Elvis and I stood behind him, looking over his shoulder as he logged on and in. “Okay, give me a sec to create the settings.”
“Appreciate it.”
For the next forty minutes we watched as Xavier played. He interacted with androids, biomorphs, cyborgs and a slew of other characters. I took notes, trying to figure out the world building. It wasn’t as hard as I expected, but I wasn’t really sure what my point was in having Xavier play the game. Rudy had said Darren spent a lot of time on GURPS Robots, so maybe it was significant. On the other hand, Darren was a lonely geek like me and this could have been nothing more than a fun way to pass the time. How the heck would I know?
It wasn’t until I saw a passing reference to “MasterNano” that something clicked for me.
“Wait,” I said, bending over Xavier’s shoulder. “Can you check the profile for MasterNano?”
Xavier found the profile, but as expected, there was no personal information. MasterNano was clearly the reigning king of all nanobots in GURPS Robots and he had amassed an impressive nano-kingdom with slews of servants and citizens. However, in terms of personal information, we got zip. It was all fantasy in GURPS and there was no way the person behind MasterNano was really named Si Borg who lived on Mars Street in Roswell, New Mexico. But there was that Mars reference again and it bugged me.
“Can I sit? I’d like to hack into the profile and see if I can’t get the real name and location of MasterNano.”
The room fell silent and I exhaled a deep breath. “I know what you’re thinking and it’s okay, guys. I can do this. I want to do this.”
“I thought you’d gone legit,” Elvis said.
“Yeah, for seven hundred and thirty-nine days.” I’d become a former hacker once I’d started working at the NSA. I had liked my job and wanted to keep it, so I’d given up hacking altogether, even for recreational purposes.
“I’m getting off the wagon starting right now for two reasons. One, I’m not in my office at X-Corp and here I will be absolutely untraceable. And two, it’s our first case and somehow it’s all connected to me personally.”
Elvis gave me a thoughtful stare. “It’s not necessary, you know. I’ll do the hack for you.”
“I appreciate that more than you will probably ever know. But this is my case, so it should be my hack. Besides, it’s not a malicious hack—not that I ever did those, um, much. Anyway, I have to do this.”
The room was silent.
I paused, pressing my fingers against my temples. “Okay, okay, jeez, who am I kidding? You two know me better than anyone in the universe. I’m doing this because I damn well want to.”
With that, Xavier quickly vacated the chair. “Your throne, geek queen.”
“Thanks,” I said, sitting down.
Elvis leaned over my shoulder as I got started. “You think MasterNano is important?”
“Maybe.”
I flexed my fingers and got to work. It made me happy to realize I hadn’t lost my finesse in those seven hundred and thirty-nine days. God, it felt good. Really good. It took me about four minutes to hack in and another ten to trace the ID.
“The supposed genuine name is also bogus,” I said as the data popped up. “Albert Asstein.”
“Ha.” Xavier appreciated that one.
“But the ID is interesting.”
Elvis peered at the screen. “What do you have?”
“The provider for MasterNano is in Northern Virginia, near Dulles. That’s Darren’s neck of the woods.”
“You think Darren Greening might be MasterNano?”
“Possibly.” I tapped my finger on my chin. “Let’s take a look at the last time Master played.”
“Scoot over.” Elvis squeezed into the same chair with me. “Want a partner?”
“Sure.” I gave him some room and he sat, our hips pressing together. “You want the keyboard or you going to give instructions?”
He smiled. “How would you like it?”
“I’ll take the keyboard.”
“Okay.” He gave my ponytail a gentle tug. “Girl’s choice.”
Apparently bored with our mundane hack, Xavier wandered out of the room. With Elvis at my side it was a super easy hack and in just a few minutes we’d discovered that MasterNano had played yesterday at 11:48 p.m. for a period of sixty-seven minutes. After a while, I let Elvis have a turn on the keyboard. But instead of elbowing in front of me, he reached one arm around my waist, basically hugging me as his fingers flew over the keyboard.
It wasn’t long until we discovered that the provider for MasterNano yesterday was not the same as in his profile.
“This one leads to Massachusetts,” Elvis said. “Cambridge, to be exact.”
“Cambridge?” For a moment my mind raced until it suddenly came to me. “Cambridge. That’s where MIT is.”
Elvis shifted in the chair. “What does MIT have to do with anything?”
“Nothing or everything.” I leaned back. Elvis’s arms were still around me. He smelled nice, like soap. I felt comfortable and safe resting my head against him.
“Want to illuminate the thought process?”
“The STRUT chat room. I met two guys there. RawMode and Grok.”
“Grok as in Heinlein’s Martian?”
That’s what I loved about Elvis. I never had to explain anything. “Exactly. And Darren had a postcard of Mars in his treasure box. Could be significant.”
“Darren has a treasure box?”
“Yeah.” The tone of his voice made me decide not to tell him about mine. “Anyway, Grok and RawMode talked to me in the chat room about Darren and his theories on nanotechnology. Grok was from MIT or so he said. Maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe it’s not.”
“Want to check out Grok?”
“We can try.” I leaned forward and logged in to the STRUT chat room. There were six other people there chatting but none of them were Grok or RawMode.
“Dang. Can’t trace them if they’re not online.”
Elvis leaned forward, his arms still around me. I watched as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He shifted a bit as he typed so that his chin rested lightly on my right shoulder and his cheek pressed up against mine. Weird, but it felt kind of nice.
I waited until he had finished before asking what he’d done.
“I wrote a protocol to alert me when either RawMode or Grok logs in,” he explained. “It’ll start an automatic trace. The next time either one logs on, I should be able to narrow the location for you, and if we get lucky, we might even be able to pinpoint it.”
“Good idea,” I sighed, feeling oddly relaxed. I turned my head slightly to look at him. “Thanks, Elvis. You’re the greatest.”
At that moment, I realized my mouth was nanoinches from his. I had a sudden memory of a very nice kiss he’d given me a few months before just as I’d embarked on one of the most dangerous operations of my life. He’d been my pillar then just as he was now, helping me out when I’d really, really needed it.
It seemed as though he was lowering his mouth toward mine when Xavier walked back into the room. Elvis jumped up and I almost toppled out of the chair, managing to catch myself at the last second.
I rose and shrugged the blanket off my shoulders. “Uh, thanks again. You guys rock.”
Xavier gave me a thumbs-up. “For you, Lexi, anytime.”
“Yeah, you’re only saying that because I’m Basia’s best friend.”
Elvis laughed. “Hey, it helps.”
He walked me to my car, no hint that anything might have passed between us. Had I started to imagine things or had my commitment to explore my femininity suddenly started to pay off in unexpected ways?
After I left the Zimmermans’, I headed home. The first thing I did was open my laptop and download Goldfinger. I watched the movie while eating a dinner consisting of Frosted Cheerios and raisins. I paused and replayed parts of the movie several times to watch Pussy Galore in action and jotted some notes on a pad of paper. Hopefully Ursula
would approve.
I made myself a cup of tea and took it into the living room with the Kama Sutra book. I started with the chapter on kissing. Just to be on the safe side, I jotted some notes down on that for further review. Because I was curious I read three more interesting chapters on sexual positions, taking an inordinate amount of time to review the large and complex illustrations. Most of the time I think I had the book upside down. Jeez, who knew everything could fit properly when people were contorted like pretzels?
A little after one o’clock in the morning Ursula rang the bell to my apartment. I’d fallen asleep on the couch, right on top of the Kama Sutra book. I leaped from the couch and opened the door. She walked in, looking a bit frazzled.
“It’s been a hell of a night.” She slipped out of her coat. Nothing underneath but a blazing pink bra with rhinestone studs and matching panties. Her blond hair was mussed and her face had tons of makeup.
“Do you ever wear normal clothes?”
“I just got off work. The patrons were crazy tonight.”
“Sorry.” Was that an appropriate reply?
She grabbed my hand. “So, how are you tonight, Pussy?” She pulled me into the center of my living room.
“Sleepy.”
“That’s Lexi answering. I want to hear from Pussy.”
“Oh. Pussy says she’s feeling all feminine and sexy.”
“That’s better. Come on, let’s practice moving to the music.”
She slipped the CD in the player and I dutifully swayed, closing my eyes and trying to feel the beat. I nearly jumped out of my skin when she grabbed my hips and started shaking them back and forth.
“Move your hips, not your whole body. You look like a frozen cadaver when you rock back and forth like that.”
“I’m trying, but this is embarrassing. Finn is just going to laugh.”
“This is not for Finn. This is for you. The point is that you need to feel sexy and confident. That way you don’t have to rely on a man to make you feel that way.”
I sighed. “I guess.”
“Look. After a few…or maybe a hundred…sessions with me, you should be able to walk across a room naked and with full confidence in your womanly power.”
Panic gripped me. “But we’re having dinner alone at his place on Friday,” I blurted out. “On his birthday.”
“Friday? Are you freaking out of your mind? For God’s sake, I’m a stripper, not a miracle worker.”
“Oh, jeez. I knew this was too good to be true. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “Okay, okay. Calm down. We can figure this out. It’s a good thing I made a hair appointment for you tomorrow at five o’clock.”
“What?” I screeched. “Forget the hair. This is about sexual confidence.”
“Appearance is half the battle. The appointment is at Shay’s Hair Salon on Fifth and Main Street. You’d better be there.”
“But I need time to process. To mentally prepare myself for a…a hair appointment.” I could hardly bring myself to say it.
“If you are going to be alone with him on Friday at his place, there is no preparation time. Be there, shut up and let Karen do her magic with your hair. I already told her what I wanted.”
“Oh, God. No hair dye.”
“Highlights. Subtle. And a bikini wax. That’s the deal.”
“Bikini wax?” I scrubbed my hands over my eyes. “I’m not planning on wearing a bikini. We’re having linguine. This is all moving too fast. I’m going to be a train wreck.”
“If you stay calm, we might be able to get you through this. Live with it. It’s just hair.”
I took a deep breath. Sex appeal was harder than facing down crazed terrorists, and I would know it for certain since I’d already done that.
“Okay. What do I do next?”
“Did you do your homework?”
I nodded. “I watched Goldfinger in its entirety and paid special attention to Pussy Galore’s mannerisms, behaviors and words. Just as you instructed.”
“Good. So, why don’t you show me some of what you saw?” She sat on the couch and watched me expectantly.
I closed my eyes and imitated some of the things I’d seen Pussy Galore do on the screen. I sashayed across the room, wiggled my hips, flipped my hair and cocked a hand on my hip before purring, “So, how was that, James?”
Ursula looked at me in astonishment. “How’d you do that?”
“Um, I have an excellent visual memory?”
“Now you tell me? Sit down, shut up and watch me. Memorize my every move and gesture, just like you did for the movie. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Ursula began dancing. She slid her hands up and down her sides, strutted forward, bent over provocatively and whipped her hair around until I thought it might fly off her head. Lifting one leg high in the air, she slid her hands down it and then twirled around and pretended to hump an imaginary pole. It all seemed pointless, but no more than say, the Ride the Elephant in the Wind position I’d read about in the Kama Sutra.
“Okay, you try.” She sat next to me on the couch. “Now remember, you are Pussy Galore, the woman who will seduce James Bond.”
I stood and went to the middle of the living room. Closing my eyes, I remembered what she had done, in what order and how. I added in the Pussy Galore mannerisms as often as I could. I took it step by step and was gratified when she rose and clapped madly when I finished.
“This is a heaven-sent stroke of luck. You’re not half-bad when you do that visualizing thing.”
“I’m not?”
“Well, the point is I’ve got something to work with. Anyway, your next homework assignment is to come to the club tomorrow night and watch me and the other girls dance. You’ll get to see all the moves and then you can visually pick and choose what you think will work to heighten your confidence.” She scrawled an address down on a scrap of paper and pressed it into my hand.
“Sounds easy.”
“It will be.” That’s when she noticed the Kama Sutra lying open on the couch. “Are you going to visualize that?”
“I’m trying. But it doesn’t seem scientifically to scale.”
She laughed. “God, Lexi. I’m so not the voyeuristic type, but I swear I’d pay good money to see you in action.”
I shrugged. “I’m not judgmental. Whatever mode floats your code.”
Chapter 10
I got to the office bright and early the next morning. I’d read through my email and was just about to log in to the STRUT chat room when Basia came bounding in.
“I got an excellent progress report from Ursula,” she said. “Now, that’s the quick study I know.”
“We have to work fast. Finn invited me to dinner at his place on Friday. It’s his birthday.”
“Ooooh. That’s the best news I’ve heard all week. I cannot wait to hear the details.”
I told her what had happened in the utility closet and she clapped her hands when I told her I’d kissed Finn first.
“God, I really did spend every penny wisely.”
After she left, I sipped my stone-cold coffee and logged in to the STRUT chat room. Just a few people chatting about something off-topic. I didn’t have an email from Elvis either, so I supposed neither Grok nor RawMode had made an appearance last night. I was just standing up to go get some more coffee when my phone rang.
“Carmichael.”
“Hey, Lexi,” said Elvis. “Got some news for you.”
“Be still my beating heart.”
“I did a little hacking of my own last night. Between the STRUT chat room and GURPS Robots, I came up with something interesting.”
I felt absurdly touched that Elvis had spent a considerable bit of his own free, not to mention super valuable, time working on this for me. “Really?”
“Yeah. MasterNano last played GURPS from an ID in the same area as Grok last logged in to the STRUT chat room. Just shot the particulars your way if you want t
o go a bit more on it.”
I felt my heart leap. “That’s great, Elvis. You are totally the bomb. I owe you big.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
I printed off the info from Elvis, perched my glasses on my nose and paused. To hack or not to hack? I really needed this information and time was of the essence. It would be extremely risky to do a hack right here from X-Corp and even riskier to do it from my own work station. But jeez, it had to be done and now.
My mind made up, I gathered the materials and went to a guest office. In the highly unlikely event I got traced, no one could pin the hack directly on me. Nonetheless, X-Corp would suffer, so whatever I did, I’d have to do it perfect.
As soon as I got started, I felt the rush of adrenaline I always got when beginning a significant hack. I couldn’t help but savor each stroke, each moment.
“Better than sex, baby.” I remembered Finn’s kiss in the closet. “Well, maybe.”
I spent double the usual effort and time hopping around, making sure I couldn’t be tagged. Then, once I felt secure, I started digging.
The digging is the sweet part, the addictive pull. God, I loved it and realized just how much I missed it. When I hacked, it was me and the virtual world and no one else.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been at it when I finally found what I was looking for.
“Bingo.”
As I had suspected, both internet IDs came from the exact same location in Cambridge.
“Come to Mommy.” I zeroed in on a street address.
Once I had the address, it was a piece of cake to find out who lived there. The name hit me like a ton of bricks.
“Dr. Yan Gu. GU. Damn it. It wasn’t Georgetown University at all.”
I looked up all the information I could find on Dr. Yan Gu. He’d been a faculty member on staff at MIT for eighteen years, single, no children. Not surprisingly, he taught artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. He’d done undergraduate study at Georgetown University, medical school at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and doctoral work at MIT. He had an impressive online body of work including eighty-two scientific articles and papers ranging from nanotechnology in medicine, to biometrics and even the future of synthetic chemistry. Another search turned up a popular series of articles on the dangers of nanotechnology. Clearly a kindred spirit in nanothought with Darren Greening.
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