The Pattern

by JT Kalnay

  He stepped right up to Jane and threw his arms around her. He danced her three quick steps around the room and then slowly came to a stop. He eased closer to her.

  “Thank you,” he said slowly, tenderly.

  “For what?” Jane asked.

  “For everything,” Craig answered. He leaned in to kiss her. She let him have one tiny peck then snapped her head away.

  “You have very very bad breath,” Jane said. “If you want to kiss me then go brush your teeth. I’ll be right here when you get back if you still want to kiss me,” she said.

  Craig stepped back from the embrace.

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

  “You heard me. You want to smooch, go brush.”

  Craig titled his head sideways then slowly started to smile.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  “And use toothpaste. Actually, why don’t you take a shower while you’re at it. You kind of smell,” she said.

  “Anything else mom?” Craig asked.

  Jane thought for a moment, mentally going over a list. Craig suspected she kept a lot of lists in her head.

  “Yes. One more thing. Don’t forget to wash your hair,” she said.

  “Are you going to check it for cooties?”

  “I might. Now get!” Jane ordered, slapping him on the butt.

  Craig saluted and went off to the bathroom. Craig clicked on the boom box in the bathroom as he entered the large room. Bon Jovi came out blasting. After brushing his teeth, he stepped into the steamy shower. He held his head under the hot stream and sang along with the music. He was surprised that he felt himself feeling again. Thinking about Jane. Thinking about her that way. He reached for the shampoo and squeezed it out and rubbed it into his hair. The scent of strawberries washed over him and suddenly Stacey was there. Right there with him in the shower.

  Her shampoo.

  Her scent.

  Her.

  He slumped against the soapy slippery wall and slid to the floor.

  #

  “I thought you were going to be in there all day,” Jane said. She stepped towards the freshly showered programmer.

  He stepped back.

  His upper lip dug into his lower.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  He turned away from her.

  August 25, 1994

  Virginia

  Report Assembled From Wire Services

  USAir officials today told Boeing they were canceling delivery of forty jets and canceling options covering the next ten years to purchase seventy six more. Airline officials cited the deepening global depression in air travel and the lack of projected demand for seats. Officials confirmed that seats sold had decreased in the wake of recent crashes and alarming reports about the airline’s maintenance record.

  August 26, 1994

  Rabat, Morocco

  Report Assembled From Wire Services

  A Moroccan Air Force jet crashed in a remote area of the Atlas mountains today killing forty four. The remoteness of the area and the severe terrain are hindering efforts to recover the bodies. The black box flight recorder has not been located. The wreckage is strewn over three square miles of mountainous terrain. Pilot suicide has been cited as the cause of the wreck. Friends of the pilot indicated he had been distraught over a recently failed relationship.

  Chapter

  August 26th, 1994

  San Francisco, California

  “Craig? Tim? Did you see this report from Morocco?” Dr. Jane Brady asked.

  “So what do you think happened?” Craig Walsh asked his friend Tim.

  “Could have been a million things,” Tim Ford answered.

  “Can you two figure out if it was the virus?” Jane asked.

  Craig and Tim looked at each other. Craig nodded and Tim headed for the keyboard. “If anyone can figure it out, Tim can,” Craig said.

  Jane walked over beside Craig. They both leaned over Tim’s shoulder and watched him work.

  “Little close?” Tim asked.

  They both stepped back and Craig stepped on Jane’s foot and she stumbled. He caught her, and held her awkwardly. He looked in her eyes. She held his gaze for just a moment, then re-arranged her footing and stepped back. Craig looked away, then back to her, then back to the monitor.

  “What I want to do is look for that telltale network traffic pattern in their computers. Craig wrote the program to do it so I want to get into their computer and run his program,” Tim said.

  “What computer?” Jane asked.

  “The Moroccan Air Force of course,” Tim responded slyly.

  “Won’t they know you’re breaking into their computer?” Jane asked.

  “Hah. Not likely,” Tim said. “Watch and learn.”

  Tim’s fingers moved slowly but purposefully on the keyboard.

  “First I connect to some public bulletin board. A local bulletin board. Then I find someone who’s got a chat session going. I run this little program to get their phone numbers and IP addresses.” Tim started the program, turned its window into an icon and moved it to the side of the screen."

  “Then I log into one of the local universities or any school on UCALNET and find some terminal where someone’s playing a video game. Marauder, Doom, Myst. There’s always someone playing one of those games. Twenty-four, seven. Guaranteed. Then I run this little program that waits for a screen change in their game.” Tim moved that window to the side of the screen.

  “Next I send this program that I want to run on the Air Force computer to any one of the local mail servers around here and tag it for a router at least two routers away from the video game and at least two routers away from the chat session but somewhere on the best path between them.” Tim moved the third window to the side of the screen.

  “Now for the coup de grace. I temporarily close down the targeted router with a mini denial of service attack and then broadcast the address of the Moroccan machine as the address of the server that is temporarily going to take up the slack for the downed router’s traffic,” Tim said.

  “Brilliant,” Craig said. “You make Robert Tappin Morris Jr. look like a garden slug.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Jane said.

  “Here’s what happens,” Tim started. The video game is going to have to do a screen change, that usually takes a second or two, on slower machines it might take three or four seconds. The screen image is being transferred via DMA, Direct Memory Access. The data goes straight from point A, the CD ROM or hard drive or wherever to point B, the video memory. The CPU is not involved. So it’s just sitting around with nothing to do and can be used without the person sitting there even knowing it. And, if it’s not being used, we technically aren’t even stealing the cycles. So I use those cycles to ask the mail services to deliver the package to the chatting machine. One of the routers the package is going to transit is the one we monkeyed with. So that server, which is temporarily using the Moroccan address and therefore temporarily is the Moroccan address gets the package. Now, nothing happens yet and to everyone’s point of view nothing has happened. We probably haven’t even broken a law yet. Well, maybe not. Anyway, all the network traffic is still flowing and the video game is still going and that chat session hasn’t been disturbed. No-one’s the wiser. Once the package is delivered, the video game re-establishes the affected router’s address and allows its screen paint to finish. But still nothing has really happened.”

  “All this foreplay is killing me,” Craig said. “Get to it.”

  “Patience my son,” Tim answered. “So, two of the three pieces have done their work and would be very difficult to trace. And even if they were traced, what did we do? We sent one email message from point A to point B on a public network. We didn’t use our own cycles but who cares. That’s part of the point of distributed or co-operative programming. And, if anyone had read the license for Marauder they would have seen they agreed to all this anyway. But, whoever reads the fine print in a software license. Nobo
dy, that’s who.”

  “Okay, so the program is in Morocco. How does it get started?” Jane asked.

  “This is beautiful, if I do say so myself,” Tim started. “These two people are going to stop chatting sometime. When they do, this program over here, which is now waiting in this guy’s mail server, will send a signal to Morocco to start. The program in Morocco runs and sends its results to the bulletin board, posts them in a public place, where I know to look. It happens so fast, in the time during which the connection between the two chatters is being broken down, that they never know.

  “So if someone knew where to look they could see the results too?” Jane asked.

  “And if they knew to watch for whoever was looking there they could catch you,” Craig said.

  “True and true. But, there’s a little risk in everything. And anyway, I still probably haven’t done anything illegal. And even if I did, they’ll never catch me. And if they catch me, no-one’s going to do anything. Look at Kevin Lee Poulsen, the ‘Dark Dante’. This guy stole military secrets using a ridiculously stupid method and it still took the government seventeen months to find the guy. Then they just let him go because they couldn’t prove it.”

  Craig added. “Yeah. Like that guy from MIT. David LaMacchia. He sent over a million dollars in software to people over the Internet. Problem was he didn’t own the software. He was charged with some type of crime but they dropped the charges. That was just back in April,” Craig said.

  Jane also chimed in. “I remember that story on 60 minutes about those German spies. Remember that computer nerd jumping up and down on his bed? He wrote that book? The Cuckoo’s Egg or something like that? He caught these three guys spying for the Germans after twelve months of detective work, and they got probation, for international spying.”

  “I rest my case,” Tim said. “I’m not going to get caught, and even if I do nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  “Get caught doing what?” Jean asked as she walked into the room.

  “Something about which your buddies in the FBI would be very interested,” Craig said.

  Chapter

  August 28th, 1994

  San Francisco, California

  “So Jean you’ve really got to go?” Craig asked.

  “Yes Craig. For the hundredth time I really have to go,” Jean answered.

  “I’m going to miss having you guys here,” Craig said.

  “Well if you’re going to miss us that much, I don’t have to go,” Jane said. “Jean’s got to get to work, but my semester doesn’t start for a while. I could stay a few more days.”

  Jean looked at Jane.

  “Jane? Are you sure?” Jean asked. Her voice carried that motherly tone that teenagers have dreaded forever.

  Jane looked Jean straight in the eyes.

  “Yes Jean. I’m sure.”

  “But there’s no more work to do here right now,” Jean said.

  “Well then maybe Craig and I will take a little vacation. Take a trip somewhere. Can you think of somewhere to go Craig?”

  “Sure. There’s lots to do and see around here.”

  “That settles it then. You’re going and I’m staying.” Jane Brady took her suitcase from beside the door and carried it into the guest bedroom.

  “Craig. You be careful with her,” Jean said.

  “Maybe you better tell her to be careful with me,” Craig answered.

  Chapter

  August 29th, 1994

  Muir Woods, California

  Craig’s knuckles turned an even brighter shade of white as he slowly twisted the car down through another hairpin turn. Jane held her breath for the hundredth time.

  “Is it much farther?” she asked quietly.

  “I think we’re almost there,” Craig answered.

  Another turn and then another and they were finally on a patch of flat ground in the nearly empty parking lot at Muir Woods. A small deer peered out from behind an enormous fern frond.

  The couple looked at each other, exhaled mighty sighs of relief in unison and then laughed as they gathered up their jackets and water bottles and headed towards the welcome center.

  #

  A mile into the woods they stopped beside a small sign marking the tallest tree in the park.

  “This is incredible,” Craig said. “I’ve lived out here for quite a while and never came up here.”

  “It is amazing,” Jane said.

  Their necks craned backwards and their eyes traveled hundreds of feet up the giant Redwood tree. The moist air hung thick along the banks of the small stream running through the woods. A gentle breeze made the mammoth tree sway ever so slightly at its top, so very far up.

  “The sign says this tree is a thousand years old,” Craig said.

  “Amazing,” Jane repeated.

  “Thanks for coming,” Craig said.

  “My pleasure,” Jane answered. “I’ve always liked seeing new things.”

  “I don’t think I would have come by myself.”

  “Don’t think about it,” Jane said. She took his hand in hers and looked straight into his eyes. “It’s okay to be sad. You’ve had a loss. There’s no point ignoring it. And I’m not going to say it’s time to move on or anything like that. You’ll know when it’s right. But I am going to say that it’s good to do new things like this. Come on,” she said, not giving him a chance to answer.

  She headed further up the trail, quickly leaving him panting and scrambling after him.

  #

  “This is an amazing place, but it is kind of gloomy isn’t it?” Craig said.

  “A little,” Jane answered.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Craig said.

  “Yes?” Jane said expectantly.

  “Stinson Beach is no more than a half an hour from here. Everybody says it’s amazing. Want to go?”

  “Do we have to go back up that twisty road?”

  “Yes. But I’ll be careful.”

  Jane considered. Weighing the terror of the drive against the prospect of a sunny beach. “Let’s do it,” she answered.

  #

  The Pacific stretched away to the clear blue horizon. Surfers in their glistening black wetsuits straddled shining white surfboards as they waited for the perfect wave. Sparkling sand stretched away for miles in either direction. A Golden Retriever dashed in and out of the water fetching and retrieving a well chewed tennis ball.

  Craig and Jane walked barefoot through this paradise. A slight breeze pushed a wisp of hair across Jane’s face. She pinned it behind her ear in a languid motion and then slowly came to a stop, staring out over the ocean.

  Craig also slowed then stopped just a few feet down the sand.

  “Do you ever think about the ocean?” Jane asked.

  “Nope.”

  “I think about it. It’s such a peaceful place.”

  Craig said nothing. He followed her gaze.

  A pod of killer whales took turns breaking the surface miles from shore. A series of gulls swooped and clawked over some small fish that had washed ashore. He closed his eyes and let the sounds and the smells wash over him.

  “I’d love to live someplace like this,” Jane said.

  “You’d need to win the lottery,” Craig answered.

  “Do you want to stay over?” Jane asked. “I think that cottage we walked past is for rent. Want to see?”

  “We don’t have anything, not even a toothbrush,” Craig said.

  “I don’t care,” Jane said. “Let’s see.”

  #

  A mostly empty bottle of white wine sat on a low table between two matching redwood Adirondack chairs. Jane and Craig sat staring out over the ocean, watching the nearly full moon.

  “It looks so close, like you could reach out and touch it,” Jane said.

  Craig simply nodded.

  “We’re so lucky we could rent it,” Jane said.

  Craig nodded again.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Jane asked.

  “Nope. Ju
st being,” Craig answered.

  “Want to go for a walk?” Jane asked.

  “Sure,” Craig said.

  They stepped off the porch onto the beach. Jane carefully placed her sandals on the porch and then pulled the beach blanket she’d found inside tighter round her. They walked out towards the surf, then along the beach towards the rising moon. A small group sat listening to a dread locked surfer strum his guitar near a small campfire tucked up against a sand dune.

  “It’s very romantic,” Craig said.

  Jane stopped and looked at him.

  “It is,” she said. “All of it. The woods, the beach, the moonlight. It’s like a movie.”

  “So what happens next in the movie?” Craig asked.

  Jane stepped closer to him.

  “The man and the woman who are just getting to know each other maybe find something in each other. And they wonder what’s going to happen. Then they remember their hurts and feel their ghosts and decide that maybe they’re not ready. But then, maybe just for that one night they forget their hurts. They think about who they are right now, and where they are right now. They accept for one moment that maybe they’re right here, right now, for a reason. They let the ocean and the wind and the moon and the wine do magical things.”

  Craig moved closer to her.

  “And do they do this?” Craig asked.

  He put his arm around her, and kissed her so gently she could barely tell he was there.

  “Yes.”

  She opened the blanket, wrapped it around both of them, and led him back towards the cottage.

  Chapter

  August 31, 1994

  San Francisco, California

  “Where have you been? And why are you smiling like that?” Tim asked.

  “I went away for a few days with Jane answers both questions,” Craig said.

  “Oh.”

  “Oh what?” Craig asked.

  “Nothing,” Tim said.

  “Come on. Let’s hear it,” Craig said.

  “Hey, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine with me,” Tim said.