The Infinity Program

by Richard H Hardy

  Suddenly it was as though his mind had disconnected from his body. The ringing in his ears ceased and he found himself floating just above the horizon of an immense world. The most amazing vistas swept by below him and he could swear he was on the edge of something, a new kind of understanding. It was as if his very consciousness had been re-minted and cast anew. It was at that moment that Harry lost consciousness.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On Thursday morning, shortly after seven, Jon Graeme left for work as he normally did. Without making a conscious decision, he went by way of Harry’s place to see if his friend had returned. Even before he parked his car, he could see the three external power cables that snaked through the first floor window of Harry’s condo. He was surprised that his friend would be so careless. If the electric company saw this setup, Harry could have a lawsuit on his hands.

  Jon knocked on the door repeatedly even though he was sure that Harry was still gone. When he finally stopped knocking, he stood on the doorstep, gripped by conflicting feelings. He wanted to follow after Harry, blow off work and start the long drive to Tartan’s Crag. Commonsense told him that it was too late for that. Realistically, there was nothing more he could do at this point. But he found this fact totally unacceptable. Above all else, he wanted to find some way to help his friend. Harry had become like family to him. He was the big brother Jon had never had. He knew that Harry would go the distance for him.

  As he continued on his way to work, Jon hardly noticed the damp, gray day that rolled by just outside his car window. What was Harry doing in Tartan’s Crag? Obviously something profound had happened to him the first time he was there. As Lettie kept reiterating, Harry was no longer the same. But it was futile even thinking about it. He had not so much as a single shred of information to explain what had happened to Harry.

  As Jon entered Building C, he saw John Balis and George Ludwig standing in front of the elevators on the south side of the building. While he could not make out a single word of their conversation, he could catch the tone of it. It was decidedly hostile, as was their body language. Ludwig was invading Balis’ personal space, his face red and his voice sputtering in a clipped staccato.

  Balis maintained a look of icy reserve, unyielding before Ludwig’s furious onslaught. When the elevator doors opened, Balis turned his back on Ludwig and stepped inside. Jon saw Ludwig clench his fists and follow.

  After Jon arrived at his office, he couldn’t get the scene he had just witnessed out of his mind. It hadn’t occurred to him before that the relationship between Balis and Ludwig was strictly quid pro quo. It was an arrangement of convenience, about business only. No personal element bound the two men.

  Jon booted up his PC but quickly found that he was unable to concentrate on his work. The events of the past few days kept replaying in his mind. In particular, one statement that Harry had made resonated. Harry thought he could implement Shor’s Algorithm.

  Jon did a quick search on the Internet and found that what he had told Lettie the other night was essentially correct. If it were possible to implement Shor’s Algorithm, public-key cryptography became completely vulnerable. Servers within the defense industry, the financial industry, and a legion of other industries would be an open book to whoever possessed the decryption software that could implement the algorithm.

  Jon leaned back in his chair and contemplated the implications of such a real-world implementation. For a company like HTPS Industries, whose largest clients were in the defense industry, it would be a gold mine. Beyond its immediate application, it would open the door to a whole new generation of decryption software. What kind of revenue would this mean for HTPS Industries? Harry would make history.

  In the midst of these thoughts, something else that Harry had told him came back to him. The reason for the failure of Harry’s new operating system. Jon had not quite understood Harry’s explanation, but it was something about Ludwig changing the clock speeds in the memory active cycle. The bottom line was that Ludwig had hosed the entire test environment with his meddling, thus dooming the test run of Harry’s operating system.

  It all clicked together. In a flash, Jon realized he had what he needed to put Harry back in the good graces of Benton Reeves and HTPS Industries. All he had to do was meet privately with John Balis and update him with the facts. It made perfect sense. Above all else, John Balis was a “bottom line” type personality. Without the presence of Ludwig, who would act as a drag on anything involving Harry, John Balis would put aside personal issues when dollar signs were flashing in front of his eyes.

  Before Jon could finish this train of thought, there was a knock on the door. It swung open to reveal Sue Angelino, Matt O’Reilly’s assistant, a small, intense woman of about thirty with an olive complexion and closely cropped black hair. She crossed the room and placed a sheaf of papers on his desk.

  “Walt Zoeller added two new functions to the Smart Memory module. We need the Help file updated by noon so we can ship. If you have any questions, Walt said to give him a call.” With that flat statement, she turned her back on him and walked out of his office.

  Jon lost all track of time in his mad scramble to update the Help file. It was always a challenge to document Walt’s program changes. As far as Walt was concerned, and apparently most Programmers at HTPS, the English language was enemy territory. His notes were a mishmash of cryptic phrases followed by examples in C++. Fortunately, Jon had enough background from various project meetings to pull the mess together and define the functions in a few cogent paragraphs.

  When he finally looked at the clock it was a few minutes past eleven. The documentation for the functions had been written but he still had to update the Help file with the changes. If he scrambled, he could just make the deadline.

  At 11:45 Jon recompiled the Help file and notified the Smart Memory Project Manager that it was ready to ship. He had barely a second to catch his breath when Sue Angelino knocked again. Without so much as a “Hello, how are you doing,” she gave him a quick rundown of what was needed.

  “The new functions Walt added caused the interface to lock up when the Group parameters were called. Walt and Matt had to rewrite some stuff. They added new flags that have to be manually set on the interface. It needs to be documented. If you can do it by 3:00, we can still get the package out in time.”

  She put the sheaf of rumpled papers on Jon’s desk. “I can ask one of the Service guys in the cafeteria to send you up a sandwich and some coffee.”

  “Hey, that would be great,” Jon replied as he gazed in despair at the pile. “Thanks.”

  Jon made the deadline, but it was a challenge. Between Walt’s obscure C++ syntax and Matt’s scrawled handwriting, it had been an uphill battle all the way. But at ten to three, he had recompiled the Help file and notified the Project Manager.

  Jon took a sip of cold coffee, leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. He had been staring at his screen so long that phosphene pixels were dancing on his eyelids. But before he could relax, Matt O’Reilly barged into his office without so much as a tap on the door. His face seemed even redder than usual as he perched his small frame on the corner of the desk, crossed his arms, and stared unblinkingly at Jon.

  “Jon, I’m desperate. You’ve got to help us. You remember that small contract we had with TPTG software?”

  Jon shook his head. He didn’t have a clue about TPTG.

  “Well, you don’t really have to know anything about it. We sent them a package of add-ons, but TPTG is too incompetent to make them work. They can’t even update their own layouts.”

  He moved around Jon’s desk until he stood right next to him. “Let me take the driver’s seat,” he said.

  Jon stood and Matt quickly took his place, typing madly away on Jon’s keyboard. In less than a minute he had accessed the main server in Building C and had brought up the file layout in question.

  “We need to update the Canaris ranges. The ‘From’ range starts at position 50 and ends at posi
tion 59. The ‘To’ range starts at position 63 and ends at position 72.”

  He laid a printout of the new ranges that were needed on Jon’s desk. There were three pages of them.

  “See?” he said. “Piece of cake. Sorry to stick you with it but Elena’s out today and everyone else is tied up.”

  “When do you need it?” Jon asked.

  “Any time before you leave tonight would be fine.” Matt crossed the room and opened the door. “Thanks a lot, Jon. I really appreciate it,” he said as he left Jon’s office.

  Jon groaned as he picked up the three-page listing of the Canaris ranges. He quickly calculated that at 66 lines per page that meant he had 396 10-digit numbers to key in. And the numbers had to be entered exactly, not so much as a single position off. He wanted to scream. “They’re killing me!” he said under his breath. But even as he said this, he turned to the Program File Editor, located position 50 and began to key in the first number.

  When Jon finished the job at about ten to five, he fired off an email to Matt to let him know be had updated the TPTG file. After clicking ‘Send,’ he clicked ‘New’ and opened his address book to find John Balis’ email address in the company directory. A voice in the back of his head said, Do you really want to do this? But he didn’t listen to it. He had made up his mind this morning when the idea first occurred to him. If he had learned one lesson from Harry, it was about having the courage to stand by his convictions.

  “I have important information concerning Harry Sale’s code,” he wrote. “I was unable to mention this to you yesterday because of the presence of George Ludwig. What I have to tell you could have major financial implications.”

  After he had finished his email, he let the cursor hover over the Send button for nearly a minute. You’ll get fired if you send this, said the voice in the back of his head. They’ll show you the door, just like they did to Harry.

  But Jon would not listen to the voice. His friendship and loyalty to Harry outweighed any other consideration. His conscience allowed him only one choice. He clicked the ‘Send’ button. Almost as soon as he clicked on it, a feeling of despair flooded him. What have I set in motion? he thought.

  Trying to turn his mind away from the fear that he had just flushed his career away, he turned to the new email in his Inbox. Right at the top was an email from Lettie. He quickly clicked it open.

  Jon, are you going to Miller’s tonight? I really need to talk to you. Can I meet you there at six?

  Jon wrote an email back and promised to meet her. The various other emails he had received contained nothing of importance. He was just about to quit for the day when another email bounced into his Inbox. It was from John Balis. The message was a terse command: Stop by my office tonight after five.

  Jon looked at his watch and saw that it was already past five. He quickly shut down his PC and made a dash for the door. John Balis was not a person you wanted to keep waiting.

  When he arrived at Balis’ office in Building A, Jon was out of breath. The secretary, who was shutting down for the day, gave him pointed look. She was obviously peeved that he had delayed her exit.

  “Mr. Balis will call you when he’s ready,” she said as she picked up her coat and handbag and, without even asking him to take a seat, stalked out the door. Jon glanced at his watch. It was five-twenty.

  By five-fifty Jon was a nervous wreck. Even though he sat in a comfortable chair, he was on pins and needles. Second thoughts assailed him. I never should have done this, he said to himself. This was the world’s stupidest idea. They’re going to fire me. They don’t want Harry back. They’ve already made up their minds.

  At six o’clock it suddenly occurred to Jon that Lettie would be waiting at Miller’s for him. Reaching for his phone, Jon realized with a shock that he didn’t have her cellphone number.

  By six-thirty Jon had halfway decided to walk out. They were going to fire him anyway, so what difference did it make? He stood from his chair and took a step toward the exit, but before he could take a second step, the door to the inner office swung open.

  “Well,” said John Balis in a cold, flat voice. “Don’t just stand there. Come in.”

  Jon felt his anxiety ratchet up a notch as he entered the office. Though the room was opulent and had all the earmarks of wealth, power, and influence, there was something cold and austere about it. The walls were bare and the furniture looked Victorian—more cold and utilitarian than comfortable.

  Jon’s footsteps echoed hollowly on the bare parquet floor as he moved toward the oversized desk positioned against along the back wall of the office. Balis was seated behind it. With his silvery hair and aristocratic features, he looked like the Lord of the Manor. Jon thought of the old nursery rhyme: “Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly ….”

  “Jon,” Balis said, gesturing to his left, “I’d like to introduce you to our CEO, Mr. Benton Reeves.” There was an amused expression on Balis’ face. It was obvious he was quite aware of the effect the man’s presence would have on Jon’s morale.

  Jon turned and saw Benton Reeves seated on a black leather couch on the far right side of the room. Heat suffused his cheeks. He had somehow missed the man when he entered the room. For a moment he felt like a complete fool, but then had the presence of mind to say, “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

  Benton Reeves acknowledged him with the barest nod. He was short and stout and had a rather pronounced dewlap that made him seem older than he actually was. His expression was pinched and sour, as though he had a bad case of indigestion. Probably inspired by me, Jon thought.

  “Well, Mr. Graeme, you said you had news for us,” Balis said, looking pointedly at his watch.

  Jon took a deep breath. Suddenly it didn’t matter to him anymore. It was all a lost cause. He would lay his cards on the table and that would be the end of it. Since he was going to be out on his ear in any case, he had nothing more to lose.

  Jon turned to Balis. “I think I can summarize it quickly. I have just three points I’d like to make. The first is that the test with Big Moe last weekend did not fail because of Harry Sale’s software. It failed because George Ludwig made last minute changes to the clock speeds in the active memory cycle. Those changes caused the failure. If Harry had a second chance and could set up the initial test conditions by himself, his software would work. And it would have a huge impact on processing speed, increasing it by a factor of one hundred.”

  “Surely you exaggerate, young man,” said Benton Reeves.

  Jon turned to him. “No, sir. Harry assured me that this was the case.”

  Jon was lying to the old man but felt no guilt. Harry had in fact told him that it would increase the processing speed by a factor of one thousand. Jon had changed it to one hundred to make the claim more believable.

  “Go on,” said Balis.

  “The next point is that Harry’s new code might have major financial implications.” Jon paused for dramatic effect and sensed that the eyes of both men were riveted on him. “Harry has found a way to implement Shor’s Algorithm.”

  Jon paused, pondering the effect of his statement on Balis, whose face remained impassive. There was no way to tell whether or not Shor’s Algorithm meant anything at all to him.

  Jon took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “An implementation of Shor’s Algorithm would destroy security for the most important and largest computer systems in the defense industries and the financial sector. The world’s most secure systems would no longer be safe. The Department of Defense would pay a king’s ransom for this kind of software.”

  “You’re not shy about making grand claims,” said Benton Reeves, a hard edge in his voice.

  Jon was not put off by their cool reactions. “My final point is that Harry Sale has entered the most creative period in his career. You know what he has accomplished already. What would it cost HTPS Industries if Harry took his ideas to one of your competitors?”

  There was a bleak silence. Jon sagged. He had given it
his best shot and it hadn’t worked.

  There was a choking sound coming from Benton Reeves. As Jon studied the man, he realized he wasn’t choking. He was laughing.

  “For a Grade C technical writer with barely six months experience, you certainly have a set of balls on you,” he said.

  Jon did not know what to say. But before a silence could settle in, Balis dismissed him.

  “Thank you for stopping by, Mr. Graeme. We’ll let you know one way or the other what we decide.” He looked smug, like the proverbial cat that had eaten the canary. The chilling way he had used the phrase “one way or the other” left no doubt in Jon’s mind that his job was on the line.

  “Thank you for your time, gentlemen,” he said. He pivoted about and walked toward the door. The clicking of his heels on the parquet floor was the only sound as he left the office.

  Jon made it to Miller’s in record time, weaving in and out of passing lanes like a madman. It was seven-fifteen when he turned into the parking lot. As he got out of his car and began walking rapidly across the gravel lot, a green civic caught his eye. It was Lettie’s car, and someone was in the front seat, slumped over the steering wheel. Jon walked over and rapped on the window. Lettie’s startled face turned toward him. She had been resting her head on the steering wheel. Tears were running down a face that was the very picture of misery.

  Jon slid into the passenger seat and gingerly put a hand on Lettie’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said.

  Far from comforting her, his gentle words seemed to have the opposite effect. She broke into sobs and put her hands over her face.

  Jon froze. He didn’t know what to do or say. So, he put his arms gently around her and hugged her. “It’s going to be okay, Lettie.” He repeated this reassurance over and over until she stopped crying and looked up at him.

  “I kept waiting for you, Jon. Waiting and waiting and waiting. I really needed to talk to you. I can’t believe you let me down like this.”