by J Boyd Long
“Okay,” he said, taking one last look around. “I’ve got the basic concept in here.”
Tocho turned the light off, and shut the door behind them as they retreated into the main control room. “How about the computers themselves? Are you good there?”
“I should be okay,” Quentin said. “It’s not exactly the same as things are in our dimension, but it’s close enough that I think I can figure out how to work with it.”
“Alright then, let’s get out of here.”
They returned to the main floor, and again, Tocho closed the door firmly behind them, looking all around them for any sign of discovery.
“We’ll stop at each row on the way back and check, just to make sure we’re not walking into a trap,” he whispered.
Quentin nodded, and followed him across the open floor to the first row. Tocho peered around the corner, then slid forward a few feet to the next row of gates. There was no one there, and they hurried across to the next row. It was also clear, and they made their way up to the third row, where their own door was waiting. Tocho poked his head around the corner, and seeing Eissa standing there waiting, took off down the hallway with Quentin right behind him.
“It’s about time,” Eissa hissed, leading them back through the door.
“Hey, good things take time,” Quentin said, grinning at her. The humidity wrapped around him like a warm, wet blanket, but he was relieved to be back.
“Yeah, and great things happen all at once,” Eissa retorted. “What took you so long? I was stressed out of my goddamn mind.”
“We were gone like five minutes,” Quentin protested. “We found the server room, and found out they’re still putting the computer system together, and all kinds of good stuff.”
Tocho closed the door, and Bob shut it down, pulling the fuse before he closed the panel.
“Let’s go back to the cabin, and you can tell us all about it,” he suggested.
Chapter 17
The four of them sat in silence on the porch of the cabin, each digesting the information that Quentin had presented. The evening was progressing towards twilight, and the tree frogs were beginning to sing. Bob cleared his throat, absently combing his beard with his fingers as he mulled over the situation.
“Well, isn’t this a fine fix,” he said. “We’ve got a golden opportunity with such a short time to act that we’ve got no time to plan it out appropriately. It’s a recurring problem, all of the sudden.”
“Well, if we know there’s no one there right now, why don’t we just go in there and bash the servers to death?” Eissa asked. “Two minutes with a baseball bat, and it’s done.”
“Well, that would slow them down for a day, but it wouldn’t destroy the system,” Quentin said. “The program that runs the DimGates has to be corrupted. If we just take out the servers, the program is still alive. It’s probably in three or four different locations, maybe more. The servers are one spot, but there’s no way it’s the only spot.”
If it was his program that ran the DimGates, there would be copies of it stashed all over the place. That wasn’t something you took risks with, especially when you knew there were people out there trying to shut you down. The only way he could even convince himself that it was possible to corrupt every copy was the fact that they were still working on constructing it. That meant that either all the copies had to be updated to reflect the changes made, or the backups were replacing older versions when they saved it. Once the program was complete, there would likely be a copy on a hard drive in a safe deposit box somewhere, safe from corruption. This really was a ‘now or never’ situation.
“So, you need to be able to sit at one of those computers and write a virus program, is that right?” Tocho asked.
“Yeah, I have to be able to connect to the whole network,” Quentin said.
“What sort of preparation do you need to do that?” Bob asked. “How long will it take you to actually do it once you get started?”
“Well, there really isn’t anything I can do to prepare,” Quentin said. “Basically, I just have to sit down and start writing it. I can’t give you much of a time frame, because I’ve never done it before. I’ll need a couple of hours, for sure. Maybe more.”
“So, right now is the best chance we’ve got to do this, isn’t it?” Eissa said slowly. “I mean, every day that goes by, it gets more likely that there will be tighter security, and the computers will be harder to get into once they get passwords on them, and all that. It’s pretty much got to be tonight, or tomorrow night. We can’t risk waiting.”
“That’s the same conclusion I came to,” Bob said. His brow was furrowed in a frown, and his white eyebrows stuck out like horns. “I don’t like it one bit. This is all happening way too fast. Hell, three days ago, I was sitting on the porch, solving the world’s problems with Bewildered. We need more time to think about all of this. ‘Fools rush in,’ so they say, and I’m inclined to agree with them on that point. On the other hand, I just don’t see how we can afford to wait. It’s a damn pickle.”
It suddenly seemed like they were moving too fast to Quentin, too. Before, when Bob was dragging his feet, Quentin had been raring to go. Now that things were escalating, the pressure was intensifying, and he needed more time to think it through. If he did find a way to write a virus that shut down the DimGate system, what would happen to them?
“Just to clarify,” Quentin said. “If I manage to put this virus in the DimGate system, we’re going to be stuck in this dimension, right? Assuming we even get back to this one, that is. This will eliminate any possibility of ever going back home, right?”
“Dude, what the fuck are you trying to get back to at home?” Eissa exploded, spinning to face him. “Your sister? Your job? Do you think Zimmerman is going to just believe that this was all a big misunderstanding? We can’t go back, not to a normal life. Especially if this works, you’ll be his top priority target. Think about it.”
Quentin was surprised by the unexpected attack, and he quickly responded in kind, his face darkening. “Well, how do you think it’s going to be, living here for the rest of our lives, stuck on an island for thirty years? Have you thought about that? Never see another person, never eat at another restaurant, or see a movie. Does that sound like a good trade to you?”
“It sounds better than getting blown away in my bed while I’m asleep, or stabbed in a damn parking lot somewhere. Would you rather be dead?”
“I don’t know,” he shouted in exasperation. He hated not having all the answers, it fed right into his feelings of inadequacy. “I don’t fucking know! How are you so sure about any of this?”
Eissa glared at him, her eyes black with rage. “I’m not sure about anything, except that it’s better to be alive than dead. You need to get a grip on reality, Quentin. You can’t fucking go home. We’ve already been over this. You can either sit here and do nothing, or you can take it to DimCorp, and at least try to do something. Deal with that, so the rest of us can move on.”
Quentin hung his head. She was right, of course, which just made him angrier. He would be on the run the rest of his life in his own dimension, at least until they caught him. Holt had probably already found a way to get Quentin on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. For that matter, he might already be an inter-dimensional fugitive. Somehow it wasn’t near as exciting and romantic as the movies made it seem. The anger ran out of him as fast as it had come, leaving him depressed and remorseful.
His gut was cramping like he had diarrhea. This was way more pressure than he had ever experienced before, and he didn’t see any way out of it. Suddenly his mouth filled with saliva and his stomach lurched. He leaped up and sprinted for the tree line, and just made it to the trunk of a palm when the vomit came. He bent over, hands on his knees, as his stomach twisted and churned, emptying itself of every last drop, leaving him sweating and crying in the encroaching darkness. A warm hand squeezed his shoulder a few minutes later, and Tocho handed him a small towel so he could clean
himself up.
“It’s all starting to get real, huh?” Tocho asked. He smiled sadly, as Quentin scrubbed his face. “I know exactly how you feel right now. I remember it all too well; the realization that you’ve already passed the point of no return, the doubt about whether you can perform in the moment and not crack under the pressure, the fear of failure, the fear of getting caught, the doubts about whether you really even know how to do everything you’ve obligated yourself to, all of that. Then you start second-guessing yourself, and going over and over all the ways you might screw it up. Trust me, I know all about it.”
Quentin cleared his throat, and spat a wad of phlegm on the ground. “Yeah, I guess that pretty much sums it up.” A tear trickled down his cheek, and he brushed it away. He hated feeling this way. He hated the doubts that he had about himself, he hated the pressure, and he hated how everyone was focused on him, scrutinizing everything he said and did. Are you ashamed of yourself, Quentin? Maybe. A week ago, he hadn’t been dealing with any of this stress. In some ways, maybe ignorance really was bliss. That insight brought a small smile, but it didn’t make it to his lips.
“I mean, I felt okay about it, but then we’re talking about going back over there right now, like, I need to write a virus that’s going to save the world fifteen minutes from now, and I’ll never be able to go home, and, well, I don’t know. Eissa got me all upset, and it all sort of sat on my stomach all the sudden.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out. “It’s a lot to handle.”
“Yes, it is,” Tocho said gently. “It’s more than any one person should ever have to take on. I want you to remember two things. First, you don’t have to do this. You have the power to step back. We can scrap the plan, go back to the drawing board. Second, you aren’t doing this alone. The four of us are a team now, and you might have to sit at that keyboard by yourself, but you don’t have to save the world by yourself. We’re all in this together.”
Tocho’s calming presence helped soothe his nerves, and a wave of gratitude swept through him. “How did you get through this part?” Quentin asked. “How did you stop puking and start getting things accomplished?”
“You have to learn how to break it down, to take it in pieces,” Tocho said. “You can’t go through the door thinking that you have to write a virus and save the world, and fight any bad guys that come through the door, and hold up your part of the team mission, and whatever else you’ve got running around in your head. You walk through the door with one mission, one focus. You walk through that door with the mindset that you are going to sit down at a computer and write a piece of code, and that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. You can’t think about what will happen if you succeed, or if you fail. You only think about the steps that you need to take to do that one thing.”
It was like his therapist was there, telling him all the things she had told him a dozen times over the years. Would he ever learn, or was he terminally dense? He hung his head, blushing in the darkness.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Quentin said. “I’ve got to quit psyching myself out with all the rest of it, and focus on one thing at a time.”
“It’s not something to be embarrassed about. Everything you knew to be true about reality has been turned on its ear in the last two days. Your mind is busy grappling with its own comprehension of things, so you can’t expect it to be handing all the other stuff at the same time. Give yourself a break.”
Quentin chuckled. “My therapist would say the only one expecting me to be perfect is me. I could probably do a better job setting expectations for myself.”
“Exactly.” Tocho laughed. “Let’s go back to the porch and see how the other two are getting on.”
A gentle breeze followed them across the yard, carrying the sound of the ocean with it. The full moon was just coming into view over the trees, pushing the darkness back under the forest canopy.
“Hey, bubby, are you okay?” Eissa asked, as Quentin sat down beside her.
“Yeah, I’ll make it,” he said, a rueful grin playing across his face. “I just got a little overwhelmed there for a minute.”
Eissa slid over behind him and rubbed his shoulders.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said after a minute. “I just- I don’t know.”
“I know,” Quentin said. “In some ways, it probably seems like I’m not acknowledging what’s happening.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Quentin took a deep breath and blew it out his nose. “If I’m being honest, the idea of never being able to go home scares the shit out of me, and I guess I’m torn. Logically, I know it makes more sense to hit DimCorp at its heart and shut down their computers. I get that, I really do, but part of me wants to go home and figure out a way to punish Zimmerman and Holt, you know what I mean? It’s personal, because they took advantage of me, of Quentin James. I know that’s small potatoes compared to DimCorp taking advantage of all these dimensions, but it’s still important.”
“Stick with the logic, Q. It’s what you’re good at.”
“I know, I know. Like I told Tocho, I just got overwhelmed by it all. I’m a little out of my league, here.” More than a little, miles more than a little. His league didn’t even make it on to the list of leagues here, who was he kidding?
Now that he had said it out loud, it didn’t seem like such a strong argument. In fact, he felt downright selfish and self-centered. This impacts everyone in the world, Quentin. Everyone in the world times a thousand dimensions. How much more important are you, your fears, your wants, compared to all of them?
“It’s easy to get overwhelmed,” Bob said, from the other side of the porch. “It took me six months to get my shit together when I discovered the DimGates, and you’ve only had a couple of days, so don’t be too hard on yourself. And as far as bringing Zimmerman to justice, it’s also understandable that you’d rather fight someone you know that’s done you wrong, instead of fighting a faceless entity through a computer. That’s just human nature. When it’s personal, you need a person.”
Quentin shot Bob a look of gratitude, and smiled. There was something comforting in being understood, even if he was wrong.
“Well, that’s hard to argue with,” Tocho said. “Now then, we need to make some tough decisions, starting with: are we going back over tonight?”
They all looked at Quentin, and his chest tightened. It was up to him to decide. He felt like a child king, forced to make the decisions that ruled the destinies of untold masses of people long before he was old enough, wise enough, or experienced enough to know the right answers. He looked at each of them, hoping to see a sign, something to keep him from having to make this terrible choice all alone.
Eissa’s expression told him what he already knew. She wanted to fight, but she would stand by him, no matter what he decided. Tocho’s face was calm, almost bored, as if they were trying to decide what to eat for supper. Only Bob’s eyes showed any sign of reluctance, but it was hard to read anything more than that behind his bushy white eyebrows and beard. Quentin looked at the floor in front of his feet and let out a deep sigh.
“It seems like this is our only real choice. We’ve got to hit them while they’re unprepared.”
The others nodded, and he felt a weight lift from his shoulders. Once you face a fear head on, and stop trying to avoid it, it loses some of its power over you. He knew this, and had even experienced it before, but it was still the hardest thing in the world to do. Now that the decision had been made, all the variables fell away, and the only thing he had to handle was the task in front of him. It might be the hardest part, but at least it was down to just that.
“Well, if we did, what all would we need to do?” asked Bob. “Quentin would be at a computer, of course, but what about the rest of us? We need to draw a diagram and figure out how to run security for him.”
Tocho reached down and gathered a handful of shells and pebbles from the ground.
“Alright, here’s the door,” he said,
placing a lantern near his feet on the porch floor. “We know there’s another exit in the back of the room. Up front here is the control room. There’s a hallway that runs beside it and comes into the main room, no doors on it. That’s probably the main access point to both the control room, here, and the main floor.”
Quentin’s attention wavered between the plan that Tocho and Bob were hatching, and his ability to actually conjure up a virus that could paralyze something as big as DimCorp. It would probably be easier to take down the Pentagon’s computer system, and probably less dangerous. At least at the Pentagon, he could expect some semblance of Due Process. It was doubtful that DimCorp worried about things like that. Eissa snapped her fingers in front of his face, bringing him back to the porch.
“Hello, anybody home?”
He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I was just thinking about the virus.”
