The Digital Dream

by Mike Cartlidge

  He’s sweating too much for his fingers to grip. They slip off the smooth control lever. He looks behind himself again to check on Estrada. Anger surges as he sees the other man standing stupidly in the middle of the room, back turned towards him. He screams. “Estrada. For Christ’s sake, move it!”

  The other man remains still. He’ll have to close down the air conditioning himself, but first he has to seal the door. He turns back to its smooth surface, his wet hands scrabbling to find a purchase. At last, the lever begins to move.

  He hears movement behind him. A hand reaches past him and tries to pull his away from the metal. He presses harder but his damp flesh slips again. The other hand pushes the lever back to its original position and pulls inwards. The door starts to open.

  Hendriks turns to the other man, his mouth opening in protest. His words die in his throat as he sees the insanity in the technician’s eye. Hope dies in his heart as he sees the bloody weal on Estrada’s cheek and the foam on his lips.

  He slips and falls onto his back. Sprawled on the floor, he tries to grab Estrada’s foot but the man kicks out at him, connecting with the side of his head. In an instant, the other man is out of the laboratory and into the corridor. Standing in the hallway, his back arches and he gives a low screech, head thrust back, arms flailing, before staggering and running away.

  Hendriks feels the itching again. It’s spread to his cheeks and neck now. It’s unbearable. If he doesn’t scratch, he’ll go crazy. His fingernails gouge his flesh, bringing him some desperate relief. He tries to think. Rebecca... Somehow he must protect her. The office at the end of the corridor has a computer system...

  He pulls bloodied hands away from his face, staring with terror at the red flesh under his fingernails. Somehow he manages to direct his feet along the hall.

  The office is empty. The computer is on. He will have to re-enter his ID and passwords before he can send a message. He wonders if he can do it before he passes out.

  9

  USENET-A CHAT SESSION NUMBER 7246-E3. MESSAGES RECORDED AT ***.**.**.

  UNDERDOGG I’ve lost the connect!!! What the fuck’s happening? Talk to me, man.

  STRYKA Something’s going down. There’s someone else into the net. They’re trying to fuck with us, man.

  UNDERDOGG Wot’s the man doing?

  STRYKA Cool. He says he’s gonna stick it to ‘em, man. Says he wants me to help him. Chill out. We’re dealing. This prick’s gonna get the scare of his life. :-)

  10

  Kathleen points to a line on the second screen. “This is a message from a laboratory computer system somewhere in Adobe Flats,” she says. “It’s sending something called a code RED-A.”

  “Sending where?”

  “I don’t know. There’s another network address but it doesn’t tell me anything.”

  I shake my head and try to think clearly. “The message sounds hot. Maybe we should remove the blocker message so that it will get through to wherever it’s intended to go.”

  “Maybe,” Kathleen replies. “The only thing is, if we do that, whoever else is using the system will become aware of us. That might mean that we’ll never be able to trace them.”

  “Still, if...”

  I pause. Another message appears on the screen. Kathleen scans it quickly, trying to translate it for me as she goes. I see her eyes widen.

  “This is another message from Adobe Flats,” she says. “It’s not about code reds or anything. The sender is trying to tell someone that they’ve had an outbreak of something. A8811, if that means anything to you.”

  Not a fucking thing but it sounds not nice. Shit. Another message appears. Kathleen keeps translating.

  “Same sender. He sounds desperate. He says he thinks he’s infected and that the contamination would have spread within the building. He’s saying that the site has to be sealed off before anyone can carry the infection to the outside.”

  Another message. She continues to read.

  “Sounds crazy, as though he’s gone over the top. Something about outside infection and quarantine. And someone called Rebecca. An outbreak of... I can’t make sense of it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say urgently. “We’ve got to clear the blocker and let those messages get through to wherever they’re supposed to go.”

  She looks up at me desperately. “I don’t know if I can do that. All I can do is receive messages from the mutated virus. It doesn’t allow me to...”

  “Reprogram it. Send it out to kill the blocker messages.”

  I guess she doesn’t realize that she’s doing it, but she places a hand on my arm. She stares at me, thinking. I’ve enough sense to keep quiet. After a few moments, she shakes her head as if she’s trying to clear her brain.

  “There might be a way,” she says. “My god, I’m going to have to work fast.”

  Her hand leaves mine and starts to press keys. Lines of program code appear on the first of the video displays. “I’m changing the virus to allow it to attach itself to any message it finds and send a message back to me. Then, if I tell it to, it will disable the message. That is, I think it will. There’ll be no time to test this thing.”

  I sit back again and watch her as she bites her lip, concentrating. I check the watch. It’s four minutes before she leans back and looks at me.

  “Don’t know if it will work, but...”

  “Set it loose.”

  She presses the Enter key and sits tensely, waiting. The second screen goes blank again for a moment. We peer at it anxiously. The messages start to reappear. This time, a bright asterisk shape appears next to the first. Kathleen presses a key and it moves to the next message down.

  “This is the blocker,” she says. “I’m going to tell the virus to kill it.”

  She presses the K button and waits. After a few moments, the asterisked message winks out. The bright asterisk moves to the next message.

  “I just hope we’re in time,” she mutters. “If this is for real, can you imagine what those people at that Adobe Flats place could be going through?”

  Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it.

  She deletes other messages, then looks at me. “That’s all the blockers. The messages from Adobe Flats will be going through now.”

  “What next, I wonder?”

  “Probably a message back to somewhere in Adobe Flats to start off the quarantine exercise. We can watch for it...”

  “What about whoever sent the blocker? Will they know what we’ve done?”

  “It depends. If they have a facility for scanning messages, like we have here, they’ll know something happened.”

  There’s another flicker of light on the screen. Kathleen leans forward. “That’s a return message to the system in Adobe Flats. Probably, it’s to tell them that... Damn!” she says.

  Another line has appeared on the screen.

  “Another blocker?”

  “Yes,” Kathleen breathes. “I’ll need to kill it before...”

  She gasps as the format of the lines on the screen changes. This time, I can read the latest message.

  o WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?

  “You were right. Someone is able to see what we are doing,” I say quietly.

  “What do we do now?” she asks.

  “Damned if I know. Can we send a message back?”

  “I suppose so.”

  I lean over her shoulder and type.

  * WE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

  o THEY CALL ME STRYKA, MAN. NOW GO FUCK YOURSELF. THIS IS MY SCENE. IF YOU DON’T GET OFF OUR SYSTEM YOU’RE GOING TO BE REAL SORRY.

  * YOU’RE TOO LATE. WE’VE FREED THE MESSAGES YOU WERE BLOCKING.

  o NO, DUDE. IT’S YOU WHO’S TOO LATE. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT WE CAN DO.

  Nice guy. I turn to Kathleen. “Can you use the virus to trace whoever this is?”

  She thinks for a moment. “I think so. I’ll clear the system on the first terminal and try. You’ll still be able to send messages on the other system. Fi
rst, I’m going to clear the message back to Adobe Flats that they’re currently blocking.”

  She presses the K key once more and the blocker message winks out. Within seconds, another message appears at the bottom of the second screen.

  o I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THAT, MAN. NOW I’M REALLY PISSED. GET OFF THE SYSTEM NOW.

  * NOT A CHANCE.

  o THEN WATCH OUT, FUCKER. COS WE’LL BE AFTER YOU.

  The screen goes blank. Kathleen glances at me. “They’ve broken the connection,” she says quietly.

  11

  The Director is a worried man. The delegation of visitors walks across the tree-lined park towards the Microbiological Research Establishment building. Two members of the House Ways and Means Committee and their entourage, fact-finding, being shown the edited highlights. Funding is going to be an issue again this year and there are the inevitable questions about why the US is still investing so heavily in chemical and germ-warfare research in these post-cold war days. There are questions, too, about whether the intent of the establishment is really just defense, as they always maintain, or something more sinister.

  The Director beams at his guests as they pass the soldiers at the guard post and enter the gates of the compound. Low buildings on either side. They stroll through into the square in front of the main building. Tidy lawns lie beyond, with traces of exposed soil where gophers, impossible to deter, burrow under the high wire fence. Two of the damned creatures are out there now, nibbling on the grass. He can see the little fuckers. Wishes he had a gun. Past the wire, he can see the open stretches of the ranges and more distant farmland and stretches of trees. It looks deceptively peaceful.

  He hopes the scientists will be on their best behavior. They’re an unpredictable bunch at the best of times. He hopes to God that nobody will embarrass him. He keeps talking as he saunters along beside the soldiers, emphasizing once again that all research conducted on the campus is meant for defensive purposes. “I know the press never want to believe it,” he’s saying, “ but the stories of mass-destruction weapons are much...”

  He is interrupted by the first of the screams. Its volume is muted by walls and windows but its edge of horror is unmistakable. He stops, stunned. He senses the shocked reaction of the politicians. His first conscious thoughts are again of embarrassment. Not another practical joke by the laboratory people. Please, not that. Not now.

  12

  “What now?” Kathleen asks.

  “Nothing much we can do,” I reply. “Let’s hope the situation in Adobe Flats isn’t too bad. What about the hacker? This Stryka? Can you find out anything about him?”

  Her eyes go back to the display, which has now reverted to its earlier format. She presses keys and messages reappear on the second screen. “These aren’t current messages. They’re just recordings of the ones we’ve already seen.” She peers closely, deciphering codes. “Yes. I can see where he’s coming from. The way the system works, it’s like there’s an audit trail of accesses. Each message sent on the email system goes through any number of servers in the network. So, you can follow a message back to whatever computer in the network last switched it. And from there to the previous system, and so on. It’s odd, though. At times the system seems to show me some alternate network address, and then it disappears. It’s as if there’s someone else around but my program can’t seem to...”

  “Could that be this Robert O’Regan character?”

  She shrugs. “It’s possible, I suppose, but I can’t be sure.”

  “What about the guy you could detect? Can we trace him back to source? Can we find out who he is?”

  “You may be able to through your telephone company contacts.” She looks from the screen to my face. “This character’s not actually that smart. I should be able to trace his calls back to origin. If he’s using a dial-up connection, I’ll be able to get through his Internet Service Provider to his phone number.”

  “That’ll do. We’d better call the FBI. They can handle it through the phone companies.” I reach across the table and pick up the telephone. To my surprise, she places her hand on mine.

  “We’d better think this out first.”

  “Meaning?”

  “What we’ve come across here may be an act of terrorism. We don’t know how many people are really involved. This hunch I have that there’s someone else... It’s kind of sinister.”

  “If you think Stryka isn’t really that clever, I suppose it could stand to reason that someone is helping him.”

  “Until we know, it might be better if we don’t get ourselves involved. Stryka threatened us. We could become a target.”

  “We can’t just stand by...”

  “I didn’t mean that we should. But there are other ways in which we can let the FBI have the information we hold.”

  “Like?”

  She pats the screen. “One of the systems tied into the phantom network belongs to them.”

  13

  In front of them, the main door of the building bursts open. A military policeman staggers backwards through it, onto the tarmac of the square. For a moment, the Director is distracted. Then he becomes aware of movement behind the soldier. He looks up as the apparition moves into full view. A second scream splits the quiet of the plain. This time nothing muffles the sound or the dread. The gophers grazing by the barbed wire fence dive for their burrows. The Director stumbles backwards, sending one of the other soldiers sprawling onto his back.

  It is hard to tell who the figure is. Or had been, thinks the Director. The face is a mass of sores, blood running from flesh that seems to have shed all skin. The chest is exposed where the man has clawed away his shirt and the veins and muscles are sickeningly visible. Incongruously, the man clutches a giant Teddy Bear in one of his hands. As the small party watches, transfixed with horror, the figure screams again, the toy bear dropping to the ground, the hands rising to the face, fingers scratching as if the victim is tormented by an itch too terrible to ignore. The Director feels his breakfast rise in his gorge. He wants to look away but is powerless to do so. He’s transfixed by the enormity of what he’s watching as the victim’s fingers penetrate the exposed flesh on the face and a gob of meat comes away, causing a mad, demented eye to sag onto the exposed cheekbone.

  The Director feels a bump as a congressman pushes against him, then staggers past, breaking into a run as he makes for the gate.

  The bloody figure screams again and sinks to its knees. The hands scrabble on the ground and reach pathetically for the Teddy Bear, pulling it towards the ruined chest. The scream bubbles downwards to a whimper. The Director looks between the gory apparition and the fleeing figure of the politician. His mind weaves incongruous circles. Fucking scientists, he’s thinking. Fucking bastards. Always pulling something. Always showing me up.

  He stops. A different thought. Unwanted logic returning. He wonders whether he’s already contagious.

  14

  We send the message to the FBI machine, carefully disguising it so that its origins will be untraceable. Afterwards, we sit in the small office, feeling drained, both of us suddenly unable to think clearly.

  There’s nothing more we can do. It’s time we were out of here. I offer to drive her home again. We walk down to street level like zombies. Find the car. Pedestrians pass by. We ignore them. Climb inside, close the doors, start the engine.

  Again, we share the intimacy of the ride in the small car. The conversation is less relaxed than when we rode this way two nights earlier, both of us wondering whether this is reality or a dream. It’s all too much to believe. When we compare thoughts, we discover that we’re sharing the same feelings of denial. What seemed to happen at Adobe Flats must have been a drill or a joke in bad taste.

  As we pass the inner suburbs, I turn the car radio on but the news programs contain no mention of incidents at government research establishments. A good sign. Maybe.

  In time, as the car leaves the freeway and starts to growl its way through suburban stree
ts, the strangeness of the past few hours begins to come under control. Other feelings, no less awkward, replace it. The small world inside the Morgan forces us together. Conversation ceases. I glance at her. She’s sitting with her hands resting in her lap and her eyes on the road ahead. I realize that I don’t want this journey to end: that I don’t want to be separated from her today. I realize also that my reluctance to be parted from her is only partly due to the paranoia of the day. Better not to explore the other motivations. I wonder uneasily if she feels the same way.

  When we pull up in the quiet suburban street, she hesitates before opening the car door. When she turns towards me, I smile tentative reassurance. I want to reach out and touch her cheek. Self-discipline holds me back. I wonder what her reaction would be. I figure I detect something close to confusion in her eyes. She seems about to say something, then thinks better of it and climbs out of the car and walks to the front door of the house. I sit in the car and watch until she has the door open before gunning the car engine and heading back towards the city.

  15

  She hears her father call from her parent’s bedroom as she negotiates the stairs.

  “Kathleen? Is that you home, yourself?

  “Yes, Dad. Everything’s fine. It’s just me.”

  In the privacy of her room, she crosses to the window but she’s too late to see the old Morgan turn at the end of the street. She feels strange, dislocated. It’s the intensity of the day’s strange work, she tells herself. When she locks minds with the system, it’s as though time stops and the outside world doesn’t exist. She wants to deny the potential horror of what may have happened, but that isn’t all. She wants to deny the way she feels.