Chapter 3: Decisions, Decisions

NewChapter3h.doc

I stood the doorway of the conference room, leaning on the Boss's cane and watching Davis head down the hall. At the far end, he stopped and called the elevator. It opened right up. He stepped inside, turned, and pushed his button, then looked up and saw me, watching. I lifted the Boss's cane in a mock salute. Davis smiled back and bounced his Link in his hand, just high enough for me to see it. Then the doors slid closed, and Davis was gone.

Lowering the cane on the floor, I pivoted a quarter-turn around it, shuffling backwards until I faced the room. It was a sorry sight - the Boss still slumped in his chair, Beau looking worriedly toward him from beneath the table.

"Great job, everybody," I said brightly.

The Boss slowly raised his head, took off his sunglasses, and twisted his head sideways to glare at me through his peripheral vision. He stuck out his hand and growled, "Give me that."

I strolled to the table. "If you need to yell, yell at Beau. Look at his paws -he licked the dye right off." I held out the cane while looking under the table. "And he's the one who shouted my name! What were you thinking, Beau? Bad dog. Bad dog!"

Beau bared his teeth while the Boss snatched his cane. He didn't like my saying it, but he'd had made a pretty serious mistake. When you're secretly a talking dog, the last person you want to find out about it is a genetics company executive.

Beau looked back up at the table. "Sorry," he whined, apologetic.

He needn't have bothered. If the Boss wanted an apology from anyone, he wanted it from me. But he wasn't going to get it.

After everything that had happened, and all that'd been said - even after agreeing to email Davis instructions on where to upload his data and deposit his fee – the Boss had still resisted giving the man back his Link. He honestly expected him to walk around the campus for a half-hour first.

I tried to stay out of it, but even I had my limits. All I said was "Oh, come on!" – my one and only contribution to the entire meeting – but it was enough to shift the balance in Davis's favor.

As far as I was concerned, the Boss had no one to blame but himself. He's the one who put me in that situation; he's the one who made me speak out. But was I mad at him? No, not me - I was ready to make peace, and put the whole thing behind us.

But if the Boss wasn't ready yet, that was fine too. My hands finally empty, I reached once more time for the junk on the table in front of the Boss, eager to pack up and end this while embarrassing episode.

"No, no," he said, stopping me. "I'll pack; you go watch Davis." Lowering his cane to the floor, he levered himself out of his seat with a groan. "And leave that on," he added, as I reached for my beard.

I sighed, but to no effect. So we orbited the table like a pair of electrons – him, to the front; me, to my laptop.

Davis was just coming out of the elevator as I sat, shiny Link still in his hand. Just as he promised, he waited until he was completely outside before he put it back in. He even made a big deal out of it, holdingit high in the air and turned one complete circle, mugging for the hidden cameras. He th lowered the Link to his Jack very deliberately, elbow extending straight out, and gave a mocking wave (in the wrong direction, but how could he know?) before pressing it home.

I liked it. At least the guy had a sense of humor.

The Boss no doubt expected status reports from me, but I was in no longer in the mood to volunteer. He wanted to pack, let him pack. I'd been told to watch Davis; watch is what I'd do.

Not that there was much to watch. The expression on Davis's face quickly faded; he stood there, perfectly at ease. He didn't even lean on anything.

Clearly, he was waiting for something – a ride to the airport? I looked through all the external cameras in the area - there weren't any cars nearby. He must have come in by autocab, and even now was using his Link to summon another to take him back. I hoped it wouldn't take too long to arrive.

Davis, however, seemed perfectly content to wait. He was working his Link: answering messages, reading reports – or maybe just recording his impressions of us and this meeting. Probably having a good laugh about it.

No wonder he was content. As long as he had his Link, he was connected to his world no matter where his body was. Even Nowhere, Ohio.

Waiting without a Link, however, wasn't quite so much fun. I found myself, not for the first time, wondering using a Link was like. Of course, I knew in theory, but… Voices constantly whispering to you? Images superimposed on your vision? It sounded crazy-making. How come everybody loved it?

Frustrated with myself, I shook away those thoughts. This was old, familiar ground for me. I'd wasted far too much time in pointless speculation over the years. Better to ignore the impossible, and focus on the here and now.

Davis was still waiting. What was taking so long? Had the stupid cab driven all the way back to the airport empty? That seemed so wasteful, I couldn't believe it. Why hadn't it stayed where it dropped him? Davis obviously hadn't order it to stay, but I doubted he explicitly sent it away either - why should he? And the probability that it had been called somewhere else seemed impossibly slim. Port Columbus was clearly still open, but I'd be shocked if there were more than two or three flights in a year. This area wasn't exactly a hotbed of Linker tourism.

The more I thought about it, the more the question started bug me. Even if the cab had to leave, why had it left so quickly? It hadn't been on any of the exterior views when Davis arrived – I'd certainly have noticed. Yes, I'd been a little bit late getting to the cameras, but for me to miss it completely, it must have taken off almost as soon as Davis shut its door. Why couldn't it have waited for him the way the elevator did?

For that matter, why did the elevator wait? I didn't know much about what the world was like before the Collapse, but I did know something about elevators – the Boss had made me study control systems years before, and designing an elevator control algorithm had been one of the assignments. Wouldn't a building like this follow some kind of schedule? Filling up each morning, say, and emptying each night? Wouldn't an intelligent elevator expect that? Finding itself idle in the morning, especially after the first ride up in a while, wouldn't it anticipate that a new day was starting, and zip back to the ground floor to wait? That's where most of the calls would originate. Only later, when the building was starting to empty, would the elevator decide to climb halfway up the building, to be a close as possible to the next rider down.

But whatever it did, it shouldn't just loiter at the fourth floor like that. That was just… dumb.

Something was screwy here. I supposed that the elevator control system could have been dumb - though that seemed unlikely in a building this new – but surely the autocab's wasn't. Besides, intelligent systems were awfully commonplace - at least, that's what the Boss claimed when he made me study them.

I ran through though a few designs in my head, trying to figure out what was going on.

An intelligent system is designed to learn and adapt. In these two cases, that meant analyzing usage patterns, then modifying its own behavior to minimize people's wait times, and maximize their own utilization.

Systems like that are easy to make, but they do have one problem: if the usage pattern stays the same for a long time, the system can lock in, becoming unresponsive to change. New usage patterns still have some effect, but only after a long time – longer, even, than the old pattern had been in effect, since the new pattern has to first equal and then significantly exceed the strength of the old pattern before new behavior shows up.

In other words, such systems become… well, like grumpy old men. Nobody wants that. So normally, the designer would have to include some mechanism for eroding the old learned behavior, aging it out even as new behavior is created. The quicker the system needed to adapt, the faster the erosion would be designed to occur.

I realized then what must have happened. The elevator designer had overlooked the one possibility that had actually occurred – a long period of zero utilization. All these years without a single call button press: in the absence of usage, no new behavior was created. Meanwhile, the old behaviors had steadily eroded and eroded… until the system was finally left with nothing.

It made me kind of sad to think about it. When the build first closed, the poor old elevator must have faithfully gone through the motions for quite a while. down every morning; up every night. Down, up; down, up.

But nobody ever called again. The reasons for moving faded away. Finally, it just gave up. It saw no reason to move anymore.

That still didn't explain the autocab, though. If its patterns faded, why didn't it just stay where it was?

Of course, a cab can't be allowed to hang around forever. Leaving itself parked in an unproductive spot would be nearly as wasteful as going back empty. Plus, the world used to be full of all kinds of other factors: traffic, and cops, and who knows what all. If nothing else, a parked cab would eventually make a nuisance of itself.

They must had been designed with something to make them give up on an unpromising location. A kind of built-in restlessness that would make them drive away. Then, with no other input, they'd naturally return to the airport, since that was the most common endpoint for all their journeys....

That's when it hit me: with all its behaviors now faded to nothing, how would it know where it belonged? What else satisfy its restless impulse? I didn't like the idea of an autocab, lost and empty, wandering endlessly with no memory of home...

"Where is he now?" barked the Boss,

Startled, I glanced at the screen. Bad news - Davis was nowhere to be seen.

I couldn't believe it. His autocab must have come and gone without my even noticing.

"Just getting into his cab," I lied. No sense stirring things up. "You must be psychic," I added, trying to kid.

The Boss just grunted.

All that time, and he was still messing around with the cart. Time for me to step in, apparently. I got up, shutting the laptop with a snap. The sound caused the Boss to jerk to a stop.

"Turned off the alarms?" he asked gruffly.

I knew why he asked. "Are we still going through with that?" I asked, not bothering to keep my opinion out of my tone.

But the Boss didn't answer, just stayed frozen in position: I hadn't answered his question.

I sighed. "Yes, I cut the alarms - all of them, before I drove into the building."

"Good," he said, then knelt down with an effort. "Your laptop's the last, then. Bring it over, then help with these ties."

I put the laptop into the copper box, then knelt down on the other side of the cart and started tying. His attitude was really starting to get on my nerves. I wasn't just a pack mule…

"What do you think?" asked the Boss from the other side of the cart. "Was Davis lying?"

Now that was more like it! I leaned around the front on the cart to answer… only to find the back of the Boss's head. He wasn't asking me – he was asking the dog.

"When?" answered Beau in his whiney voice.

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, that's helpful," I hissed, sneering.

The Boss didn't even turn around. "Cart ready?" he asked. I muttered my answer. "Then bring it out to the hallway." He struggled to his feet. "Come on, Beau." As the dog, with his own little limp, trotted to him, the Boss returned to the previous topic. "So, he was lying sometimes?"

"Don't know," Beau answered, apologetic, as they stepped from the room. "Too nervous."

Nervous? I thought as I picked up the cart's handle. Why should Davis be nervous? He only had his brains scrambled, at a secret meeting, by crazy people, in bad disguises.

Actually, Davis hadn't seemed nervous at all to me. But nobody cared what I thought anyway. I just pulled the cart.

The Boss was waiting on the other side of the doorway. "Hold," he commanded as the end of the cart pulled even, then pulled a bundle off the back. "All right, pull it over to the far wall… a little farther. Beau, stay with it. Seth, grab the fire extinquisher."

"Is this really necessary?" I asked. "The hallway is full of dog hairs – are you going to burn it too?"

"Are dog hairs are on file somewhere?" the Boss answered, untangling straps. The straps fell away, revealing themselves as a harness for the small flame-thrower backpack wrapped inside. "Help me put this thing on," he ordered.

I didn't like it, but did what I was told. The flame-thrower wasn't part of the original plan, but our buddy Arvin somehow came up with one at the last minute, and the Boss took him up on it.

It wasn't very big, but it was still almost too heavy for the Boss to wear. To keep from falling backward, he had to lean dangerously far forward, cane in one hand, wand in the other. He looked back at me one more time. "Ready?" he asked.

I picked up the extinguisher, pulled the pin, and nodded. The Boss nodded back – it suddenly occurred to me that he was nervous too - then limped into the room. There was a hissing sound; then a couple of clicks; then a burst of flame shoot out of the wand.

The Boss started at the back wall, quickly going over everything – wall, floor, table tops and chairs. He kept the nozzle moving, leaving every surface charred and smoldering. There weren't a lot of flames – thank God, or I would have had to jumped in and put them out. The Boss only wanted to destroy trace evidence, not burn the building down.

Maybe it was overkill, but I have to admit, it was a lot easier and more certain than the original plan – vacuuming and wiping everything we might have touched, then spraying with beach to denature whatever the vacuum might have missed.

The Boss was almost finished. The paper signs that Davis had dropped ignited with a flash. The Boss ducked out of view around the door. A second later, flames shot between the hinges as he torched the wall I'd been pressed against. He hobbled passed the door way, torched the other side, then returned, backing out into the hallway. He turned released the lever, extinguishing the flame at the tip of the wand with a sputter.

We crowded together to looked into the room. There was a lot of smoke and ash, but since there were no open flames, I could drop the extinguisher – it wouldn't be needed.

"Close the door, and latch it," said the Boss, turning away and unfastening his straps.

I pulled the door to me with my gloved hands, and snapped the latch closed, cutting off the smoke and reducing the airflow into the room. The smoldering wouldn't last long. I leaned back against the closed door. "That room has seen its last conference," I said.

"It had anyway," said the Boss, still struggling awkwardly to get out of the harness. He didn't ask for help, but after a moment I came over and helped him anyway.

Re-packed, we started away from the elevator that Davis had used, heading toward the back of the building. "Hurry," urged the Boss, which was pretty funny. He limps, Beau limps, and I was trying to drag a wagon full of junk.

We finally back to the van. As I re-loaded everything into the back, the Boss tried to get me to keep the laptop out so I could check for activity along the way. But I said no - enough was enough.

"I can't watch it and drive," I protested, sounding a little whiney myself. "Why don't we stop once we're outside of town? I can check again then." Unless you want to drive… I didn't have to say the threat out loud

Actually, the Boss probably could have driven, at least once we got through the side streets and onto the highway. I-71 south is wide and pretty straight, and there was no traffic - just the usual stream of automated delivery trucks, zipping by in a blur of red, white, and blue.

The Couchee trucks wouldn't have caused him any problems. They're programmed to avoid obstacles at all costs. I found that out the hard way, years ago, when one surprised me by zipping around a corner while I was in the middle of the street. It was scary that first time, but it just swerved around me and kept going. Once I figured out that they wouldn't run me over, I even made a game out it, trying to force one to stop. So good are they that I never did succeed completely, though I did make a few to slow way down. I even hitched a ride on one… but that's another story. A dumb game, maybe… but I was a dumb and lonely kid with nothing better to do.

The trucks weren't even security concerns, because they couldn't report us. According to the Boss, they had no ground control, just pre-programmed destinations and built-in road map. They were expected to GPS their way around independently, More to the point, they had no uplink capability other than position tracking – and even that probably wasn't watched too closely. Who cared if a truck or two went astray, and some hundred Couchees dropped some pounds, or went a little dirty? Nobody, that's who – probably not even the Couchees.

A bigger concern to us were all the traffic cameras and sensors. Not the video – like on the campus, that was all spooled locally, and there was no one watching. But many of the cameras did upload reduced data to the various face and vehicle recognition services on the net, and those very well could be monitored.

Finding and disabling each and every sensor would have been an enormous task. Fortunately, it was easy enough to block those services at the routers along our path instead – we blocked them all the time around our base of operations.

These idle thoughts, inspired by the passing trucks, left me with a nagging feeling. I tried to dismiss it, telling myself I just needed to remember to undo the extra blocking once we got back… but that wasn't it. It was something about the cameras themselves…

And then I remembered: I was supposed to erase all the video that the campus cameras had recorded! Everything that I'd been watching all morning had been spooled to local storage, just waiting for someone to come along and take it. Even worse, the footage I hadn't watched was up there too – us arriving, us burning the conference room, us leaving…

This was bad. I needed to fix it double-quick…

"Pull over," ordered the Boss.

I jerked my head around, glancing quickly at him in amazement as the van swerved and rocked. Was he reading my mind?

Apparently not. My reaction seemed to startle him even more than he startled me "There's a rest stop ahead," he explained nervously. "You said you'd pull over…"

"Right," I said, trying to act like nothing happened. "Sure. Thanks."

We pulled into the rest stop and got out of the van. Beau needed to relieve himself, but the Boss wanted to wait and see what I found in the router logs.

"Go on, take him," I said. "This will take a while. I'll holler if anything turns up." He took some convincing, but with the help of Beau's whimpering, they finally limped off together. Thank goodness: no way did I want to open up that laptop with him standing right there.

They limped off together down the sidewalk. I cracked open the laptop the instant they passed out of sight, then cursed every second it took the pig to resume. They they were – every window that had been left open the last time I used it… including all the ones containing video feeds.

Initially, the the windows were frozen, still showing the images they'd contained at the moment when the case last snapped shut. Then the laptop found the network, and one by one the images jumped as each connection was re-established. The "jump" was actually pretty subtle, since nothing in the images was moving – a change in the daylight for the exterior views, and, of course, the ever-present jitter of video noise – but that was enough for me.

I fired off an interactive session to the server through our back door, then started closing down the video windows – clickclickclick - while the session logged itself in.

The program we'd prepared to erase the video wasn't subtle. Written to use the lowest level routines available, it quickly took over the system, locking out all other tasks while giving itself as much priority as possible. It couldn't stop everything, but that wasn't the point. The idea was just to prevent alarms and stop as much disk I/O as possible. As strange as this may sound, it needed to keep the system from crashing before it had a chance to finish its tasks.

Then, phase two: overwriting the hard disks. In general, not an easy task, with all the virtual disks, journaling and versioning file systems, remote backup, and other ways that some systems try to make it hard to lose data. Fortunately, we weren't trying to solve the general case, though, just this specific one… and we got lucky there – the campus security system's configuration was nothing special. Everything stored on it could be easily and completely destroyed.

Then, once the storage had all been overwritten a few dozen times, phase three would begin – randomizing memory. The trick is to erase everything that isn't "you", then erase as much of yourself as possible without killing yourself in the process. Again, this might seem like overkill… but it was easier to erase everything than to chase down all the possible places where harmful data which be cached.

Of course, I didn't get to see any of that happen. I just had to trust that it would. As soon as I downloaded and started the program, phase one caused my session to hang, just as it should. There was left for me to do but close the window.

From opening the laptop top to closing the last window, the whole process only took a minute or two. The Boss and Beau were still nowhere in sight. I suppose I should have been relieved, and maybe I was – for about one second. But then, as I moved to close the laptop, I suddenly remembered what I was supposed to be doing – checking the logs of the routers for new Link activity – and my feelings changed.

The idea behind it all – that Davis had still have men ready to come right in after the meeting, that somehow this whole thing might still really have been a trap – was so preposterous to me that, somehow, my relief at getting away with one somehow got all mixed up with my guilty conscience and earlier discontent. Suddenly, all I felt was anger and resentment.

I did checked the logs, though – expecting nothing, and finding it – but I decided not to shut the laptop after all. I left it sitting there running on the floor at the back of the van - van door wide open, router windows wide open – then stomped away. I needed a break too. Let Beau check the stupid logs, if the Boss was so worried about them.

The two of them had taken a path that wandered back the way we'd come, down toward the highway. So I climbed the steps to the main building. I didn't go inside, though. I'd been inside a rest stop before, and it had been pretty disgusting - flooded, moldy, and completely trashed – so I passed the entrance and went around the back. There, I spent my time looking over what used to be a picnic area – the rotting tables and benches, the scattered brush and saplings, the patchy and overgrown lawn. It suited my mood.

Heading back, I took my time, deliberately. Though I'd cooled off a bit, it pleased to imagine the Boss milling around, waiting. Just let one of them dare to say something!

So I was surprised and puzzled, when the van finally came into view, to see one of our boxes on the ground by the open rear doors, and the Boss sitting down on it, facing away. Cautious, I circled wide, wanting check out the situation without getting too close. But there was no one else there – just another box opposite, with Beau and his food bowl lying on the ground in between.

Sighing, I trudged my way over. "What's this?" I asked suspiciously, startling the Boss. Before he could answer, I noticed a pile of food and drink unpacked onto a folded paper bag on the floor of the van. "You've been busy," I noted.

"It's just…. I thought…" The Boss trailed off, shot a glance at Beau, then took a deep breath and tried again. "Long ride home," he said finally. "I thought, maybe a little food…"

I looked from the Boss to the dog, from the empty food bowl to the still-wrapped sandwiches. Clearly, this wasn't about hunger. This was about Seth being upset. This was about making Seth all better.

"This was your idea," I said to Beau.

Beau grunted up at me from the ground. "I'm just a dog."

Sarcasm. Terrific.

"I, um, I did want a chance to say that, um, well… good job today." said the Boss. His own generousity seemed to warm him as he went. "And last weekend as well. Fine work - excellent, really." He smiled. "I don't know what I'd do without you!"

The cruel thing was, that was supposed to make it all right.

For a moment, I almost said what I was thinking. That "good job" meant nothing to me, when all he wanted was for me to do as I was told. That hearing how useful I was, was like being given a life sentence.

But some slender shred of honesty prevented me. Because the hard truth was, I wasn't unhappy with them; I was unhappy with the way things were. And nothing I could say - no matter how mean it was, no matter how true - was going to change anything.

I didn't want to give up my resentment. I didn't want to them to think they understood me, and that somehow they'd made everything better. And I especially didn't want to sit on a box by the side of the road and eat my lunch in the windy November cold.

But I didn't have a lot of options.

"That's what I'm here for," I said with a sigh, and down I sat.

Apparently, that was all that was needed.

"All right, I have sandwiches and some water – help yourself," said the Boss. "And apples for later," he added as he dump scraps in Beau's bowl.

I watched with bemused detachment as he bowed his head and said his private grace, then reach toward the food. "Awt-awt," I said, holding up my bare hands. Raising his eyebrows in thanks, he pulled off his gloves then unwrapped his selection. "Awt," I said again, miming a tug my now-removed beard. This time I got a head tilt along with the eyebrows. After setting his beard aside and re-raising his sandwich, I noticing him hesitating, rolling his eyes to see if I'd stop him again, before taking his first happy bite.

It was hard to stay made at the guy.

Besides, it wasn't so bad - at least we now had something exciting to work on. The girl's disappearance intrigued me in many ways, but not least in terms of Davis's last offer. If we found her, and if the Boss was still reluctant to just turn her in, we were supposed to go see her, and ask her directly… and, clearly, in that case, by "we" I meant me.

I imagined meeting her in all kinds of exotic places, like something out of the movies… though most any place would be exotic to me. Perhaps she was one some one some remote tropic island… or hiding behind a hijab inside Muslim Europe. Hey, maybe she really was in a Indian temple, just as Davis told her friends!

Wherever she was, I'd go there and meet her. How I'd managed to function without a Link didn't matter – I'd get there somehow. I could be cool and mysterious: "Good evening, Ms. Doulos. Yes, I know your name… but don't be afraid. No, my name's not important…" Or maybe I'd keep it casual at first, like a chance encounter: "Hey, you remind me of someone. Where are you from?" And then she'd say…

"Had enough?" asked the Boss, bringing me abruptly back to the here and now. "The apples are quite good." As though to prove it, he took another bite of his.

"Why don't I eat it while I drive?" I suggested, suddenly freezing.

Chewing, he shrugged his agreement. We packed everything back in, and returned to the highway.

For a while, I fiddled with the radio, apple held in my teeth, trying to pick something up. The van was quite the relic, having a radio, but that was probably to be expected in a self-drive model. There weren't any regular broadcast stations anymore, but sometimes the foreign work parties that roamed around the country set up low-power, temporary ones, broadcasting news and music from back home. But though I thought I almost heard something, it never seemed to get stronger, just kept wavering in and out of the static.

I had hoped, frankly, to annoy the Boss a little, but ended up mostly annoying myself. He remained completely oblivious, lost in his own thoughts again.

So…" I said, rousing him gently, "figure it out yet?"

The Boss produced a rueful smile. "Not yet," he admitted. "It is tricky, isn't it?"

I couldn't argue with that.

The Boss turned toward me, half propping himself against his side of the van. He was ready to talk.

"I just can't decide about the money."

"Money?" I asked, confused.

"Yes. If we don't take it, how upset will he be? I know what he said, but…"

"Wait! What? Davis's money?"

"Well, certainly," answered the Boss, looking surprised himself. "You're not suggesting we take the money and do nothing, are you?"

How could I answer that? I was speechless.

Helpfully, Beau stuck his head between the seats. "It smells bad," he explained.

"The money? You think the money smells bad?" Someone was losing his mind, and I was afraid it was me. Beau just looked at me sadly, and pulled back his head.

The situation – that's what he meant. The situation smell bad.

"Is that it?" I asked the Boss. "You going to turn this down because it 'smells bad'?"

The Boss pulled out his Voice of Reason. "Come on, Seth, none of his story makes sense. You see that, don't you?"

But I was too unhappy to answer. Apparently, this whole trip had been for nothing. We were just going back to the same old routine. We'd never find out what happened, and I'd never travel anywhere or see anything.

"Right from the beginning, Davis acted like he knew what we could do," continued the Boss. "So why insist on meeting? He could just as easily described the problem in a message."

For a moment, I tried to bite my tongue, but my bitterness got the better of me. "Maybe he's not a backwards, anti-social sort," I suggested, then snuck a quick glance to see if the Boss got it. He did.

"He does meet people," interjected Beau.

I started to say something mean to him, and then I realized what he'd said.

"You smelled them on him, didn't you?"

Beau's answer was matter-of-fact. "Yeah."

All right, Beau!

"Sure," I said, gloating a little, "an important guy like that, he probably has two or three meetings every week. It just seems natural to him." Eyes forward, I bent the rest of me back toward my buddy Beau. "You think we should try to find her, don't you?"

In exactly the same matter-of-fact tone: "No."

You dog! Stymied, I fell back onto my seat.

The odometer clicked off two tenth miles of silence before the Voice of Reason sounded again.

"You do realize, don't you Seth… the girl is probably dead."

I gave the Boss a long hard look. He was deadly serious.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked incredulously.

"Almost sure," he replied with confidence.

I shook my head. It didn't add up for me. "Maybe I missed something. Did Davis say anything about that?"

"No… and that's another odd thing about this. Davis seemed intelligent, don't you think? He must realize the same thing. So why bother trying to force me to look for her?"

I almost fell for that, and tried to explain human emotions. But I caught myself just in time."

"Okay," I agreed, "Davis is smart. But I'm just a moron. Explain it to me. Why is the girl almost certainly dead?"

It was the Boss's turn to sigh. "You're not a moron," he declared. "You just… you haven't had time to think this all through." He paused to see if I believe him. I didn't, but I let it pass, and he continued. "But Davis had time – months of it. He had to know. Unless you think that a child…"

"A nearly grown woman," I corrected.

"…a rich, spoiled young woman," the Boss conceded testily, "is capable of arranging a disappearing act like that one!"

I said nothing. He had me there.

"It doesn't fit a runaway's pattern," continued the Boss. He wasn't rubbing it in – he was still wrestling with it. "It's too much, too difficult, too elaborate for an emotional behavior like running away." He sighed and rubbed his jowls, then turned back to me. "Or do you disagree?"

He finally asked for my opinion… and there's nothing I could say. Naturally.

"Okay, fine," I said finally. "She was kidnapped. We might still…"

"No," said the Boss.

"No what?" I asked. "We can't find a kidnap victim? I admit it might be…"

"No, she's not kidnapped," the Boss stated. "Not in the usual way, at least." Before I could ask, he answered: "No ransom demand."

That was a very good point. "Maybe…" I said, then came up empty for a moment. I was down to grasping at straws. "Maybe they're afraid a note would be traced."

"Someone can pull off a stunt like that, but can't send an anonymous message?" scoffed the Boss. "I don't think so. Kidnappers would find a way to ask for ransom, unless maybe they accidentally killed the girl… maybe even then."

We let a few silent miles go by.

"Okay then," I admitted humbly. "Then why did she disappear?"

The Boss shrugged. "I can think of two possibilities, one remote: either they want something from her…"

"Like…?"

"Like, she knows something. Something valuable - maybe about her father's business. It could even be something she isn't even aware she knows..." The Boss must have sensed my skepticism. "I said the possibility was remote," he reminded defensively.

"Let's hear the other one."

The Boss sounded grim. "That somebody wanted exactly they achieved – the paralysis of her father."

"Why would anyone want that?"

The Boss shrugged. "You heard Davis yourself. Dulos has boarded himself inside his lab… but he isn't working. He's hiding, broken, unable to function. If he really is as important to GGC as Davis claims, that's got to hurt their company."

I nodded my head, thinking I saw where he was going. "Some sort of anti-genetics movement," I sagely concluded.

The Boss just snorted. "A Couchee revolution? Not even they would believe a story like that. Davis is right – nobody that matters is against genetics any more. At least not in this country. Maybe someone somewhere does… but border security is so tight, both the country and the enclaves themselves, that I'd be shocked if anybody like that could get anywhere near the girl."

"Then who?"

"A competitor? The government?" The Boss was breezy – the question didn't interest him much. "It maybe even someone ambitious inside GGC itself. All we can know for sure it, whoever it was, they knew Dulos well enough to predict how he'd react.

"But the point's the same regardless: once they had the girl, they had no reason to keep her alive, and every reason to dispose of her as quickly as possible. She would have been nothing but a risk for them."

I was stunned. I was sad. But the Boss was right – it was obvious, once you thought about it.

"All that effort, just to kill her," I murmured, horrified.

"Well, it probably wasn't that much effort."

The Boss's observation was casual, almost an aside. But it took me by surprise.

"You know how she disappeared?"

He looked at me curiously. "Don't you remember? I already told Davis how it was done. Someone modified the video from the surveillance cameras."

"He said they checked that," I protested.

"Pfui," the Boss scoffed. "I said it was easy to do; I didn't say it was easy to prove. Come on, Seth - that girl didn't evaporate."

"But the 3-D model…"

"Don't tell me that took you in too!" The Boss sounded pained. "I keep telling you not to watch so many movies." I started to protest, but, exasperated, the Boss cut me off. "They checked the video against the model, yes? And what was the model based on? That same video! Of course they agreed!" He shook his head sadly. "You ought to know better by now, Seth. Processing can do a lot of things to data. It can sort data; filter data; organize, visualize, and summarize data. But whatever it does, it never creates new data. That just isn't possible."

"So those Russians really did rip Davis off?"

The Boss wasn't interested. "It depends what he asked for," he said dismissively. "But no matter what, the fact that they could make a model good enough to impress Davis just shows how easy this disappearance was.

"Even without a 3-D model, I would expect to find a few frames in the rest of the footage that would serve as drop-in replacements for the frames showing the abduction. After all, security cameras spend most of their day recording the scenery.

"But if for some reason that wouldn't work - if a random cloud or wind at just the wrong moment changed the scene too much - well then, use a model to synthesize the frames you need to replace. Create the model from the actual abduction footage itself, then simply edit the model to remove the abductors. Render the resulting model from the appropriate angles and at the appropriate times, paste the resulting frames into the appropriate places, re-encode the stream… and that's it!"

If he was expected applause, the Boss was disappointed. I was too distracted by another idea.

"Say that you're right, and someone did hack the video… They'd do that over the net, right?"

The Boss was nonplused. "Sure, I guess. If the video was stored on site, the way it as at Ohio State, then yes – otherwise, the hacker would show up on the footage later when he left."

"But that's great!" I yelled, very excited. "Don't you see? Their attack will be in the router logs! You can trace them back! You can find out who did this!"

"Yes…" the Boss replied slowly, "it would have been in the logs… six months ago…"

I understood his point. Routers weren't designed to store log entries forever. Their capacity was large, but finite; to handle that, they "wrapped", overwriting the oldest entries with the newest ones. "But if there hasn't been very much traffic since then…," I arugued. "… if no one has lived there since, and there is not a lot of other people near-by…"

"That's a lot of ifs," countered the Boss. "You're forgetting about all the forensic teams, and the people who dug out the foundation…"

"But we could look!" I protested. "We could try!"

The Boss took his time responding… and when he finally did, his voice was filled with concern. "Why are you so interested, Seth? It'd just be more work for you."

I found myself a little embarrassed for a lot of reasons – by getting so excited now, by my fantasies earlier, not to mention by the Boss sudden interest – so I tried to play it off. "I just feel bad for them - you know, the girl and her father." I was surprised as I said this to realize it was true.

We drove for a bit in awkward silence.

"You know," the Boss said finally, "that's another thing that bothers me. Davis said I should take his money so he can tell Dulos that I'm looking for his daughter; that just knowing that will make the man feel better."

"So? If you take the money, he believes you're going to do your best."

"Dulos doesn't know me. Why should he believe that?"

"You worry too much. Davis was ready to say anything to get your to agree."

"A man like that, giving up so much for so little? No plan of attack, no status reports – not even an email saying I've taken the job. Just 'take the money, and call me when you find something'? Pretty poor negotiating, if you ask me."

"Would you have agreed to any of those conditions?"

"…probably not."

"Well, then…"

"That's not the point! He says his friend is suffering. He says that he can help him simply telling him, without any evidence, that I'm looking for his daughter. So why does he need me at all? Why not just tell his friend what he wants to hear, if thinks he'll believe it, and save us both the bother… and himself a pile of the money to boot?"

"You're want him to lie?"

"I'm just saying that it doesn't add up. If I take Davis at face value, then the girl is somewhere out there; I don't understand how that can be. But if I'm right about what her disappearance really means, then Davis is either a fool or was lying to me; I don't understand that either. There's something wrong here, something missing… and I don't like it."

"And so we come full circle: can I get away with ignoring the whole thing, or do I have to take the money and make some token effort despite my concerns?"

"You're really that scared of the guy?"

"Are you kidding? Why do you think I agreed to meet him?

If I could make him happy without doing something regrettable, I'd do it in a heartbeat, just on the off-chance that he'd go away and forget about us.

Never forget how vulnerable we are. Staying useful, harmless, and almost invisible has made it worthwhile to ignore us so far; but just one word from someone like Davis, and they'd be after us in force, destroying everything we've preserved, and making our lives miserable in the process."

"Are you sure that what he wants is bad enough to risk all that?"

"No, I'm not sure… but I'll tell you the truth, Seth. A part of me says that we should just shutdown everything: turn off the power, stay off the net, and go to ground. Or maybe not even bother with that; maybe just keep driving right now until we're far, far away…"

"Don't worry. I know that's irrational. We're not going to do that."

"But yes, part of me does wish that Davis would just lie to Dulos, if comforting his friend is really his motive – it'd certainly be easier."

"It'd be just as easy if you'd lie: take the money, if you think that'll get him off your back, and simply don't do anything else."

"Did we ever ready a book called "God's Secretaries"? It's the story behind the King James translation of the Bible."

"No."

"Well, we ought to. It's an excellent book."

"Don't spoil it for me then."

"Oh, I won't. There are a lot of fascinating details in it. But do you know why they made that translation in the first place?"

"No… but I guess I'm going to find out."

"When James took the thrown, there were already two major English translations of the Bible: the Bishop's Bible, which was the official Bible of the Church of England; and the Geneva Bible, which was preferred by Calvinists like the Puritans. Now, the Bishop's Bible was a poor translation, and everybody knew it. But James wouldn't allow the Geneva Bible to take its place. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Marginal notes. The Geneva Bible translators had put in marginal notes about the text, explaining what the verses meant. The note that James detested the most was in the first chapter of Exodus. Do you remember the story of Exodus?"

"I guess… Jews in Egypt; parting the Red Sea…"

"Don't forget the plagues. You used to love the plagues."

"…"

"But all that comes after. In chapter one, it says that the Jews lived in Egypt for many generations. They thrived, becoming so numerous that Pharaoh became concerned. First, he made them slaves; when that didn't stop them, he called in the Jewish midwives…"

"Midwives?"

"They help woman deliver their babies."

"Oh…"

"Anyway, he called in these midwives, and told them that when they see a male Jewish baby being born, they were to kill it."

"What? Why? I mean, why not kill adults? Why use midwives?"

"I guess he wanted to avoid causing a fuss. If the midwives could kill the children before their first cry – maybe even before they were completely born – then everyone would think it had never been alive, and nobody would blame Pharaoh."

"Ick."

"Exactly. That's why the midwives ignored the order. Jewish baby boys were born all over the place.

"Now, when Pharaoh found out, he was quite unhappy. He called back the midwives, and demanded to know why they disobeyed. They told him that it wasn't their fault. That Jewish women weren't like Egyptian women; that Jewish women gave birth so quickly that the babies were born before the midwives arrived."

"…that makes sense..."

"Seth… they were lying."

"Oh."

"So that's what the marginal notes dealt with: disobedience of the Pharaoh's orders, and the lie told to cover it up. What do you think?"

"I'd have done the same thing."

"So would most people, I expect. But the note in the Geneva Bible took a different view. It said that the disobedience was okay, because the order they were disobeying was wrong; but the lie was a sin."

"If they'd hadn't lied, Pharaoh would have killed them!"

"Even so."

"And that's why James wouldn't accept that Bible…"

"Not exactly. He thought that both the disobedience and the lie were wrong."

"You're kidding!"

"The Pharaoh was like him, a king. If you encourage people to do what they think's right instead of what they're told… well, that's sedition."

"Is that what you think?"

"Me? Come on, Seth, you know me. I agree with the Geneva translators, except for one little thing: do the right thing, no matter what; never, ever tell an outright lie; but, for goodness sake, if you see a life-threatening situation coming, put down your head and hide!"