The Sin of Moloch

by Andrew Gordinier

  The screen went blank, and a single point appeared in the middle, that point stretched into a line. That line stretched into a broad flat surface that slowly warped into a cube, then a sphere. The surface of the sphere rippled, and it formed symmetrical spikes that reached out while other points collapsed inward towards the center of the sphere but never touched. Deanna was fascinated, it wasn’t anything new to the world, but she somehow thought that what came next would be. The orb turned polygon turned and spun, then with an audible pop, her monitor went blank. Deanna sat back in her chair, so disappointed she wanted to cry. She leaned towards the computer's case to hit the power button and force a reboot, only to let out a sharp cry. There was blue smoke threading through the cooling vents that Deanna knew spoke of very dead electronics.

  “No…” Deanna whimpered. She had built the machine herself, made custom alterations to the case, carefully overclocked and tweaked the CPU. Now it was venting the magic blue smoke that singled the escaping soul of well-loved electronics. She pulled the power cable out and frantically unscrewed the side panel, hoping that it wasn’t too bad, that it was just a dead power supply or something she could scrounge parts for quickly.

  Looking in the case, it was clear there was nothing to do, nothing to save. Even though the video cards and CPU were both water-cooled, they were literally smoking. The hoses for the cooling system had melted and spilled water all over vulnerable parts. Still, the water seemed to have done nothing to prevent them from burning. The RAM cards looked like they were still smoldering and melting themselves. Deanna was shocked and sat back slowly, staring at the appalling damage done to her beloved machine in only a few seconds. No way that should have happened, no possibility that some ‘simple’ algorithm was going to kill the beast she had worked long and hard to put together. A machine that had cut its teeth on much harder and more complicated programs, it should have chewed up John’s equation and spit it out like bad-tasting chewing gum.

  Numbly she fumbled for her phone and dialed John’s number.

  “Hello?” John sounded distant and sleepy.

  “You murdered my computer.” Deanna wiped tears from her eyes.

  There was a long pause before John responded. “I hardly know your computer, I don’t have a motive for murder.”

  “Your stupid program came close to working, and then it burned my computer, it looks like it was in a damn fire. What the hell is this crap!” Deanna felt herself losing her emotional composure, but didn’t give a damn, she wanted John to know he had a part in destroying her best friend.

  “Where are you at?”

  “I’m at home, you dumb ass!”

  “Where do you live?” John asked calmly and slowly.

  “Near Fulton and North Elizabeth.”

  “All right, I’ll be there soon. Text me your address.”

  “What good is it going to do-“

  “I want to see the damage done to your computer, it might help figure out what to do next.”

  “I’ll tell you the damage done, total! Total destruction, like something out of a nightmare. This was my baby, and your program destroyed it!”

  “Deanna, I’m sorry. We’ll take care of it, just humor me and don’t touch it for now.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Text me your address, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Deanna hung up without saying anything. She hit a few buttons and frantically typed out her address, hitting the send button, ignoring the typos in her message. With a heavy sigh, Deanna sat down on the floor and examined her destroyed machine from a safe distance. Something was nagging her, an uneasy feeling in the back of her head, something that she couldn’t put her finger on. She got up, got a beer out of the fridge, and sat down again. The beer opened with a satisfying hissing pop. It tasted cold and soothed her raw nerves, but did nothing to drown out the troubling feeling at the base of her skull.

  Something was wrong, she was missing something, but what? Closing her eyes, Deanna tried to think about what had happened when she ran the program. She couldn’t focus, all she saw was her dead friend and lover that she had built and slaved over. Deanna tapped the side of the bottle with the bottle cap, and there was a dull ringing. It touched a childhood memory. Her father showing her how to build a computer while he drank a beer, and she drank grape soda. After hours the body was complete, and the moment of truth at hand, would it boot? They held hands, and he let her do the honors. Her small finger touched the power, she paused, and then pressed down with confidence. The fans came alive, a few panel lights came on, and there was still silence, but then the motherboard let out a sharp “beep” to declare it was alive. Her father smiled and held his beer bottle up, she tapped her bottle of soda to it, the clink of glass on glass. They drank smiling and started talking about the software installation.

  Opening her eyes, Deanna looked up at her monitors, they had gone dark in power saving mode. She wished there would be a flutter of light and life on them, some miracle of electronic resurrection. She paused as that feeling in her skull took voice and asked a simple question; “How did I not smell the smoke till it was too late?”

  “Holy hells.” Deanna said aloud. “How did I not smell the smoke?” She looked at the burnt remains of her computer's brain and guts with a different perspective. Such intense heat should have burnt parts out and damaged the case, but there was no damage to the case. The burn pattern made no sense even on the boards. The CPU should have cut connections and shut down everything at some point, but it didn’t. Somehow it forced the boards to keep working and building heat. But how had she not smelled smoke? How was there not an actual fire? Questions marched through her mind not in single file, but in full parade formation with brightly colored floats that blocked traffic for hours. She sipped her beer and waited for John to show up so she could dig her fingernails into him and pull the answer out of him. She daydreamed of horror movie scenes that bordered on the comical, they could be summed up as “picking his brain” and “digging for answers” in a very literal way. It would be payback for killing her baby like that.

  There was a knock at the door. Deanna looked at the display on her cell phone, she had only called John fifteen minutes ago, how had he gotten here so fast? Deanna got off the floor and looked through the peephole. Sure enough, it was John, how the hell did he get there from the north side so fast? Deanna opened the door.

  “What happened?” John said, getting to the point.

  “I ran our program with some added formulas I’ve gotten from M theory and a few other places. It worked fine for a few moments before it fried my machine.”

  As she spoke John crouched and looked at the damage done to her machine. He reached up and pulled the flash drive out that she had forgotten about. “Is this the program?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have any other copies?”

  “No.” Deanna lied.

  “I need any copies you have left, this program is dangerous in ways I never thought of.” John had a stern look on his face and spoke with an authority that Deanna wanted to challenge.

  “I had some backups encrypted on my hard drive, I think they survived.”

  “Really?” John looked at her computer, and she saw his eyes briefly lose focus as if he were thinking of something far and distant. Deanna smelled burning electronics and noticed wisps of smoke escape her computer again. “I don’t think your hard drives made it after all.”

  “How…” Deanna had no idea how he did it, but she was sure that John had just fried her hard drives without touching them. “What’s going on, what is that program really? What are you hiding from me?”

  “I’ve been trying to protect you, to prevent you from losing your mind.”

  “Is that why I can’t use graphics with this program? Why I can’t map the data sets? That’s stupid, John.”

  “Do you remember when the Morton Salt factory burned?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That fire got started by someone who saw what you want
to see. It drove him mad, he started killing people.”

  “That guy on the North-side? The one they blamed the fire on? He was driven mad by a computer program and started killing people with a flame thrower?”

  “It wasn’t a flame thrower.”

  “Your FBI buddies tell you that?”

  “No, I was there.” John looked away from her, and his tone dropped to a near whisper.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look, I’m not hiding things to play games here. I’m keeping secrets to keep you safe and not ruin your life. The truth of all this almost ruined my life and may still get me killed. I’ve kept this secret from people who wouldn’t like it, and I’m searching for something important-“

  “A grand unified theory.” Said Deanna smugly.

  “As important and world-shattering as that is, this is bigger.”

  “Then-“

  “If I were to tell you, it would endanger you.”

  “Then good luck getting that program to work on your own, you and I both know that it would take you years without me. Can you wait that long?”

  “Deanna-“

  “No, tell me or forget it.”

  “Then give me all the hard drives it’s on and all your copies of it.”

  “What?”

  “You gave me a choice. I’m choosing. As of now, this project is over unless you want to change your mind about your demands.”

  “Tell me, or forget it all.” Deanna stood her ground.

  “Then give me all your copies, I’m sure you have backups all over the place.” With a snarl, Deanna set about collecting flash drives from various hiding places around her small apartment. John watched with a wry smile on his face and seemed surprised by how many copies she had. Reaching under her desk, she peeled back some tape and pulled out a sixth flash drive and dropped it into John’s hand.

  “That’s it, that’s all of them. You, jackass.”

  “I’m sorry, Deanna. I really am.” John put the handful of drives into an inner pocket of his coat and pulled a massive wad of money out of the same pocket. “This will easily allow you to rebuild your computer and leave you enough left over to cover payment for your programming skills.”

  “Thank you, and frack you.”

  “Deanna, I-“

  “No, John. You don’t get to say something nice to make yourself feel better. You lied to me and took advantage of my trust. Fuck you.” Deanna enjoyed the dejected look on John’s face as he turned and walked out the door.

  Deanna closed and locked the door behind him. She felt her rage burning a hollow place in her, she sipped the last of her beer and was disappointed that it had gotten warm. She picked up the rubber-banded roll of bills John had left on her desk. They were all hundreds, dog eared and well used. These had been in circulation for a long time and weren’t going to be traced. Where was he getting his money from? Was he really tangled up with the FBI? And, why couldn’t anyone just pay her in Bitcoin like a reasonable person?

  Deanna walked across the small apartment to her bookcase and pulled a large hardcover book off the corner of the bottom shelf. It was a copy of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” she opened and flipped a few pages to reveal the cut-out pages at the center of the book. It was an old spy trick that Deanna thought would never fool anyone, so John was a special kind of fool. She maneuvered the bills into the hidden compartment and pulled out one of the several flash drives hidden there. Why would anyone ever give up every copy? She was sure the program was valuable and would make her rich and famous when she got it working, it would also make John feel stupid, and there was a joy in that for her. But, most of all, she wanted to see more of what had crashed her computer. She just plain wanted to know what the answers to reality looked like, for no real reason other than she could.

  John set up his laptop at the warehouse and idly toyed with the handful of flash drives he had taken from Deanna. He felt terrible about the way things had worked out with her. What was he supposed to do? She had clearly either stumbled into something with the program or used a graphics program to map the data sets it was generating. But what had gone wrong, what had happened to destroy her computer like that? Sure it was burnt to a crisp as Deanna had said, but the patterns of her computer boards were damaged and deformed. His computer played a set of gentle chimes singling it was done booting. John took Deanna’s flash drive and slipped it into the USB port on his laptop. Then before doing anything else, he scanned it with some costly anti-virus software. Deanna was paranoid, and he didn’t put it past her to leave a trap or two. It was a good thing he did. There were several very nasty ones posing as text documents and image files labeled ‘data’ and ‘research.’

  Feeling safer, and slightly smarter than Deanna gave him credit for, John opened the only folder left on the drive. It prompted him for a password. John growled inwardly, he should have seen that coming. Leaning back in his chair, he thought for a moment, he had seen Deanna pick passwords before, she tended to stay away from random characters and numbers. John had once seen her lock a fellow student out of his email by changing his password to “I_Done_Deanna_Wrong”. She never explained why she had done that. So, what would she use to lock a program that John had been paying her for? One that had frustrated her endlessly, a program that she expected to give to John eventually?

  John started guessing passwords. His first few tries were all about greed and money, mixed with ample swear words and other vulgarities he had heard Deanna say. Nothing worked. John paused and thought about it some more, the pay was a new thing, she might not have changed the password after that. A few more combinations and random guesses got him nowhere. He was happy she had not set it up for a limited number of tries before it did something evil. He was going to have to either brute force the code or find a way around it. Brute force searching every possible code was time and lots of it. John’s skills at going around the lock were questionable at best.

  Glancing at the clock, John realized he had wasted several hours on random guesses and was getting frustrated. A few more tries, he told himself, and another hour slipped away without him noticing. Finally, he typed in the phrase “screw_you_John” and the file popped open a window. John sighed and hated himself because he should have guessed that sooner.

  Opening the de-compiled script, John held down the “page down” button and let line after line of computer code scroll past. Thankful that being a mage has given him more than just abilities with magic, John scanned the coding with defocused eyes, seeing the patterns of it. Deanna was right, he couldn’t replicate her skill or knowledge with computers, he saw that quickly enough. John also noticed that Deanna had coded in a graphics interface that would map the data sets as they were generated. He sighed and stopped scrolling through the code because now he was sure. She had run it with graphics, and that the only thing saving her from madness and death was her computer burning out.

  Closing the programs and shutting down his computer John pulled out the flash drive and walked over to his safe. He opened it, the weight of the door was reassuring but convinced him he was exhausted as well. Dropping the flash drives into a drawer in his safe did nothing to make John feel better about the events of the night or Deanna. So far as he was concerned, the safe held nothing valuable, but only dangerous things. His handgun, the Primer and key, the old ring with a pattern hidden in it, and now those flash drives. John thought back to Owen’s basement and the hidden safe there. It had seemed there were so many treasures and rare things tucked in with the dangerous and deadly, or was that John’s imagination making the past seem a bit sunnier than today? John wanted to care, but couldn’t, he needed sleep. Besides, other dangers were lurking in the shadows, dangers that would not be locked away so easily.

  Chapter 15

  The lobby of the hotel was luxurious, marble and deep carpets, with comfortable seating set about with care and precision. It was an environment John was unaccustomed to, and he much preferred more modest surroun
dings. Conrad seemed at home though, sipping tea while he chatted ideally with Shades. Even though John knew his name now, he still thought of the man as Shades because of his ever-present sunglasses. John saw differently now, his confession and speech at the meeting had shown him to be brave and honest, traits he felt rare in mages. Eric standing behind Conrad, alert and silent as always, didn’t seem to give a damn where they were. John appreciated the man's skills and felt that he owed him deeply for the training that he had given Radha, training that John couldn’t provide. As John approached the small group, his dress shoes uncomfortably tapping with each step on the marble, he wondered about Eric. How does a man become the hired gun of a mage? His loyalty to Conrad went well beyond money, and there was clearly a long history between the two of them.

  “Hello, John.” Conrad said with a relaxed smile. He set his tea down and shook hands warmly with John. John shook hands with Shades, and Eric in turn.

  “Is he here yet?” John asked, taking a seat next to Conrad.

  “They.” Said Shades dryly. “They are not here yet, and I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “I suspect that they aren’t either.” Conrad spoke as he poured himself more tea.

  “If one of them is a Censor, then you can bet he, or she, is going to enjoy any discomfort they cause. Everything I hear about them tells me that they are predictable only in their cruelty.” Said Shades grimly.

  “I doubt that they are the walking talking embodiment of evil.” Said Conrad stirring sugar into his tea.

  “We’ll know soon enough, they’re here.” Eric said in a hushed tone. John followed his gaze to two men who had entered the lobby and were walking towards them.

  The man in the led wore a suit that was shades of gray and black, with a dark red tie, he walked with his head aloof and a straight spine. He was thin, everything about him was thin, from his lips to his smile and hair. John was not pleased by the image of this man cutting through all they had worked for.