by Paul Dueweke
His left hand reached for and found, with no visual help, the cord of the blinds above him. With a smooth pull, the blinds descended silently behind him, eliminating the background glare and returning the natural contrast to his anatomy. He walked away from the window toward the two, past them, circled around behind, and then back in front of them again where he pulled another chair like theirs to a position between them and the walnut overhang of his desk. Without a word, he sat back, being careful that he not visually favor either of his guests. The darkened window panel now lay squarely behind him, and his features leapt forward in the intimacy of his new setting. Jenner changed her position, first crossing her legs at their ankles, then at their thighs. A quick glance toward Sherwood revealed a granite figure, breathing shallowly, focused.
“What I want done is not a job for wimps, nor for anyone who can’t completely forget what they’ve been doing all day when they go home. It’s a tough and extremely sensitive job, and it must completely absorb you, and you must agree up front that you’ll keep the strictest confidence about every phase of it. I feel the security surrounding this program exceeds the highest level thus far created by COPE. That’s why I need to extract this special promise from you. Also remember that your decision won’t go beyond this room if you choose not to participate. You may have some time to think about it, but if you know the answer now, I’d appreciate it.”
Jenner glanced over at Sherwood who maintained intense eye contact with the Asp. Before the Asp’s words had fallen from his lips, Sherwood responded, “Yes sir, I can handle those conditions.”
Jenner followed with an, “I can too, sir.”
“I appreciate your support,” the Asp continued. “I knew I could rely on you, and you won’t be sorry. This is a tremendous opportunity for you to grow within COPE. We remember all deeds, both good and bad—even though we may not record it in your personnel file.”
The Asp stood up and motioned them toward a small conference room adjacent to his spacious office. “Let’s continue our conversation in here where we can be more comfortable.”
This is it, Sherwood thought as he walked in front of Jenner. This is the room where he briefs his secret agents before their missions. His mind ran wild with a flood of famous spies from his past. Images of Jade Fist and The Sniffer surged within him. At last, he thought. At last.
The interior room was adequately proportioned and suitably illuminated with indirect artificial lighting. Naked walls faded into vaporous shadows. The chairs were alluringly comfortable, inviting exhaustive discussion, soliciting detail. They lowered the artificial boundaries usually installed between human hierarchies. The oval table lacked chairs at its two ends. This place is made for doing business, Sherwood thought, and measuring secrets.
The Asp closed the door behind them without fanfare. A discrete but clear flashing red light above the door reading UNSECURE changed to a steady, green SECURE and was slowly exiled to oblivion as the discussion began.
The Asp sat down next to Jenner and across from Sherwood. He seemed to be occupied by another task, relegating secrets to the back burner for a moment as he withdrew a filigreed pipe from a carved cherry pipestand containing three pipes. Six eyes watched a match erupt into flames, then watched the fire being sucked into the bowl of the pipe.
Sherwood allowed his eyes to follow that first cloud of smoke as it rose and obscured the Asp for a moment. He studied the smoke, then studied the man who’d created it. His eyes then snapped back to the pipe rack where he noticed an empty recess carved into the wood at its top. He measured that recess in an instant. It was just large enough for a lighter.
Leaning back to the squeak and crunch of leather, the Asp began. “We need to redirect the mission of our spiders. Until now, we’ve used them for reconnaissance, and they’ve performed admirably. They have generally done what any average agent could do in very covert situations. On many occasions, we’ve teamed a spider with one of our autonomous T-11 cars to carry out surveillance and minor espionage functions without arousing suspicion and alarm that a spider alone would certainly do. The spiders seem to evoke a fear among people. But, as you know, the octoped, low profile configuration is the most stable and efficient. In any event, we have limited our spiders to rather routine missions.”
Sherwood’s instinct for inscrutability suppressed his excitement. Jenner leaned forward with an audible swallow.
“Now, however,” the Asp continued, “I want to capitalize on its strengths—stealth, intimidation, and the agility of a cat burglar. I want to expand its role so it can perform missions that only our most experienced agents can perform. This means you’ll have to study every aspect of its proposed missions in preparation for the upgrade. You see, what I want our spiders to be able to do is to attack a human target and be equipped to inject a lethal dose of a nerve agent, GX-37. They must be upgraded with the required hardware and controls, and their reliability and identification accuracy must be enhanced.”
The Asp raised the pipe to his mouth with one hand while placing his other flatly on the tabletop as if to somehow monitor his protégés reactions in this new arena. Sherwood sensed the interrogation. He judged the Asp had been fired by a career in the looking-glass world where things are rarely as they seem. But Sherwood mirrored a ruthless, experienced agent—not the engineer the Asp probably expected. There was a dialogue between them as Jenner tried to conceal her discomfort at discussing the unlawful termination of human life in such analytical terms.
“As you know,” the Asp continued, “COPE is charged with protecting our republic from those who seek to destroy the great progress we’ve made toward effective and free access to the political process for all our citizens. Our robots can help us maintain the freedoms that Americans have died for over the centuries. They will become soldiers in the never ending battle against the enemies of liberty.”
… and of COPE, thought Sherwood, wondering if the Asp could decode this thought.
The Asp paused, thoroughly but delicately interrogating every element of Sherwood’s face for a glimpse into this young engineer, but finding no opening. He then asked, “Any questions?”
A silence shaped itself to the room as the Asp studied his two engineers. Jenner fidgeted, and Sherwood probed the words human target that hung persistently from wisps of smoke before the partially occluded face of the Asp. Finally, the silence was broken by Jenner. “How are these … ah …”
“Enforcements,” assisted the Asp.
“Yes. How are these enforcements accomplished presently?” she asked.
“We currently perform that function with COPE field agents. But there are some serious deficiencies. First, it’s very labor intensive, and thus the costs are extreme and the reliability isn’t adequate. Secondly, human enforcers can sometimes be traced back to their sponsors if they aren’t scrupulous about their professional ethics. A robot could be so clean and so generic that it could never be traced back to its source. Robotic enforcers would solve a set of practical problems that we’ve had in recent years. And finally, after years of very expensive R&D, robots are good enough to do the job. All they need is the finishing touches of a pair of dedicated engineers.” The Asp leaned back in his chair, pipe secured between his teeth, put his hands behind his head, and added, “To my knowledge, we are closer to realizing truly autonomous enforcement robots than any other organization on earth. I believe this will be the last surge to put us over the top—and I’m entrusting it to you two.”
“How about support?” questioned Jenner.
“You’ll have the entire Dorsal Fin staff at your disposal. There are only two differences between you and them. First, you’re the boss; and second, they don’t know the whole story.”
“How about this injector?” asked Jenner. “Do we have to develop it from scratch?”
“That’s being done as we speak,” replied the Asp. “I have a contract with a little company up north to deliver a prototype in about three months. They’re at your disp
osal. All you have to do is integrate it and make the whole system work—flawlessly.”
Sherwood sat back in his comforting chair, his hands folded under his chin. But his mind was far from relaxed. He was analyzing the possibilities, playing the options in his mind. This was the opportunity; this was the threshold between his impotent world and a life that he had always dreamed of—his niche.
“Sir?” said Sherwood as he sat forward. “What will become of us after the project is completed?”
“You’ll be rewarded according to the success of the task. I can assure you that compensation in the form of money and opportunities within COPE will be forthcoming.”
How about teaming me with my own spider? Sherwood asked in his mind.
“Any other questions?”
“No, sir,” replied Jenner.
“Everything is quite clear,” added Sherwood.
With these simple instructions, the Jenner-Sherwood team launched into Project Dagger, one of the most covert programs at COPE. They accessed whatever resources were needed. For Jenner, this meant a team of programmers and analysts and access to the most advanced computer systems at COPE. For Sherwood, it meant classified data, advanced optical cubic integration systems, a team of electrical and mechanical engineers and technicians, and CAD-CAM packages coupled to laser and virtual reality-prototyping machines. But beyond these toys of common nerds, he was reborn. A control-system nerd transmuted into a master of history’s greatest espionage tool. This was the saga for which he had been created.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Computer War
This new task challenged both engineers and took them deep into the technical operations of COPE. Jenner’s software engineering talents were so exceptional they could reach full potential only in an incubator such as this. And her new access to the COPE computer systems was a trip to hacker heaven. She became so engrossed in the complexity of the system software that she frequently stayed late at night exploring the folds of COPE’s unsung management hero.
Her access to the COPE computers was well beyond what she needed. The Asp didn’t understand the technical requirements as well as she did, so when he asked her what access level she needed, she took a wild shot and said system manager level, the highest operating level. He bought it without question, and she was in.
The system manager of a large computer system is the person responsible for keeping the system and network running flawlessly and coordinates all software and hardware configuration changes and maintenance. But the system manager’s most important role at COPE was to provide for system security. The identity of the system manager was known to only two people at COPE as a way of further insuring their paranoid concept of security. Jenner was not one of them.
Jenner spent nearly every evening exploring system-level operations to a depth that she felt only the real system manager probably understood. During every session, she would learn about at least one new network, database, or level of operation that she didn’t even know existed. She kept accurate notes in an electronic notebook in her secure file. This was the most awesome computer game she’d ever played.
* * *
The networks connecting all the distributed mainframe computers and the thousands of slave computers and workstations all over the country were a maze of links. More than a hundred levels and sub-levels of security classification, each with its own list of authorized users, codes, and procedures, wove through the computers and networks. Many classifications even required encryption.
The COPE computer system had been developed by high-tech wizards smitten by a virulent disease universal in computer jocks—the obsession to maximize system flexibility and growth capacity. This translated to more bytes, more FLOPS, greater speed, and more nodes than would be required by the most imaginative estimate of the system requirements. The corollary disease was also rampant—a computer system swells to fill all available capacity.
The whiz kids at COPE also adhered to another rigid code—the quality of the documentation is inversely proportional to the complexity of the system. In other words, the more complicated the programming gets, the less gets written about it. This makes it very tough for new people coming on board to know what they are inheriting. It results from the developers pushing on the state-of-the-art so hard that they’re always behind schedule, over cost, and too busy to properly document what they’ve done. In addition, computer nerds are notoriously poor writers and view documentation as unclean drudgery that someone else might do if they just ignore it.
In one of her ramblings through COPE’s brain, Jenner had referred back to her electronic notebook for a password into a classified account. This one was unusual, however, since it was a word that had personal meaning to her even though someone else was using it. But she found the password in her classified notebook had been changed. The original was GRUMBUG, which just happened to be the name that her grandmother had called her when she was little—an odd, but memorable, coincidence. When she returned to her notebook, it had been changed to GRUMBLE. But only the system manager could gain access to her protected account. Apparently, the system manager had been monitoring her exploratory activity and chose to make this change in Jenner’s personal notebook.
What Jenner was too naive to appreciate was that the system manager had access to her personal-history file in which the Grumbug nickname had appeared, realized that this change would probably be noticed by Jenner, and had issued it as a subtle warning. It was the computational equivalent to a shot across the bow. But Jenner either didn’t get the message or chose not to heed it.
She pieced together what information she had to try to determine the identity of the system manager. This took a month of late night hacking, and she was shocked at the inescapable conclusion. The system manager, who was responsible for maintaining the computer system, correcting errors, modifying programs, managing passwords, and directly influencing the control of every aspect of COPE operations, was not a person. The system manager was another computer, or at least a partitioned section of the main COPE supercomputer. And this wasn’t just an ordinary system manager. Its software was so broad and complex that it made daily recommendations to every level of upper management. It was so trusted that those recommendations were generally followed without question.
But this computer had gone well beyond the role of a system manager. It had compromised its own security by invading a personal locked file and modifying it. This was exactly contrary to the most basic function of a system manager—to insure error free files to the users. It seems almost malicious, she thought.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Winning Side
The Asp called Sherwood into his office. “You and Jenner have pulled it off. I’ll admit I had some doubts about anybody being able to handle that job on such a short fuse. But Dagger was done under budget and met every spec, and all in fifteen months.” He considered his pipe rack and chose just the right pipe for this conversation. He offered his tobacco pouch to Sherwood who removed his own pipe from his pocket.
“You both have fine futures at COPE, and I can recommend you highly for whatever positions you might want. Whatever you do, I’m sure COPE will benefit. I’d be very happy, of course, if you’d choose to stay on here in Dorsal Fin, however COPE encourages its brightest people to get exposure to diverse areas. There are other projects within Dorsal Fin …” He drew in a river of smoke and mixed it with the rest of his sentence. “… or even Shark Bait, where you would be most welcome. I talked with Jenner a few minutes ago, and she’s decided to stay with me for another year or so.”
Sherwood held his pipe in his hand, not wishing to compete with the Asp. If I could only work with a spider on a mission, he thought. “Project Dagger,” he trolled, looking squarely at the Asp, “has given me insight into COPE that few have experienced.”
“The every-day missions for a spider,” the Asp parried, “might elude someone with a zealous imagination such as yourself. I hope you’re not jumping to conclu
sions about its utility.”
Sherwood’s gaze met the ASP’s on a silent battlefield. “Yes. I understand,” he finally replied. Another period of silence matured as both men analyzed each others eyes and telltale lines in their faces for signs of weakness, for cracks through which some personal inference could be drawn.
Sherwood said, “I made the move with COPE to this new headquarters originally in hopes of working my way into a field assignment. The electrical engineering degree that COPE allowed me to pursue seemed to complement the electronics devices I built when I was younger. It also seemed to be an excellent way to raise myself from the menial jobs I held with COPE earlier in my career. In retrospect, it seems to have been a fortuitous choice since I ended up right in the middle of some very exciting and challenging programs.” He put the pipe to his lips while studying the Asp.
“Your performance in Dagger was most gratifying,” the Asp responded. “You’ve shown excellent commitment to COPE and the ability to work effectively under pressure. But most important, you’ve shown intuition—the ability to choose the best alternative. I think you have an excellent career ahead of you, whether you stay in engineering or move into the field.”
“Thank you for your praise, sir. I have given some thought to the direction I wish to go, and I think field work would be best for me.” With spiders, he added to himself.
“Most of the investigative work COPE does is fairly routine,” said the Asp, “the stuff that produces those boring reports in the newspapers and the endless personal-history data on millions of Americans. There are some positions in the field, though, that might be exactly what you’re looking for. Each of the two major parties has about a dozen regional offices. Attached to each office is at least one COPE Liaison Officer who effectively works directly for the Regional Director of the party. In reality, these liaison officers are on the COPE payroll, but for appearance sake, they’re party employees with titles like Special Assignment Manager. COPE found that investigative activities were more efficiently performed and publicly less onerous when carried out in the field from within the party at the regional level.”
