Exponential

by JM Addison

  *

  Monday, things were pretty hectic at Viiradium. First there was some extra security. It seems that a big government agency was visiting the place to have a look at some of the products Viiradium was producing. To coincide with this visit, The CEO of the company, Bob Danvers, was to make a formal announcement to all employees. The industry press members along with a few news reporters were there to take it all in. The rumors were that the announcement was simply going to be a summary of the financial success the company had enjoyed during the last fiscal year. Others were saying there was some sort of deal making going on with the government to provide security solutions to much of the government computing infrastructure.

  Whatever the case, there was two guards at the main employee lot entrance and an additional guard posted at the employee building entrance. Mara just pinned her ID badge to her lapel (like she was supposed to) instead of fishing it out of her purse to show it to security people. She felt a little more comfortable with the extra security around even though it had nothing to do with her.

  There was a lot to do that day. While Human resources wasn’t directly responsible for public relations, they fell under the same upper management structure. So she was to be present during the morning divisional debriefing which she usually did not need to attend.

  Throughout the day, she continued to be plagued with the nagging issue of her missing brother. She was comforted by yesterday’s visit to the police. At least something was being done. She only hoped they were making some progress.

  As the day wore on, her hoped kept her spirits inflated just enough and she was able to concentrate on her work. She took a break to attend the corporate chairman’s announcement being piped into the employee lounges and lunch rooms as well as the conference rooms so that most of the people could find someplace to go where they could listen. The announcement was preceded by a lengthy introduction by Jack Thistle, the communications and public relations manager. Jack was well versed in security technology and Mara, even with little interest in mathematics, actually found the introduction sort of stimulating. Jack tried to put into simple layman’s terms the importance of computer security and some of the potential benefits, even for the average consumer market: A cash-less society, an end to computer viruses, communication impervious to eavesdropping attempts, secure computer based trasactions and technologies impervious to computer hackers and such. And, of course, the important role Viiradium was playing as a central figure to the development of such technology. Why, already the cryptographic techniques developed at Viiradium had become sort of a world standard to allow secure communications between people and organizations.

  After a round of hearty applause, the Chairman, Bob Danvers, was introduced. The Chairman and other corporate executives were actually resident in this building most of the time. However, they rarely emerged from the sixth floor executive wing to mingle with the working class. Nonetheless, the chairman was a well-respected by most of the company as a sharp yet fair business man who had the whit and skill needed to create the kind of success enjoyed by Viiradium. With that popularity and admirable reputation though, not much was really known about him personally except what you might find occasionally in an interview printed from time to time in the popular finance periodicals.

  The announcement was mainly congratulatory and commended the entire organization for their diligent efforts to continue driving Viiradium along the forefront of the ‘technology curve’. He briefly reviewed the results of the last fiscal year’s financial figures which continued to exhibit double digit growth. He concluded with an announcement that there was indeed an important partnership forming between Viiradium and the federal government to create secure computer communication standards for strategic government use that were a degree stronger than those standards used by the commercial world.

  She dined on a late lunch in the employee lounge and discovered her mind drifting back over the week’s activities. That stupid e-mail from the anonymous sender that she deleted without even reading continued to harass her thoughts. She knew that there was a way to restore deleted messages because they had to do it on occasion when a disgruntled employee maliciously deleted all mail messages in their electronic in-box if they were being terminated. Now, the policy changed so that they would simply lock out the user from their e-mail before informing them of their employment termination.

  After lunch she returned to her work area and made a call to the information systems operations department. “Operations, this is Vince,” came the monotone response to her call.

  “Oh, hi Vince. This is Mara Chandler in HR”, she replied.

  “What can I do for you?” It was particularly amazing how positively a person’s attitude became affected when they found out they were talking to a Human Resources Supervisor. It’s not like she could do anything about an individual’s performance, but since all evaluations were routed and maintained by HR, many employees seemed to have a little more respect than normal.

  “I was wondering if I could have someone’s deleted e-mail messages restored?”

  “Well it depends. If it was from more than a month ago, it goes out to archive. Archive restores require quite a bit of approval to get the go ahead for us to proceed.”

  “Nope, just last week”, she responded.

  “Usually Deleted messages are kept on the servers until the archive jobs run. So, there should be no problem. Who’s mail are you looking for? We may have to ‘reset’ their password so you can get in?” He was apparently assuming HR needed access to a terminated employee’s deleted mail.

  In a slightly embarrassed tone she replied, “Actually, it’s mine.”

  “Oh. Well I, don’t know”, he hesitated. “Usually we don’t restore a user’s own files, some sort of policy against it…” She could tell he felt a little remorse for not being in a position to fulfill her request.

  Trying to persuade him was at least worth a crack. She choose the nonchalant approach: “Oh, it’s just a couple of messages I deleted by accident the other day. I didn’t realize I even deleted them until today when I looked. Then I remembered cleaning out some of my mail folders and realized I must have deleted a couple of messages I really needed along with the rest. Do you think you can you help me out?”

  “Well, if you go through the normal procedure, you need to put in the request on the IT helpdesk internal web form. But the restore request does need your manager’s approval. But since these are just your own deleted files I don’t really see what the big deal is, so why don’t I just restore them after the regular delete jobs run tonight.”

  “Great! Thanks a bunch. That really does help. How do I find them?”

  “I’m here ‘til ten tonight, so I’ll schedule the restore last thing before I leave. All your deleted files from that night will be restored to your wastebasket folder. You will have tomorrow to pull out what you need. Then tomorrow night the regular nightly delete jobs run as usual and any files you leave in your wastebasket will be deleted again.”

  “That’s fine! So tomorrow I will be able to just move what I need from the wastebasket to a file folder?”

  “Right. I just need to be sure I’ve got your e-mail ‘log in’ name right and I need to know which day last week you deleted your messages.”

  She supplied the correct spelling of her e-mail login name and the day of the week in question so he could perform what he referred to as a “single user restore” operation. She hung up and let out a sigh of relief for cutting through the red tape, but it was short lived. She felt stupid for insisting on what was likely a dead end anyway. Probably some purveyor of ‘net-porn’ or get rich quick promotion. It was just a detail that irritated her, that’s all.

  Mara ended the day rather exhausted and she looked forward to just going home and sort of ‘vegging out’ in front of the TV. It was almost six by the time she tidied up her workspace, checked her voice mail (which seemed to be working fine now) one last time. She discovered a voice mess
age from a ‘Detective Taylor’ at the Bedford police she received at 3:41 that afternoon. She was hopeful that they had something, but then realized that if they had, wouldn’t it be Chris that called instead of the police? He left the main number of the Sergeants Desk and asked that she return his call. He wanted to talk about the missing persons report she had filed on Saturday.

  Even though he would likely be gone, she decided to call back anyway. She dialed the number and waited. The phone was answered shortly with, “Bedford Police Department.”

  She asked for Detective Taylor and was informed that he had left for the day. She identified herself and indicated she was returning his call. The officer took a message including her home number and assured her the detective would receive it first thing in the morning. She hung up, collected her purse and coat and headed out.

  On the drive home she still found herself a little apprehensive after the scare she suffered on Saturday. She couldn’t help but keep a suspicious eye on the surrounding traffic as she made the trip back to her place. By the time she had arrived, it was well into the evening and quite dark. She pulled into the small off-street parking area in the back reserved for the tenants of the building and found only one available spot right at the end farthest from the building to pull into.

  She grabbed her purse, got out of the car and locked it. Parked at the corner of the lot where the driveway entered was a dark, late model four door sedan. Sort of large – perhaps a Mercury? There appeared to be someone seated in the driver seat. Probably waiting to pick up someone from inside.

  She walked away from the dark car and approached the entryway. The lot looked typical in the dim overhead lighting. Some bits of trash could be seen here and there, especially at the perimeter. Off to one corner was the pungent trash dumpster amidst a broken down fence that was meant to hide the eyesore but instead managed to attain its own “eyesore” status. She realized that she needed to get into a better neighborhood. This place was getting sort of ‘tired’ looking. She thought she saw movement in the shadows near the trash dumpster along the adjacent parked car. She paused momentarily to look again as she fumbled with her key ring to find the key for the upstairs door to her apartment.

  The hair on her arms prickled as gooseflesh formed. It felt as if some instinctive proximity detector suddenly alarmed. A man materialized out of the shadows and approached her. Suddenly, she was all adrenaline. She turned to flee back to the relative safety of her car, but practically ran into another thug who had somehow appeared behind her. He was huge. At least in comparison to her.

  She froze. Her feet simply didn’t know what to do. She was between the two men. Her car lay beyond the larger man and her building lay beyond the other thug. She decided to split the difference and make a dash for the row of parked cars in front of her. Perhaps she could somehow make it back to her car and escape. Just has she tensed for the spring, the large one made a grab for her. Her yanked her by the shoulder of her coat and wrapped an arm around her pinning her arms down at the elbows with her back to him. He held her like a vice tight against his stomach. He made a little chuckle as he seemed to enjoy holding a soft young woman so close and firm.

  The first man approached, “That’s her alright. Put her in the car,” he said. Out of desperation, not knowing what to do, she stomped down on the instep of the one who was holding her as hard as she could. Unprepared for the attack he momentarily loosened his grip with a howl of pain, anger and frustration. She twisted free and made a dash around behind him to the relative safety of the row of parked cars. But before she could get two steps away he lashed out with the right arm and grabbed a fist full of her hair.

  He yanked her back and upwards toward him. The merciless pain instantly brought tears to her eyes and she let out an involuntary yelp. Instinctively, she reached up behind her head and grabbed onto his hand in an attempt to take some of the weight off her scalp. However this allowed him to wind his fingers in good and tight with more of her hair. He practically lifted her off the ground which caused her to begin to let out a scream. In an attempt to shut her up he shook her back a forth a little, like a rag doll. The pain nearly became unbearable. Her purse and keys went flying. Then with his free left hand smacked her hard with the open maul of his hand just below the rib cage driving the air from her. He flung her to the ground like a piece of trash with such force she felt like she was being dropped out of a tornado.

  She slammed into the wet pavement on her right side and rolled a little onto her stomach. She lay there gasping, unable to recover her wind from the hard slap to her midsection. She began to fear for her life.

  The first man said, “Listen you skinny little bitch! Shut your friggin mouth before you wake the natives!”

  She couldn’t be sure, but he seemed to have some sort of Euro accent. She continued to gasp for air as her breath slowly returned. The big one scooped her up and dragged her limp form to the waiting sedan. He opened the door and sort of shoveled her into the back seat. He bent over to start to get in himself and blocked any chance of escape. However, she wasn’t going to take this abuse without a fight. She sort of scrambled across the back seat to the opposite door but as she reached for the handle to open it, the door swung open on its own. She looked up into the malicious grinning sneer of the first one. She still had her hand firmly on the arm handle of the door, but he blocked her escape. He put his open hand up in front of her to indicate she needed to settle down and get seated.

  With his hand blocking her exit, he began to slowly close the back door. She saw her opportunity and yanked the door shut with a slam driven by all the force she could muster.

  It Worked.

  The unexpected move caught the man’s hand in the door as it slammed with sort of a sickening brittle crunch. Amazingly, the door just sort of bounced back open again. But now, her captor was on his knees caressing his wrist and attempting to suppress the animal scream building up in his throat. From the spreading purple color, it was obviously quite broken. She scrambled out the door, kneeing him in the temple quite by accident as she skittered by and made a dash around the back of the car for the row of parked vehicles.

  The large one, surprised by the resourceful attack on his partner by such a little bit of a girl, made the mistake of attempting to follow her same path out the same rear door instead of simply turning and getting out his own door. The extra delay gave her the time she needed to make an escape.

  She stumbled for the refuge of the parked row of cars feeling like a terrified, hunted animal. She could hear the labored breath of the large one close behind. She sensed more than saw another one, third man, apparently the driver of their getaway transport, join the pursuit. She assumed with some pleasure that the one with the smashed hand was out of the race for a while. She weaved around as much as she could but found herself backed into the far corner of the lot eventually trapped behind the trash dumpster. The close stench of the foul remains of old waste felt like a hand over her mouth and she gasped for breath. There was the decaying fence around the dumpster itself and another fence separating the back lots of the building on the next block. There she was, pinned between the two fences with only one way out - the way she came in.

  She was ‘out of rope’ as it were. No place to go. No place to hide. In moments they would be on her like hyenas in for the kill. Her heart felt like it was going to beat its way out of her chest. She tried to shallow her breathing so the sound wouldn’t give away her position.

  She heard the shuffle of feet as the two men closed in on her location by a process of elimination. Just then the muddy shadow of one of the figures fell across her only escape route…