38
Near Washington Circle, District of Columbia
USA
JON, YOU LOOK TERRIBLE. But you, Randi…you are a vision, as always.”
Marty Zellerbach was standing in the doorway, his pale, puffy head and hands the only thing emerging from a shimmering red tracksuit. Undoubtedly, his finest regalia in honor of Randi’s visit.
He turned and headed back into the house, indicating for them to follow. “Try not to get the rug dirty, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s new.”
Randi pantomimed strangling him from behind and Smith grinned as he examined the side of his friend’s head. He spotted telltale glimmer of studs when they passed beneath a light.
Not that he was surprised—Zellerbach was a lifelong technology addict. There was very little of interest that he hadn’t bought and disassembled. In high school, his room had been piled with the carcasses of everything from Atari game consoles, to Rubik’s cubes, to VCRs. It was precisely this tendency, along with his two PhDs, that made him perfect for the job.
They entered a room in the back dominated by an enormous worktable and an even more enormous Cray computer.
Zellerbach dropped into the only chair and left them to lean against the back wall. “Now, why is it you’re here?”
Smith pointed to a Merge disassembled on the table. “That.”
His response came out in one long rush. “Isn’t it incredible? I mean, I knew Christian Dresner was a genius, but he always seemed to waste it on boring things like antibiotics and hearing aids. Who would have thought he had this in him? I’ve already got four apps in to Dresner for approval, but I haven’t heard back yet. One’s particularly sweet. It lets you—”
“What do you know about it, Marty?”
“The Merge? What do you mean?”
“You’ve taken it apart. What did you learn?”
“Oh, that. They sent me one for free because of my tech blog. Thought I’d have a closer look.”
“And?” Smith said, trying not to let his exasperation show. As he suspected, Zellerbach was just about due for another dose of his meds and was starting to lose focus. He’d get increasingly manic until he took a pill that would then cause him to descend into sluggishness. It was the brief span between those extremes when his incredible mental horsepower really shined.
“You tell me, Jon. Rumor has it that you’re running the military’s development program.”
Smith frowned deeply. Was there anyone on the planet who didn’t have that particular piece of classified information? “And where did you hear that?”
“If the military doesn’t want people on their networks they should do a better job of securing them.”
Smith just let that go. “What about the Merge? Can it be hacked?”
“If you were to give me the encryption codes.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Come on. After everything I’ve done for you, you’re going to stand there and lie to my face?”
“Scout’s honor, Marty. I don’t need Dresner’s approval to upload software but I can’t get into the operating system.”
Zellerbach couldn’t hide his disappointment. “In that case, it can’t be done.”
“You’ve told me a hundred times that there’s no such thing as a completely secure computer.”
“But this is different,” he whined. “You don’t just have to come up with the password—and it isn’t going to be his birthday or his dog’s name—you’d have to mimic the way his brain communicates that password to the system. And he’s the only person who knows the language the brain speaks.”
“Catch-22,” Randi said.
“Exactly. In order to access the system you’d have to know so much about it you wouldn’t need to access it.”
None of this was any real surprise. Smith’s own people, as well as the NSA’s brain trust, had told him exactly the same thing.
“You’re sure the military doesn’t have access and you’re just not telling me, Jon? I can keep a secret. And I have some other app ideas that Dresner’s gonna be a dick about. You know, with the right camera, you could see everyone naked—like those glasses in the comic books when we were kids. Tell me that’s not a moneymaker.”
“You’re already rich,” Randi pointed out.
“True. Would you like to come out on my yacht? I have a bikini in mind for you that would—”
“You don’t have a yacht.”
“But I do have the bikini.”
She gave him a stern look that hid a smile. “Let’s see if we can focus on the task at hand, shall we?”
He shrugged. “There is no task at hand.”
“So, you’re telling me that no one has hijacked this system.”
“Hijacked it? No way. Not without Dresner’s direct involvement. And if he’s involved, that’s not really hijacking, is it?”
It always circled back to Dresner. Did he know the a*shole who totaled the Triumph? And if so, what exactly was their relationship?
“Can it affect your mind?” Randi said.
“That’s all it does—makes you hear and see things that aren’t really there. Icons, maps, music…”
“What I mean is, could it, for instance, make a soldier not defend himself? Could it turn a very religious person into an atheist?”
Zellerbach’s brow knitted. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Simple question, Marty.”
He pondered it for a moment. “I mean, I could code something that made everyone who attacked you look like your mother. That might make you less likely to fight back. Not sure how you’d turn someone into an atheist.”
“I’ve talked to a few neurologists about this,” Smith said. “And they all tell me it’s pretty far-fetched. There is evidence that religiosity and the propensity for violence have a genetic component. And they have been able to manipulate it in a crude way using magnetic waves, but it takes a lot of power and the effect is pretty unpredictable.”
“Maybe someone’s figured it out. I’m guessing that if we asked your neurologist friends a few months ago about projecting Angry Birds onto my visual cortex they’d have said no chance in hell.”
“Touché.”
Marty shook his head. “It’s possible, but really unlikely. Even if you could figure out how to do it, the magnetic fields you’re talking about would take so much juice. Seriously, if you were eating breakfast, you’d be in danger of your spoon flying up and sticking to your head. That’s just physics. Ever wonder why you have to have the unit plugged in for the sleep function? Power. And sleep is light-years easier than changing someone’s personality.”
“So you’re saying there’s no way to affect someone like that.”
Another shrug. “You could make people dizzy and nauseous. That’d make them not want to fight or go to church.”
“Yeah,” Smith said. “But if the Merge really started screwing with you—made you sick, changed your personality, or whatever—why wouldn’t you just turn it off?”
“Someone could disable the switch.”
“Sure,” Marty said. “But there wouldn’t be anything stopping you from taking it off and walking out of range. Or hitting it with a hammer. Or throwing it in a pool. Or—”
“I get the point, Marty. Thank you. What about something permanent?”
“You think Christian Dresner is trying to give us brain damage?” he said, squinting a bit as he examined Randi. “Why are you asking all this stuff?”
Smith wasn’t prepared to tell him about Afghanistan and that reticence made this line of questioning less effective than it could be. Science was about the free exchange of ideas and he always seemed to be in the position of having to hide something.
“We’re just brainstorming here. We’d like to make sure we cover all the angles before we hand it out to our entire military.”
Marty didn’t seem entirely convinced. “The short answer to Randi’s question is no. Doing physical damage to the brain would take still more power. Even if you suddenly emptied an entire Merge battery into one skull implant, it’d just give you a nasty shock and confuse you for a few seconds.”
“Very brief, very weak electroshock therapy,” Smith agreed.
“Maybe our question needs to be broader,” Randi said. “Marty, is there any way you could use this thing to do mischief?”
It was a beautifully phrased challenge. Marty’s job, his passion—in fact all he really ever thought about—was new ways to do mischief. And in light of that, his answer was surprising.
“Not without getting Dresner to approve apps that he’d never get behind in a million years.”
“I can’t believe you’re so easily defeated.”
Another nicely phrased challenge. Smith decided to reinforce it. “He’s right, Randi. It’s a tough problem. Maybe we should go see that kid from Anonymous. I hear he’s—”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t look into it! Did I? Did I? I don’t think so.”
“Well, we—”
“Look, there are a few things in the Merge hardware that I don’t completely understand,” Marty said, suddenly desperate to prove his superiority over his Anonymous nemesis. “I assume they’re future upgrade paths or maybe something to do with battery management. But if they’re not being used, maybe they’re not locked down by the operating system. It’s possible I could get control of them. And I’ve only been thinking about this for less than a half an hour! You can’t expect me to work that fast! No one can!”
“That’s the Marty I know and love,” Randi said. “So here’s your assignment, Marty. Make that thing do something evil.”
* * *
THE DOOR BEHIND THEM closed and both Smith and Randi immediately slowed, looking around the quiet yard for any sign of the security systems they’d tangled with on the way in.
“You don’t think he’d…”
Smith shook his head. “I think even Marty knows better.”
She nodded, but let him take point in case the fish catapult should suddenly appear. “What now?”
“Dresner,” Smith responded. “If Marty and my people are right, no one does anything without his approval.”
“They could have missed something.”
“Maybe. But just between you and me, we’ve thrown everything we have at this and come up completely empty.”
“Looking to cut Dresner out of the loop?”
Smith shrugged. “Not specifically, but it makes sense for us to have as much control over our system as we can. You can’t be too careful.”
“Do you think Dresner’s responsible for what happened in Afghanistan?”
“Based on everything I know about him, it seems far-fetched. But it’s worth looking into.”
“What about the guy who wrecked the Triumph?”
“Hopefully, Star’s making some progress. But if not, I have some ideas of my own on that subject.”
They made it to the gate and were both relieved to be through it and back out on the street. Damp and muddy, yes. But not picking smelt out of their hair.
“Then we’re off to Germany,” Randi said.
“Germany? Why?”
“Because I have a friend there that I think can help.”