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Dongmei Hu Yang, generally known as Hu, could have been sick of explaining her name, but fortunately, she liked explaining things.
No, Chinese people—at least in China—didn’t usually have middle names in the American sense. But then, she was a third-generation American.
She could certainly have used her first name. She liked the sound, and the meaning—“winter plum”—had pleasant associations. She had used that name as a child, ignoring the occasional jokes, of which “ding, dong” was the least offensive. But once she decided on a career in law, and then in litigation, the meaning of “Hu”—tiger—came to seem more and more appropriate.
Of course, now and then some new acquaintances, usually elderly, felt called upon to launch into a rendition of “Who’s On First?”
In fact, the first time she got to be first chair in a major lawsuit, her fellow associates had surprised her with an elaborate performance of that number. And a cake. The memory helped her smile, rather than groan, when someone new dredged up the reference once again.
All of which made it more than a little disturbing that when her former law partner, who’d recently changed his name to Jim, answered her last note with such unusual promptness, he not only asked if it had been meant for someone else, someone named Jim, but addressed her as Dongmei. He hadn’t called her that in years. When, early in their acquaintance, she had asked him to call her Hu, he had responded with annoying comments about owl sounds, but he had eventually dropped the jest and followed the lead of the other lawyers and staff.
She’d been worried right along that the digitization process, presumably imperfect, might alter her colleague in ways that would be hard to undo. Some of the other partners had thought that was happening when “Jim’s” politics started changing, but Hu had reserved judgment, knowing that new activities and associations, not to mention a radically new perspective, might offer sufficient explanation.
That comforting rationalization hardly applied to this latest message, even if it did represent a return to the status quo ante.
She would have to stay in closer touch with her colleague (and remember to use his original name when she did so). There might be something she could do.
* * * * *
Esther came in that morning to find an urgent message from Max. More than urgent: its tone was almost frantic, although he had maintained enough self-control to avoid any real details. She had better make time to see him soon, before that control frayed any further. She could find an excuse to take a day off—if she took pains to be careful.
* * * * *
Esther’s message instructed Max to meet her for lunch at a grimy little bar, too rundown to attract any LiveAfter executives who might be in town for some reason, or any of their clients. He’d played at bars like this, when he got broke enough, and eaten whatever free food they threw his way. But he would have no appetite today, even for something more edible.
Esther listened to him with her lips pressed tight together and her greasy bread sticks hardly touched. When he had finished, he slumped back in the wobbly chair and waited for her to say something, anything, that would make him less afraid.
But he knew better, really; and he was not surprised when she finally said, in almost a monotone, “We knew that something had blown up, but not the details. I don’t think I can find out any more. And I don’t know what I can do, at least short term.”
They sat in glum silence for a moment before he remembered to ask, “What about the code Thea asked for? Can you do that, at least?”
Esther reached for a bread stick, stared at it, and took a determined bite. “I’ll find a way.”
Now Max just had to come up with something to call the code, something innocuous, like a new music processing program.
Not that either of them had been getting much writing done lately.
Damn it, he was not going to let the sons of bitches drive him crazy and keep him from writing! Max grabbed his guitar and kicked his front door open. He would head down to the ocean and come up with something.
No, he had better check first to see if Esther had sent the code. He put down the guitar and checked his mail. Yes! There it was.
He looked with longing at the open door, then set down the guitar, closed the door, locked it, and got to work on his message to Thea.
* * * * *
“But you started the troupe! Why would you want to drop out?”
The lawyer no longer known as Jim (Thea knew it was pointless, but she refused to think of him by his original name) shrugged and smiled. He did a lot of smiling these days. “I guess I don’t crave the spotlight any more.”
The Diva drew herself up and puffed out her chest. “Are you saying there’s something wrong with wanting to shine? To excel? To lead?”
Not-Jim put up his hands, still smiling, in cheerful surrender. “Of course not! We all do what we’re suited for. You’re suited to take center stage. I’m not. But I’m not really leaving! I’ll still help out with building sets and hauling props. I’ll be a prompter when we need one. And I’ll always be there to cheer you on.”
Thea forced a smile of her own, then moved slowly toward the door in the back of the room. She had the distinct feeling that if she could, if she had a body capable of it, she would be feeling sick. But apparently vomiting had been eliminated as one of many undesirable functions.
And in all the turmoil, she’d somehow missed a call from Max. But he’d left her a message. And finally, he’d sent her the code.
In spite of the circumstances and the stakes, this investigation, this sleuthing, might turn out to be fun. She was bound to learn a good deal.
Thea had never worked with the code generated by nanoparticles, though she had seen examples of machine-generated code. Only an expert would be able to analyze it. But she might be able to sniff out unexpected variants.
Did nano-generated code insert punctuation to turn active code inactive, "commenting out" what would otherwise be part of the program? Because she was occasionally seeing such punctuation, spaced the way it would be for that purpose.
And surely that stretch of code, and that one, had a different feel, a more obviously logical flow? It did not look like any coding style she knew, but more like some sort of careful imitation of the machine-generated code, a programming style designed to pass itself off as machine-generated code to the casual eye.
It was almost like reading a musical score—a score into which another composer's work, from a different period, had been intermittently inserted.
What was that?
Thea gasped and shoved her chair backward, away from the screen. In the middle of one of the suspect sections, a subroutine name jumped out at her: incPol. A subroutine name including "inc" usually meant something would be increased, just as "dec" usually meant "decrease." Pol. Political?
And there, farther down: decIndep.
And decIndiv.
