by Greg Enslen
Mike was holding up one of his hands.
“Okay, okay. You’ve convinced me that you know what you’re talking about.” He was smiling at what seemed to be some inner, private joke. “It’s difficult when you get to be my age to cut through all of the jargon, but it sounds like you made the FBI academies’ training case files more accessible, and that’s good. Now, a second question: Do you like working with computers?”
Her mind juggled with this for a moment. Yes, she liked working with computers, and she knew that this was her strong suit. She had joined the FBI to become a field agent, to get out there into the real world and try to help in the best way she could. Sitting behind a computer for the next twenty or thirty years at FBI Headquarters was not her idea of field work, but she got the feeling that there might not be any other choice, at least not right now. She just hoped that the next words she said didn’t dictate the rest of her career.
“Yes, sir, I do like working with computers. I think computers should be used as any other tool, just like a pencil or a calculator. They should help you get to where you want to go, and maybe even get you there a little faster, but they shouldn’t be studied just for the sake of studying them.” Her face flushed a little, perhaps slightly embarrassed for expressing her opinion in front of her new supervisor.
“It’s just that I don’t want to be stuck behind a computer for the rest of my career.” She might have been slightly embarrassed, but underneath her slight embarrassment lay another layer of emotion. Here she was, sitting in the office of the FBI’s Deputy Director of Personnel, voicing her opinion on her future career.
For years at the Academy, she had felt as if her feelings and her opinions (except those related to the computer network) had held little weight with anyone, and she spent all of her time concentrating instead on studying the opinions and ideas of the others that had come before her. She had listened to countless instructors and professors lecture to her, or at her, on the prevailing methods of law enforcement and investigative techniques. She’d sat, sometimes bored, in a dozen different classrooms, listening to others ramble on, but saying little or nothing herself.
But now, here she was, talking, explaining, convincing. She was the one that was speaking, and this man was in fact listening to her.
And it felt really good.
He nodded at her response and steepled his fingers, an expression that instantly reminded her of her father. It had been one of his favorites on the rare occasions she had been able to spend time with him, and he used to watch the TV news with his hands up in front of him, steepled in just the same thoughtful manner.
Wallace took another cursory glance at her file, but his mind had already been made up minutes ago. Darren Paynod had suggested and approved of her addition to the Team and their new computer project based on her written file, but Mike Wallace had the final decision on whether or not to add her, based on their personal meeting. He had been apprehensive, concerned that Miss Nolan would turn out to be just another thick-headed computer nerd, capable of understanding little of any concept that couldn’t be quantified in terms of kilobytes and nanoseconds.
Evidently, this girl wasn’t like that. She was friendly, outgoing, driven. She was very knowledgeable about computers, but she wasn’t so ingrained into the topic that she couldn’t think about anything else...
And she was beautiful.
Wallace spun around in his odd chair and reached into a open file cabinet behind his desk, pulling out a manila folder that was bordered and sealed with bright blue tape. He glanced at it once more, as if having second thoughts, and then spun around and handed the file over to Julie.
She took it carefully, keeping it flat like a waitress trying to keep from spilling a tray of drinks. She noticed the blue tape first, and then read the title:
PROJECT 546DF: WILDFIRE
Wallace saw the stunned look on her face. He didn’t usually miss much, but anybody could have figured out how and what she was thinking. “We have a exciting new project starting up next week, and we think you will make a valuable addition. Take that file back to your office and read it carefully, and then spend the rest of the day writing down your opinions and comments on the possible uses and benefits of such a system. A wish list, so to speak. There is also a timetable included, describing when each part of the new system will be on line.” He looked up at the modernistic clock hanging on the gray wall behind Julie, which read 1:08. “Let’s see you back here tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. with some ideas, okay?”
Julie nodded, and then finally found her tongue. “Yes, sir. Nine o’clock. Thank you, sir.” She got up and reached to shake his hand.
“Oh, and don’t take that file home,” he said as he shook her hand.
“Yes, sir,” she said, smiling, and left his office.
Wallace smiled as he watched her leave and shook his head. She’s gonna stand that computer department on its ear.
Julie managed to get almost all of the way back to her office before she broke the blue tape seal on the folder and began looking through it.
Project Wildfire was a fancy name for a new supercomputer being installed for use in the FBI Headquarters. The computer, a Cray Mark IV, was several years ahead of anything that she had heard of, but the advances made in this particular unit followed logically from what she knew of the present generation of supercomputers available on the commercial market. This unit was a generation or two more advanced, and companies all over the world would have salivated over the mere prospect of using it, had they known it even existed. This unit was the only one of its type in the world, a prototype, and the FBI had been challenged by Cray Corporation to construct a program sophisticated enough to make full use of the computers’ advanced abilities.
Eventually, the rest of the FBI would be able to use the Cray, but for now, all of the research and development would be carried out by the eleven members of the Team, all of them assigned, at least temporarily, to Project Wildfire.
She had heard rumors about the Team before, back at the Academy, but she would never have dared dream of being made a part of the Team. Julie did not see her name among those listed on the page, so she assumed hers would make it twelve.
The main thrust of the Computer Response Teams’ newest project would be to construct a massive database to hold the criminal files on all known law-breakers and offenders in the continental United States. It sounded like an incredible undertaking, but Julie knew that it would not be as difficult as it sounded on paper. She knew that the country’s master lists and files on criminals had been computerized for many years.
The new twist on this project would be that all of the files, every single one of them, would be stored inside one master data bank, instead of spread out in a dozen room-sized mainframes scattered from one end of the continent to the other. This mass storage would create advances in two separate areas.
One, access to the files would be increased and access times would be reduced because all of the information would be inside this single super fast unit.
Two, the structure of the database would hopefully allow, for the first time, comparison of massive numbers of files from all over the country. Any or all criminal files inside the unit could be compared to any other file.
One of the most helpful methods of police investigation is the discerning of subtle patterns in a series of crimes. Sometimes, it was something as simple as a common tire track or a common type of rope that could be the key to cracking a case, or a whole string of cases, wide open.
Julie remembered reading about a case several years ago that had involved a series of unsolved disappearances from several neighboring small towns. Because the police officers of these towns were seldom in communication with one another, the pattern went undetected for several months until a waitress at a local roadside restaurant had happened to mention the latest disappearance to a highway patrolman who had stopped off for a cup of coffee. It was soon discovered that all of the cases, some of them five counties away,
had one distinct, unpublished fact in common: in each case, the killer had been wearing a red baseball cap. In hindsight, the answer had been simple, but it had taken a simple, lucky fluke to put it all together.
The powerful machine she would be working on, it would be a high-tech answer to that lucky fluke.
David got into his car and started back to his apartment, and he got about halfway there when he realized that he didn’t really want to go home. There was nothing at his apartment for him. The news that he needed to pass along to his Aunt could wait - she was most likely passed out and not able to listen anyway.
Let Abe Foreman handle the details of the move, David thought. He seemed more than willing to step in and help his Aunt find a new place to live. He had even offered to oversee the selling of the house, and depositing the proceeds for her. The check in his pocket - it could wait to be deposited. The money was his, now, and all he really had to do was go and get it. The years of waiting were over, and now it was time to figure out what he was going to do next.
David knew that as the way things stood right now, his Aunt was slowly drinking herself to death. It was not difficult to imagine attending her funeral sometime soon. He knew that was a terrible, sick thing to think, but the realist in him, the part of his mind that never pulled any punches and always “told it the way it was”, that part had already picked out what to wear to the wake.
Some of the things that Abe had said were very true. She had drunk a lot of the money away, back when she’d first started receiving the payments on David‘s 11th birthday, before Abe had stepped into the picture. He must have quickly understood what was happening and diverted most of the funds to safe places. Without the house and all of its memories of his parents hanging over her, David’s Aunt could concentrate on living the rest of her life, instead of focusing on the past. The extra money from the sale of the house certainly wouldn’t hurt her financial situation.
Just the thought of his Aunt out and about, no longer shackled to the altar of the Great God Vodka, brought a smile to his face. To see her out, enjoying life and meeting new people, would be great. It would be one less thing on his mind. He had a feeling that her mood of late was far too self-destructive to last much longer.
David thought about the condition of the house yesterday morning, and how he had though it had smelled like death and decay. He didn’t like his Aunt living there all by herself any more than anyone else, but if she was going to move out, David wanted her to move out because she WANTED to, not because Abe Foreman had told her that it was something she needed to do. Even though he had helped get the family finances under control after his Aunt had almost pissed it all away on liquor, David still had never really liked Mr. Abe Foreman. Every time he went in and talked to the man, he felt like he was being examined like a little bug under a microscope. It was a feeling that made him uncomfortable, but he had never said anything about it.
No, when it came to his Aunt, David didn’t think there was much he could do for her. It was up to her to help herself, and if getting her out of that house helped, then it was the right thing to do. He could get her on her way and then move on with his life.
As David drove, his thoughts turned inevitably to Bethany. He drove past the restaurant where they had eaten on their first date, and that was all it took to flood his mind with memories and thoughts of her.
But Bethany wasn’t there for him anymore, even though she said she was, or at least she said she was willing to be. He’d enjoyed dating her, and they had spent some very special times together.
Yes, he could quickly admit to himself that he had enjoyed being with her, and theirs was by far the most well rounded and successful relationship he had ever had. They would go places together, they would spend quiet evenings together with a pizza from Tony’s and a rented movie (of course, they had gotten the movie from the video store, so they always got the newest releases free) and sometimes they would sleep together and sometimes they wouldn’t, and either way, David had been happy.
He had been very happy.
No, no! It hadn’t been all good, or he wouldn’t have ended it as he did. They had had fights, plenty of them, and the longer they had gone out, the more they would fight. A few had been about him thinking about leaving, but there had been plenty of others.
“David, why don’t you go back to school and study Architecture? You always say that you always wanted to be an architect...”
“David, do you want to work at a video store for the rest of your life? There’s no future...”
“David, why don’t you and your Aunt talk very much? I think that if you talked more and spent more time together, maybe you two could get past whatever it is that’s keeping you apart. In my family, we always...”
It always seemed to come down to the same things: she wanted more from him than he could give her. She had wanted him to have more, to be more, and that, combined with other things, had finally made him crazy enough to end it. That, and the fact that she probably would’ve ended it pretty soon, anyway.
Of course she had said a lot of things that made sense, but he didn’t need anybody telling him what to do with his life, much less somebody like his girlfriend. Bethany had said that she was only trying to urge him to improve himself, to go back to school and finish his degree; she only wanted him to have some direction in his life. And when she said it, he could almost believe it.
But no one was going to run his life but him.
Not his drunk Aunt, not his over-bearing girlfriend, and certainly not the memories or ghosts of his dead father.
David Beaumont wrenched the wheel around hard and headed west, out of town. If only it was for good!
He wished he could just pack up and leave and never look back. He hated Liberty; he hated the way the past lay around all over the town like a choking thick blanket. He hated hearing about his father and the Killer - the Story had long ago stopped amusing David, and he had the sneaking suspicion that he would never, could never amount to anything as long as he stayed in Liberty, trapped under this sweaty blanket of legend and history and booze.
But maybe they were just looking out for his best interests. Maybe they really did mean well, and he was just pushing them away? He had come to grasp only a week ago the patterns that had ended every relationship he had ever had over the years with girls; he was jealous and eager to delve into and control their personal lives, but when it came to opening up and letting them into his brain, into the feelings and attitudes that rattled around inside that skull of his, he threw up a huge wall, massive and as winding and stony at the Great Wall of China. It blocked any possible “invasion” of his privacy.
He, that is the objective part of him that usually was drowned out by the other more selfish aspects of his mind, knew that David was just being an idiot. It knew that he was just afraid of getting hurt again.
One of the three courses he had managed to finish at Central Virginia Community College over the summer was an Introduction to Psychology class. They had studied the emotions and motivations that drive people and the actions that they undertake, and when they had gotten to the chapter on sublimation of pain and the symptoms that accompanied it, David remembered distinctly the feeling of goose bumps running up and down his arms, right there in class.
Sure, he had been hurt by his father’s death, even though he had never known him. His mother had died giving him life, and his only other family member had turned to the bottle and the Great God Vodka for comfort and escape, leaving David on his own to create his own support method, and David had done just that. David had decided that the best way to deal with pain was to just ignore it. Pretend that it didn’t happen.
That obviously hadn’t worked. Even though the Psychology professor had warned them about the tendency of psychology students (and medical students, too, for that matter) to find at least two or three serious diseases or disorders in their studies that the students are convinced they are suffering from, David was sure that this was more than j
ust an active imagination. He wasn’t a medical student, imagining he had cholera just because he had finished reading about it in a textbook and suddenly remember coughing and sneezing the night before.
No, David really felt this way.
He felt betrayed, he felt lied to, he felt angered by what had happened to him. He wanted to blame someone, and more often than not, he ended up blaming those around him, those closest to him.
This included his rare girlfriends.
But most of all, underneath what felt like a swirling whirlpool of pain and sorrow and anger, he felt like he had been abandoned.
He passed a sign that marked the western city limits of Liberty, and already the road was starting to twist and wind its way up into the foothills of the Shenandoah’s. Several housing developments and subdivisions, including the one Abe Foreman had suggested his Aunt move into, were scattered about here on the hills overlooking the town, but he could easily see where the rough and rocky ground quickly stepped in and showed who was in charge, jutting up into the sky in places and affording some lovely views of the city below, spread out like a blanket in the valley below. He had once come up here with Bethany and parked and walked back into the hills, finding two or three spectacular views of the only town he had ever known.
The road continued upward, switching back and forth on itself as it wound up towards Shenandoah National Park and its myriad recreational facilities, camping areas and hiking trails. David was in the right lane, his Mazda chugging slowly and laboriously up the long incline, and the two or three other cars going his way easily blew past him, honking as they accelerated smoothly around him.
On one particularly sharp turn, he tried to take it too fast and his glove compartment popped open on its own accord like a mouth, a sheaf of various papers and bills and other sundry stuff spilling out onto the passenger floorboard. He only glanced over at the papers and continued on up the hill.
