Overclocked (3 page)

“Yep.”

“Can I see him?” she asked in a tight voice.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Don smiled, a gleam in his eye. For a mo­ment, Tania was di­ver­ted from the main ob­ject of her ire. Be­neath the dir­ector’s care­worn ex­ter­ior, she thought she saw the dash­ing young man he must have been when he was cut­ting a swath through the field of com­puter sci­ence. She was aware of his back­ground, as any­body in the field would be. How he had jumped from one bleed­ing edge labor­at­ory to an­other, soak­ing in everything un­til he fi­nally ended up as the secret dir­ector to a secret de­part­ment in a secret loc­a­tion, floors be­neath Rim­shot’s cor­por­ate headquar­ters. Very few people in the world had a mind as sharp as Don Novak’s, coupled with the abil­ity to use it.

Al­though she knew where to go, Tania let Don lead the way, men­tally pre­par­ing her­self for what she’d see. They walked through an­other, more solid-look­ing door and into the cent­ral lab. The light in the room was sub­dued. Ar­rayed in an an­gu­lar semi-circle in front of them were banks of mon­it­ors. Three tech­ni­cians skipped from one mon­itor to an­other, punch­ing com­mands into key­boards, set­ting up dia­gnostic activ­it­ies and watch­ing the res­ult­ant pulses on their screens with calm in­tens­ity. They didn’t even lift their heads at Tania and Don’s en­trance.

Bey­ond the desks and be­hind a large panel of glass was a set-up that looked like it be­longed in a hos­pital. On the left side of the panel, cush­ioned by a heavy foam mat­tress and covered with a light waffle weave blanket, lay Carl’s body. Feel­ing a pull of curi­os­ity and won­der, Tania left Don to speak with one of the en­gin­eers. She moved for­ward to the edge of the glass, peer­ing in at its lone oc­cu­pant.

Carl was hardly dressed, bare right down to his un­der­wear, ar­rays of sensors thread­ing un­ti­dily from where they were at­tached to his skin. Tania saw the ripples the wires formed as they snaked un­der­neath the blanket and emerged at the bed’s edge. Look­ing like strands of spa­ghetti, they rose to a metal shelf filled with one blink­ing rect­an­gu­lar box on top of an­other. The back of the boxes con­tained enough slots to re­ceive each wire, trans­lat­ing its sig­nals into crit­ical in­form­a­tion. Tania knew the sensors were there to mon­itor Carl’s vi­tal signs, but she didn’t real­ise there would be so many of them. It seemed that every twitch a muscle made would be re­cor­ded.

In con­trast, the most im­port­ant piece of sensor equip­ment, the neural head­set, was com­pletely wire­less. It en­circled the top of Carl’s skull like a del­ic­ate hair net, each in­ter­sec­tion glit­ter­ing as sil­ver-white as a night-time star.

And as for Carl him­self. Tania tore her glance from the head­set and fo­cused on his face. He looked…an­gelic. His face was hand­some and peace­ful, re­laxed in re­pose, look­ing like noth­ing less than a fairy-tale prince.

“Wait­ing for a de­luded prin­cess to wake up his good-for-noth­ing arse,” she said to her­self. The breath from her words formed a small sheen of milky con­dens­a­tion on the win­dow.

Don moved up next to her and Tania felt his warmth against her arm.

“How long ago was he in­ser­ted?” she asked, her gaze not leav­ing the su­pine fig­ure on the bed.

“About nine thirty.”

“One and a half hours.” Her voice was tone­less.

“Tania.”

There it was again, that hes­it­a­tion. This time, caught by some­thing in his voice, Tania turned to face the older man.

“What is it?” His ex­pres­sion mirrored the worry in his voice.

He didn’t an­swer.

“Damn it, Don. I told you some of the pro­to­cols needed fine-tun­ing.” Her tone was low and heated.

“It’s more than that.” He pursed his lips then took her el­bow. “Come on,” he said, with a quick glance around, “I’ll ex­plain in the brief­ing room.”

They walked past both Carl’s il­lu­min­ated cap­sule of space and an­other room identic­ally out­fit­ted but com­pletely dark. The third door, con­ven­tional tim­ber this time with a proper handle, turned at Dan’s twist. In­side, thick car­pet muffled Tania’s foot­steps.

She twirled be­fore the door clicked shut, pre­mon­i­tion rais­ing the hairs on the back of her neck.

“Some­thing went wrong, didn't it?”

Don didn't an­swer her im­me­di­ately. He walked over to a poster that dec­or­ated one of the room's walls, eye­ing the mo­saic of pro­mo­tional im­ages for Rim­shot In­dus­tries as if he'd never seen them be­fore.

“We gave him a vir­tual tether so that, in cases of ex­trac­tion and pro­longed non-com­mu­nic­a­tion, we’d be able to yank him out. It wasn’t meant to be el­eg­ant, but it
was
meant to work.”

Tania nod­ded im­pa­tiently. “Yes, I know about that. If you re­call, I dis­agreed on the tether's ar­chi­tec­ture. I still think—”

Don sighed as he turned and faced her. “We lost the tether nine minutes after in­ser­tion.”

She couldn’t be­lieve what she was hear­ing. The tether, while not el­eg­ant, was the most fool­proof piece of soft­ware in the en­tire pro­ject. “Lost?”

“Gone. Sheared away. We don’t know how.”

That ex­plained his wait­ing for her when she ar­rived. It also ex­plained the tired ex­pres­sion on his face and the three pro­gram­mers scur­ry­ing around with an air of frantic fo­cus.

“So if Carl wants to get out?” she asked.

“He’ll have to come up with a method of con­tact­ing us him­self.”

Tania’s legs trembled. Reach­ing for a chair back, she pulled on it and grate­fully sank into the up­holstered seat. Don did the same at a more sed­ate pace.

What the Base­ment Five lab was try­ing to do, what Tania and Carl had com­peted for so fiercely, was to be part of the next step of vir­tu­al­isa­tion. The top-secret pro­ject was aimed at in­sert­ing a per­son—their thoughts, ex­per­i­ences, per­son­al­ity, the whole kit and ka­boodle—into the in­ter­net, with po­ten­tial ac­cess to every con­nec­ted com­puter net­work in the world.

Right now, Carl could be trip­ping through the bytes at Cal­Tech or lost in waves of data in Ban­galore. And the way back home, the trail of bread­crumbs to safety, had just dis­ap­peared.

Tania swore softly. “Shit!” She paused for no more than a heart­beat. “I know Carl and I have had our dif­fer­ences, Don, but you have no choice. You have to send me in.”

The words were ripped from her be­fore her brain could catch up. It wasn’t what Tania had wanted to say, what her hurt ego was de­mand­ing, but it was the
right
thing to say.

“No.” Don was vehe­ment. “Ab­so­lutely not. I’ve already lost one re­searcher in cy­ber­space. Do you think I want to com­plic­ate the situ­ation by throw­ing an­other per­son in there?”

Tania took a deep breath. She had made a de­cision and was now com­mit­ted to see­ing it through.

“This isn’t some­thing simple, like a data­base file or sort­ing al­gorithm gone wrong. We’re dis­cuss­ing an­other hu­man be­ing, a per­son, lost in an en­tirely un­ex­plored uni­verse. Damn it, Don, we know more about the sur­face of
Mars
than the data we pro­cess and store every day.”

Don’s ex­pres­sion re­mained mul­ish. “I’m not go­ing to do it, Tania.”

She sat back and bit her bot­tom lip, know­ing she would have to tread care­fully. When he stuck his heels in about some­thing, Don was eas­ily as stub­born and in­tract­able as Carl.

“Carl and I were chosen for this pro­gram be­cause of our abil­it­ies,” she said. Her words came out slowly as she gathered her thoughts. “I was chosen for my know­ledge of cloud ap­plic­a­tions and my work on the the­or­ies of data or­gan­isa­tion. Carl was chosen be­cause...be­cause of his broad tech­nical know­ledge and quick ad­apt­ab­il­ity.”

Not to men­tion the abil­ity to charm every one of the board mem­bers straight into the out­stretched palm of his hand. Know­ing that this wasn’t the time to open
that
can of worms, Tania tried to keep the dry­ness out of her voice.

“You and the board chose Carl be­cause he is ex­tremely ten­a­cious.”

She thought about his single-minded pur­suit of her and al­most smiled, be­fore put­ting it out of her mind.

“I’m sure,” she said, “that if any­one could have sur­vived a tether sever, it would be Carl.”

Don nod­ded cau­tiously and Tania took a breath. That was the ground­work done. Now, for the meat of her ar­gu­ment.

“But right now, he needs help. Help from someone who knows the ins and outs of cy­ber­space bet­ter than he does. Carl is good, but he doesn’t have an in-depth know­ledge of how data can or­gan­ise it­self in semi-an­archic en­vir­on­ments.”

“But you do.”

Tania let the words hang in the air between them, for­cing Don to re­cog­nise her skills and ex­per­i­ence.

“You know I do,” she said.

He sighed and looked away, shak­ing his head, be­fore pin­ning her with a glare.

“Nice try, Tania, but no.” He threw his hands up in dis­may. “What do you ex­pect me to do? Cre­ate
two
zom­bies for the in­ser­tion rooms? What if the same thing that happened to Carl hap­pens to you?”

Tania leant for­ward in her chair, ready to press the mat­ter un­til it broke. Or Don did. Her tone in­creased in ur­gency.

“You know I’ve spent years re­search­ing com­plex data sys­tems,” she said. “I’ve pub­lished more than twenty pa­pers on the topic. Carl hasn't. It could be that he did some­thing when he entered the Blue. Maybe there was a data polling er­ror. Maybe he severed the tether by mis­take. And now he’s stuck there with no way back. What are you go­ing to do, Don? Wait un­til his va­cant body ex­pires of old age be­fore send­ing someone in to help him?”

The dir­ector looked pale and ex­hausted, vis­ibly aging be­fore Tania’s eyes.

“It’s only been two hours,” he said. “He may find a way out of this.”

“We still don’t know the long-term ef­fects of the Blue on our tem­poral sense,” she ar­gued, feel­ing him about to waver. “Our im­mer­sions in the sand­pit only las­ted three to five minutes apiece, and that was in an ex­tremely con­trolled en­vir­on­ment. Carl has already been im­mersed in the wild for more than a hun­dred minutes. Who knows how that’s af­fected him?”

Don shook his head again.

“I’m not will­ing to risk you, Tania, not yet.” His voice strengthened as he ob­vi­ously came to a de­cision. “We’ll leave it for a day. Mon­itor Carl’s pro­gress, his vi­tal signs. Maybe he’ll find some way to in­ter­face with us. If we hear noth­ing after twenty-four hours, I’ll re­quest a meet­ing of the board. If there has still been no con­tact from Carl and the board is agree­able,” he swal­lowed, “I’ll make the go-no go de­cision.” He pinned her with a glare. “To­mor­row.”

“Not just ‘to­mor­row’, Don. To­mor­row
morn­ing
.” Tania was in­sist­ent. “There are too many vari­ables in a situ­ation like this. We don’t want to hes­it­ate, not if it can mean someone’s life.”

They stared at each other and Don’s heavy breaths echoed in the room.

Tania didn’t leave the lab for the rest of the day. She peered into the small room where Carl lay, watch­ing the readouts with in­tent and nar­rowed eyes. She tried to re­duce him to a cipher, a sym­bol of their pro­ject, but couldn’t. Im­ages from the past few months flashed through her mind. His in­furi­at­ing smug­ness and un­deni­able sex ap­peal. His ar­rog­ance and gift for data ana­lysis. His some­times child-like sense of hu­mour com­bined with a razor-sharp mind that made her catch her breath. Lastly, she re­membered the hot and will­ing lover. The nights of ec­stasy, the days of frus­tra­tion.

A snip­pet of her con­ver­sa­tion with Don con­tin­ued to haunt her.

We lost the tether nine minutes after in­ser­tion.

Nine minutes.

Why nine minutes? It didn’t make any sense. She could un­der­stand a ter­min­a­tion straight on the heels of in­ser­tion. That would mean some kind of fault, either with the hard­ware or the trans­fer pro­cess. A pro­cess, she ad­ded, that had
ap­peared
to work flaw­lessly in the safe and se­cure en­vir­on­ment of the sand­pit.

She could al­most un­der­stand a ter­min­a­tion six minutes after in­ser­tion. That was at the up­per limit of their own ex­per­i­ments. Maybe some­thing broke down after reach­ing that dur­a­tion? It was un­likely but not un­heard of. But
nine
minutes. That was in­ex­plic­able.

Tania knew com­puter sys­tems. If some­thing com­plex was run­ning for six minutes without a prob­lem, chances were it would keep run­ning for hours without a hitch. Of course that was with the pro­viso that the en­gin­eers who de­signed and de­veloped that sys­tem were good, but Tania knew that Base­ment Five’s en­gin­eers were some of the best on the planet.

She had looked over the morn­ing’s data. The tether had been work­ing well for al­most the full ten minutes. There had been no spikes of alarm, no gaps in com­puter pro­cessing, noth­ing at all to warn of cata­strophic fail­ure. Frus­trated by the lack of data, she kept comb­ing back and forth through the fig­ures, check­ing and double-check­ing dia­gnostic re­ports, tests, past sim­u­la­tions, any­thing she could think of that might give a clue to the mys­tery.

By the time six o’clock rolled around, she was still out of op­tions and there was no change in Carl’s status. He was breath­ing nor­mally, look­ing peace­ful, ap­par­ently asleep, and sexy as sin un­der the thin blanket. Tania gazed at his face, torn between want­ing to kiss his lips and punch him in the nose.