Terminal Connection (3 page)

A
ustin looked up from the news article Steve had thrown at him. “Now calm down, son. I already know about this situation and have a plan …”

“You know?” Steve jabbed a finger into Austin’s chest. “You told me that you installed the fixed hardware. This should not have happened! That was my daughter’s best friend! I’ll recall the Nexus even if it bankrupts us!”

“Now what the devil are you talking about?” Austin turned to Ron, who had left and was halfway across the lobby.

Austin grinned. He took a casual puff from his virtual cigar. “Smart boy. He knows when to leave.” He placed a hand on Steve’s back and extended his other arm toward the back of the room. “Step into my office.”

Steve led the way through the scarred lobby and down the hall. Austin’s office was a simple, ten-foot square, glacier-white room with a mahogany desk, matching file cabinet, and bookcase. It was a secure location; the Nexus server only allowed two connections into the room.

Once inside, Austin said, “Computer, Phantom of the Opera, Act One, private booth.”

The room transformed around them. Mahogany paneling grew across the walls of the office, while the room’s white carpeting flushed to a deep red. The office furniture disappeared, replaced by a row of six chairs that faced away from them. The back wall in front of the chairs melted away and transformed into a railing overlooking a stage. An old recording of the opera played. Music filled the room and the air grew thick with the scent of cigar smoke, musty wool, and aging leather.

Austin walked around the row of chairs and sat on the end. He patted the seat next to him. “Come on over here and sit down. The Phantom here rates among the finest of the theatrical arts. Do you know the story? You could learn a lot from this—a hell of a lot. The Phantom himself was a brilliant metaphor, the shadow of excellence.”

Steve walked over, leaned against the railing, and faced Austin with his back to the stage. “Austin.”

“Shh! First enjoy. Where are your manners? Sit.”

“I don’t have time to play these games with you,” Steve said.

Austin smiled and took another drag on his cigar. “Son, why don’t you take a seat and calm down. Don’t be so dramatic. You’re just an engineer in CEO clothing. You don’t have the stomach for it. Like I said, I have a plan to take care of this
without
a recall.”

“You’ll take care of it? Last year I told you to install the fixed hardware, but you didn’t. Now it looks like your friends at DARPA missed your omission and someone is dead because of it!” Steve regretted hiring Austin, but he needed his connections into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

In the 1960s, DARPA had tried to create a military communication network that could survive a localized nuclear holocaust. Soon DARPA opened this network up and enabled first the scientific and later the private sector to join. The Internet was born.

DARPA bowed out as the Internet regulator, but with the advent of VR and globalization, society had a change of heart. In the wake of tainted products and quality control issues, DARPA took back regulatory control in the United States and approval of Internet-based products. Austin had the connections to grease the certification process.

Indeed, DARPA took less than four months to certify the Nexus. This saved Steve’s company from bankruptcy; but at what cost? Steve shook his head. He had done it all for Brooke. With the company taken care of, he had focused on the Nexus Healer, a device that would enable her to walk again after the accident had left her partially paralyzed and her mother dead
.
Just five more days and he would announce the Nexus Healer’s beta trials and surprise Brooke. She would walk again. Steve woke from his musing. Austin had turned back to the stage.

“Damn it, Austin! What have you done?”

“What have I done?” From his pocket, Austin extracted a piece of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to Steve.

Memo

During performance testing Nexus Corporation discovered that the Nexus’s Signal Amplifier, which relays and amplifies signals to and from the brain, could direct an intense, prolonged signal, causing a severe seizure. In rare cases, users could die from cardiac arrest.

There are two possible solutions: repair the defective hardware with a patch in the software or completely replace the defective amplifier. Although the software solution is not completely effective, it is 16.2 million dollars cheaper than the hardware solution even factoring in the expected wrongful death lawsuits.

After careful consideration, Nexus Corporation has decided to implement the software solution. This alternative is the more cost effective of the two. It will preserve the company’s viability while providing adequate protection to the customer with a negligible loss of life.

Sincerely,

Steve Donovan

Austin Wheeler

Steve looked up. “I didn’t sign this. Where’s the other memo?”

Austin closed his eyes, enthralled by the music as it crescendoed. “Now, that’s art at its best, a fine blend of music, acting, and drama.”

“Damn it, Austin! Where is it?”

“It was on the disk array that went bad.”

Steve shook his head. “I never signed this!”

“I am afraid you did. That is your signature. You signed it along with a stack of other papers five months ago.”

Steve took a step toward him.

“Now, calm down. I didn’t want to deceive you, but it was the software solution or nothing at all. The company was broke.”

“You can’t blackmail me! Your name is on this memo, too!”

“No one is threatening you. This is just my insurance card. I’m in the same riverboat as you. I, too, am an accessory to murder.” Austin leaned back and blew out a puff of smoke.

Steve shook his head. He should have known that Austin would pull something like this. He should have trusted his instincts and fired him a year ago; but the accident had left him in a fog, unable to make the necessary decisions. Austin had saved the company and given him the opportunity to focus on development of the Nexus Healer.

The corners of Austin’s lips curled into a smirk. “One dead girl after only two million units? When production goes full scale, we’ll be buried by wrongful death lawsuits. As I see it you have two choices—patch your patch, or go into the corpse business.”

“Fuck you, Austin; I’m going to DARPA!”

“Really?” Austin took a puff from his cigar. “Son, what makes you think they don’t already know?”

Steve frowned.

“Oh, come on Steve.” Austin laughed. “Think about it. How do you think I got the Nexus approved in four months instead of two years? Last year I went straight to Ed Davis, the new Assistant Secretary of Defense that oversees DARPA. I gave him the Nexus schematics in exchange for immediate Nexus approval and some funds to keep us afloat. All in all it was what you’d call a win-win situation, a daisy of a deal.”

Austin took another puff from his cigar and blew out three perfect circles of smoke. He grinned. “Now son, it’s true I don’t know exactly what Ed uses the Nexus for, but I believe his motives to be of a trustworthy nature. He will keep quiet about the defect and so will you. If something does slip, that memo will make you the perfect scapegoat for the lot of us—you being the CEO, inventor, and all. There’s no way out for you. I’m afraid you have to play by my rules now, son.”

“I’ll tell you what.” Steve walked past Austin toward the exit. “You do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do.”

“Let me guess. You’re going to the media?”

Steve kept walking as the music from the stage escalated.

Austin raised his voice above the music. “Do you think that’ll clear your conscience, son? Like I said, the girl is dead after only two million sales. What will happen in another year? How many deaths will it take before you act? DARPA won’t act; they have too much at stake.”

“Austin, I’m not going to jump through your hoops,” Steve said. He opened the door.

Austin remained in his seat. “I am quite serious here. Now, you know there’s no one else who can fix this problem. The Nexus Transporter is too complex. No one understands her like you do. As I see it, if you enable DARPA to handle this mess, your inaction will cause hundreds, perhaps thousands of deaths. Use that peevish little brain of yours. If you think about it long enough, you’ll see that I’m right.”

Steve stopped. The music dipped and the melody became soft. Austin was right. The Nexus consisted of multiple sensors, emitters, and a very sophisticated computer. The computer was highly parallel and massively integrated, containing many synchronized processors. It ran over one hundred programs, each of which served a specific function for the Nexus, much like each organ serves a particular function in the human body. The complexity of each program was dwarfed by the complexity of their shared interactions. Only he and perhaps a few of Austin’s Chinese associates understood the machine.

“Besides, if this becomes public news I’m sure they’ll lock you up, so you can just forget about the announcement this next Monday. Brooke will just have to wait until you get out of jail before she walks again. As I said before, I do have a plan.”

Steve turned.

Austin remained sitting, facing the stage with his back to Steve. His finger danced in the air with the tempo of the music.

“What is it?” Steve asked.

“Come over here where I can see you, son.”

Steve returned.

“I’m surprised. I expected more of a fight from you, but then you always were a bright kid.”

“Actually, Austin, it’s called integrity—something you might want to look into.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’d like that.”

Steve stood between Austin and the stage and leaned against the railing.

Austin strained to look around Steve. “Now that’s just rude, son.”

Steve said nothing.

“You will investigate this death, covertly. Then, once you find the software problem, you will create a new patch and transmit it to every Nexus through the Internet. I’ve also had Ron create an open expense account for you with the Swiss Bank Verwaltungen. They specialize in discreet arrangements such as these. There will be no ties or transactions traceable back to the company.”

The organ bellowed as the current act of the play reached its climax.

Austin sighed. “It’s a shame that you don’t appreciate the finer things. We’re missing the best part.”

Steve shrugged.

Austin leaned forward in his chair. “One of the Chinese associates, a Miss Allison Hwang, will assist you.”

“She’ll slow me …”

Austin waved his hand by way of interruption. “I’m afraid you have no choice. She’s connected with Ed Davis. She’s my insurance that you won’t miss anything else. Miss Hwang will meet you in the lobby in ten minutes. As you already stated, your corrective software patch took the life of Camille Anderson.”

Austin extracted an envelope from his suit pocket and handed it to Steve. “That file contains the information that Allison has collected on Camille.”

The file was lavishly stamped and embossed with Austin’s gaudy signature scrawled across what appeared to be a wax seal.

“That is an encryption lock. You will need this to access the file.” Austin handed him a small scrap of virtual paper with the word “patch” written on it. “That seal is the latest in security software.”

Steve memorized the password and handed Austin back the scrap of paper.

“You will need that,” Austin protested.

“The encryption protects the file?”

Austin nodded.

“But not that piece of paper.”

Austin snorted, closed his eyes, and once again lost himself in the music.

Steve stepped out of the booth and headed down the hall toward the lobby and Miss Allison Hwang.

A
llison awoke and gasped for air. Where was she? She sat up in bed, her arms still aching, her heart racing, and her pulse throbbing in her temples. She looked down at her hands. No blood, cuts, nothing except some scars. The nightmare faded.

“Shit!” she gasped. Allison massaged her hands. She was soaked in sweat.

A year had passed since that day on Hainan Island when the Chinese had launched their attack on the Spratly Islands. At least once a week she relived it; and when she awoke, her dad was still gone.

Fresh tears streaked her face as the images resurfaced. She took several deep breaths.

His death would not be in vain. She would find a way to fulfill his dream. Despite the failed mission and political fallout, Ed Davis had given her another shot. She promised him a way to sort though the mountains of data, to provide an interface for Warscape. That is when she approached another one of her father’s friends, Austin Wheeler, about the Nexus Transporter. The Nexus became Warscape’s interface, and she became the youngest DARPA chief in history. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency provided the Department of Defense with all the hi-tech military paraphernalia it needed, including Warscape.

Of course, Austin required special funding, and the Nexus certification had to be streamlined. Allison had abstracted these details from Davis. Now it appeared that one of these details included a deadly bug that could jeopardize the project, and in turn, her position. She would have to go undercover one more time to correct the problem and protect the agency’s interests.

Allison reached for a warm Pepsi sitting on her bedside stand. She popped it open and took a gulp. The tepid soda foamed as it hit her empty stomach. A few more sips cleared her mind. She placed the empty can back on the bedside stand and noticed the clock: 8:55 a.m. She collected her thoughts. Her appointment was in five minutes. Thank god for zero commute time.

She groped for her Nexus on the stand near the bed. It was not there. Where was it?
No time.
She got up, opened a drawer, and grabbed the Portal Sphere’s headgear and gloves instead.

She flipped over the bulky headset of the Portal Sphere. It resembled a motorcycle helmet and contained a flat screen for each eye and wide spectrum speakers for each ear. The fiber optic lined gloves enabled her to manipulate things in VR, but she had ditched the bodysuit and universal treadmill. Just two years prior, the Portal Sphere was cutting edge technology; then the Nexus came along.

Now there were two types of VR gear out on the market. Unlike the Portal Sphere, the Nexus made things feel real and come alive.

The Nexus bypassed the senses and muscles altogether and talked directly to the brain. Unlike the Portal Sphere, there was no screen glare, no hissing speakers, and no massive headgear pressing into your face. You would not stumble on a treadmill or hit the railing with your hand as you reached for something inside VR. The Nexus made VR feel like a dream.

Allison walked down the hall to her living room and sat in a reclining chair. She shook her head and drew back her long, black hair. She slipped on the gloves and headgear and entered a dream world, but unlike her recurring nightmare, it was a dream she could control.

Steve stepped out of the virtual hall, but instead of finding the Nexus lobby, he entered a temporary holding area, a twenty-foot by twenty-foot white-walled room with high ceilings. A single object broke up the room’s monotony. Embedded in the middle of the floor was a five-foot diameter circular mirror stenciled with the word
Microsoft®
.

In an attempt to restore the lobby and erase the hacker’s handiwork, Ron had taken the lobby offline. It probably would not work. They needed to restore a backup copy of the lobby; but of course, Ron had not saved his work. Steve would have to repair the lobby by hand, and he would have to do that before anything else. He glanced at the time fixed in the upper left corner of his vision: 8:57. Great, she would be here any time.

He was pacing. He stopped. He never should have confronted Austin. It was a bad idea, a very bad idea. Throwing Ron under the bus would not make it any better.

Ron was just the CFO, a glorified accountant. Austin and Steve had stuck him with management of the internal network and servers and the title Chief Financial Officer. As always, Ron made the best of it. He had a good heart. Over the last year, Ron supported Steve as he consoled Brooke and mourned Tamera’s death. Ironically, they had met through Austin, the source of his ills.

A metallic whine sounded in the hallway.

Steve spun around to see a seven-foot-round, two-dimensional, black oval open up just a few feet away. It was a Portal, used to jump between different sites on the Internet. Bots in the background performed Google searches, based on the user’s request, and made the transfer, or presented options if the destination was not obvious. A woman stepped through the void and with a metallic clank the Portal disappeared behind her. She was Amerasian with a lean, athletic frame and long, black hair that contrasted with her green eyes.

She’s beautiful
, he thought.
No
,
you’re just desperate after being alone for almost a year
. Yet, he could not take his eyes off her. His neediness remained, gnawing at him.

She turned her head from left to right and slowly scanned the room. He smiled. Her deliberate movements were the telltale signs of a Portal Sphere user. The images would jerk as the Portal Sphere panned.

She smiled when she saw him. “You must be Steve.”

He nodded and walked to her as she extended her hand. “Allison Hwang.”

He shook it.

“Where are we?” she asked, pushing her hair behind her ears.

That was a mistake.
Before Steve could say anything to stop her, she stumbled as she knocked her Portal Sphere’s headgear askew and turned her view of the room sideways.

Her arms flailed as she fell. Steve caught her. “Close your eyes.”

“What? Oh.” She closed her eyes and readjusted her headgear. After a second, she opened them, and Steve helped her to her feet. “Thank you. I guess I developed some bad habits with the Nexus.”

Steve nodded.

“Did Austin tell you that I was coming?”

“You’re here on Austin’s behalf.”

“That’s right.”

“Are you an engineer?”

“Not exactly.”

“So, what exactly are you here to do?”

“Uh, to help where I can, cut through the bureaucratic bullshit, stuff like that.”

Steve sighed. “Do you know
anything
about the Nexus?”

Before she could answer, the figure of another woman materialized in front of them. Allison shot him a questioning look.

“That is my CFO’s idea; an advertisement before we enter the site. It’ll help pay for renovations.”

The woman had just come out of a shower. Wrapped in a towel, she laid on a bed in front of a laptop computer. She spoke to her husband across the Internet through video conferencing software.

“I miss you too, dear,” she said.

A second image materialized in juxtaposition to the first. A man in a business suit hunched over his work computer.

“Honey! Someone will see you.”

“Don’t you wish!” She threw her wet hair back and revealed some cleavage.

“I wish I were home.”

“Why can’t you come home now? Seattle’s not that far from Portland. You could catch a flight tonight and fly back to Seattle in the morning.”

“I’m sorry, babe. I can’t. Could we meet online?”

The woman shook her head. “It’s not the same.” The woman took out a credit card. “You know you left me with your VISA card, John.”

“Damn! I left home without it?”

She took the card and ran the edge up her side.

The man held his breath as he watched the screen.

“Can you see what I am doing with it?” She pressed the card against her breast.

The man laughed. “You know I can. I really, really wish you wouldn’t do that!”

She kissed the screen and smiled. “We’ll be waiting,” she said. She slipped the card beneath the towel.

The images faded as a voice announced: “VISA, it’s everywhere you want to be.”

“Ah, who’s this, my friend?”

Steve turned. Ron stood a few feet away, a smirk painted on his Scandinavian face.

“What kind of ad was that?” Steve said.

“You didn’t get it?”

“Of course I got it, and I want it turned off. No more ads. Okay?”

Ron bowed. “Anything for you. Care to introduce me to your new girl friend?”

Allison laughed, and Steve cringed. He was glad that the Nexus could not show him blushing.

“This is Allison Hwang, an associate. We’ll be working together.”

“Working. I see.” Ron winked.

Steve turned to Allison. “May I introduce Ron Fisher, our CFO and my social coordinator?”

“Charming.” Allison extended her hand to Ron.

He lifted and kissed her hand, then turned to Steve. “Can I show you something?”

“Let me guess. Taking the lobby off and then online didn’t clean up the graffiti.”

Ron shook his head.

“What graffiti?” Allison asked.

Ron answered her by transporting them from the holding area into the lobby of Nexus Corporation.

They did not fade in or step through a portal. Steve stumbled to one side before regaining his feet. He heard Allison gasp.

“Sorry about that,” Ron said. “I haven’t been able to install the dampening software since the hackers did this.” He pointed to the lobby.

Steve looked around. Profane phrases and icons covered every inch of the lobby’s cathedral walls.

“Wow!” Allison scanned the lobby. “Someone really, really hates you guys.”

“I’m sure it was one of Steve’s fans. Nothing is more pleasing to a hacker than embarrassing the guy who started it all.” Ron winked at Allison. “Don’t worry. This won’t be too difficult for him to fix, right?”

“That depends. How far are you into the lobby’s set up?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can we alter anything real, like manipulate machines or change production lines from in here?”

“Not yet,” Ron said.

“Then I think we’re fine. It looks like the hacker painted over the existing environment, adding to the database, not modifying it.”

“Uh, what are you guys talking about?” Allison asked.

“You don’t know anything about the Nexus, do you?”

She shook her head.

“Nexus Corporation lives within a computer, specifically a VR server on the Nexus Corporation’s network. Through the Internet, the VR server feeds each of us a perspective of this lobby as we interact with the environment and each other.

“The VR server treats the lobby as an amalgamation of objects. Every beam, tile, and panel in here is stored in its database. These objects consist of sight, sound, scent, taste, touch, and gravity components. When the hackers came in and vandalized the lobby, they used tools similar to the ones Ron used to design this place. They added objects. They laid them on top of the existing environment. Every graffiti slogan they sprayed appended an object to the database. If we remove the latest objects from the database, the lobby will be restored to its original form. All we have to do is strip off these new objects the hackers added, while looking for signatures which might point to those who did the hacking.”

Ron laughed. “Steve, you make it all sound so simple.”

“Well, it made sense to me,” Allison said.

Ron raised an eyebrow. “And you’re not his girl?”

“Mr. Fisher, I’m nobody’s girl.”

“And feisty, too!”

Allison shot Steve a look.

He acknowledged with a nod. “It’ll just take a few minutes to clean this up.” Steve pressed a button on his virtual wrist. A rod of metal, six feet long, appeared in his left hand. As he pointed the rod at one of the walls, the graffiti on the wall disappeared.

“Cool toy! Let me try that.” Ron reached for the rod.

“Ron!”

Allison laughed.

“Can’t you at least pretend we’re professionals?” Steve whispered to Ron.

“Sorry, friend!” Ron laughed and backed off.

It took a few seconds for Steve to finish the task. He stepped back and surveyed the room. Down the center of the white marble floor ran a black marble path bordered by threads of turquoise. The path led to the front desk and hallway beyond. Around the edges of the room, white marble pillars jutted skyward supporting a large, domed ceiling, perhaps eighty feet above them.

“Wow! Not bad!” Allison said.

No longer covered by graffiti, Steve saw an exposed stream. It cut through the black marble floor near the wall. He walked to it and knelt down. “Computer, activate the sniffer.”

The sniffer materialized in front of him. In cyberspace it appeared as a rigid, thin sheet of paper with a long glowing tail attached at its base. He took the tail and placed it in the stream. Blocks, letters, numbers, and various symbols appeared on the paper. They materialized left to right and down the page. When they reached the bottom, a clean sheet of paper appeared on top of the first and filled the page with more symbols. The stack of paper continued to grow, one a second, until he had collected about ten pages. Steve frowned.

“Well, Ron,” Steve muttered, “I hope these were just juvenile hackers.”

“What is it?” Ron kneeled next to him.

“Did you see this?”

Ron shrugged.

“This stream represents a segment of the network, the segment that connects the VR server to Nexus Corp’s other computers and the Internet at large. It carries day-to-day operational and financial data. Not all of the data is encrypted. The hackers could have used a sniffer like this to access our company’s data, or worse, to insert a virus. You need to cover or encrypt this data stream ASAP.” Steve stood.

“Has our data been hacked?” Ron asked.

Steve shook his head. “No way to tell. With backups, we could compare before and after the attack. The graffiti could be camouflage meant to write over the remnants in memory that would show us what programming tools they used to hack the site or to deliver a virus.”

Ron frowned. “A virus? Are we infected?”

“I can’t say. Viruses are very small and easy to hide. I won’t go into detail, but an undetected virus is like a spy in an organization. Once accepted as one of the fold, you can’t find it without making every system, program, and data file a suspect.”

Ron looked confused.

“Most viruses do the same three things: infect, multiply, and express. After slipping in, the virus will find a vulnerable computer to infect. On any network, usually at least one insecure system exists that is not password protected. Otherwise, it will try various combinations of usernames and passwords on every system until it gets into a system. Once inside, the virus can use a number of methods to multiply and spread across the entire network. Many protocols allow “trusted” systems to talk to one another. Yet, the virus is harmless until it expresses itself and does its master’s bidding. This could be anything. It could start sprawling more political graffiti. It could secretly transmit company data to a competitor, and it could do this whenever. The environment or a timer could trigger it.”

“This is worse than the war. At least then I was fighting something tangible—something I could see and touch—something that would bleed,” Ron said.