Playing A Losing Game

by MF Bishop

  Chapter Eighty Five

  The hours passed and the argument continued. More and more officers pulled rank on Alexa; Walsh's office filled with starred shoulders, beribboned chests and red, angry faces. Outranked and outshouted, Bobby lost ground to the 'pull the plug' faction. The only question seemed to be whether to pull the plug immediately or follow the communication line to the traitors' lair, shoot the lot of 'em, and then pull the plug.

  "Enterprise Magnetics," Bobby muttered, but no one listened. In despair, he sat by the door, trying vainly to catch Tony Walsh's eye. Although it was his office, Walsh couldn't bring himself to clear the room or maintain order. When Frank Jervis came in, the brass didn't notice; the argument continued.

  "Frank, Frank, listen, Frank." Bobby leaped up and grabbed Frank's tie.

  "Ow, let go, Bobby." Frank pushed him away, but Bobby hung on.

  "We found the link."

  "I know, that's why I'm here."

  "Oh, right, but Gotts and these others, they want to shut it down, pull the plug." Bobby leaned over to talk into Frank's ear, both hands now clutching the tie.

  "Well," Frank said, pulling futilely on his tie, "why the hell not? We found it, let's get rid of it."

  "Christ on a crutch. I don't know why not, but we shouldn't do anything irreversible until we've thought it through. Actually, I do have an idea, maybe. It probably won't work, but...."

  "Bobby?"

  "Yeah, Frank?"

  "Get your damn hands off my tie."

  "Sorry." Bobby let go. Frank pushed through the crowd to the desk, where Gotts was preparing orders for a combat team to conduct an immediate search and destroy mission into the wilds of Northeast Washington.

  After three tries, Frank quieted the room. "Gentlemen, no action will be taken here today without the express approval of the President. General Gotts, will you narrow this discussion group to five or six, including Major Britton? General Walsh, will you see that we are not disturbed until further notice? Thank you."

  Frank settled himself behind the desk as Gotts motioned people out of the room. In a few moments, Bobby was alone with the White House Chief of Staff, three generals and an admiral.

  Frank introduced Bobby. Gotts and Walsh Bobby knew. The other Army man was General Alfred Phinney, commander of the ground forces in the Game. The admiral was Robinson, the keyboard-smashing commander of the Pacific fleet.

  "Ok, Bobby," Frank said, "why don't we just unhook that dingus in the computer room?"

  Bobby looked around. Only Frank and Tony Walsh looked friendly. "If we do eliminate their access to Omniac, then everything will be even in the Game. Will we win if we do that?"

  General Phinney answered. "It's too late to win. Even if we can stop the J's cold, or roll them back, the Game ends after five game years. We've already played for three years. We can't regain enough ground in the two years left to keep from losing."

  "Unless," Bobby said, "we could gain an advantage, an edge, like they've had over us all this time."

  "Such as?" Gotts asked coldly.

  "Such as leaving the spy in place and sending the J's phony signals. We could make them think we were doing one thing and then do something else entirely." Bobby jumped to his feet and began to pace. "We can isolate those receivers and feed them just what we want them to hear."

  Bobby stalked around the room and waved his arms. Tony Walsh and Frank looked thoughtful. General Gotts looked irritated. Phinney and Robinson looked puzzled; they had no idea what Bobby was talking about.

  General Phinney leaned toward Frank. "What's he saying?" he whispered.

  "Spurious signals," Bobby yelled, "multitasking, game-time synchronization!"

  Frank held up his hand. "Sit down, Bobby, uh, Major Britton and be quiet for a moment." Turning to the commanders, he said, "What he is suggesting General, is that since the J's, Japanese game-players, I mean, are using the spy signals to tell exactly where all our military units are, and even to get a little advance notice on each move we make...."

  "We also do all of our planning on this computer." Tony Walsh interjected.

  "And a preview of our plans," Frank continued, "Major Britton suggests we feed them phony information - let them think we are doing one thing, then do something else entirely. In effect, we 'turn' their spy into a double agent."

  Phinney looked doubtful. "Sounds awfully complicated. And wouldn't it be against the rules? For that matter, isn't that damned spy thing in there against the rules? Could we have the J's disqualified?"

  "No to both," Walsh answered, "the only rule is no interference with your opponent's computer or communications. They didn't interfere with us, they just listened in. And if we send them phony information, it isn't interference."

  "But where," Phinney persisted, "do we get these 'spurious' signals."

  "Multitasking!" Bobby yelled, leaping to his feet.

  Frank held up his hand. "Meaning," he said smoothly, "having Omniac do two things at once, such as running the actual game moves and the phony game moves at the same time."

  "No can do," Tony said. "Not enough mips."

  "Mips?" Admiral Robinson muttered.

  "Christ on a crutch," Bobby said, "that monster can't handle two lousy partitions?"

  "Partitions," Robinson sneered, "what is this shit?"

  "It's not as powerful as it looks," Walsh said, "anyway, it has to track thousands of objects and hundreds of thousands of variables. It can barely do that once. Not to mention that the instructions the J's are intercepting would tell them if we ran multiple partitions."

  "Christ on a crutch," Bobby muttered, and sat down. Everyone was silent for several minutes.

  "I like the idea of turning the tables on the J's, uh, the Japanese," Phinney said, "if this computer isn't big enough, or whatever, could we use another computer?"

  Walsh shook his head. "There aren't any other computers like this one. This is the only one of its kind in the world."

  Bobby leaped up, sending his chair crashing to the floor. "Christ on a crutch. Of course! You're absolutely right, General. The Electric Dragon."

  "I can't stand this," Robinson said, "who is this maniac? Where did he come from?"

  Gotts scowled and pointed at Frank. "Ask him," he said.

  Frank was watching Tony, who also jumped to his feet. Tony and Bobby did a clumsy Mutt and Jeff dance as they hurled questions at one another. After a minute of their excited technical babbling, Frank held up one hand. "Gentlemen, please," he said, "let us in on the story."

  Tony Walsh sat down. "The Electric Dragon is our name for a computer we recently uh, 'acquired' from the Japanese. Major Britton serves on an Army Computer Intelligence Agency team that has been examining this computer."

  "A techno-spook," Robinson muttered, "I should have known."

  "The Electric Dragon," Bobby broke in, "translates the signals Omniac produces into signals that Japanese computers can understand. These signals are widely used in Japan, and many Japanese computers understand some version of this language."

  "So?" asked General Phinney.

  "So we have lots of computers that can speak that Japanese language. One of those could feed those signals to the Electric Dragon, and it can translate them into Omniac's language. We set up a little transmitter, and tell them just what we want them to hear." Bobby sat down and crossed his arms. "Nothing to it."

  Tony had been excited, but now he looked doubtful. "Nothing to it?" he asked, "Just how would this work?"

  "Well," Bobby answered slowly, " I'm not exactly sure. Mary Grier would know the details. She's in charge of the project."

  "Major Mary," Tony said brightly. "Of course. She's the head scientist on the Electric Dragon project," he explained to the now sullen audience. He pressed a button on his desk. "Please contact Major Grier for me," he said, "try the Computer Intelligence labs at the N
avy Yard first."

  Mary was there. She immediately agreed to appear as ordered at OMCOM.

  There are certain advantages to the military, Bobby reflected; subordinates don't spend a lot of time debating whether or not to carry out the request of a superior officer. Which is a great convenience for the superior officer.

  Frank sent out for coffee and sandwiches while they waited for Mary. Deciding on ham or roast beef kept the general officers occupied for some time. Bobby asked for a burrito, if they could get it, and looked forward to seeing Mary. The food didn't take long, but there was no burrito. Bobby settled for ham.

  Mary was smiling when she came in, glanced briefly at Bobby and snapped a salute to the men eating sandwiches around the desk. The effect of her salute was marred by a dirt smudge across one sleeve of her class 'B' shirt. Another smudge lightly marked her cheek. Tony returned her salute. The other officers waved their sandwiches.

  Mary listened and smiled as Tony explained what they wanted to do.

  "Yeah, we can do that," she said when he finished, "wouldn't work if the Dragon was a real computer, but it isn't actually a computer at all."

  "So what is it?" Robinson snapped.

  Mary didn't answer. She was looking at Tony Walsh. Her normally hard face looked relaxed, almost gooney. Why is she looking like that? Bobby wondered, is she sick?

  "Major," Tony said gently, "the Admiral asked you a question."

  Mary turned her head slowly. "What? Oh, yeah, uh, yessir, it's more like a giant, super fast signal processor. Lots of electronics and solid state shi...uh, stuff. We can rearrange the processor modules and run it in reverse."

  "How long will it take," Frank asked, "to get it working properly backwards."

  "With our full crew," Mary answered, "thirty-six, forty-eight hours. Something like that."

  She spoke not to Frank but to Tony. What is wrong with her? Bobby thought. Then the terrible realization came.

  "Christ on a crutch." he said. All eyes turned to him.

  "What was that, Major?" General Gotts asked.

  "Uh, nothing, sir, I thought I had something, but nothing, nothing at all." Bobby's voice echoed in his ears, his stomach twisted around the ham sandwich. Mary, his Mary, was in love with Tony Walsh!