Utopia

by Lincoln Child

  Walsh belched again, loudly this time, turning the heads of several passersby.

  “Nice one,” Kyle said, nodding approvingly at his friend.

  Coming to UCSB as a freshman, Kyle had heard horror stories of college roommates from hell: the party animal who cranked death metal on his stereo until dawn, the slob who changed his underwear once a week. Tom Walsh had proved a pleasant surprise. The two shared many interests: track and field, ska music, dirt bikes. Tom was a whiz in the hard sciences, while Kyle wrote decent papers and spoke fluent French, and they’d helped each other through what could have been a rough first year. As sophomores, their paths had diverged, but they still remained close friends. Tragedy struck at Christmas, however, when Tom’s older brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. Throughout the winter, Tom remained moody and withdrawn, and Kyle had been half-surprised when his friend took him up on the idea of spending spring break in Las Vegas. But, very gradually, Tom was at last returning to his old self. At first it had seemed almost a conscious effort, as if he were just going through the motions of having a good time. But at Utopia especially, Tom had lapsed into easy banter, and his smiles were genuine. He’d even talked about applying here for a summer job.

  Kyle yawned, stretched. “So, dude, what now?”

  Tom patted his stomach. “I don’t know. I was thinking, maybe, Station Omega?”

  Kyle looked at him again, this time in disbelief. “You’re shitting me. After downing four Supernovas? Get real.”

  Tom’s only answer was a crooked grin.

  Kyle considered this as he stood on the concourse, heedless of the streams of chattering guests surrounding them. Station Omega was Callisto’s “free-fall,” a relatively new breed of ride in which guests were allowed, quite literally, to drop from a great height. Commonly, riders were strapped into place, as if riding a vertical roller coaster. But Utopia’s designers had taken the standard free-fall concept and made it their own. Guests would board an escalator at Callisto’s Skyport and enter an elevator-like compartment that would—so the storyboard went—be transporting them to a waiting shuttle. But as soon as the elevator doors closed, something would go terribly wrong. There was a lurch, then a shudder. Ominous cracking noises would be heard. The lights would wink out, smoke would begin to fill the compartment. And then—without warning—the guests would hurtle straight downward a hundred feet before the lights came on, brakes were applied, and the elevator slowed to a quick but remarkably gentle stop.

  It was a short ride, but effective; so effective that Station Omega had some of the most restrictive ridership requirements in Utopia.

  And Kyle and Tom had already taken the drop six times that day.

  Now Kyle glanced down the concourse, toward the crowds milling around the Skyport. Six drops in Station Omega was already a UCSB record. It looked pretty crowded down there. And the line for their last ride had been their longest of the day.

  Still, seven times would cement their achievement. Especially after knocking back those four Supernovas.

  Besides, Tom had been the one to suggest it.

  Kyle looked over, gave the thumbs-up. And Tom’s grin widened into a genuine smile.

  “Come on,” Kyle said, swinging his cape with a flourish. “Let’s go for it.”

  3:50P.M.

  WAIT A MINUTE, ” Terri said. “Something’s wrong here.”

  Warne lifted his head and looked across the table at her. Angus Poole, too, lowered his beer and looked over, drawn by something in her tone.

  She’d opened the plastic bag and was holding one of the larger shards in her hand, turning it over and over. “This disc,” she said. “It’s blank.”

  “What?” Warne replied. “That’s impossible. It’s the Crucible technology, they were handing it over to John Doe.”

  “I’m telling you, it’sblank . Look, under this black light you can tell.” She handed him the shard. “See? If data had been burned to this, you’d see the pits and lands in the polycarbonate. But nothing. Nada.”

  Poole took the bag. “I don’t see anything.”

  She looked at him sardonically. “Listen to a trained professional here.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Warne said. “Why would we give him a blank disc?”

  “Maybe we didn’t,” Terri replied.

  Warne shut up abruptly, grappling with this fresh surprise, struggling to unravel John Doe’s clever little knot. What was it Poole had said?Stop and ask a few basic questions .

  And then, suddenly, he had an idea.

  “Terri,” he said. “That worm we found was inserted into your computer a month ago. Is there any way it could have been planted remotely, over the Net?”

  “Nope. All Utopia terminals are individually firewalled. I can’t even receive mail on that machine.”

  “It’s ironclad?”

  “No hacker could get through it.”

  “Externalor internal?”

  Terri shook her head.

  “Then that can mean only one thing: the worm had to bephysically copied onto your machine. From inside your office.” Warne paused. “Now, think carefully. Who could have had access to your terminal around that time?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Not coworkers? Not your boss?”

  “I would have known.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure.”

  Warne sat back. The speculation that had been gathering dissolved abruptly into disappointment.

  Then he had another thought. “What about you, then? Did you install anything? Any new programs, OS upgrades?”

  “Nothing. They’re very strict about production systems. No software gets installed without prior approval from IT. But there hasn’t been anything, not since the Metanet itself. And that was close to a year ago.”

  Warne slumped further in his chair. Around him, the Sea of Tranquility was abuzz. The two rowdy youths at the next table had left, only to be replaced by a family of six. The children were drinking root beer floats and playing with foam-rubber swords.

  “Wait a minute.”

  At the sound of Terri’s voice, he sat up quickly.

  “Therewas something. Just over a month ago.”

  Warne looked at her.

  “But it’s not the smoking gun you’re looking for. In fact, it’s just the opposite.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Remember how we said the entire Utopia system was recently white-hatted?”

  “Yup. By KIS, the same outfit that did Carnegie-Mellon.” Barksdale had mentioned this in the morning meeting.

  “White-hatted?” Poole asked, draining his beer.

  “Hackers for hire,” Warne explained. “Legitimate snoops. Big firms employ them to try to break in, uncover security loopholes.” He turned back to Terri. “Go on.”

  “Well, we got a good report card. They said our network was decently hardened. But they did distribute a system patch for some of the high-security terminals. To fix a bug in Unix that could potentially be leveraged by hackers, they said.”

  “A system patch? For how many terminals?”

  “Not many. A dozen or two.”

  “And yours was one of them.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Terri nodded.

  For a moment, Warne remained motionless. Then he stood up, the chair skidding back across the transparent floor.

  “Where’s the closest phone?” he asked.

  “The public phones are in the Nexus. We’ll have to go down the concourse and—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “We need to find a phone. Any phone.Now .”

  Terri stared at him in silence. Then she, too, stood up, motioning for them to follow.

  Warne dropped some bills on the table and they half walked, half jogged toward the rear of the lounge, into a wide passage leading to Callisto’s casino. Terri walked directly toward one wall, opened a well-disguised door. It was lined in the same dark material as the wall, invisible save for the gray rectangle
of corridor that lay beyond it. He ducked through, followed by Poole.

  Closing the door behind them, Terri led the way down a metal staircase and along a service corridor, turning into a large office labeledCompliance . A bank of secretaries sat in carrels along the far wall, typing. One or two looked up briefly, then turned back to their screens.

  Terri pointed to a phone on an empty desk. Warne picked it up, pressed the button for an outside line, dialed.

  “Directory assistance? I need a listing in Marlborough, New Hampshire. Keyhole Intrusion Systems.”

  A moment later, he was dialing again.

  “KIS,” a woman’s voice said on the other end of the line.

  “Give me Walter Ellison’s office, please.” Warne mentally crossed his fingers. It was almost four. As he remembered, Walt Ellison was a workaholic. There was a very good chance he’d be there, if he wasn’t at a client’s.Pick up, damn you, pick up . . .

  “Ellison here,” came the voice he remembered: loud, nasal, Bostonian.

  “Walt, this is Andrew Warne. You tested our system at Carnegie-Mellon last year. Remember?”

  There was a silence on the other end, and for a sickening moment he feared Ellison had forgotten him. Then he heard a lazy laugh.

  “Warne, sure. Robotics, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s that ice cream vendor of yours, what’s its name—”

  “Hard Place.”

  “Hard Place, right. Sheesh. What a piece of work.” Another laugh.

  Warne leaned into the phone. “Walt, listen. I need a favor. It’s about a KIS client.”

  “You mean Carnegie-Mellon.”

  “No.”

  Ellison’s tone grew a little distant. “Hey, Dr. Warne, you know I can’t discuss other clients.”

  “If I’m right, you won’t have to. See, I don’t want to know about work you’ve done. Just about work youhaven’t done.”

  There was a pause. “I don’t follow.”

  “Remember who I was building Hard Place for?”

  “Sure, the theme . . . I mean, yes, I remember the entity.”

  “Good. And you know I do work for that, ah, entity?”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “Then you shouldn’t mind answering one last question. Has KIS ever done a security audit for them?”

  The line was silent.

  “Look,” Warne said urgently. “Ihave to know.”

  Still, silence.

  “It could mean life or death, Walter.”

  There was a sigh. “Guess it’s no secret,” Ellison said. “We’ve never worked for them. Would be a peach of a job, though. Could you swing it, you think? Put a bug in the right ear?”

  “Thanks a lot,” Warne said, hanging up. Then he turned to face Terri and Poole.

  “KIS never came to Utopia,” he said.

  Disbelief rushed into Terri’s face. “That’s impossible. I saw the team myself. They were here for the better part of a day.”

  “What you saw was John Doe’s advance guard.”

  Terri didn’t answer.

  “And those system patches they handed out? Stealth software. When you ran the patch, you installed their Trojan horseon your own system .”

  “You mean—” She hesitated. “You mean the whole thing was a ruse?”

  “A very clever, very brazen one. To infect certain Utopia systems, pave the way for what’s happening today.”

  “But that can’t be. KIS is a real company, you said so yourself. It can’t be a ruse.”

  Terri was speaking quickly.She’s beginning to understand, Warne thought to himself.And she doesn’t like where this is leading .

  “Yes, itis a real company. John Doe knew that. Utopia would never have fallen for a phony. But the people who showed up—who did the security audit, gave you those system patches—were impostors, not KIS employees. Instead of closing loopholes, they were creating them.”

  “Sira ulo,”Terri muttered. “No.”

  “KISwas never here .” Warne gestured toward the phone. “I just got it from the horse’s mouth.”

  “But we would haveknown, ” she said. “Fred arranged the whole thing himself. He would have smelled a rat, he would have known if something—”

  She fell silent. Warne took her hands.

  “Terri,” he said. “Fred Barksdaleis the rat.”

  “No,” she repeated.

  “He’s the one. John Doe’s man on the inside. He gave John Doe everything he needed to compromise your systems. Nobody else had the access, the authorization. Nobody else could have set it up.”

  With an awful, piercing kind of clarity, Warne saw the layers of deception peel away one by one. No doubt, early on, John Doe had had his men try halfheartedly to break into Utopia’s computer network from the outside. That would have given Barksdale legitimate reason to contact Keyhole Intrusion Systems. Only it wasn’t KIS who showed up to check Utopia’s defenses, it was John Doe’s team. Unwittingly, Utopia had not only allowed its systems to be hacked—it had even invited the hackers in. Those strange glitches Sarah had mentioned early on, the disaster on the Notting Hill ride, must have been by-products of the installation process—or, perhaps, cold-blooded field tests by John Doe. And yet even now, with proof staring directly at him, he did not want to face the consequences of such a complete, such a devastating betrayal.No, not Barksdale, he knows too much about . . .

  As he finished the thought, he felt his heart begin to beat wildly within his chest.

  Terri stared at him, a strange expression on her face. Then, slowly, her eyes fell away. She shook her head, not speaking.

  “I know. It’s a terrible, terrible thing. I don’t understand it any more than you do.” Warne tightened his grip on her hands. “But right now we don’t have time to figure it out.”

  He turned to Poole. “You’ve got to find Barksdale. Get him to Security, stop him before he causes any more damage.” He fished in his pocket. “Here’s my passcard. I’ve got Sarah’s tag, I won’t need it.”

  Poole remained motionless. “Find Barksdale. And what if he hangs tough? You think they’ll take my word over his?”

  “You’re the war hero, you figure something out. Tell them what I just told you.”

  With a grunt, Poole took the card, slipped it inside his jacket. When the hand came back out, it held an automatic pistol.

  Warne glanced at it in surprise. Then he remembered how the hacker had fired at them, back in the Hub; how the man had dropped his weapon in the scramble that followed. Funny he’d forgotten about it all this time.

  “What about you?” Poole asked, checking the weapon, returning it to his jacket. “I still want that lifetime pass.”

  “I’ll be okay. I’ll meet you in the Security Complex. Just get Barksdale.”

  “You take care.” And Poole ducked out into the corridor.

  Warne turned back to Terri, still silent and white-lipped. “Do you understand what this means? If that disc is blank, they must have planted it there. They have the good disc.They already have the Crucible technology . Why is John Doe asking Sarah to deliver another one, and deliver it herself? He wants her. Why, I don’t know. But I do know she’s in danger.”

  Even as he spoke the words, another, even more terrible image flashed across his mind: Barksdale, that morning, suggesting Terri take Georgia for a soda.Barksdale knows about my daughter. But does John Doe?

  Terri was watching him intently. Suddenly, her eyes grew wide. It was as if her own thoughts had raced to the same question.

  Warne spun away, clenching and unclenching his fists. He was in an agony of indecision. Sarah Boatwright was in grave danger. She was walking—unwittingly—into John Doe’s hands. On the other hand, Georgia might be at risk herself. Perhaps it wasn’t likely. But if they’d been searching for him . . . if they had already killed somebody,believing it to be him . . . and if John Doe learned . . . Georgia,his only family . . .

  He could not reach them both. There was on
ly time for one. One in certain danger; the other in possible danger. One loved, one once loved. He pressed his face into his hands. It was an awful, unthinkable dilemma.

  He felt a hand fall on his shoulder. “I’ll go,” came the voice.

  He turned back to Terri. “I’ll go,” she repeated in her low, uninflected voice. “I’ll watch Georgia.”

  He let his hands drop to his sides. “You will?”

  She nodded.

  For a moment, the surge of relief was so strong that Warne felt physically weak. “You know where she is, right? Still in the Medical Facility, in a recovery bay.” He thought quickly. “I want you to take her someplace where the two of you can hide. Get her to Security, if you can, but get her somewhere you’ll be safe. Just to be sure. Will you do that?”

  Terri nodded again.

  “Thank you, Terri. Thank you. Thank you.”

  He embraced her, held her close against him for a moment, then pulled away. Terri’s eyes did not leave his face as he headed for the door.

  A moment later, he was once again in the corridor, running now, heading back toward the public spaces of Utopia.

  3:55P.M.

  CENTRAL WARDROBE WASa sprawling warren of rooms on B Level. Though its halls were always teeming with cast members, Wardrobe seemed to grow particularly busy as four o’clock approached. Royal dukes and knight-errants from Camelot, going off-shift, butted elbows with street vendors in straw skimmers and seersucker suits, bound for Boardwalk and the evening festivities. Courtiers in wimples and flowing dresses chatted with interstellar explorers wearing pressurized flight suits. Dressers, milliners, costume consultants, tailors, and speech trainers wandered through the hallways, adjusting and instructing. It was a bizarre, noisy, disconcerting mix of old and new, past and future.

  The dormitory-sized men’s lavatory was sandwiched between Costume Storage and Cosmetic Prep. Inside, a lone male stood before a bank of sinks. He was washing his hands carefully, taking time to remove some caked material from beneath his fingernails. That accomplished, he pulled a paper towel from a nearby dispenser, glancing up at a mirror as he did so. A pair of taciturn, almond-shaped eyes stared back.