“What sort of information storage does the ID use?”
He shrugged. “No idea.”
“But if you had the translator, you could reprogram the card.”
“Sure, but unless you plan on going to the Home Planet, breaking into Benson-Starr Enterprises in London, and stealing one...”
“I may know someone who has one.”
“Yeah?” Jerry G looked skeptical.
“I’ll bring it over when I’ve got it.”
“I doubt it. Benson-Starr manufactures them exclusively for GoCom. But hey, assuming you are able to get your hands on a translator, what exactly do you want me to do?”
“Why? Are you thinking of bailing out on me?”
His eyes shifted. “It just seems like you may be in over your head on this one.”
“I already told you it would be risky. You didn’t seem to mind.”
“There’s risky, and there’s risky. I didn’t realize GoCom was involved. You want to just summarize what you’re planning on doing?”
“I’m playing the biggest prank that’s ever been played on the Anterran government.”
Jerry G’s concern was helpless against the excitement this explanation brought. “I don’t know, Jill. Okay, I’m in.”
“I figured. I’ll be back with the translator.”
He looked into her eyes a moment—a moment sort of like that other moment when she’d first got here. “Yeah, great, Jillian. See you then.”
WHILE the sun came up she waited by the Northshore Garage. Matt was the first to arrive. He seemed a little too happy to see her. She asked him about the translator.
“Sure I’ve got some of those. You need some GoCom ID work done?”
“I want the translators themselves.”
“Well, that’ll cost you.”
“So you said you have more than one?”
“Several. I know a guy in London.”
“I need three.”
“Must have something interesting planned, sweetness! I guess I could spare three of them. Did I mention it’ll cost you?”
“You did, but that was as specific as you got.”
“Try two thousand credits.”
“Let’s skip the bantering and hear your final offer.”
The lewd smile made another appearance. “What about that date we talked about?”
“We didn’t talk about a date.”
“How about fifteen hundred credits, and you and I have dinner someplace nice?”
“How about thirteen hundred credits, and I don’t kick you in the crotch right now?”
He sniffed. “All right, deal.”
“I’ll give you half up front. You’ll get the other half when and if they work.”
“Believe me, they work—unfortunately for you. Messing with GoCom’ll only get you in trouble.”
She winced. He was probably dead right on that one.
“I got nothin’ more to say.” The man who called himself Mr. Love still had several tattoos showing despite his long-sleeved prison garb. He sat at the table in the interrogation room with arms crossed, frowning exaggeratedly.
Across from him sat Director Holiday. “I won’t force you to cooperate,” he said blandly.
“I already cooperated. I told you who my clients were.”
“You told us who some of them were.”
“All of ’em!”
Holiday shook his head. “All but one.”
Love looked away. The guilt was all over his face.
“Come, man, stop pretending,” Holiday said evenly. “We have evidence that there’s another client of yours that you’re refusing to tell us about. If you don’t want to name him, fine. But I recommend that you at least stop lying to us about him. That won’t help your case.” Holiday stood and walked toward the door. Before exiting, he paused. “On the other hand, if you do tell us more about this particular client, it will help your case—perhaps a great deal.”
Love bit his lip, darted his eyes around.
“Well?” Holiday asked.
Love shook his head.
“Have it your way,” said the director. He opened the door.
“I got my reasons,” Love whispered behind him.
Holiday closed the door. “I’m sure you do,” he said to himself. He gestured for the guards outside the room to escort Love back to his cell.
The Director smiled on his way back to the department. Love may not have cooperated yet, but Holiday’s seasoned instincts could tell he was cracking. Sooner or later he was going to tell them everything.
JILL found Jerry on the couch in his basement. He had a bedroom upstairs, but no one remembered the last time he’d slept in his actual bed. Jerry G wasn’t used to hitting the sack before three or four in the morning. He also wasn’t used to getting up before noon, but it was eight o’clock when Jill shook him awake. That made him a little grumpy.
He got over it when he saw the three devices Jill had brought over. They were fairly compact, roughly cubic in shape. Benson-Starr translators. He looked at her in surprise and admiration. “How...?”
“You know better than to ask. Can we get to work?”
Jerry G rubbed his eyes. “If you explain what sort of work you have in mind.”
“We’d better test the translators first.”
“Ah, so your source may not be the most trustworthy fellow?”
Jill didn’t answer. She gestured to his main computer.
Jerry sat at it like a pilot in the cockpit. “Okay. I don’t think I mentioned that we need a specific piece of software to recognize the translator and access the ID.”
“No, you didn’t,” Jill sighed. “So how—?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got the software. It’s not hard to get, really. They don’t protect it very thoroughly, considering it’s worthless without the translator.” He was unscrewing a panel in one side of the translator.
“What are you doing?” Jill asked concernedly.
“Just checking it out. I’ve never seen one of these and I’m curious.”
“It was hard to get, so don’t ruin it, okay?”
He whistled as he looked at the interior of the device. “I think it’s acoustic.”
“What?”
“The information is relayed through sound. See these tiny parts here? They realign to create different pitches—pitches human ears can’t detect, of course. Different exact pitches translate into different segments of information. That’s what the GoCom IDs use. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Cool,” said Jill, sounding like she didn’t think it was that cool. She’d never shared Jerry G’s fascination for the technical side of things. She was much more interested in the practical. “So are we good to go?”
He plugged the translator into a jack on his computer. “I think so. It should take the info from the card and turn it into info my computer can interact with.”
“How close do I have to get for the card to be accessed?”
“You can leave the card in your pocket and stand up to fifteen feet away if you want. The signal reaches at least that far. Here, I’ve already got Daniels’ info.”
Sure enough there it was on the screen: scans of Martin P. Daniels’ photo, birth certificate, social security card, background check, and pages and pages of other information.
“Now,” said Jerry G, turning to look Jill in the eye, “you want to let me know exactly what you’re planning?”
“Could you delete the info on the card?”
“Why would we do that?”
“I don’t want you to. I’m just asking if you could.”
“Of course.”
“What if you weren’t here?”
He gave her a puzzled look. “What?”
“Could you make the computer delete the information of any GoCom ID card that came within range of the translator, whether you were present or not?”
“I suppose I could cook up a program that would do that. I could set it to cycle so it sen
t out a signal from the translator every few seconds—”
“How about constantly?”
“Okay, constantly.”
“And whenever it detected an ID card within range, it would erase the info on the card?”
“Yeah. But I still don’t—”
“What if there were a lot of ID cards within range of the translator at the same time?”
“No problem. It would erase all of them in an instant.” Jerry G looked pleased and anxious at the same time—pleased that he could write the program in question, anxious because he didn’t like where this was going. “So that’s the prank? You want to get this program cycling on a computer near the entrance to GoCom and delete everyone’s ID profile?”
“There’s more to it than that. I want to get inside GoCom myself.”
Jerry G whistled. “Okay. You’d better explain more.”
“Next question: Could the program replace the info on the IDs with new info?”
“If we had the info, sure.”
“Like Martin P. Daniels’ profile?”
Jerry G smacked his knee. “You’re brilliant, Jillian, you know it? Brilliant!”
THEY were ready for the job two days later.
Not surprisingly, Jill had done her research well. Most of GoCom’s hundreds of employees worked a standard 9-to-5 shift. About sixty percent of these rode the ferries across the lake, which were the slowest but cheapest means of reaching the massive island building.
At roughly 8:25 a.m. a trio of ferries departed from a pier on the west shore of the lake near the Avenue of Towers. The ferries arrived at the island about twenty minutes. The passengers disembarked at a large plaza before GoCom’s main entrance. A few would linger in the courtyard, smoking or chatting on their phones or doing anything else to pass the time. Some people had a phobia of clocking in so much as one minute before the appointed hour. But most would file directly through the glass doors and into the wide entrance area.
Once inside the employees would form lines before a row of security scanners—boxy white arches linked together across the entryway. One by one GoCom personnel passed through and had their ID cards scanned. Their facial features were also scanned, making sure each ID was being carried by the person authorized to carry it. If the scanner detected no card, if the card and the face didn’t match, or if there was any other problem, a few of the on-hand security officers would ideally resolve the problem as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Of those who didn’t commute via ferry almost all took the skybus—quicker but more expensive, which meant most of its passengers were a bit higher up in the GoCom food chain. The skybus departed from a terminal just blocks from the ferry pier. Several busses left every weekday morning at 8:30 sharp and formed a little parade thirty feet above the lake’s surface. They dropped their passengers off at a plaza on a terrace, just as the ferry passengers were swarming across the plaza thirty feet below. The bus passengers then entered a similar entryway, and passed through similar security scanners where issues were resolved by similar security persons.
The handful of remaining 9-to-5 folks was the most pampered. These were the proud few who had obtained parking permits for the garage—the very garage from which Jill had made her getaway in the unwitting Martin P. Daniels’ vehicle. From the garage employees entered a similar but smaller entryway, and passed through similar but fewer security scanners.
By the time these select few were entering the building, the workday of Anterra’s Governmental Complex was just getting underway.
Most of this Jill discovered on the net in the comfort of her own apartment. She enhanced her understanding of the process by donning a newly-purchased business suit and riding a bus on Wednesday and a ferry on Thursday. She also read, on the official GoCom Security postings on the net, that the complex’s state-of-the-art security had functioned without any major hitch in the decade since it had been installed.
Today would be the first.
11
IT was 7:30 when she met Jerry G at a café on the lakeshore. The café was about a five minute walk from the skybus terminal, and an even shorter walk from the ferry pier.
“You look good, girl,” Jerry G said as platonically as possible. “First time in a business suit?”
“No, actually.” She didn’t elaborate. “You look very professional yourself. Had to slick down the fro, huh?”
“I figured it would be worth it for a prank like this.”
Jill fidgeted. “Look, Jerry, I should tell you; this is more than just a prank.”
Jerry G didn’t look too surprised. He didn’t look too happy either. “Want to tell me about it?”
“I’m not sure about all the details myself. All I know is...well, this is my last job.”
He looked at her sideways. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m done with crime.”
“Um, you’re actually about to commit the biggest crime of your career.”
“Maybe the biggest. Definitely the last.”
“Hmm. So what are you getting into?”
“Like I said, I’m not sure.”
Jerry G shrugged. “Hey, it’s okay by me. Whatever’s going on, I’m glad to be on board.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t just mean the plan. I mean, yeah, I like our plan. But I mean...you know, I’m glad to be helping you out. Whatever you’re doing.”
Jill found it easier to smile down at the table than at him for some reason. “Thanks, Jerry G.”
The moment got longer and more awkward.
“We’d better get going,” Jerry said, clearing his throat. “You’re sure you want the ferry? The bus is nicer.”
“It’s cool. You take the bus.”
“If you insist. By the way, I never did ask you how you were going to cover the other employee entrance—the one off the parking garage?”
Jill half-smiled. “I managed.”
MARTIN P. Daniels was in a better mood than usual. He counted the reasons as he backed out of his driveway and soared thirty feet into the skyway. Today was Friday. He had a nice weekend of golf and leisure ahead of him. He’d had his coffee. And he finally had his new ID. No more waiting at the door for security to make all the necessary calls to let him in. That had been a pain in the backside the past couple days since his old ID had been stolen.
He also had a computer in his trunk, but that part he didn’t know about. The computer had a Benson-Starr translator attached to it. The computer was also running a program—a program Jerry G had finished writing the night before, much later than he had planned.
ON the first of the three crowded ferries, the same program was running on the computer in Jill’s briefcase.
AT the bus terminal, the same program was running in Jerry G’s computer. He stood near each bus as it was loaded, then boarded the last one.
When he got off at GoCom, he pretended to be on the phone and wandered around the raised plaza, getting within fifteen feet of as many people as possible. Their IDs should all be reprogrammed by now, but it couldn’t hurt to be careful.
He ended up at the edge of the terrace and looked at the plaza below. The ferries had arrived and their passengers were streaming toward the front doors, or else meandering in that general direction.
Jerry G smiled. Chaos was about to ensue.
He jumped back onto one of the busses just as it was about to return to the shore. The driver eyed him curiously.
“Forgot one of my files at home,” said Jerry with an embarrassed smile. “Idiot!” He shook his head at his own stupidity.
The driver shrugged and gunned the engine. The bus was out over the lake again.
Jerry G looked back toward the massive island complex. His job was done. But Jill’s had just started. He bit his lip and prayed she’d be all right. Could you pray for a crime? Maybe if it was someone’s last crime ever...
SHE was just one of a sea of humanity rolling toward the front doors. By the time she was in the entrywa
y the lines at the scanners were already backed up, and security personnel were scrambling.
Jill smiled. So far, so good.
MARTIN P. Daniels parked in his reserved spot near the elevator. He was fairly early, as usual. He got on the elevator and descended one floor to the entryway.
The moment he stepped off the elevator his semi-good mood evaporated. As early as it was, the lines at the scanners were still fairly long and didn’t seem to be moving at all. Security people were running around with all-too-serious expressions on their faces.
“What’s the deal?” Daniels asked the guy in line in front of him.
“Some kind of trouble. They’re not letting anyone through at the moment.”
“So should we ride down to another entrance?”
“I wouldn’t,” said the guy. “That’s where the trouble is.”
“What trouble?”
“Sounds like everyone’s IDs are scanning with the same name and profile—somebody named Daniel or something like that.”
Martin P. Daniels groaned.
The lines got longer and longer behind him. Everyone who had arrived after Daniels had walked by his car—which meant their IDs contained his profile as well.
“OF course I’m seeing what’s happening!” the head of GoCom security barked into the phone in his office. “We’ve suddenly got thirty-five hundred Martin P. Danielses on the premises, and more arriving every second...No, our computers aren’t the problem...No, the IDs can’t be the problem either! How could this guy’s info get programmed onto hundreds of ID cards overnight?...I have no idea! We’re working on it.”
The phone rang again the instant he hung up. He didn’t answer this time.
His assistant burst into his twentieth-story office with a tray of coffee, which he slurped down without a word of thanks. “So what do we do?” she asked him.
He thought hard for a minute. “Tell them to shut off the scanners and let them all in. We’ll have to get someone at each gate to check IDs visually.”
“How can they check them if the scanners...?”
The Nexus Page 8
