn to say something,” Luddie prompted. “I just offered you a job.”
“I—I didn’t expect that,” David admitted.
“Let’s just say you’re a little easier to research than I am,” MacPherson said. “I like the fact that you’re with the Net Force Explorers, even if Nick D’Aliso doesn’t.”
“Why?” David asked bluntly.
“There’s a whole lot of screaming going on about secrets being leaked onto the Net,” the young inventor said. “I’ve got people on my neck, trying to blame the leaks on Hard-weare. Either they’re trying to bad-mouth a product that’s kicking their butts, to try and force more information out of us so they can copy the vests … or to set us up for a takeover.” MacPherson scowled. “I know we’re not responsible for this cyber-leak.”
“You told me that before,” David said.
“I designed those suckers. I got them up and running. I know them like nobody else. As for what those people are claiming, there is no way it can happen.”
Trust me, I’m the inventor, David thought, unconvinced.
“You might have an easier time getting people to believe you if you let them see how the vests work,” David said. “Maybe Net Force—”
“No way,” Luddie interrupted. “This isn’t academic science, where you give out everything you did to see if others get reproducible results. If I do that, I’ll be up to my ass in imitations.”
