Death of Secrets

by Bowen Greenwood

  "Who's to say any of us are intoxicated? Or that all of us are minors. I’m sure none of us would mind a Breathalyzer to check…"

  Franken cut her off. "Look, Kelver. I'm going to find out who shot that guy. When I do, either you'll have helped the investigation or you'll have hindered it. If you helped, then you're a good citizen and to be commended. But so help me, if I find out you were keeping things from me…"

  She nodded. "I understand."

  Franken sat back down in his patrol car. "Don't forget, Kelver. You've been warned!" He slammed the door to his car and laid down a strip of rubber as he left.

  "That was close!" Their driver breathed an audible sigh of relief to accompany his statement of the obvious.

  "Let's get out of here before he changes his mind and comes back," Kathy suggested.

  The driver nodded, his double chin jiggling. "Yeah, and he better not follow us either."

  They boarded the van and placed their safety in the hands of a stranger.

  ***

  When the van finally came to a stop, Kathy breathed a sigh of relief. Whoever their driver was, his right foot weighed a lot more than lead, she thought. The side door slid open and she and Michael stumbled out.

  They stood in yet another dimly lit parking garage. The hard cement floor felt cold on the feet, and the Spartan columns that held up the roof cast flickering shadows in the glow from the occasional lamp.

  "Follow me," their driver said, and headed for an elevator.

  Kathy and her friends tagged along behind the man, and walked through the elevator door while he held it open. The quick ride with no interruptions stopped, and they exited into a hallway. Their driver waddled forward to open the first door on the right.

  The room they found themselves matched the parking garage almost perfectly. The stark, bare interior had the look of abandonment about it. A run down couch sat against one wall, and a mismatched loveseat against another. The room lacked end tables or any other flat surface. No pictures or other decorations hung from the walls. The only light trickled in through the windows and down from a ceiling light that looked like it dated back to the 1950's. Overall, Kathy thought, the decor reminded her of…

  She sucked in her breath. It was as if he hadn't even changed clothes.

  "Oh my word! You!"

  The man standing before her wore a black T-shirt, black slacks, black socks, and black loafers. The overhead light in the room turned his photograde lenses dark too.

  "Yes, Kathy, it's me. Marvelous though that escape of yours was, it was really unnecessary."

  She backed up involuntarily, bumping into Michael behind her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and stepped slightly in front of her. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the man in front of them.

  Colleen asked, "Jakarta?"

  He nodded. "Correct. I really don't see any need to tell you my real name. But I do feel a need to apologize to Kathy. Had I known you were trying to find me, I'd never have made such efforts to bring you here involuntarily."

  Kathy growled. "You mean to tell me that was all a mistake?"

  "I truly do apologize. I had no idea you were trying to reach me, and it was so important that I recover that flash drive."

  "Yeah," Kathy groused, eyes flashing. "Important enough to break into our dorm room, try to run us off a bridge, and shoot up Michael’s house!"

  The man before them blinked. "I can’t be blamed for that list, I’m afraid," he said. "I did kidnap you, regrettably, and for that I apologize. But I’ve certainly never asked anyone to fire a gun at you, nor would I countenance it if someone did it on my behalf."

  Kathy’s reply was succinct: "liar!"

  He stared at her, holding her gaze. "It’s true, I assure you. I’ve never lied to you yet. The kidnapping was me, and I am truly sorry. All the other things you describe…" he shrugged.

  "You’re trying to tell me it wasn’t you who did those things?"

  "You have my word, it wasn’t me."

  Kathy gave a short bark of a laugh. "Yeah, right. You didn’t trust our word, so why should we trust yours?"

  "Miss Kelver, you just spent the last thirty minutes or so in a vehicle with associates of mine – the last part of the ride without your cell phones or pagers. If I had been the one who did all these things you describe, don’t you think I could have had you shot many times over in that half hour?"

  Kathy wanted to object, but couldn’t find a way to dispute his argument. She grated her teeth, and turned away.

  Colleen picked up where her roommate left off. "Who, then?"

  Jakarta gave a wolfish grin. "Most likely the people I stole the flash drive from in the first place."

  "And who are they?"

  He chuckled. "All in good time, my dear."

  Kathy frowned and turned back around. "If you stole it, how did Eric Harrison get it?"

  The hacker sighed and turned away. "He stole it for me. Had I known the depths to which they would sink, I would never have sent him. He, like all the people who work with me, do so out of a sense of friendship and shared enthusiasm – and mutual profit. He never signed on to get killed, and I never meant him to. But he did. So as you can imagine, the flash drive you’re carrying is very important to me.

  "OK, what's so important about that flash drive, anyway?" Kathy asked.

  "Ah, yes. The explanation you wanted so badly. Your price, as it were, for returning the flash drive to me." Jakarta removed his glasses and wiped a handkerchief over the lenses. "Please, take a seat. I'll explain. Can I offer you anything to drink?"

  Kathy and company shook their heads at the offer of refreshment, and moved collectively to the couch. When they were all seated, Jakarta smiled at Colleen.

  "You must be the famous Colleen Christina, who tracked me so diligently. May I say I’m impressed? Not many people can find me on their own."

  She blushed and returned his gaze. Truth to tell, that was easy for her. Jakarta was nothing like most other guys she knew on the Internet. He was very good looking – slender, clear complexion, and only a few years older than her. "I had a lot of help, from people I asked and stuff."

  He nodded, and his smile crept ever so slightly towards becoming a frown. But then he pasted the indulgent smile back into face. "Yes, you did make rather a lot of noise, which I must admit isn’t my preference. But I can hardly blame you, since it accomplished your goal. I’m impressed with your skill and, may I add, glad to discover that someone so good with computers is also so very attractive."

  Colleen blushed deeper and couldn’t hold the young man’s gaze for very long. Kathy managed to keep from snickering until the moment ended. Finally Jakarta turned away from Colleen and devoted his attention to the full group.

  ***

  The unmarked official car crawled through DC traffic at a snail's pace, and for the tenth time in as many minutes Sam Franken denied the urge to put his magnetic siren on top of the car and cut through the gridlock.

  Instead he white knuckled the steering wheel and swore at any driver who was the tiniest bit slow getting going when the light turned green. He knew his anger was really about the Kelver situation, not about the traffic, but that didn't stop him from expelling a particularly nasty curse at a driver whose left turn caused him to miss a light.

  He reminded himself not to take an unusual shift again. Covering for a friend was one thing, aggravating his blood pressure problem was something else entirely. Franken tried to cool himself off by daydreaming about how he’d spend tonight when he got off, since his friend was taking Franken’s usual night shift in repayment. But that only made it more aggravating to sit stuck in traffic.

  Something had happened to Kathy Kelver. She'd started off mad that he didn't believe her report, and wanting the police to do something. But sometime between that first night and tonight, she'd changed her mind. Now she didn't want police attention to the matter.

  Had she been bought off? It was a possibility, but Franken didn't believe it. His e
arlier hunch about her came back to him. Kelver was one of the good guys. That much felt certain to him. So why was she shutting him out?

  He growled. Most probably, she was off on some vigilante mission, trying to take care of things herself since there had been so little official interest at first. College kids and their sense of justice. Kids think they can take on the whole world by themselves, he groused. Well, he'd find out what she knew.

  When she'd first reported the body, Franken remembered that Kathy had brought her roommate along. He'd just go talk to her, and find out what Kathy had been doing.

  Unfortunately, Franken didn't remember the roommate well enough to realize he'd just seen her getting into that van with Kathy. Hoping he'd find her in Kathy's dorm room, he headed for Georgetown.

  The Resident Assistant at Kathy's dorm room was a remarkably helpful soul, urged along by the University's policy of as much cooperation with the police as possible. With a few well-timed words about the possibility that Kathy Kelver might be in danger, the RA had been perfectly willing to open up her dorm room.

  Franken gazed around, wondering whether he could learn anything here. He'd been disappointed to find the roommate out, but a useful clue might still be here.

  The most obvious feature of the room was the astonishing mess on the floor. Books and women’s clothing stretched in no order at all from one wall to the other. An experienced cop, the disorder spoke two words to him: "break-in."

  Beyond the mess, though, the collection of computer parts jumbled on one of the two desks caught his eye. Franken was no technology whiz, but he could tell right away most of those things belonged inside the beige box, rather than outside. It did not escape his notice that, according to the young man he had just interrogated, this whole business revolved around a thumb drive. Perhaps the disassembled PC was connected somehow?

  He sat down at the desk and began to rummage through the drawers.

  ***

  "So, you want to know what's on the flash drive. In order to understand, though, you'll need a bit of background. Please bear with me if it seems like I digress."

  Jakarta rested his hands behind his back and looked at them, locking eyes with each one in turn. To Colleen he looked like a professor about to lecture.

  "There was a time when, if you wanted to know a fact, you had to want it bad enough to go to the library and try to look it up. Congressman Vincent probably remembers it, although the rest of us may be too young."

  Mike’s face tried to look grumpy about the implication that he was ancient, and wry that yes, he did remember having to go to the library to look things up.

  Jakarta went on. "In the 90’s, looking something up became a little easier. If you mastered the art, you could spend a few hours looking things up on Alta Vista or other primordial search engines. From there, we grew into sitting down at keyboard, dialing in a web address, and Google giving us the answer right away. That became today’s world, where we simply speak the question into our phone and get the answer."

  He paused, and stared directly at Kathy. "The inevitable destiny of our current course is this: instant availability of information. Anywhere you are, whoever you are, you'll be able to instantly know anything you want to know. Anything."

  "That seems a bit farfetched," Kathy replied.

  "Really? Consider this: in the beginning, computers were capable of accepting input only by rearranging their wires. Later they evolved to accept punch cards, and then keyboards. In the late 1970s, the graphical user interface was developed, and humans could interact with computers by the now-famous pointing and clicking. That became touch screens, cutting the mouse out of the input chain. And after GUI? Already, voice recognition systems are gaining currency. Today, they are simply a method of speaking commands which would otherwise be transmitted by a mouse or keyboard. But as Windows and Macintosh were developed specifically to take advantage of the easiest form of input possible at the time – the mouse – how long can it be before an operating system is developed to take real advantage of voice recognition?"

  The hacker was really warming to his theme, now. Colleen was again reminded of one of her professors giving a lecture. He had a tendency to stroke his chin during pauses, and now he even removed his glasses to once again wipe them clean on a handkerchief. When he resumed speaking, he also resumed pacing.

  "What is the central motif of this progression of input devices?" Jakarta asked. "Faster transfer of information. A more direct line between the human brain and the computer. Technology's big achievement has been to make it easier and easier to move your thoughts into the computer. It’s become as simple as to see what you want and point."

  Colleen now leaned forward in her chair. She ate this stuff up, Kathy noted.

  Jakarta slapped his hands together in mimicry of prayer, and then rubbed them back and forth as if for warmth. "Think it through, and the next step will be obvious. Direct transmission of our thoughts to the computer."

  Michael snorted, earning an indulgent smile from Jakarta. "You're rolling your eyes, scoffing. But give it a bit more thought. Remember that the human brain is a bioelectrical system. Electricity involves the flow of electrons. And that means, on some level, radiation. What radiates can be detected. And read.

  "Yes, read. Of course the technology seems farfetched. But never forget: in 1950, the technology didn't exist for a computer to recognize a human voice. We in the industry call this new technology TR, for Thought Recognition, and it would be the Holy Grail of human-computer interaction."

  Colleen nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, everyone knows it’s coming – well, everyone in the industry. But we also know it’s whole decades away. No one seriously thinks about it now."

  "No," Jakarta replied, "very few people do, or they’d be more worried. The implications for the information industry are almost unimaginable. Once we make the leap to computers that read minds, how does anyone keep anything to himself? An author need do no more than conceive a plot, and a greedy audience could already be reading it. The garage band your brother plays in? Your memory of that song could be downloaded by anyone with that kind of taste.

  "Those who earn their living by exacting a fee for providing information are in for a bad century. Will creative art still advance when no one can gain anything by creating it? Will the frontiers of knowledge expand when ideas are shared so instantaneously no one even notices whose idea it was?"

  He looked at Mike. "Congressman Vincent, you know how politics has been roiled by the idea that the government reads all of our e-mail. What happens when the government reads our minds?

  "The real shocker, ladies and gentleman, is that this has already been done. A defense contractor has built for the NSA a device designed to pick up and interpret the radiation from a thinking human brain. They call it GigaStar."

  That brought Michael out of his seat. "That’s crazy!" he scoffed. "I’ve been briefed on the GigaStar. I just had a hearing on putting it in the NSA’s budget. It’s just a high tech device to monitor computer traffic!"

  Jakarta eyed him carefully. "You say you were briefed on the GigaStar, Congressman. But have you ever physically seen one? Has the NSA or the contractor ever demonstrated one?"

  Mike shook his head.

  "Why not, do you suppose?"

  "I’m sure because it’s classified."

  "Well, if they briefed you on capabilities it has, then they must trust you not to sell that information to the commies, or terrorists, or whoever it is we fear these days. So if they’re willing to tell you, why aren’t they willing to show you?" When Mike was slow responding, Jakarta went on. "Because the real device has capabilities far beyond those you were briefed to expect."

  Colleen spoke up. "It’s not like I doubt that the government would lie to us. But come on, I at least have some background in this. That level of thought recognition technology is supposed to be more than twenty years away!"

  Jakarta looked at her and nodded. "For public use, it probably is. But how long do
you suppose the government had voice recognition technology before Dragon started making software for doctors to dictate their notes? How long, for example, was the Government traveling into space before they opened the technology up to private companies to use? And speaking of space, Colleen, did you know NASA already has a system that will interpret nerve impulses to control an aircraft? Fully tested and works like a charm. Other scientists have monkeys playing video games using only electrical impulses from their brain. They’ve already done the theoretical work on this. Don’t kid yourself. However fantastic you think it sounds, thought recognition is more than possible. It’s here. The only problem is that no one has considered the possible side effects."

  Mike still sat with his arms crossed over his chest. He leaned back, away from the conversation. But at least his head was no longer shaking. Jakarta stared at him. "Do you know much about computers? I could easily prove it to you. You see, that flash drive you brought me contains the programming that makes GigaStar possible – the code that tells the hardware how to read and interpret the radiation from a thinking human brain."

  Colleen was on her feet immediately. "Show me. I could understand it."

  Jakarta eyed her for a moment. "Perhaps. Can you write Assembly Language?" he asked, referring to one of the more advanced computer languages.

  She nodded. "And how. Trust me, I can keep up."

  "Very well, then. Follow me." He waved at their driver and then turned to exit the room.

  CHAPTER 11

  "They're not suspected of any crime. But we suspect they may be in some danger. Please, you can come along if you like. I just need to check their room to see if there's any sign of where they've gone."

  Nathan left his NSA identification on the desk as he held the young woman's eyes with his own. He didn't even need to act sincere – he was every bit really worried about his friend.

  Seeing the ID card, the clerk at the Holiday Inn relented. "Let me go get the manager," she said.