Viral Spark

by Martin McConnell

  An image of one of the machines enters my mind. Shopping carts are wire mesh baskets shaped more or less like a cube, which automatically identify and follow customers, acting as carriers for food tubes and other assorted items. They follow the customer to their apartment, and once emptied, return to the store. Typically, they use signals from the customer’s implant as triggers, as well as various function calls around the building, such as elevator activation.

  “I need to pick up some food tubes before I head home. I’ll test one on the way out. I’m sure they were invented before they became dependent on Wi-Fi calls.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain,” says Paul. “I think those are actually a revision of an earlier device made before the first Internet-of-Things bubble.”

  “Most of them were invented after the start of the century. That doesn’t mean that they need Wi-Fi. I remember reading about necessary redundancies in school, because of the original resistance to automated vehicle controls.”

  “Even so. If something goes wrong, well. You know.”

  “Hey, the GM approved it. It’s on him now.”

  Paul chuckles. “Good point. Alright, let’s get out of here. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I project a call to Amanda, and she answers immediately. Her face appears on my desk.

  “Robert. I’m in the middle of a test. You brewing tea?”

  “About to head up to the apartment right now. I wanted to let you know.”

  “Okay, I’ll meet you there. I gotta go.” The desk returns to programming displays and work orders. Everything seems to be fixed, except for the robot parts that are still in the cleaning boxes. Work tomorrow morning will be putting them all back together.

  Worn out, I push through the double doors into the store. As I turn the corner toward the cheese, I see him standing there. His swollen muscles and jar shaped head stand out like a floating leaf in a cup of tea. He looks my way.

  “Robert.”

  “Mike,” my voice breaks.

  “I heard that you and Amanda were hanging out the other night.”

  “Yeah, um. She came over for tea.”

  “For tea?”

  “Yeah. I have a special mix that I get from the farmers on the roof. They don’t sell it in the store. She said that she had a rough day at work, and I figured it would help.”

  “That’s great. Listen. Stay away from her.”

  He turns, strutting away before I can get another word in. My face warms, and an urge strikes that I can’t remember feeling before. I want to run up from behind and knock him down, but I resist. The pressure stretching his shirt from underneath is more than enough to convince me of how bad of an idea it is. Even if I didn’t have to worry about agents shocking me, it’s likely I’d be bloodied up or dead by the time they arrived to arrest me.

  I grab a tube of cheese, and suddenly remember what I’m doing here. No baskets in sight. I take another, and a patrolling shopping cart turns into the aisle. The camera sensors must be working, because it accelerates toward me and stops. I drop in a single tube and return the other.

  The cart follows, as planned, to the sausage aisle, where I load another tube. My implant dings with a sale tone as I exit the market area. The cart has no trouble following me into the lift. When I step out, she is standing in front of my door.

  “You needed a cart for two food tubes?” she giggles.

  “Testing.” As the door opens, she takes a step back to allow me and the cart through. It follows me to the kitchen, where I pluck the old cheese tube from the printer, and drop one of the new ones in place.

  The little shopping cart does exactly what it’s supposed to, and exits the apartment without trouble. I toss the empty tube in the recycler, and begin brewing tea.

  “Redundancies everywhere,” I say.

  “What?”

  “That little shopping cart is operating without a Wi-Fi connection. The doors are set to scan and open automatically for the right people, but they also have systems in place to allow bots to pass through, depending on a preset list of conditions.”

  “Okay?”

  Amanda stands close, looking over my shoulder. Without touching, I can feel a tingle as my skin senses her body from the short distance. She’s invading my personal space, and I love it. I bob the tea balls up and down until the water darkens to the right color.

  “I used a work-around to fix the glitches with the robots, but I had to take them off the network to do it.”

  Sweat droplets form on my brow. I feel like an ice cube in the sun, warming in her presence. She’s the sun, and my thoughts about her boyfriend chill me from inside.

  “Can they work like that?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Cool. Maybe I should try that with the coffee machines.”

  The tension tearing up my gut is too much to keep the story bottled up. “I ran into Mike while I was downstairs.”

  Her eyes roll, her shoulders drop, and she sighs. “What did he want?”

  “Told me to stay the hell away from you.”

  Her eyebrows tighten. “That’s just like him to be a jerk. That’s one of the reasons I left him. He’s always crowding me. One day somebody is going to kick his butt. Stupid gorilla.”

  The ice in my belly melts away. Even in our modern culture, the idea of personal ownership continues from ancient parts of the brain. When people share a relationship, they fundamentally claim ownership over each other to one degree or another. Once the bond is broken, we find ourselves looking for a new owner, and I’ve been looking for a long time, with only one prospect in mind. Perhaps ownership isn’t of the person, specifically, but of the bond between two. They share the deed to that bond.

  “Tea?”

  “Please.” Her eyebrows return to normal, and soften with the first sip. “So what now? Want to watch some feeds?”

  “Sure.” I try not to smile, as I don’t want to publicly pronounce my excitement about her breakup. I’m here, alone in a room with her, and nobody else is around to steal her attention. How this night goes will determine if, when she’s ready, she decides to share her next bond with me.

  There’s a certain force required to win the affection of another person. Not overbearing, like driving a nail with a rock, but a subtle clockwork of delicate pieces, which must all line up exactly right. Too much, and the newly formed connection will shatter. Not enough, and she might think that I’m not interested at all. Only a narrow range of effort will be productive, and that is assuming that she has the same interest to begin with.

  Our story together begins on my sofa, watching not news, but funny videos of her choosing. I don’t typically watch the wall for entertainment, so I don’t know what’s interesting and what isn’t. Music is enough for me, but I enjoy the time with her. Before long, her head is resting on my shoulder, and I slip into a heavenly slumber.

  EIGHT

  I wake up in a contorted state. My neck aches from kinking against the arm of the chair. Amanda is perched at the other end of the couch, staring back at me.

  “I thought you’d never get up. You always sleep this late?”

  “Late?” My mental search for the time plants a clock on the ceiling above me. “It isn’t even six thirty. I don’t need to be into work until eight.”

  “It takes me way to long in the morning to get ready. I’m usually up before six. I hope you don’t mind, but I used your restroom. I reprogrammed the printer in the bathroom the way you had it, so hopefully you won’t be printing off my stuff.”

  “No, that’s fine.” The morning fog begins to clear. Amanda’s tunic color has changed, and her hair is damp. “You didn’t head home last night?”

  “I didn’t know if I should or not. You started snoring, and I didn’t want to wake you. By the time I thought about it, I was already falling asleep. I figured I would stay and you could kick me out in the morning.”

  “No, that’s fine. I just figured that you would take off. It’s no problem. You want
some tea?”

  “You make tea in the morning, too?”

  “I always make tea.”

  I climb off the comfortable cushions and stagger a bit as I start toward the bathroom.

  Music.

  Vivaldi fills the silence, and my morning ritual starts again, this time a bit different. Another warm body in the apartment adds a faint essence of comfort, at the same time sending an unnerving stream of potential consequences into my head. After a quick shower, I’m back in the kitchen, fumbling with infusers.

  I always give the little steel balls a look over when they come out of the washer. Don said that it’s possible the harsh chemicals could damage them, but so far I’ve never had an issue. Every so often a bit of leaf will get stuck in the mesh, but I have yet to actually break one.

  “Green walls,” she says. “Green cups. And you’re wearing a green tunic. You have a thing for that color?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And this music. It’s lovely, but there aren’t any words.”

  “When Vivaldi was alive, music was different. Musicians clustered in groups of three or four, sometimes two, sometimes a lot more. They gathered in halls and performed live, but there was rarely a singer with the group, or words for this kind of music.”

  “So they all played the same instrument or something?”

  “No, but different instruments would compliment each other in different ways. Every performance was unique, and people enjoyed playing and listening to the music of great composers. Kind of like mimicry programs, but with little flaws and changes in tempo that weren’t as precise as modern music.”

  “Handmade music. Why didn’t they ever imitate rock bands? Why just non-singing groups?”

  “I can’t speak for all of them, but the composers that I prefer all lived before the first rock bands. Vivaldi, Beethoven, those guys.”

  “Interesting. And the green?”

  “It’s just my color. I like being on the roof with the plants, and it’s magical watching some of them turn from brown sticks into green bushy things in the spring. I don’t know. I just like green.”

  “I see.”

  “Here’s your tea.”

  She climbs onto a stool at the end of the island, and swipes away at some kind of project on the display while I attempt to make biscuits that won’t stick or char. I fail, and the bread on every one of them rips at the bottom. Personally, I think the printer spends so much effort trying to recreate bubbles in the bread material that it has lost focus on putting out a homogeneous product that just works.

  After breakfast, Amanda drops her cup and plate into the washer, and turns toward me. “Last night was, interesting. It’s kind of nice just hanging out. Want to meet up again tonight?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m going to get out of here and get to work. I’ll see you on your lunch break.”

  She escapes without another word. Just hanging out.

  I finish my biscuit, drop the rest of the dishes in the washer, grab my smock, and head to work.

  The bots are behaving themselves as I walk through the aisles. I guess the plan is working. As I burst through the double doors, someone is sitting in the stool at my workbench. Someone I’ve never seen before. Paul is on the far side of him, and glances my way.

  “There he is. Early as usual.”

  The other guy looks up from a flat rectangular device. His hair is trimmed high and tight, giving his head the shape of a jar. He’s massive, making even Amanda’s ex-boyfriend look small by comparison; like the kind of guys that I see when I walk by the gym. Musclebound monsters all focused on one thing: increasing their bulk. His shirt looks a size too small, and stretches tightly over his enormous frame. His arm extends toward me with an open hand.

  “Robert? I’m Tom. Nice to meet you.”

  His solid grip clamps around my hand, pinching off circulation to my fingers.

  I wince. “Nice to meet you too.”

  “The GM sent me over here from across town. The tip you guys sent in about the Wi-Fi caught somebody’s attention over there, and the boss told me to drop by and include you on this.”

  “You guys have a lot to talk about,” says Paul. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

  “Pretty clever move, turning off the Wi-Fi. My own manager was a little jealous, I think. You beat him to the punch on that one, and if you were in the office with us, he would probably think that you stole the idea from him.” He chuckles.

  “Well. I didn’t steal any ideas. I had to meet a girl though, so I was in a hurry to come up with a solution.”

  “Funny where ideas come from sometimes.”

  “What are you doing here, Tom?” I find that repeating someone’s name once or twice helps me remember it.

  “I’m here to hunt for your hacker. You ever seen a signal analyzer before?”

  “Nope.”

  He slides the flat device toward me. It looks like a tablet computer from the antique store. “This device has all of the scanning tools that we need to track the source of the problem. Here on the right, you can see all of the frequencies that it’s picking up. These two peaks are your standard 2.4 and 4.8 gig Wi-Fi protocols. Some of this other stuff is standard radio frequencies. We can actually home in on a broadcast signal if we find one, and pinpoint the location the interference is coming from.”

  The device displays an assortment of numbers and charts I don’t fully understand. Graphs are labeled with tiny letters which are nearly unreadable. The graph he’s pointing to shows two peaks, and a smooth band of ripples across the bottom, like some kind of equalizer. I’ve seen graphs like this in my musical studies.

  “We can basically cook the signal and process it however we want. Hopefully find these codes that are being sent to the bots and everything else. Notice anything weird?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I don’t understand all that background noise, or the clumps. Are there really that many radio signals bouncing around the building?”

  “Some of it might be the hum from your desk, but yeah. There are a lot of frequencies zipping through the air. Since the robots are getting their signals from the Wi-Fi, I was going to focus on that, but the sources appear to be normal routers all over the building. The weird thing is that even though they are operating independently, when a spike of data hits, all of them peak out, and broadcast the same profile. The disruptions come from everywhere at once.”

  “What?”

  “Here, let me pull up the scope display.”

  He taps a few buttons on the screen, and it changes to several horizontal frames, each one containing what looks like a staticky heartbeat monitor.

  “These are signals coming from isolated Wi-Fi sources I’ve identified. See how they’re all different?”

  “Yeah?”

  He taps a clock shaped button at the bottom of the display, and enters a time. “Now look. They all lined up, broadcasting the exact same signal, and much louder than the normal traffic.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea. But I set up a robot board.” He points to a black electronics packet sitting on the comms mat. “Every time that little guy receives a pirate signal, these charts sync up. So the signal isn’t coming from one interfering device. It’s coming from the whole building. Whoever is doing this has figured out a way to hack all of the Wi-Fi routers. Not only that, several peripheral devices sync up and broadcast as well. Even your desk and Paul’s office.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Sometimes, when the signal hits your bench, the desk repeats it, and sends it out again.”

  “So what do you need me to do? It sounds like you know what’s going on better than I do.”

  “Boss said come down and get the kid’s opinion. I showed up this morning. I follow orders. After all, it’s an excuse to cruise around the city and get out of the office for a while.”

  “So you like leaving your building?”

/>   “Sure. There’s more to the world than one bundled complex. Sometimes you need to get out. Anyway. You should keep this analyzer on your person. Fiddle with it. Twist knobs and push buttons. If you get any clever ideas that could help us track the virus, then let me know. I’ll probably be in Paul’s office most of the day.”

  “So you want me to sit here and be clever while I work on robots?”

  “Hey,” his hands go up in defense. “I’m not expecting anything from you. I’ll continue monitoring the virus. If you happen to get an idea while you’re working, then tell me about it. The higher ups are interested to see what you can do. You’re about to finish your school, right?”

  “Yeah. How did you know that?”

  He winks, and then hops off the stool. “Like I said. It’s nothing to me, but the powers that be are interested. They might be fishing for a new intern. This virus is infecting everything, and we run robotic tech around the world, from factories to grocery stores to vehicle controls. They’re desperate for anything or anybody that could help us resolve the problem. Even school kids.”

  He walks to Paul’s office, and disappears behind the closing door. I take my spot at the desk. The queue is full of robots showing up for maintenance. I evaluate each bot with a simple diagnostic, and disassemble only the ones that are in real need of a cleanup. The morning zips by, and before I know it, it’s time for lunch.

  I pick up Tom’s tablet, and scan over it, flipping between different displays. Every app evaluates the signal data differently. Then, as if by some divine intervention, the building screeches. The harsh sounds stop me cold. I squint and cringe at the same time, slapping my hands over my ears. In the corner of my eye, I catch flickers on the tablet display. It’s not just the Wi-Fi frequency, but the whole signal band which amplifies. Where there were ripples divided by two peaks a moment ago, there is now a sea of flickering signal on every frequency.

  The room quiets, and the signal scanner returns to normal.

  NINE