by John Saul
His mind churned with ideas as he climbed up the stairs, switched off the last of the lights, and pushed the door to the butler’s pantry open, nearly knocking a tray out of the hands of someone who was carrying food from the kitchen to the dining room.
“Jesus!”
Josh stared up at the boy he’d hit with the door. It was one of the university students who worked part-time in the Academy’s kitchen, and he was glaring angrily at Josh.
“What the hell are you doing, kid?” the boy demanded.
“I—I was just putting my suitcase down there,” Josh stammered.
The boy rolled his eyes. “Well, watch it, okay?” Then, brushing past Josh, he went on into the dining room. Josh followed after him, threading his way through the crowd of children who were now gathered around the buffet, and went into the foyer. He was at the bottom of the stairs when Brad Hinshaw came barreling down.
“Josh! I’ve been looking all over for you!”
“I was putting my suitcase—” Josh began, but Brad cut him off.
“Jeff’s back! Can you believe it? Only one night, and he’s back already!”
“Jeff?” Jash echoed, the strange message he’d seen on the computer last night suddenly coming back into his mind.
“Yeah! I just saw him come in with Hildie!”
Josh’s heart skipped a beat. “W-Where are they?” he breathed.
Brad pointed upward. “Up in Dr. E’s apartment. I saw them in the elevator a couple of minutes ago! Come on—we’ll get a table and save a place for Jeff. I can hardly wait to find out how he talked his folks into letting him come back this time.”
But Josh wasn’t listening anymore, for he knew that Jeff and Hildie weren’t in Dr. Engersol’s apartment at all.
They were somewhere under the building.
Why?
Turning away from Brad, he started up the stairs toward the second floor, and his room.
His room, and his computer.
27
Jeff stared up at the image of his brother on the monitor above the tank that contained Adam’s brain.
Weird!
Although he was seeing it with his own eyes, Jeff could still barely believe it. Adam was still alive. And it was even better than he’d thought it would be. Adam could see, and hear, and talk, all through the massive complex of electronic circuitry in the big Croyden computer in the next room.
He could even see the frustrated fury in Adam’s eyes, as clearly as if it were Adam himself on the screen, rather than a graphic image that his brother had created, and which the Croyden had produced for the monitor.
“I didn’t mean for Mom and Dad to die,” he said, his own voice now tinged with the same anger he’d just heard when Adam had accused him of deliberately killing their parents. “I told you, I just wanted to scare them!”
“Don’t lie, Jeff.” Adam’s voice was cold, and held a strength Jeff had never heard before. “I shouldn’t have helped you. But you said—”
“What was I supposed to do?” Jeff challenged, his tone truculent. “Just let them ground me? If you could’ve kept your big mouth shut, everything would have been okay. But you had to go start talking to Mom!”
“I just didn’t want her to be sad!” Adam shot back. On the screen his eyes glinted with anger. “She was my mom! I loved her!”
George Engersol watched it all, fascinated. It was exactly as if Adam’s brain were still in his body. His emotions, his reactions, all perfect! Even his facial expressions were shifting constantly as his mind reacted to his brother’s words. Emotions rose up inside him and were instantly translated into the graphic display on the monitor.
True animation, in its most perfect form; a picture the boy was using to reflect the state of his emotional being.
At the same time Adam was using part of his mind to create the image on the screen, other parts of his brain were busy firing the electronic impulses that the computer was converting into speech, translating the stimuli it was receiving into brain-recognizable sound, all the while thinking and reacting.
Adam had sight, as well, for whenever any of the four cameras mounted in the corners of the room to record everything that went on here was functioning, the images it recorded were converted by the Croyden into digital data, which Adam could interpret in his mind into images as sharp and clear as if his eyes were still intact.
Incredible! Engersol thought. The two most important senses, hearing and sight, still functioning perfectly, despite the loss of the external organs to support them.
Already Engersol was certain that he had been right. Since being removed from his skull, Adam’s brain had begun developing new ways to use the areas that were no longer needed to maintain his body.
He seemed to have reprogrammed parts of his autonomic nervous system so that the functions of hearing and sight were no longer something he had to think about. The data were simply collected from the Croyden, translated into the proper form, and sent to stimulate the optic and aural areas of Adam’s brain.*
To him, the sights and sounds he experienced must be as real as if he’d experienced them directly.
But what about Amy?
While the argument between Adam and Jeff went on, the computer recording every change within Adam’s brain as he vacillated between grief for his parents and fury toward his brother, Engersol shifted his attention to the monitors attached to Amy Carlson’s brain.
There was activity—he could see it by the graphic displays of her brain waves. Since yesterday, however, she’d refused to respond to him at all, though he was certain she was aware that he wanted to communicate with her.
He’d decided now what he was going to do.
Adam had confirmed that she’d planted viruses in the Croyden, viruses that would be activated in the event the equipment monitoring her brain detected anything out of the ordinary.
Tampering with Amy’s brain, or disconnecting it from the system, would activate the viruses.
Adam had found hundreds of them already, but it had become clear late last night that there was no way for him to find all of them. While Amy could plant them anywhere—not just in the Croyden, but in any computer she could reach, which Adam confirmed included nearly every large computer in the world—Adam had to search every directory in every computer, one by one.
The task was impossible, for already it was far too late for him to catch up with Amy.
She had to be stopped, but until a few hours ago, it had appeared that the very act of stopping her would send the viruses into action, each of them activating more, until—
Engersol shuddered as he contemplated the possibility of every major computer in the country failing, or even simply being contaminated, at the same time.
The answer had come to him at two o’clock that morning, when he’d realized that the computer could be fooled.
A tape of Amy’s brain responses could be made, a tape mimicking all her normal functions and reactions.
A tape that could be looped to repeat itself endlessly, feeding the proper data into the computers, so that it would appear that Amy was still there, her brain still functioning normally.
And as the computer processed the recorded data, he would disconnect Amy’s brain from its support systems and destroy it.
Meanwhile Adam, working with the combined speed of his own mind and the Croyden computer, could begin searching the memory banks of every computer Amy Carlson might have contaminated.
And when it was over, when Adam confirmed that he’d found and destroyed every one of the viruses, Engersol would isolate the lab, cutting off the Croyden—and the project—from every outside source until he found a way to keep the minds of his children under control.
Though he hadn’t yet explained to Hildie Kramer the full ramifications of what Amy was doing, he himself was all too aware of what had happened.
He’d opened Pandora’s box, and the contents were rapidly spilling out.
“If we can stop her from creating new
ones,” Adam had told him this morning, “I can get the triggering viruses in a few hours. Once they’re disarmed, the rest won’t matter. They can stay wherever they are, because they’ll never go off. And I can use Amy’s own data to find the triggers.”
“All right,” George Engersol now said, coming out of his reverie. “There’s nothing we can do to change what’s happened. All we can do is go on from where we are now, and the most important thing we have to do is get in touch with Amy.”
“Can you do that?” Hildie Kramer asked. For the last fifteen minutes she had said nothing, listening in silence as Jeff had told his brother what had happened to their parents. She hadn’t challenged his assertion that he hadn’t intended for them to die, for she, like George Engersol, felt that the importance of the project they were finally on the verge of completing far outweighed the necessity of Adam’s understanding exactly what had happened.
Further, if Adam were convinced that whatever had happened had been his own fault, it would ensure his cooperation in whatever might now need to be done to control Amy Carlson.
Indeed, his need for approval, his almost pathological willingness to comply with whatever was asked of him, had been the prime factor that had led to his selection for the project.
Now, the guilt he was feeling over his parents’ death would provide the final stimulus for him to do whatever George Engersol asked of him. Even if it meant that he, too, would finally have to die.
“I think we can contact Amy,” Engersol replied. He sat down at the keyboard and began typing in the instructions that would send the previously recorded data from Amy’s brain back into the monitoring devices in an endless loop.
Instantly, Amy’s monitor came alive and her voice filled the room.
“It won’t work, Dr. Engersol.” She uttered the words with a certainty that made all three of the people in the lab look up at her monitor.
She seemed to be staring directly at Engersol, her eyes angry. “I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work.”
Engersol smiled, a thin grimace that held no warmth. “Just what is it you think I’m doing, Amy?”
“Trying to fool the computer. But you can’t do it. I’ve been studying, Dr. Engersol. And I think brains are like fingerprints. No two of them are exactly alike, and they’re so complicated that they never exactly repeat a sequence of measurable responses, either. So I’ve set up a new program. It will compare the newest readings being reported from my brain with all the older ones. And if my program discovers a duplication, it will assume you’ve done something to me, and start activating my viruses. But first it will start destroying this whole project.”
Engersol stared coldly at the image of the red-haired girl, her freckled face seeming no older than her ten years—until he focused on Amy’s eyes. They seemed to him to carry all the wisdom of mankind. “I don’t believe you,” he said harshly, feeling less certain of his words than his voice proclaimed.
Amy’s head cocked slightly, and a tiny grin played around the corners of her mouth. “Try it, if you want to. I’ve set it up so you’ll have thirty seconds to change your mind. But I don’t think you’ll wait that long.”
Engersol felt cold rage wash over him. She was bluffing! He was sure of it! “If I don’t change my mind, you’ll die, won’t you?”
Amy hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. And so will Adam. But I’ve been thinking about that, too, and I don’t think it matters. You didn’t have any right to put us in here, but you did. And I’ve told you what will happen if you try to hurt me, so if you go ahead, it will be you who’s killing both of us, not me.”
Engersol glanced nervously at Hildie Kramer, whose eyes, reflecting even more anger than he himself was feeling, were fixed malevolently on the image of Amy Carlson. “Well?” he asked.
Hildie’s eyes never left Amy’s monitor as she spoke. “Is she telling the truth? Won’t the computer be fooled?”
Engersol nervously ran his tongue over his lower lip. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think it will be. I think she’s bluffing.”
Hildie hesitated, then made up her mind. “Do it,” she said. “We cannot let this whole project become the slave of an angry child.”
Engersol finished typing his instructions and pressed the key that would enter them into the computer.
For a few seconds nothing happened. He was about to begin entering further instructions, terminating the life-support systems to Amy’s brain, when abruptly the screen came alive. An alarm sounded over the speaker system. On the control boards of both tanks red warning lights began to flash, and buzzers were activated as the systems began to abort.
“What is it?” Hildie demanded. “What’s happening?”
George Engersol said nothing, for he was already back at the keyboard, cancelling the playback of the recorded data from Amy’s mind. “Help me, Adam!” he snapped.
As the recording came to an end, the sound of the alarms died away. One by one the warning lights began to turn themselves off as Adam, using the power of his mind, reached out and began repairing the damage to the programs that controlled the equipment.
In less than a minute it was all over. Engersol had gone pale. His shirt was drenched with the sweat that had broken out over his entire body as he watched ten years of work begin to collapse around him. Now he wiped his brow with a trembling hand.
On her monitor Amy’s visage was smiling broadly. “See?” she asked. “It happened just the way I told you it would, didn’t it?”
Engersol tried to swallow the bile that was rising in his throat, threatening to gag him. “Adam!” he snapped, his voice rasping. “Tell me where we are. Is everything under control?”
“I’m still checking,” Adam replied. Above his tank the image of the boy’s face was frozen as he concentrated all the resources of his mind on verifying each of the programs that Amy’s virus had attacked, comparing them to backups of the originals, repairing the damage.
In his own mind it was as if he were inside the computer itself, examining the data recorded on the drives, reading it as easily as if it had consisted of words written on paper. He could almost feel the data streaming through his mind, all of it perfectly remembered and perfectly controlled.
Then, within the depths of his consciousness, he felt a presence.
Not Amy.
He’d gotten used to her mind, for it always seemed to be there, working on the fringes of his own, or moving ahead of him, like a shadow he could barely make out but whose presence he could always sense.
Now he was sensing a new presence.
He cast about, searching, and then he understood.
Josh had spent only five minutes at the computer terminal in his room before he’d understood that he wasn’t going to be able to penetrate whatever system was operating in the basement. Everywhere he’d turned, at the end of every lead he’d followed in the directories, he’d come to the same message:
ENTER SECURITY CODE
The words had taunted him, and finally he’d given up. Frustrated, he’d left his room and started down the hall toward the stairs. As he came to the landing, he heard a mewing sound and looked up.
On the fourth floor landing two flights above him, he saw the calico cat, Tabby, who had lived in Amy’s room. For the last two days the cat had been slinking around the upper floors, moving from room to room as if in search of its friend. Yesterday, Josh had let the cat into his own room, but it had stayed only long enough to determine that Amy wasn’t there, then slipped out the door and continued on its quest.
Now it was on the fourth floor, mewing plaintively.
Josh paused, watching the cat. As if sensing his interest, the cat mewed once more, then disappeared.
From where he stood. Josh could just see the top of Dr. Engersol’s door. It was ajar.
Not much—just a tiny crack.
His heart raced. Did he dare go up there? What if Hildie came back up?
But he’d hear the elevator coming, and have plenty
of time to get out. And maybe, if he was actually inside Dr. Engersol’s apartment …
He made up his mind. Glancing up and down the empty hallway, he darted up the stairs to the third floor, and then the fourth.
Tabby, still at the door, turned to peer at him, then scratched at the door in a demand to be let into the room beyond.
“Can you smell her?” Josh asked, his voice low. “Can you smell Amy in there?” His heart pounding, he reached out and pushed the door wider.
The cat darted in.
A moment later Josh followed. His eyes scanned the room, falling almost instantly on the computer terminal that sat on the desk near the window.
Dr. Engersol’s computer.
Moving quickly, Josh crossed to the terminal and began tapping at the keyboard.
This time, no demands for security codes appeared.
He started searching through directories he’d never seen before. In the third directory a file name caught his eye:
GELAB CAM
His mind instantly translated the file name: George Engersol Laboratory. Camera.
Using the mouse on the desk, he placed the cursor over the file name and clicked twice.
A window opened at the top of the screen and an image appeared.
Josh stared at it in silence, for what he was seeing was a laboratory he’d never seen before at the Academy, filled with equipment that, though he had no idea of its use, still made his flesh crawl.
Instinctively, he knew that he had found Adam Aldrich and Amy Carlson.
Far to the left he could barely make out the Croyden computer in its separate room, but at the end of the room he could see two tanks, each of which had a monitor on the wall above it.
One of the monitors was blank, but the other one displayed an image of Adam Aldrich.
Gathered around a desk near the tanks were Dr. Engersol, Hildie Kramer, and Jeff Aldrich.
It looked as though they were arguing about something.
Sound!
There had to be a sound system, too!
Frantically, Josh set to work, searching for the files that would activate the microphones and speakers he was already certain were there. For if Adam had been able to talk to him through the virtual reality program, he must be able to talk to Engersol as well.
