Forever Begins Tomorrow

by Bruce Coville

  Though Ray had protested the idea vigorously, he knew Trip was right: Elinor had to remain on the suspect list.

  He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It just didn’t seem reasonable that a spy could make such incredible cake.

  “Ray?”

  Mrs. Gammand was still waiting for an answer.

  Suspect or not, was it possible neither Brody nor Hwa had contacted his parents to tell them about the gang’s latest escapade?

  He was searching for some nice, noncommittal response when a six-inch-tall polystyrene monster came bounding across the table. Leaping onto his plate, it began jumping up and down in the frosting.

  “Warthos!” cried Ray’s father. “You come back here!”

  Ignoring its creator, the hideous, four-armed purple automaton continued to stomp through Ray’s cake.

  Dr. Hugh Gammand’s towering figure rose from the other side of the table. Muttering in disgust, he snatched his newest character out of his son’s dessert.

  Ray gazed mournfully at the mutilated cake. He thoroughly enjoyed his father’s passion for creating three-dimensional monsters. But the hobby did make the odds of completing a meal in peace in the Gammand household a less than fifty-fifty proposition.

  Fortunately, in this case the monster had provided a useful diversion. His stepmother turned her attention to his father, launching into her “How many times have I asked you not to bring your monsters to the table?” speech.

  Locating an undamaged corner of his cake, Ray popped it into his mouth. He consoled himself with the thought that if the gang’s clues were accurate, at least his father was off the hook. At seven feet plus, Hugh Gammand was too darn tall to be Black Glove.

  Wendy Wendell III had no such consolation when it came to her parents. They were both well under the five-foot-seven mark the gang had figured as Black Glove’s maximum height after they had seen the spy run under a pipe suspended at that level.

  At least Mom is a blonde, thought Wendy. That lets her off the hook. She paused, then added, Unless they’re working as a team!

  The Wonderchild glanced down at the plate of bean sprouts and stir-fried tofu she had been trying not to eat and wondered if it would really be so bad to find out her parents were spies. After all, if they got tossed in the slammer, maybe she would get sent to an orphanage where they served normal food (like hamburgers and french fries) instead of the super-healthy glop her parents always ate.

  She poked at a sprout. The thing that really mystified her was that her parents actually seemed to like this slimy stuff. She could understand people who were in their thirties, and therefore well on their way to being ancient, wanting to take good care of their bodies. But she couldn’t understand them enjoying it. At least, not if it involved eating goo like this.

  Mrs. Wendell gestured toward Wendy’s plate. “You didn’t finish your meal, darling.”

  Fighting down several remarks that would have done wonders for her reputation as a smart-mouth but nothing for the sake of domestic tranquility, Wendy said, “I wasn’t very hungry.”

  Her parents’ acceptance of this explanation was a sign of the hours they had been putting in at the computer lab. Anyone who spent much time with the Wonderchild knew that hunger was a permanent condition with her.

  “Did you have a good day?” asked Dr. Watson, spearing his last piece of tofu with his fork.

  “It was… interesting,” replied Wendy. Was her father genuinely ignorant of the day’s events? Or was he baiting her, to see what she would say?

  “How are you making out with your new tutor?” asked her mother.

  Wendy seized on the question as an excuse to escape from the table. “Actually, I haven’t started with it. You said I could choose the hours I put in. Since I already had plans this morning, I was waiting until tonight to work on it. I’d better get at it.”

  Before her parents could think of another question, she had slid out of her chair and was scooting down the hall, glad to be away from the cross-examination—not to mention the smell of that food.

  Reaching the door to her room, she glared across the mess on the floor to where the shiny new computer sat waiting. “I hope you’re ready to fight,” she said, pushing up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “Because this bedroom isn’t big enough for the both of us!”

  Plunging into her room, Wendy waded through the debris, prepared to battle the electronic intruder to the death.

  Rachel looked up the path leading toward Dr. Remov’s house. “I wonder if Dr. Mercury will be here, too,” she said.

  Hap Swenson shrugged his broad shoulders. “Probably. It’s not easy to find one of them without stumbling over the other.”

  Rachel hesitated. It was hard to believe chubby, exuberant Armand Mercury could be a danger to anyone. But the portly scientist did match their two clues… On the other hand, he was best friends with Dr. Remov, the only adult on the island willing to seriously discuss the gang’s fears that a spy was trying to undermine Project Alpha. In spite of Dr. Mercury’s frequent teasing on the matter, Dr. Remov was adamant in his belief that G.H.O.S.T. did exist, and deeply concerned that it might have infiltrated the project.

  In her darker moments Rachel sometimes wondered if Dr. Remov was so certain about G.H.O.S.T. because he himself was one of its agents.

  You’ve got to trust someone, she told herself, repeating her twin’s comment on the situation. And as Roger kept pointing out to her, not only had Dr. Remov been a real help to them on more than one occasion, he was too tall to be the spy.

  She shook her head. Something’s got to break soon or I’m going to lose my mind. I can’t stand living in a situation that makes me so suspicious I wonder if the only reason someone is helping me is to cover his tracks!

  Hap nudged her with his elbow. “You still here?”

  “What? Oh, sure. Sorry about that. I’m right beside you.”

  “What happened to ladies first?”

  “I’m liberated. Get moving!”

  Dr. Remov threw open the door almost before they rang the bell, which was the way he usually greeted them. A smile creased his freckled face. “Rachel! Hap! How nice to see you. Come in, come in!”

  He ushered them into the living room, where Dr. Mercury sat with his pipe and a container of sudsy water.

  “Armand—look who’s here!”

  Dr. Mercury was in the midst of blowing an enormous, rainbow-hued bubble. His real attention reserved for the work at hand, he didn’t speak, only gave them a wink. Unfortunately, that slight motion was all it took to burst his bubble. It disappeared, spattering him with a fine spray of droplets.

  “Oh, poop,” he said softly. “You know, Stanley, this new formula just isn’t working.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get it eventually,” said Dr. Remov, patting his friend on the shoulder. He crossed to a battered leather armchair and settled in with a sigh. “So—what brings you two here on this fine October night?”

  “Fine, indeed,” snorted Dr. Mercury. “Personally, I miss a nice, blustery, multicolored October. Living where the seasons are backward is going to drive me out of my mind.”

  “It will be a short trip,” replied Dr. Remov. Turning to Rachel and Hap, he said, “I’ve only got a few minutes. I’m scheduled to meet Dr. Clark in the Brain Cell soon.”

  Hap lifted an eyebrow in surprise. The Brain Cell, the central command location for Project Alpha, was so secret usually the scientists wouldn’t even acknowledge its existence. The gang only knew the term because Dr. Mercury had once blurted it out to Trip and Ray. None of them had managed to get inside the place.

  Noticing Hap’s reaction, Dr. Remov shrugged. “You two are less of a security risk than someone else who seems to actually have access to that ‘secret’ location. So why play unnecessary games? Now, what’s on your minds?”

  Rachel quickly poured out an abbreviated version of the day’s events, culminating in the interview with Dr. Hwa. Despite her belief that they could trust Dr. Remov, c
aution prompted her to leave out some of the details, such as Wendy’s mysterious rescue.

  Dr. Remov listened quietly, drumming his fingers against the arm of his chair. “And why have you come to me?” he asked when Rachel was finished.

  “Two reasons, sir,” replied Hap. “To begin with, we thought you should know what the enemy had been up to.”

  He nodded. “And the second reason?”

  “We’re confused about Dr. Hwa,” said Rachel. “He was really angry with us. But as far as we can tell, he hasn’t said a word to our parents. It doesn’t quite add up, and we wanted to know what you thought about it.”

  “Since it isn’t the kind of question you can ask your parents,” said Dr. Remov with a chuckle.

  “They could have asked me!” said Dr. Mercury, setting down his bubble pipe. “And since I’m here, I’ll tell them!”

  He turned to Rachel and Hap. “It’s a simple matter of management. Our dear Dr. Hwa may come across as a pussycat, but the truth is he’s about as soft as a concrete bed. He’s well aware that your parents would go crazy if they found out some of the things you kids have been up to. He’s also aware that if that happens it might interfere with his schedule for the project. So he simply doesn’t tell them.”

  Dr. Mercury picked up his pipe again. “You’ll never make sense of this if you think of it as a case of adults against kids. Think of it as Hwa against anything—anything—that might stand in the way of his machine.”

  He stirred the bubble water with his stubby fingers, then dipped his pipe back into it. “Am I right, Stanley?”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” replied Dr. Remov. The freckle-faced scientist turned back to Hap and Rachel. “Now, let me share something else with you. I’ve been doing a little digging on my own. Haven’t come up with much—I’m too busy with the computer. But I have decided that there is something funny about Bridget McGrory. I can’t put my finger on it; certainly I’m in no position to make an accusation of any kind. But you might want to keep an eye on her.”

  “You know, Ray’s been saying the same thing,” said Rachel. “I wonder what’s going on there.”

  “But Bridget McGrory is just a secretary!” protested Hap.

  Dr. Remov shook his head. “A bit of advice, my young friend. Never say ‘just a secretary.’ As you get older, you’ll learn that secretaries really control the world.”

  “You don’t think she could be building a back door, do you, Stanley?” asked Dr. Mercury.

  Hap looked puzzled. “What does a back door have to do with anything?”

  Dr. Remov steepled his fingers in front of his face. “A back door is a sneaky way to get into a computer’s command structure. Designed well enough, it could even let someone put in commands that would normally be blocked by previous programming.”

  “Like what?”

  Dr. Remov shrugged. “Oh, a command that would lock out all the other researchers.”

  Hap’s eyes widened. “Is that possible?”

  Dr. Mercury set aside his pipe and his bowl. “Well, ADAM is fairly well protected against things like that; we embedded instructions to prevent it from accepting such input very deep in its architecture. But the truth is, no system is so secure it can’t be cracked. Someone who is sneaky enough, patient enough, and smart enough might be able to get around those commands by constructing a completely new entrance to the computer. Not a physical door you could walk through, but the electronic equivalent: a back door.”

  Rachel felt a shiver. Growing up with a computer scientist for a father, she had often heard about back doors. But she had never thought about one in connection with Project Alpha.

  “That couldn’t really happen here, could it?” she asked nervously.

  Dr. Mercury shrugged. “In this business, nothing is certain except uncertainty.”

  Computer Games

  “Okay, Wendy,” said Ray when the gang had gathered in their headquarters the next morning. “I’ve waited long enough. I know you studied the printout. So tell me; how did Sherlock break the code and locate that transmitter?”

  The Wonderchild smiled. “I’m not sure I should tell you. When you find out how simple it was, you’ll just want to kill yourself because the computer figured it out first. Then the rest of us will have to talk you out of it, which is really boring, and—”

  Roger cut her off. “Wendy, if you don’t tell him soon, I think it’s more likely we’re going to have to talk him out of killing you. Besides, I want to know, too.”

  “Oh, all right,” said the Wonderchild, rolling her eyes. “C’mere, I’ll show you.”

  She led Ray to one of the several keyboards scattered about the room. The others followed.

  “Here’s the coded message,” she said. Her fingers seemed to fly as she pressed down the shift key and then typed in:

  !A@ @% ## )!$ #& @(

  Everyone studied the monitor as the computer reprinted the message.

  “It still looks like comic-book cursing to me,” said Hap.

  “Probably because it is,” said Wendy. “That is, it’s done the same way as comic-book cursing, by typing the symbols that you get if you hit the shift key before typing on the keyboard’s numeral row. Now, my dear Raymond, release the shift key and hit the same symbols.”

  Ray did as he was instructed.

  “Do those numbers look familiar?” asked Wendy, pointing to the string of digits that had appeared on the screen.

  162 25 33 014 37 29

  “Yeah,” said Ray. “A one, a six, a two… I use ’em almost every day. What do you mean, do they look familiar?”

  “It’s the number configuration she’s talking about,” said Roger. “The pattern of three digits, two digits, two digits, then repeated. And it does look familiar. Where have I seen it before?” He studied the screen for an instant longer, then groaned. “Oh, geez… they’re latitude and longitude! Three digits for degrees, two digits for minutes, and two for seconds.”

  “And those digits are familiar, too,” said Rachel, the memory expect. “That’s where Sherlock told us to look for the transmitter yesterday!”

  “You got it,” said Wendy. “As for solving it, Sherlock worked in several steps. First, it guessed we were dealing with numerals. That three-two-two, three-two-two symbol pattern would be pretty uncommon for a verbal message. Not impossible, certainly. But less likely.”

  “Now, starting with the assumption—correct, in this case—that the answer was numerical, our brilliant program proceeded to do a pattern search, a hunt for things that might display the same arrangement of symbols. A five-four pattern, a set of five digits followed by four digits, might have indicated a ZIP code. Three-three-four would most likely be a telephone number, and three-two-four would be an old-fashioned Social Security number. A three-two-two, three-two-two pattern like we had isn’t that common. So Sherlock glommed onto the right guess almost immediately: geographic coordinates.”

  “But how did it know which numerals to substitute?” asked Hap. “There would be all kinds of possibilities.”

  “That’s a tribute to our good programming,” said Trip smugly. “Mind if I take it from here, Wendy? I want to see if I’ve figured this out correctly.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “To begin with,” said Trip, “you’re right about the possible combinations. But one of the thinking tactics we’ve programmed into Sherlock is the use of Occam’s razor.”

  “Which was a really sharp idea,” said Paracelsus, dragging up one of the new stock of puns Roger had recently inserted into its programming.

  “Ignore him,” said Rachel. “He’s suffering the electronic equivalent of brain damage.”

  “Such hostility!” cried Paracelsus.

  “What the heck is Occam’s razor?” asked Hap plaintively, trying to keep the line of reasoning straight in his head.

  “It’s a rule that says in any given situation the simplest solution is usually the best,” answered Trip. “So Sherlock w
ould have immediately seized on the simple one-for-one substitution of the shift characters as a likely explanation.”

  “But it wouldn’t have stopped there,” said Roger proudly. “Once it had guessed that the symbols were really numerical coordinates and come up with a possible translation of digits to make it work, it would have begun checking to see if that translation made sense.”

  “After all, there could have been several more steps to cracking the code,” said Rachel.

  “Of course,” said Hap, who was beginning to feel like a caveman trying to make sense out of an automobile.

  “But once it discovered that its translation had located a spot close to the island, it would have reasoned that this was probably correct. Then it was a matter of comparing new ideas with Black Glove’s previous actions. Combining those with bits and pieces of information we’ve gathered over the last weeks, it came up with the hypothesis of a transmitter at that particular location.”

  “Why do I suddenly feel stupid?” asked Hap morosely.

  “You shouldn’t,” said Rachel. “To begin with, despite what Trip might say, it was an accurate guess, not an infallible prediction. Second, it would have been a lot more useful if Sherlock had also predicted we were walking into a trap!”

  “Of course, we could have thought of that, too,” put in Ray.

  “Absolutely,” said Rachel. “But we let our emotions run away with us. Sherlock is supposed to think without emotion.”

  “Really?” asked Hap. “So what happens if we succeed in making the program self-aware. Will it have emotions then?”

  An uncomfortable silence settled over the room.

  “That remains to be seen,” said Roger at last. “The most important thing to understand right now, Hap, is that it wasn’t doing anything you couldn’t do, if you had had the time and the patience. It was just doing it faster. The machine operates at five TRIPS, after all.”

  “TRIPS?”

  “Trillion Instructions Per Second,” translated their own personal Trip. “Fastest computer in the world at the moment. But it only reached that speed a week and a half ago. My mother and Dr. Fontana have been collaborating on that aspect of things. It’s all very hush-hush. Mom hardly talks about it at all.”