Data Runner

by Sam A. Patel

“Mmm. Pass the cheese please,” I mutter through a saucy waterfall of spaghetti hanging between my mouth and the bowl. “And the bread too.”

  Martin passes both without looking. The whole of his attention is focused on the data matrix. We haven’t had a chance to chat yet. I’m too hungry and he’s too focused on getting the cargo out of my wing. And is it me or have the holes in these cheese shakers gotten smaller? I rip off the cap and dump a heap of grated Parmesan into my bowl, mix it together, and fill my mouth with the cheesier blend. Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.

  “You have to approach it like a DDx,” says Martin.

  “Yeah, DDx. That sounds good.” I’m not even listening.

  “It’s a block of data, but we know they’re not using modified block cipher mode.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “It would be like making a bomb that you can deactivate by cutting a single red wire. It’s too obvious. So if it’s not modified block cipher, that rules out fourth-generation CCM mode and EAX3 mode.” Martin turns his hand over the thin screen to rotate the data matrix that looks like a golf ball. “It’s not stream cypher either, but it is a dynamic algorithm.”

  I feel my stomach getting too full and have to force myself to stop eating because I don’t want to be sluggish on my feet, just in case I have to run again. I drop my fork into the bowl and push it away. Reconsider. Pull it back and take one more mouthful. One more after that and that’s it. Now I really have to stop. I push it away again.

  Martin notices. “Had enough?” he asks.

  I wipe my mouth with my napkin. “It’s feeding off me like a tapeworm.”

  “It’s not big. The actual cargo is quite small. It’s just very heavily encrypted.”

  “So I guess you found out from Snake?”

  “Found out what?”

  “That I’ve been running data for Arcadian.”

  Martin glances away from his thin screen but only for a second. “Jack, I’ve known about your involvement with Arcadian since the day they first approached you.”

  The surprise of this nearly makes me retract my arm off the table.

  “Easy,” says Martin, steadying the SQUID to keep the connection sound.

  “If you knew, how come you never said anything?”

  “What was there to say? You’re old enough to make your own decisions. If you had asked for my approval, I would have said no. But you didn’t ask, so there was nothing to say.”

  I go into my backpack and remove the torn-up note from the syndicate. Martin’s note for the fifty grand he once owed them. I place it on the table and slide it to him, but he doesn’t give it a second thought. So he knows about that as well. But there is one thing he doesn’t know. “They set you up, you know.”

  Now Martin’s expression is quizzical. “How do you know that?”

  “I saw them doing it to someone else, and then Vlad confirmed it.” I tell Martin all about the rigged shoe. Where I found it and how they used it against him. But again, he doesn’t seem surprised. “You already knew?”

  Martin turns the data matrix and zooms in on a block of gibberish before turning his attention to me. “I did a statistical mapping of the entire session,” he explains. “To put it in context, imagine that the regression for any given run of cards falls somewhere within the atmosphere of Earth. There are anomalies, of course, but they trickle off precipitously once you pass the moon. Extreme anomalies occur somewhere in the orbit of Mars. Beyond that, there are only one or two aberrations that happen as far out as Jupiter, which would be the statistical equivalent of winning the lottery ten times in a row. You know when people say stranger things have happened? That’s usually what they’re talking about. The Jupiter points are the strangest things that have ever happened. In that context, based on the outcome of my game as a function of how much influence I was exerting upon that game, the data set for my session placed it somewhere in the vicinity of Pluto. The math required to describe it was way too astronomical for it to be a random occurrence. Card manipulation was a much simpler explanation. The only thing I didn’t know was how they did it.”

  “So then who’s the French woman from Grumwell?” I ask, figuring he already knows about that too.

  “Pardon?”

  “When Vlad tried to detain me he said he was receiving instructions from a French woman from Grumwell. The same woman who hired him to get leverage over you in the first place, apparently.”

  Martin shakes his head. “That had nothing to do with you. Honestly, I can’t see why she would have wanted to talk to you.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Sandrine something-or-other. She’s the Chief Security Officer of Grumwell. Miles’s right-hand man.”

  “I thought the number-two person after the CEO is usually the Chief Technology Officer.”

  “Usually, yes. But once you become the largest corporation in the world, with the largest GDP in the world, security takes precedence. That’s always the way it is with nation-states, only in this case the nation-state happens to be a private enterprise rather than a geopolitical landmass.”

  “But what does this Sandrine woman have to do with you?” I ask, hoping to avoid another tirade against the evil empire known as Grumwell.

  “Grumwell has been playing a long game until now trying to get me into their fold. Making such a bold move as this must mean their timetable has changed.”

  “Time table for what? What’s going on between you and Grumwell, and what does it have to do with Genie?” Martin stops cold and fixes his eyes on me. Yeah, he’s not the only one who knows stuff. And I can tell he’s impressed.

  “You found the hole, then?”

  I reach into my bag and pull Genie’s Grumwell file from the inside compartment. Slap it down on the table. Martin looks around the eatery nervously, but it’s still just the old woman.

  “Put that away,” he says. “You shouldn’t be carrying it around with you. If Blackburn finds that…”

  “What was I supposed to do, leave it in the hole?”

  “That would have been ideal. If they didn’t find it the first time, that only makes it more secure. They’re not going to go back and search the house again.”

  “These documents,” I say tapping the file, “Genie was high up in Grumwell’s security chain, wasn’t she?”

  “She was the original CSO. She was the reason why Miles Tolan made the CSO his second in command.”

  “And you were okay with this?”

  Martin lifts his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I had no problem with Grumwell at the time. Back then we both thought it was a great opportunity. As a matter of fact, back then Miles and I had our own little arrangement already worked out. Once my MacArthur grant ran out, I was going to go work for Grumwell. Miles was going to set me up in my very own lab, and he was ready to give me the two things people like us crave the most—funding and freedom. The Baxter Lab would have had free reign and a blank check to develop whatever projects I wanted.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Genie. In the course of working alongside Miles Tolan, she learned a few things. One of which was the truth about Grumwell.”

  “What truth?”

  Martin glances up at me, but all I see is the data matrix from his thin screen reflecting in his lenses. “How about we deal with one megacorporation at a time. You’ve got your hands full right now with Blackburn.”

  But still something gnaws at me. Something about the file. About the way it was hidden away in that hole. Something about the way Genie disappeared from my memory all at once—one day there, next day gone—and yet has always been there lurking in the background. A person always chased, even if I never realized I was doing it. The hole in the basement. The trunk line. The file. The optical fiber spliced directly into the aggrenet.

  “Is she Morlock?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Martin?”

  “Yes.”<
br />
  “Is she Moreau?”

  Martin looks at me. “Is that what you think?”

  That’s not a denial. “She is, isn’t she?”

  Martin shakes his head. “No, Genevive Bonillia is not Moreau.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  “How?”

  “You have to trust me.”

  “How, Martin, how? How do you know for sure that Genevive Bonillia is not Moreau?”

  “Because, Jack. It’s me. I’m Moreau.”

  My eyes stay fixed on the man long after he goes back to the hologram.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to figure that out. I suppose you don’t remember, but when you were very young I used to read you H.G. Wells to help you fall asleep.”

  It seems silly in retrospect. How many times had I walked passed Martin’s leather-bound volume of the collected works of H.G. Wells on his bookshelf? Now there isn’t a shred of doubt. I should have known it sooner. Martin Baxter is way too good to have ever been just another Morlock. He would have to be the man who created Morlock. Martin Baxter is Moreau. At the very least it explains why I was never able to find him. It never occurred to me to look for Moreau in my own basement.

  The only question now is why.

  Something occurs to Martin. Not just anything, I recognize that look in his eyes. It’s the flash of inspiration he’s been waiting for. “Hold on,” he says as he implodes the golf ball and blows it up a different way. This is immediately followed by a flurry of virtual movements as he punches keystrokes and manipulates the data matrix into submission, until suddenly I feel the pulses drawing it out of my arm.

  “You got it.”

  Martin nods. “Now let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

  Just Let it All Burn

  29

  Snake presses the accelerator to the floor to get us back to Brentwood as fast as he can even before he knows why he’s doing it. He does it because Martin tells him to. That makes me wonder just how much Snake knows about who Martin really is. In his mind, is Snake taking his cues from Martin Baxter, or is he taking them from Moreau?

  “We already knew it was about the water,” says Red Tail.

  “We knew that Blackburn had these surveys confirming a dozen or so clean water reserves,” I say, “but this file tells us exactly what they intend to do with that information.” The jerky road is too much for my thin screen to generate a stable image, so I switch it out of hologram mode and hand it to Red Tail. “These towns are all halfway suburbs to begin with, so each and every one of them is already suffering from blight. Blackburn’s plan is to finish the job.”

  “Finish how?”

  I reach out and scroll to a random town. “Here they’re going to use the lake to flood them out.” Scroll to the next. “Here they’re going to let the existing power infrastructure fail. It depends upon the town. But at least half of these towns are tied to hydrofracking disasters, and those they’re going to deal with in the exact same way.” I scroll past the other towns to the survey of Brentwood. “They’re going to use the tainted water to burn down the entire town. The entire water supply is already mixed with flammable chemicals and natural gas, so it’s the perfect explosive. All you have to do is open the master valve and flood the town’s pipes with this stuff and voila.” I start the animated graphic to show the hazardous material making its way through the entire town. “Every tap in Brentwood is now an incendiary device. All you need is a match and BOOM.”

  I scroll to the end of the file, to a classified internal communication thread between Blackburn’s Chief Security Officer and the Lieutenant General of the Blackburn Corps of Engineers, cc’d to Christopher Blackburn himself. The details of the first two pages are not what’s important. What is important are the last few lines, which I now blow up and highlight.

  In closing, the Lieutenant General expresses concern over the plan to ignite a series of blazes to burn down several North American suburbs and asks if there isn’t a better way to seize control of the assets.

  And the response from Blackburn’s CSO…no, there isn’t another way. Seizing control of the towns is the only assured way of taking control of the assets. It’s the unfortunate blowback of dire circumstance, but for the good of the company, they have no choice. Just let it all burn.

  “All this just for the water?” says Red Tail.

  I scroll to the chart listing the projections for each water reserve, their combined total, and the estimated market value.

  “Whoa.”

  “We’re not just talking about water here, we’re talking about millions of gallons in revenue. That’s how Blackburn plans to pull themselves out of the financial hole they’re in.” I put the thin screen into hologram mode and isolate the spreadsheet cell containing the market value of all the water combined. It is very long and contains three commas. I give it a flick to spin it around. Snake takes a bump. The number fizzles out. I take the thin screen out of hologram mode. “You know how everyone’s been saying that Blackburn can’t survive without a capital infusion? This is it. This is their capital infusion. Once they burn out the towns, they can use eminent domain to seize both the land and the water rights. Then all they have to do is set up relays with TerraAqua and jackpot! Instant liquidity.”

  Red Tail suddenly notices the thing that got Martin up and running back in the eatery. “These dates,” she says. “These dates are all…”

  “I know.”

  “And Brentwood is the first one on the list…and that’s today.”

  “Can you believe they actually have a schedule for this? Somebody actually sat down and made a timetable for destroying these communities. It’s…” I can’t think of a better word…“Unbelievable.”

  “This is the Complex, Jack. They don’t do anything without a timetable.”

  “So where are we going?” Snake asks.

  I flip the thin screen over to Martin, who pulls up the survey map of Brentwood. Not the simple version we saw before showing the mere the presence of water; this one contains all the layers, including a map of all the water pipes running beneath the town. Martin steadies the thin screen on his fingertips and puts it back in hologram mode. Zooms in and rotates around the old water treatment plant that was shut down after the hydrofracking disaster. “The old water treatment plant. That’s where the cutoff valve is for the town’s pipes. Once they release that and flood the town with flammable water, all they have to do is trigger it.”

  “We can’t let that happen,” Dexter says with resolution.

  “No, we can’t.” I think about Mr. Chupick. About how he turned down his settlement check when everyone else was cashing in. About how he valued his home more than any dollar amount because it was the only thing he had. About how he worked at maintaining our community when so many others couldn’t be bothered. I think about Mr. Chupick’s hope that Brentwood would again be the town it once was, a town where the people themselves would care enough to make it the very best it could be. We are those people: Martin and I, Dexter and his family, our friends at school and all of their families, Mr. Chupick. Brentwood is our town. Our community. “Dragons don’t abandon their home.”

  I turn to Dexter and match his resolve with a fist. “Dragons never run from danger.”

  He pounds it. “Dragons never run in fear.”

  Snake takes his eyes off the road long enough to observe this with admiration. “That’s an honorable code you guys have.”

  “It has to be,” I say. “Sometimes honor is all we have.”

  30

  Snake slow rolls the SUV up the macadam road leading to the old water treatment plant. Thirty yards away, he applies the brakes. A red glow lights up the back of the vehicle as a dim squeal bring us to a stop. No one says anything. We’ve all been trained, independently, to observe our surroundings before making any moves, and that’s what we all do.

  “What do you think?” Martin w
hispers.

  “I don’t like it,” replies Snake. “We’re either too early or too late. Until we know which, it puts us at a disadvantage.” Snake taps the steering wheel with his index finger. He’s obviously trying to come up with the best possible plan. “Agh!” Snake slams his palm into the wheel. The thick of his hand shakes the entire steering column. “We have no choice,” he says, “we have to go in blind.”

  “Okay, so who goes?” Red Tail asks.

  “I’ll go,” I say.

  “No, Jack. You got the last one back at the facility. This one’s on me,” says Dexter.

  “There’s no point in both of us going,” says Martin.

  “Why do you have to go?” I ask.

  “In case we need to jury-rig the electrical,” replies Snake. “If the need arises, he might be the only one who can bring this thing back online.”

  “Understood,” I say, “but let’s do a field recon first before we start bringing in the civilian contractors.” Snake turns around and stares at me over the shoulder of the seat. So does Martin. Dexter and Red Tail both turn to me in the backseat as well. Everybody stares at me. “What?”

  “There’s no need for any of you to go in,” Snake continues.

  “The hell there isn’t,” says Red Tail.

  “You’ll need at least one of us on point,” says Dexter. “Although two would be better.”

  “He’s right,” says Martin. “We’ll need at least three for this.”

  “Okay, so that should be the person with the most field experience,” says Red Tail, knowing that person is obviously her.

  I object while Dexter continues to make his case. It goes on like this for another minute until there isn’t time to argue anymore. And in the end, we all go.

  “This is so stupid,” says Snake as we all get out of the vehicle together.

  Actually, it’s not a bad plan. Red Tail and Dexter are going to circle around and enter through an upper window while we go in through the front. “It’ll work,” I whisper. “Besides, anyone who stays behind is going to be a sitting duck in there.”