“I need you to stop this,” Jack said sternly. “Because if anything goes wrong on the day then whatever hits the fan will not be distributing itself evenly, know what I mean? Can you not install another program?”
Eric smiled and walked over to the engine-like device. “Installing a new program screws things up,” he said, “not least the old one. Whereas this...” he gestured to the device, “...is a Western Power Grade 5 industrial generator. It’s going to run the system on launch day and then stay on as temporary back-up afterward. I’ve also got some guys coming tomorrow to add a sealed battery pack, based on your desire for a one-hour shutdown. We’ll be able to shut down the generator immediately in the advent of an emergency, but Quotient will store an hour’s worth of power in the pack. That, in theory, should see us through any sabotage attempts from our on-line friend. One thing I do know is that we’ve had to work damn fast, and it’s never a good idea to let anything mechanical know that you’re in a hurry.”
“But are we safe?” Jack asked dubiously.
“I hope so,” Eric said. “If this guy’s as clever as he thinks, which he may well be, then he can still get in and leave his silly messages. What he can’t do, hopefully, is realise his goal and shut the system down without the one-hour delay. By that the time launch will have gone off and the photos will have been taken. Any shutdown after that we can simply put down to initial overload due to global interest or some such crap.”
Jack smiled. Launch day was not only getting closer by the minute, but also better. Barring the unknown hacker and other very slight technical difficulties, notably those encountered due to Boston Water’s fuck up, every site had been on-line bang on schedule and every terminal had been adequately tested. Jack had to concede that it was starting to reek of perfection. But not his, or even IntelliSoft’s.
It was all MaryBeth’s.
It was MaryBeth who had initially suggested the system, MaryBeth who had chosen the sites and MaryBeth who had negotiated with the relevant governments. Worldwide. Fluently. She had even allocated the contractors. Architects, builders, fitters and electricians. That was the reason she had been so unhappy about Boston. City officials had only conceded to sell the site to IntelliSoft if they could allocate their own contractors. It stunk to high heaven of back-handers but MaryBeth had been given no choice. She was the first to blame their assigned electrical contractor when there was a delay and had demanded that they be taken off-site. When it became apparent that it had indeed been Boston Water’s, and not Howitt Electrical’s, fault she had been given no choice again. But she was not happy. She wanted everything relating to the launch to be on-schedule. So that the launch itself was on-schedule. To the second.
Though that second was drawing closer, it still seemed impossibly far away. It was hiding behind things that Jack had yet to do; a city of dreams obscured by mountains of harsh reality. He had yet to attend a second meeting with Simon, now only two full days away, so that he might acquire the final clues to the puzzle. In reality he had yet to see the true picture on the box. He had so many pieces and nowhere to place them yet. He was trying to form a picture of Lara without knowing what she truly looked like at the time of her death.
All he did know was that the final piece might just bear an uncanny resemblance to his grandson.
“Gotta go,” he said to Eric. His thoughts had stolen the sparkle yet again.
“But your baby needs you,” the younger man protested with a smile, referring only to the mainframe.
Jack smiled lamely. “I know,” he said.
It was an irony only he could understand.
a mischievous device
Psalms 21:11
It was half past eight in the morning, it was biting cold and if there was one thing Tom Howitt was not in the mood for it was unannounced visitors, especially those who almost certainly wanted to interfere. He and his team were already behind schedule, the only IntelliSoft site worldwide that was, and now some guy from the Environment Department wanted to check that the damn wiring was up to standard. Up to standard for Christ’s sake. Not one member of his team had ever produced a wiring job that was anything less than perfect. That, and the fact that his brother-in-law was mayor, was how they had got the Boston contract in the first place. Proven track record.
He was over there now, checking the schematics. Worse than that, he had been there for over half an hour and not one of the cover plates could be fully sealed until he had finished. He wouldn’t find anything. The man had said that the check was being held only because Boston were running late on the job and that there were concerns that they might be cutting corners to catch up. There were a number of reasons why they were running late, Tom knew, and not one of them could be pinned on Howitt Electrical. Nor were they cutting corners.
If a finger needed to be pointed then it needed to be done squarely in the direction of Boston Water. If they had not dug the road and sliced through the main feed cable then everything would have been peachy. Now they were not only well behind their allocated timeframe, but it would get decidedly worse if he could not get those plates back in place before nine o’clock. That was the final point at which the power company, albeit reluctantly, had agreed to postpone running everything live again. If Tom missed this window then he lost another day and that was the difference between getting the next contract and not. Unless he got his brother-in-law on the case, of course, but that wasn’t the point. He wanted the job to be right, no matter how he came about it. He just wished this guy would hurry up and get out of his face so that he could finish the damn thing off, that was all.
He was coming over now; and his face said it all. Problems.
The man, slenderly built with bushy hair and a fading tan, looked every inch the government official. A Jobsworth who wanted to stop the political favours when it came to allocating public funds. A Jobsworth who probably enjoyed fucking people during the day because he was getting little or none at home. He laid the schematic out on the bonnet of Howitt’s Dodge truck and pointed.
“I need to check this divert off the main feed,” he said. As though it might somehow be a reasonable request.
“What the hell for?” Howitt asked, his hand running nervously through his shoulder-length blonde hair. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t. Either way, I want to check it. When the pyros go off and the system goes fully live on launch day there’s going to be a lot of press and a lot of bells and whistles. That means a huge drain on the system. I need to check you’ve used the right breakers.”
Howitt’s jaw nearly hit the floor. “Used the right breakers? Listen, pal, I’ve done more of these feeds than you’ve had meals from your mama and I’m telling ya now - there ain’t a damn thing wrong with but one of my breakers.”
The man did not care. “And I’m telling you that I’m the Safety Officer here and I need to check them anyway.”
Howitt paced backward and forward for a moment, trying to think of another excuse. If he let the guy down the tube to check those circuit breakers then there was no way on earth he was going to get the plates sealed before nine.
“Listen pal, maybe we can do a deal here. I got a nine o’clock shutdown and Boston Water already set me back eight days. That feed needs fifty-amp fuses and my guys put fifty-ampers on the feed. I know it and you know it. So what does it take for me to convince you that they’re fine and hit my nine o’clock.”
The man remained impassive. “I don’t care about your nine o’clock. I care about those fuses and what will happen to Boston’s supply if your men have put the wrong ones in. I need to see them.”
The man had obviously never run his own company, Howitt thought. Typical government suit. He wouldn’t be the one paying Howitt’s penalties if the road was not pieced back together in the timeframe the city had allowed. They had reluctantly granted a four-day extension when the master feed had been sliced but Howitt had lost eight days, not four. Now he was working
double speed. If he went a day over Boston’s further allocation then it meant a severe fine. No argument and no way for his brother-in-law to bail him out without somebody picking up on it. If he went a few days over he could also kiss goodbye to every penny of profit on the job.
But there was nothing he could do because the man with the badge would not take no for an answer.
So fuck him, Howitt thought. Let him go down the tube and get his precious suit coated in filth. Maybe next time he wanted to hold back a Howitt Electrical job he would use some common sense and turn up in a pair of freaking overalls.
The man picked up his briefcase and Howitt led him to tube four, an access pipe which disappeared deep into the road and would allow the maintenance guys to do their work once in a blue whatever. He pulled back the temporary cover and looked into the darkness beyond. It was big enough for only one man at a time.
But the man knew that already.
“Be my guest,” he said, ready to watch and wait.
As the man prepared to descend beneath the road surface Howitt heard a shout.
“Tom, hey Tom...?” It was Pete, the foreman in charge of the internal wiring. “We got a problem. Jacksons were supposed to be delivering fifteen panel boards and they’ve only sent us twelve.”
“So fit twelve,” Howitt said. “And get them to U.P.S. the other three.”
Pete jogged ungracefully up to the tube. He was not the most athletically built man on the site and he was already sweating and desperately short of breath. “They’re out of stock and they’re talking three to five days availability. It’s gonna take a bit of diplomacy and/or ass kicking.”
Howitt sighed and looked at the guy from the Environment contemptuously. “I gotta deal with this. Wait here.”
The man glanced down the tube. “You go. I’ll check the breakers. If I’m happy then I’m done.”
Howitt looked at the man and then mirrored his glance down the tube. Much as he had seen the man’s credentials he did not like people checking his work without him being around. He checked his watch. Eight-forty-three. Shit, he had no choice. If the Environment guy was straight in and out he might just meet his nine o’clock.
“Okay, but be quick and be careful. You get the urge to touch anything, or wiggle anything... fight it!”
Howitt followed Pete toward the main building and left the man to do whatever the man wanted to do.
Ten minutes later, and within the required timeframe, the man interrupted Howitt’s ongoing argument with the Jacksons delivery guy to say that yes, the breakers were fine.
“Fucking-A they’re fine,” he said under his breath. “You’re just wasting my fucking time.”
The man removed a form from his briefcase and scribbled his signature of check and approval. Howitt thought it strange that the man had brought such a large briefcase when one set of forms was apparently all he carried inside it, but was in no mood to comment. He snatched the form, put it to one side and carried on his argument. The man walked out of the building.
If Howitt had felt the weight of the man’s briefcase before he went down the tube he might well have shown a little more concern. He did not even know that the man had taken his case down the tube, so he sure as hell had no idea that he had removed something whilst he was down there and wired it into the feed he was pretending to be so very concerned about.
The man was pleased that Howitt had been sidetracked. He had not even needed to accidentally kick the protected case down the tube like he had thought he would have to. The trick was to place it near the hole, turn to descend and nudge it accidentally. As the tube only held one man, he could then ‘retrieve’ it when he went down to check the circuit breakers. It was not a task he was relishing. Protected or not, that case was one dangerous thing to be kicking down a thirty foot tube.
But he could rest easy now. Boston Water’s accident with the cable might nearly have cost Howitt Electrical a contract but that was nothing. They had nearly cost him his life. Via Kalifa’s field agents, The Abraham had insisted that all the devices were planted within a set timeframe. He did not want to listen to excuses about contractors being behind schedule. It had taken the man a lot of explaining to make them understand that until Howitt Electrical had completed the feed and were ready to seal the tube there was no way he could plant anything without it subsequently being discovered. If Howitt was late by eight days then so was the device. It was a very simple equation.
Now everything was in place and he could report back to his superior who would, in turn, report back to Alexandria. As he climbed into his car and headed off into the morning traffic he smiled to himself. It never ceased to amaze him how they could manufacture scaled-down nuclear weapons that were small enough to fit in a briefcase, yet large enough to obliterate an entire city.
Better yet, Eternity had manufactured one hundred and forty-eight of them.
see what will become
of his dreams
Genesis 37:20
The light outside had almost faded completely but Jack did not bother to switch on the desk lamp. He had been looking at the picture for so long now that it was ingrained into the very fabric of his mind. The three of them; happier times. He and Elizabeth were smiling for the camera but Lara, as ever, was pulling one of her silly faces. She was eleven, their first year at the ranch. They had made the move in the spring and the flowers were in full bloom. They were visible in the background; rich primary colours. The summer was even more beautiful as he recalled; a never ending stream of picnics and barbecues. Jack had only needed to be away for eight weeks in the whole year. Two championships, no finals but still over three hundred grand in prize money. The family wanted for nothing; financial or emotional.
Lara hated having her picture taken, it seemed, even then. Odd for such a beautiful child. She was a shy girl whose main power lay in her thoughts and dreams. Private, studious and thoughtful. She would not have minded the photographs in later life quite so much had the press managed to place her own name above them, rather than Jack’s with the word ‘daughter’ tagged on as though she was some computer program he was currently promoting.
Suddenly there was a light, and Jack looked up. The door had opened and MaryBeth was standing silhouetted in the stark glow from the corridor outside.
“Making friends with the dark,” she asked. Jack placed the picture back on his desk. He did not even know why he was still holding it. Comfort perhaps. “You still flying back to London tomorrow night?” she asked, leaning against the frame. She knew he was. That was why he had no desire to go home to an empty house. A house full of distant memories.
She watched as he sank, as though his body had been full of air and a quarter of it had just escaped through a hidden valve. Perhaps it had been squeezed out by the weight of the fears and anxieties he was carrying on his shoulders.
“No choice,” he said bluntly. It was the last thing he felt like doing right now. “What time is it?”
MaryBeth checked her watch. “Ten to nine,” she said.
Jack rubbed his eyes and stretched. “I ought to be getting home.” He could think of plenty of reasons why, but not one that bore any resemblance to a good one.
“Not yet you don’t,” she said, switching on the light and walking into the office. “You’re coming with me.”
He blinked against the sudden brightness of the room and scowled. “Why? Where are we going?”
She grabbed his jacket roughly from the coat hook and threw it across.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” she said, hair dancing as she flicked her head. “Come on.”
* * * * *
Via the on/off glare of the equidistant halogen spotlamps they crossed the freshly cut grass at the Ocean side of the lake and approached the smoked glass doors of ‘R&D’, IntelliSoft’s Research and Development Progression Unit. Pausing at the digital entry system they both leaned toward the retina scanner simultaneously, nearly banging heads.
MaryBeth gestured for Jack to
go ahead. “You’re the boss.”
“No, I insist,” he said, backing off. “Besides, it looks like you’re in charge tonight.”
MaryBeth smiled and leaned toward the scanner until the laser had obtained the necessary information from the scan. ‘<5017>M.DeLaine’ appeared on the digital display at the top of the unit, indicating that her name and employee number had been logged onto the entry file. A heavily digitised voice said ‘Good evening, MaryBeth.’
“We really ought to update that,” she said as she pulled open the heavy door. “We’ve had the same voice for six years now and it’s really starting to piss me off.”
Jack followed her inside.
On Level-D, as on each of the others, were twelve laboratories. Six east and six west, each connected by one long corridor. Three of the laboratories to the west, D-7 to D-9, were dedicated to project planning and it was here that the Quotient software was constantly updated and improved.
Until recently, the R&D building had possessed six complete units between them; but now there were only three. D-10 was home to a unit used for beta-testing and D-11 was home to another which had simply been classed as a ‘spare’; a three million dollar paperweight. The third fully functional unit had been transferred to a completely remodelled D-12 and was now being used to run the recently installed ‘ReelRooms’ suite that IntelliSoft and Virtuosity had implemented together. It was to D-12 that MaryBeth was now leading Jack.
Of the three remaining Quotient units, one was still resident in New York having beaten Sorkasnov and another had been transported to Virtuality’s offices in London as part of the crossover deal. The third had been dismantled and discretely reassembled within IntelliSoft’s ‘Mountain’ Technical Division. It was this unit, the most powerful and reliable of the six, that Jack had seen that morning forming the central processing unit of the global FireWorX Network.
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