Evil Genius

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘Let’s start with the “Provocation” statute –’

  Suddenly, the lights flickered. There was a muffled boom. And with a fierce little hiss, the sprinklers on the ceiling began to spray the whole room with water.

  Cadel gasped. The water was very cold.

  ‘Oh, for Chrissake,’ Dr Deal exclaimed in disgust. He grabbed his briefcase, trying to shield himself with it. ‘Come on, everyone, we’ll do this in C-block.’

  ‘But – but what’s going on?’ Abraham Coggins stammered.

  ‘Christ knows. Bomb, probably. Or some idiot pyrogenic.’ Dr Deal seemed unconcerned.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Come on, will you? I paid three thousand dollars for this suit! I’m not about to stand here and let it get ruined!’

  SIXTEEN

  At lunchtime, Cadel found himself trooping off to the refectory with the rest of first year. He didn’t have much choice; no one had provided him with a packed lunch. And because the refectory was almost full, he was forced to sit with his classmates, who reserved a table near the kitchen door.

  Cadel was still damp in places, even after standing under the hand-dryers in the toilets for ten minutes. So he ordered a hot chocolate with his ham and cheese focaccia. The twins shared a salad sandwich. Abraham picked at a sausage roll, and Doris ate her way steadily through a meat pie, chips and vegetables, followed by a large chocolate-chip muffin.

  Gazo didn’t stay to eat. He took a meal back to his bedroom, where he was allowed to take off his headpiece and breathing apparatus.

  Clive was the last of their group to sit down, having spent some minutes, after collecting his plate of chips, in conversation with the gum-chewing, blank-faced woman behind the cash register.

  ‘It was a pyro,’ he informed his classmates, when he joined them. ‘She self-combusted, up in the labs. That’s why the sprinklers went off.’

  ‘Gross,’ said Ni, making a face, and Abraham remarked: ‘It wouldn’t have been a bomb. They have regular bomb sweeps.’

  ‘Who says?’ Clive queried aggressively. Abraham sighed.

  ‘Didn’t you read your handbook?’ he said. ‘It tells you right at the front. In capital letters.’

  ‘Perhaps he can’t read,’ said Jem. Clive stopped chewing, and fixed her with a venomous look.

  ‘You better watch your back, sweetheart,’ he hissed, spraying the table with fragments of chewed potato, ‘or you’ll find a knife in it.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Like you could smuggle a knife into this place,’ Jem taunted. ‘I don’t think so, Bludger.’

  ‘I’m not the Bludgeon any more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not the Bludgeon any more. I’m calling myself the Scourge.’

  ‘The Scourge?’ Jem echoed.

  ‘Yuk!’ cried her twin. ‘That’s disgusting.’

  Clive was taken aback. ‘What do you mean?’ he spluttered. ‘There’s nothing disgusting about it.’

  ‘The scourge!’ Ni shrilled. ‘That’s a disease!’

  ‘It is not!’

  ‘Is so! It’s some horrible skin thing – isn’t it? Jem? It’s sores and things, isn’t it? Lots of pus.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Clive protested. ‘It’s a weapon.’

  ‘It’s a whip,’ said Abraham, wearily. ‘It’s another word for a whip. Also for an agent of punishment, or destruction.’

  ‘There! You see?’ Clive was triumphant. ‘The Scourge. That’s my new name.’

  ‘Well I think it sounds revolting,’ said Jem. ‘It sounds like something you’d clean out of your nose.’

  ‘Like gunge,’ Ni agreed. ‘Or Scrooge. I think I’ll call him Scrooge. You can tell he’s mean. I bet he won’t even give me one of his chips.’

  ‘Buy your own bloody chips,’ Clive growled, shielding his plate.

  ‘And get fat? No thank you.’

  ‘What’s your real name, anyway?’ Abraham suddenly asked Clive. He had pushed aside his sausage roll; it was almost untouched. ‘Why can’t you use your real name, for God’s sake?’

  Cadel blinked, before remembering that no one else in the class had access to the kind of background information available to himself and Thaddeus Roth.

  Clive scowled at this point. ‘I’m not telling you my real name,’ he spat.

  ‘Why not?’ said Abraham. ‘What is it, Ivor Bigbum or something?’

  The twins squealed with laughter. Clive turned red. He lunged for Abraham, who jerked back and fell off his chair. The twins nearly fell off their own chairs, they were laughing so hard. ‘Shut your face!’ Clive roared. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my name! But I’m not stupid enough to use it, not professionally! Jesus, don’t you know anything?’ He glared around the table as Abraham staggered to his feet and picked up his chair. ‘Most of the staff here have an alias.’

  ‘One of the staff members is an Alias,’ Abraham muttered, but Clive ignored him.

  ‘If you lot have any sense, you’ll pick a new name,’ Clive went on. ‘Like me. The Scourge isn’t just a name – it’s a way of life. It sums up what I am.’

  ‘Which is?’ Jem wanted to know, and Clive bared his teeth at her.

  ‘Hell on wheels,’ he rejoined, brusquely.

  ‘Hell On Wheels.’ She cocked her head, savouring the term. ‘H.O.W. How. Maybe I’ll call you How. No – Howie.’

  ‘I’m the Scourge.’

  ‘Seriously, pet, I wouldn’t use that one. It sounds too icky. It sounds like “scrounge”. Why don’t you use something else?’ Jem pulled at her bottom lip, concentrating fiercely. ‘What about . . . let’s see . . .’

  ‘Big Dog?’ Ni suggested.

  ‘No – the Terminator!’ Jem cried.

  ‘It’s been done, stupid,’ her sister pointed out.

  ‘The Decimator, then. What about the Decimator?’

  They both giggled, but Clive seemed struck by the name. ‘The Decimator,’ he repeated, pensively. ‘The Decimator . . .’

  ‘It’s you!’ Jem exclaimed. ‘It’s so you, you big hunk!’

  More giggling. Abraham cast his eyes to heaven. Kunio blinked, uncomprehending, and Doris munched away, looking glum.

  Cadel cleared his throat.

  ‘Um. . .’ he began, and hesitated. All eyes turned in his direction.

  ‘What?’ barked Clive.

  ‘Well, I just thought you ought to know . . .’ Cadel took a deep breath. ‘The proper definition of “decimate” is to kill one in ten. I don’t know if that’s what you’re intending to do,’ he said, glancing at Clive.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Oh,’ said Clive. ‘Well that’s no good, then.’

  ‘You’ll have to think of something else,’ Jem observed, and rose to depart. Her sister did likewise. Abraham, who had also finished, lurched to his feet and leaned across to clap Cadel on the shoulder. ‘Nice to know there’s someone else here with brains,’ he said. Abraham didn’t linger, though; in fact within sixty seconds Cadel was alone at the table, except for Doris, who sat at the far end slurping down a cup of tea.

  She exuded an air of quiet menace. Not wishing to talk to her, Cadel soon got up, and hurried away to attend his first Infiltration class.

  This class was the one that interested him the most. He was eager to talk to Dr Vee again – eager to judge the depth and range of his teacher’s expertise. It was really because of the Virus that he had decided to enrol at the Axis Institute. Embezzlement didn’t interest him; he was only doing it to please Thaddeus. Forgery would be fun, and Law would be useful, but since Cadel didn’t particularly care for his fellow students, he wouldn’t be enjoying either course as much as Thaddeus probably hoped. Clive and Gazo were frankly dumb. The twins were tricky. Doris was frightening. Naturally, Cadel understood that his father had plans for him – plans that for some reason required a stint at the Axis Institute. Well, that was all right. Cadel didn’t mind, as long as he had his Infiltration classes to keep him happy.

  When he reached Hardware
Heaven, however, he discovered that the Virus was not there.

  ‘He comes and goes,’ explained one of the students who had already arrived. He was a sloppy-looking person, about eighteen or nineteen, with a long, bristly jaw, shaggy brown hair falling into his eyes, and grubby clothes that seemed to be in the process of sliding off him. He introduced himself as ‘Sark, like in Cutty’, and the young man near him as Com. Com was pudgy and wore glasses. His black, shiny hair was cut in a straight line all around his head, just above ear level. He didn’t look at Cadel, or speak to him.

  ‘Com’s not really human,’ Sark explained. ‘I think he’s forgotten how to talk. He relates best to computers, don’t you, Com?’

  No response.

  ‘He spends most of his time here,’ Sark added, flicking a paper clip at the oblivious Com. It bounced off his shoulder.

  ‘Um – have I got the right time?’ Cadel queried. ‘I thought I had a class at two.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t worry much about classes around this place.’ Sark was folded up in his wobbly typist’s chair, his feet propped against the edge of his desktop. He wore grimy, ragged sneakers, one of them tied with a thin piece of cable. ‘When the Virus shows up, we generally discuss a few things. Otherwise we just plug away at our own stuff.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘My personal goal is to create a super-hacker,’ Sark went on. ‘A program that will do all my hacking for me.’

  Com clicked his tongue. For an instant, Cadel thought that the noise had come from Com’s hardware.

  ‘Shut up, Com,’ said Sark. ‘Nobody knows what Com’s doing. He’s lost the power to explain things in human terms.’

  ‘But what am I supposed to do?’ Cadel demanded. ‘Just sit here or what?’

  Sark shrugged. His long limbs suddenly rearranged themselves as he dragged his feet off the desk. ‘You can have a look at your computer,’ he suggested.

  ‘Which computer?’

  ‘That one.’ Sark waved his hand. ‘Over there.’

  Cadel followed Sark’s directions. He stopped in front of a rather elderly piece of equipment, which, Cadel knew, had very little to spare in the way of gigabytes.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got a network card in there, needless to say – most of Axis is linked up. Plus we have our own high-capacity backbone. An OC-48 line. Could be worse. Oh, and there’s a supercomputer. In the back room. But you can only use it under supervision. And if you’re wondering why it looks like a tank, the whole thing’s shielded against Red Signal leaks, you know?’ Sark seemed to be losing interest in Cadel; his attention was once more focused on his computer. ‘There’s no sprinkler system in this room either, by the way. Just halon gas outlets. And it’s on a different switch, too. The Virus insisted, because there’s so much combustion on this campus – it’s like a goddamn blow furnace, sometimes. That’s why we didn’t get soaked, early on. In case you were wondering.’

  Cadel wasn’t wondering. Not about the sprinklers, anyway. He was wondering why his computer didn’t boot up when he turned it on.

  After carefully checking the mains socket, the power lead and the keyboard cable, all of which seemed to be fine, he began to punch in a few basic commands. Then he became aware of a muted snicker.

  It was coming from Sark. He could tell by the way Sark’s hunched shoulders were quivering.

  Cadel waited. He sat and stared at Sark’s back until the older student glanced around – and caught Cadel’s eye.

  ‘Oh!’ Sark seemed surprised by his classmate’s steady regard, but recovered quickly. ‘Having problems?’ he asked, with the utmost innocence.

  ‘You know I am.’ Cadel got straight down to business. ‘So what’s the deal?’

  Sark seemed to debate something inside his head. Then he shrugged again.

  ‘Second class honours if you can start up,’ he explained. ‘It’s one of the Virus’s little tricks.’

  ‘Is it a test?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Ask the Virus.’

  With a sigh, Cadel turned back to his computer. The power light was on. The keylock switch was off. He sat thinking for a while, running through a checklist in his head. He tried a few more unsuccessful commands, pondered for a moment, and tried a few more. Then, with a grunt, he scrambled for the VGA cable.

  By the time the Virus entered, some fifteen minutes later, Cadel’s machine was humming quite nicely through a series of downloads.

  ‘He did it,’ Sark announced in a flat voice. It hardly needed saying. The Virus, who was looking sweaty in a bright, short-sleeved shirt, peered over at Cadel.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘It was the monitor,’ Cadel remarked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I checked the pinout –’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The Virus didn’t seem interested. ‘Well done.’ Having reached his own desk, he began to remove various objects from his briefcase: the usual box of tissues, a packet of throat pastilles, a bottle of eye drops, an ergonomic back pillow. ‘Sark, show the boy his computer, for God’s sake,’ he added testily, and waddled off to refill the humidifier.

  ‘When Doozy first tried, he had the whole box opened up,’ Sark informed Cadel, with a smirk. ‘Had the capacitor dismantled, and everything. Thought something was wrong with the switcher supply.’

  ‘Who’s Doozy?’ asked Cadel.

  ‘He’s a bloody idiot, that’s who he is,’ was Sark’s answer. ‘Here. This is yours. That other one – it’s just a booby trap.’

  Cadel saw, with relief, that the new computer issued to him was of quite recent vintage, and well supplied with hard drive, RAM, and so forth. He was able to start it without difficulty. When the Virus re-entered Hardware Heaven, Cadel put up his hand.

  ‘Excuse me – uh – sir –’

  ‘Call me Vee,’ said the Virus. He threw himself behind his desk with a groan of relief. ‘What’s the problem now?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Cadel hastened to assure him. ‘I just wanted to know, am I allowed to install my own security?’

  The Virus’s fat face immediately screwed itself up into a grin. ‘What, you don’t trust us?’ he giggled.

  ‘Well –’

  ‘By all means, Cadel, do your worst. It won’t make any difference. I’ll still get in, if I want to.’

  ‘Yes, sir – I mean, Vee.’ Cadel had his doubts about that. ‘So I can download some programs? Right now? I brought them with me.’

  ‘Oh, you can do that later,’ the Virus rejoined. ‘When I’m not here. Right now, we should try and do something useful, for a change.’ He coughed, sniffed, and jabbed a fat finger in Com’s direction. ‘Sark, will you re-boot that boy? I don’t think he’s online.’

  ‘Hey! Wysiwyg!’ Sark threw a stapler at Com, without eliciting any response. So he leaned over and yanked the plug from Com’s mains socket.

  Com let out a strangled bellow, and the Virus clicked his fingers.

  ‘I’m uploading here, Com, pay attention,’ he said. ‘You listening, Sark?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right.’ The Virus blew his nose, mopped it and continued. ‘You’ve both met Cadel. He’s Dr Darkkon’s son. I’ve mentioned him. I’ve given you the protocol. Com? Are you processing this?’

  Com nodded.

  ‘Fine. Well, Cadel told me at our last meeting that he was interested in hardware – molecular electronics, to be exact.’ At the sound of Sark’s muffled sigh, the Virus giggled. ‘So I thought, as base-work, we might all dust off our synapses and have a fresh look at neural network models. Sark?’ (Slyly.) ‘You got a problem with that?’

  ‘No,’ Sark mumbled.

  ‘All-righty.’ The Virus fixed his twinkling eyes on Cadel. ‘I presume you agree with me, Cadel? That this is a good place to kick off?’

  ‘Uh – yeah. Sure.’

  ‘Good. Because there’s nothing like starting from scratch, I always say. If you can’t wire your own neuron outputs, you can’t call yourself a computer geek, in my opi
nion.’ The Virus bared his pointed teeth at Sark. ‘Sark’s always had a lot of trouble with low-level digital integrated circuit design. You had a hard time getting past your first NAND gate, didn’t you, Sark?’

  Sark muttered something under his breath.

  ‘Doesn’t like to get his hands dirty,’ the Virus remarked to Cadel. ‘Believe it or not.’ He tittered, and Sark threw him a black look. ‘A lot of my boys here, they can’t calculate to save their lives. Throw ’em a recursion equation and they run for cover. Sally was different . . .’ The Virus paused for an instant, before continuing. ‘Sally was different, but she had other problems. Personal problems. Pity, really. She wasn’t afraid of hard work.’

  ‘Look – are we going to do this or not?’ Sark snapped, whereupon the Virus giggled yet again, wiping his eyes.

  ‘Yes, yes, I hear you,’ he said, and drew from his pocket a tattered slip of paper, well folded, which he waved in Cadel’s direction. ‘So. Cadel. You want to get us started on this?’

  Obediently, Cadel rose and plucked the paper from the Virus’s hand. Smoothing it out, he saw that it bore a single equation:

  ‘On the left, you’ve got an input current charging a capacitor Cito a potential ui,’ the Virus drawled. ‘On the right, −ui/Riis a leakage current and Ii/Riis an outside input. What else? Sum term is input currents from other neurons. Your fj(uj) is the output of an amplifier. Your Tij/Riare conductances. Oh – and the numbers Riaren’t resistances, just scaling factors.’

  ‘Ri-i-ght,’ said Cadel, his mind working furiously. ‘So what do I do with this?’

  ‘What you do is sit down and knock off a nice, simple layout of a basic electronic circuit for a neural network chip implementation, using that equation,’ the Virus continued, clearing his sinuses. ‘Nothing fancy. Just a sketch. Something we can all understand. In fact . . .’ With a smile, the Virus surveyed his other two students. ‘In fact, why doesn’t everyone give it a go?’