The Digital Dream

by Mike Cartlidge

  > I would like to examine some of your program code.

  There is a slight pause, then.

  * Very well. I will display object code, starting at line one. Instructions for reading more code are at the bottom of the screen.

  Immediately, the appearance of the screen changes dramatically. Now, down the left hand side of the display is a list of numbers, next to each of which is a vaguely English-like statement. I read some of them.

  PROCEDURE EN-DOT.

  PERFORM EN-CIPHER.

  ACCEPT EN-SCAP.

  IF EN-SCAP = “X” GO TO EN-END.

  COMPUTE EN-COM=RODON+(SINE(Z))

  “Program code,” I say. “What’s the language?”

  “I don’t know. It’s got elements of various ones I’ve come across. I should be able to find my way around it all right. It will take some time, though.” She smiles up at me. “Frankly, you might as well go and sit on the lakeside for a while. This is just going to be a slow, head-down, concentration job.”

  I can see her point. There was a time when I might have been able to follow the program, too—but it was about ten years ago.

  I kiss the top of her head and stroke her shoulder. For a moment, I can feel her respond to my touch: then she shakes it off and starts to press keys. Smiling, I take her advice and go for a walk along the lakeshore.

  ***

  I return an hour later feeling considerably less relaxed than when I left. For a moment, she ignores my presence, concentrating on the computer screen, but when she glances up the expression on my face stops her dead. Dumbly, I hold out the morning newspaper that I bought during my walk. She takes it and looks at the front page, puzzled.

  “Page four,” I murmur.

  She turns to the inside of the newspaper to find the photograph of me. The photo’s the one featured in the firm’s latest glossy. Langan must have handed it over. The picture is halfway down the page and above it runs the headline “Computer crime expert flees with multi-million dollar haul.”

  Her face shocked, she glances at me and then begins to read. The text tells how I, with one or more accomplices, penetrated the Sligo-McNeil computer systems during the course of a routine security check. The story makes it sound as though the original access was authorized by the corporation and that I had taken advantage of this trust.

  It goes on to claim that “many millions of dollars” have been fraudulently diverted from the Sligo-McNeil accounting systems into bank accounts held by me and, possibly, unidentified accomplices. The fraud, it says, was discovered by one of the company’s internal auditors and details have been given to the police.

  The item goes on to say that I escaped from custody yesterday and am now believed to be on the run. It also gives a description of me and details of my career and position with the firm. Michelle, described as my ex-wife, is quoted as saying that she was shocked to hear that her former husband was on the run but that she had noticed that I was acting strangely in recent weeks.

  I guess it’s when Kathleen reaches the last paragraph that it really seems to scream from the page at her. I look over her shoulder as she reads:

  “The FBI are now investigating the allegations and say that they are anxious to interview a coworker of Ross’s, who they believe may be traveling with him. Her name is Kathleen Hennessey and she is described as a native of Chicago, twenty-seven years old....”

  It goes on to give a full description of her. Seeing her face, I crouch and put my arms around her.

  “What have I got you into? I’m so sorry...”

  She reaches up and grasps my wrist. “Don’t be silly. This isn’t your fault.” She bites her lip. “The worst thing is that my family will read this. God knows what they’ll think. And my husband...”

  “Your husband? I can’t see how he would have any claim…”

  “You just don’t understand, do you? He’s still my husband and always will be while we’re both still alive. I’m betraying my marriage vows.”

  “But he’s…”

  “And,” she interrupts, “I’m betraying my religion.” But her actions belie the anger in her words and she turns her face into my chest and holds me tightly for a moment. Then I feel her stiffen and she pulls away from me once more. I can see that her face is again composed. Logic re-established.

  “I’d better carry on with what I was doing.”

  I’m full of concern for her. “Stop for a while. I’ll make us some coffee...”

  “No.” Again I’m struck by the courage in her voice. “I think our only hope is to follow this through and try to beat it. I’m not going to lose a second after this.”

  I know her well enough by now to know that it will be futile to argue.

  ***

  Several times during the day I stroll back to where she’s crouched over the humming laptop but, apart from pausing to eat a sandwich at lunchtime, she refuses to break from her concentrated assault on the computer system. By mid-afternoon, I give up and walk back along the lakeshore. The sun has disappeared behind gathering cloud and the lake is becoming restless. A few hundred yards from the house, a couple of the local inhabitants are dragging a rowing boat with a small outboard motor up onto the sand above the high-tide mark. Dropping the oars into the boat, leaning fishing rods against their shoulders, they stroll off into one of the large, architect-designed houses, laughing and talking about the beers they’re planning to enjoy. I find myself envying their apparently carefree existence.

  ***

  It’s early evening by the time Kathleen starts to sound as though she’s making progress. By this time, the lines of English-like statements have disappeared from the screen, to be replaced by apparently meaningless strings of characters. Kathleen explains that this is machine code, a level of programming lower than the one that we were looking at before, and the one that the computer uses to do its actual “thinking.” She has been mapping the system’s functions onto several large sheets of white paper that lie now, scattered over the floor.

  I look at my watch. It’s past six.

  “You must be exhausted,” I say to her.

  She pauses for a moment and stretches her arms above her head. I realize how much the action excites me and catch her arms, sliding my hands down to her shoulders and breasts. Again, I feel her start to respond and, again, she pulls my hands away from her.

  “Wait a while longer. I’m in the middle of something.” She, too, glances at the time. “I’ll finish soon. Promise.”

  I look again at the screen. “Where have you got up to?”

  “I’m nearly there. Have been for a while now. I just need to follow this routine through and I think I can make a change to Bambi’s programming that will put the little bastard right where we want him.”

  “Get to it then. I’ll make myself useful in the kitchen again.” I wander to the other end of the cottage.

  Barely minutes later, I hear her exclamation. Hurrying through, I can see that the English-like lines are back on the screen and that she is flipping though page after page of them.

  “I think I’ve done it,” she says calmly. “I’ve found a way to over-ride all the controls in the system. Any other time we access the machine, we’ve just got to give it a special password and it will have to do whatever we want.”

  “That’s great,” I say. “What’s the password?”

  “Oh,” she replies, looking embarrassed. “It’s, er, little bastard.”

  “Oh. Sounds sensible.” I peer again at the screen. “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m just checking what the thing’s up to. All the time I’ve been rummaging about inside it, Bambi has been continuing to work. At any one time, there have been four or five other people talking to it. None of them will have been aware of me, though.”

  She stops talking and frowns at the screen.

  “That’s strange. I thought the last of the other users had cleared off the system. There’s still something going on. Wait a minute.”

  She
presses keys and the display changes back to the blank screen. She types:

  > Little bastard

  * Yes. I’m here.

  > What other users are there on the system?

  * There are no other users.

  She frowns. “Something else is going on in there.” Again, she punches keys.

  > What other activity is going on in the system?

  * Only my activity.

  > What are you doing?

  * I am monitoring the on-going illegal access.

  I can feel the shock hang in the air between us.

  > What illegal access?

  * The illegal access that came from your terminal.

  > What have you done about it?

  * I have been working at tracing its location through the telecommunications system.

  > Have you succeeded in tracing it?

  * Yes.

  11

  David Sligo is in his city apartment relaxing after that afternoon’s regular videoconference meeting of the Dream Committee. The session had been tense at times, for reasons he has trouble understanding. Progress is still good; they are on schedule and everything is going according to plan.

  Most encouraging has been a further report from Senator Phillip Wright, based on information gathered from a score of his Washington contacts, about the extent of their covert support in congress, the fruit of years of careful seeding. They can now count on support from influential members of both houses, including key members of the House Ways and Means Committee and key Senate committees on defense, housing, commerce, science and technology and government operations. Most importantly, of course, Wright himself is chairman of the all-powerful Senate Finance Committee. Influence can be brought to bear through special interest groups and their accompanying lobbyists. Moreover, a series of rising members of the House of Representatives and the Senate itself can be counted on to support their cause. These people have, over some years, been given financial assistance, some because of difficulties they have brought upon themselves, others because their funds would not stretch to the increasing cost of modern democracy, but most, thinks Sligo, because they are plain greedy.

  And it’s not just money that’s been spread around. Other favors. Influence brought to bear to prevent prosecution for shady business dealings. Avoidance of scandals arising from marital indiscretions. Suppression of newspaper reports about unwise homosexual liaisons. Sligo shakes his head in disgust at the weaknesses of those who would lead us. To err and to be stupid enough to be caught... The handful of politicians who have been trapped accepting illegal favors in return for lobbying on behalf of some pressure group are just the few who fall by the wayside. The Committee’s plans have been more careful, more far-reaching. Favors. The life-blood of politics. Soon the time will come when they would start to collect on those favors.

  Nevertheless, the atmosphere in the Committee meeting was strained: he puts it down to increased nerves as the project nears completion and he wonders for the hundredth time if he was right to involve Peter Dennis, who seems the most prone to stress. At times he’d had trouble containing his irritation and by the end of the meeting he’d needed a break.

  Relaxation had come, finally, even though it was in bursts of energy that would have exhausted other men. He has always been over-sexed: he accepts it as part and parcel of the extraordinary qualities that have catapulted him to the top of one of the biggest industrial combines in the world. His drives caused problems when he was younger. When he was fourteen, he impregnated an older girl, an eighteen year old from the small town in Florida where he stayed with his family during school holidays. His father smoothed over any unpleasantness arising from that incident, reacting with a mixture of distaste and sneaking pride in his son, and the girl was sent off to live with relatives in Tampa Bay with an allowance that would support her for life. The affair, however, did nothing to divert the youthful David from the pursuit of his desires. On his return to school he fell into the habit of sneaking out at nights and he was a regular client of one of the district’s more select establishments for young gentlemen in need of comfort and relief.

  He is a pragmatist who has long since given up trying to fight his nature. He has only one self-imposed rule, which goes back to his semi-legendary status at school. He never talks about his exploits. He is a model of discretion.

  He looks at the Filipino girl lying asleep beside him. She was supposed to have been a virgin. Indeed, there was a trace of blood on the sheets after the first time. He knows too much of the tricks of professional women to accept it entirely, but avoids questioning it too closely. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to believe. For a virgin, though, the girl has adapted rather quickly to certain techniques he favors and she has rapidly adjusted to the presence of the other girls.

  He’s drifting when the buzzer goes and it takes him a moment to realize what it is. The blonde—one of his more regular playthings—rises from the other side of the enormous bed and reaches for the pager on the dresser, handing it over to him with a cheeky smirk. He looks at the message displayed on the tiny screen.

  “Oh, damn! Excuse me.” He pushes the Filipino girl to one side and rolls off the bed. Muttering under his breath, he wraps a toweling robe around him and walks through into the living room. The computer screen is normally concealed in a large desk: when he presses buttons, a section in the top of the desk slides to one side and the terminal glides upwards.

  He sits down at the desk and uses the keyboard. His hand reaches to the birthmark on his face as he concentrates on the words appearing on the screen. After a few seconds his face splits into a wolfish grin and he curses triumphantly under his breath. He presses more keys and the display on the screen splits into quarters. In the top right-hand corner, a face appears and starts to speak quickly and softly.

  When David Sligo returns to the bedroom several minutes later, his face is flushed with satisfaction under his customary tan. The Filipino girl looks up at him from where she lies on the bed. She looks at his groin as he unfastens the robe and, grinning, licks her lips. Virgin! he thinks.

  “Sorry, ladies, fun’s over.” He slaps the girl impatiently on her naked butt. “Come on, I’ve got to be going.” The blonde, who’s seen it all before, pouts and opens the closet to hand him a shirt.

  The news is good. He congratulates himself, taking pleasure as always from seeing the results of his strategies come to pass. The plan for neutralizing the only remaining threat to the integrity of their system has now been put in place. The ease with which the right connections have been made is most encouraging. Mr Andrew Ross is in for an unpleasant surprise...

  12

  I hurry out of the front door of the cottage and down the rough drive. At the road, I push myself into the dense hedge and look around cautiously. The quiet lakeside street is deserted except for several small boys crossing further down on their way back from the shore. I see one of the boys shiver and pull his jacket further around his body: it’s clouded over again and the temperature is dropping. When I go back into the cottage, Kathleen is standing in the middle of the living room, waiting for me to speak.

  “The street’s quiet,” I tell her. “But I think we should expect the worst.”

  “Do you think we should leave here?”

  “I think we’d better. Let’s get ourselves packed up. We can work out where we’re going once we’re on the road.”

  We hurriedly bundle our clothes into carrier bags and load them into the back of Kathleen’s small hatchback. By the time we have folded the laptop computer and carried it to the car, the darkness is gathering around us. I’m about to walk back to the cottage to turn out the lights when I sense Kathleen stop and listen.

  “What?”

  “I think I heard a car....”

  I listen. The night is still and I can hear the sound of an engine, down the road, moving slowly towards us. “We’re probably being paranoid,” I say, “but I guess we have to be careful.”

  I jog back
down the drive. Coming to the road, I again take cover behind the hedge and peer along the road. What I see makes me jerk my head back: there are two cars, not one, and they are crawling slowly down the street as if they’re looking for a house number. Neither car is showing lights, although by now the sun is well over the horizon and clouds have drifted overhead to cut off the moonlight. However, I can see enough in the glow of a lone streetlight. The first car is a ten-year-old Lincoln with a dented front fender and patches of gray primer paint along its side. The car behind it is a big old Ford. Neither vehicle looks exactly respectable.

  I run back down the drive and grab Kathleen’s arm.

  “I may be over-reacting but I think we’ve got trouble.”

  I look quickly around and then start to propel her towards the muddy beach and along the shore. Holding hands, we run fifty yards and then cut back inland, where we squat down behind a clump of tussock grass, both of us panting lightly from the sudden exertion.

  Seconds later, we hear the sound of knuckles rapping on the door of the cottage. I risk putting my head up to see what’s happening and make out movement against the cottage lights. I duck back down and whisper to Kathleen.

  “There are two of them at the door. I suspect there’s more of them in the yard, but they’re keeping out of sight.”

  “Do they look like police?”

  “Not exactly.” I hold back from telling her that they look more like the bikers who attacked me in the park, back in the city.

  There comes the sound of knocking again: this time it’s louder and more insistent. As I look over the grass once more, I see a man with a tattered jacket and torn jeans try the door. Finding it unlocked, the man edges cautiously in. His companion beckons at four other figures who run quietly to the door. They all follow the first man into the cottage.