When Jon woke the next morning he didn’t want to get out of bed. As he lay back, head buried in the pillow, he realized that he was at his wit’s end. In the past six months he had been brow beaten, bullied, and threatened. He had treated everyone with respect, but it seemed he received nothing but insults and humiliation in return.
He thought about confronting Harry at home, but he did not for a moment believe he would find his friend there. He could wait in Harry’s parking lot again, but his absence at work would be noted, putting both their jobs in jeopardy. No, he would just have to wait until Harry surfaced again, hoping against hope that it would not be too late.
Somehow the sheer force of habit got him out of bed and off to work. When he sat down at his desk and leaned back in the chair, he smiled faintly. At least the chair was comfortable. In fact, it was the most comfortable chair he had ever sat in. It seemed to be form-fitted to his body. Suddenly he laughed out loud. You’ve been taking it all too seriously, he thought to himself.
When he booted up his computer something strange happened. A large message box opened on the screen. Inside the thin blue border was a message from Harry:
I’ve turned the corner on the Q.C. I’m out of the root directory. It was a test, as I suspected, and I finally passed. I’m moving at light speed in a whole new direction. Sorry if I kept you guessing. I need a few more days alone with the Q.C. I’ll get back in touch soon. Here’s the completed version of the Public Key Decryption software. I hope it will keep the wolves from your door. It will only run on Big Moe: /work/CPP/HSALE/pkd.exe.
After he read the message, Jon smiled again. Harry’s persistence had opened up a new direction, an entirely new path on the quantum computer. Jon wondered where it would lead. His smile vanished. The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became.
After he digested Harry’s news, Jon gave Ted Blume a call to report that he finally had a working beta version of the PKD software. Ted was shocked into silence by this unexpected turn of events. The phone line was quiet for half a minute before Ted was able to speak. “Incredible! Come on up to my office and we’ll test it together.”
Jon sat in a small chair next to Ted as the older man logged onto Big Moe.
“We can test it with Little Moe,” Ted said. He handed Jon a piece of paper that gave Little Moe’s IP address and Public key. Moving aside, he let Jon edge his chair over so that he was sitting directly in front of Ted’s terminal.
Jon moved to the directory Harry had specified and ran the executable from the command line. A dialogue box opened up immediately. “Key in the IP Address,” said a succinct screen message.
Jon keyed in the IP address and then pressed “Enter.” He was immediately prompted to key in the Public key. This took a while, since the public key was a very large value. Once it was keyed in correctly, he hit the “Enter” key and a new message flashed across the screen: “Running …. Running …. Running ….”
He and Ted waited impatiently. Five minutes later the status message disappeared and they found themselves logged onto Little Moe as Super User. They had full access to every account on its system. A wild thought ran through Jon’s head. He could go to usr/sys/bin and key in rm * and delete every binary file on the system and bring Little Moe crashing down. Instead, he turned to Ted to gauge the older man’s reaction.
Ted’s mouth gaped open and his eyes were wide. “Oh my God, he did it. I didn’t think it was possible, even for Harry Sale. Man, I thought I was going to be out the door on this one. I was seriously thinking about packing my bag.”
“Me too,” said Jon.
“Well, I’d like to crack open the champagne and celebrate, but I think we better tell John Balis before he decides to visit us with his hatchet.”
Jon listened as Ted filled in Balis on the success of the test. There were long pauses and after each one, Ted said “Yes.”
Ted turned to Jon again. “He wants to arrange an immediate test with the Pentagon people. Can you be ready at ten a.m.?”
“Sure thing,” said Jon, “I’ll be there.”
At the demo for the Pentagon personnel, Jon noticed that Eric Meyers studiously avoided eye contact with him and directed all his questions to Ted Blume. Jon and Ted ran the same test again and succeeded in logging onto Little Moe. Nearly all the Pentagon crew remained impassive, completely restrained. It was as though they did not realize that they were witnessing a major breakthrough in information technology. The one exception was Tom Delaney. The odd little man looked like he had been pole-axed. His eyes blinked uncontrollably. Jon glanced at Meyers out of the corner of his eye. Meyers’ cultivated look of bored cynicism remained carefully in place.
The ranking officer, who sat next to Eric Meyers, was the first to speak. He turned to Ted Blume. “We need to do some testing in private. Can you arrange that?”
“Yes, certainly,” Ted said and rose from the table. “Jon and I were just leaving. You can stay on in the conference room. I’ll leave word at the switchboard that you’re not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Just log off Big Moe and then log back on under your own special logon ID. You’ll have complete security that way.”
“They certainly kept their cool,” said Jon when they were out of hearing distance from the conference room. “We give them the holy grail of decoding software and they hardly bat an eye.”
“That was for our benefit, Jon. Now that we’re out of the room they’re probably jumping for joy.”
The Pentagon personnel remained in the conference room the rest of the morning and then, following a short lunch break, on into the afternoon. Out of curiosity, Jon sounded out the security guard who worked near the conference room. “How did those Pentagon guys look when they went to lunch?”
“Like the cat that swallowed the canary,” he said.
Jon could well imagine. They had probably already logged onto the main computer used by the Chinese defense system. God only knew what they would do when they realized that Harry’s software was the open sesame for almost every major computer system in the world. Jon wondered if Harry had thought through all the implications of his new software.
Oddly, Jon still felt depressed and discouraged, even after the successful test. He couldn’t focus or concentrate. Lettie had cancelled their afternoon meeting. She had been called away on an emergency assignment—finishing up a document Tina Johnston and Ed Merkle had failed to complete in the required time frame. It was just as well. Lately Jon had been feeling more and more dispirited about how things stood with Lettie. Seeing the fresh-cut rose on her desk nearly every morning had taken its toll. At first he had tried to ignore it, but lately his eyes were continually drawn to it. He fantasized about throwing it on the floor and grinding it with his heel or tossing it into the waste basket. He also wished he could tell her about seeing Eric Meyers at Miller’s, arm in arm with the resident bimbo. But Jon kept his anger and negative emotions in check … although he could not help but wonder if his control and reserve were killing him with Lettie.
By three in the afternoon the walls of his office seemed to be closing in on him. Something akin to claustrophobia had him in its grip. He had to get out or risk becoming completely unstrung. He took the elevator to the first floor and told the woman at the security station that he had an appointment and would be out of the building for the next forty-five minutes.
Then Jon did something he had never done before. He walked around to the back of Building C and through the park until he came to the meadow. After crossing the quarter mile or so of meadow, he arrived at the edge of the pine forest. The smell of the pines and clean air helped, but hopelessness still tugged at him.
At the very edge of the pines, a large flat rock jutted out of the ground. Jon sat on it and began to sort through the many issues on his mind.
Lettie first. Their static, business-only relationship was almost unendurable. He had to do something decisive to change it. Almost any movement would be better than continuing on like an ostrich with its head in the sand. He had been passive so far because of the risk of losing her forever. Well, damn the risk! He had nothing left to lose.
Then there was Harry. The sheer scale of the changes Harry was in the process of making disturbed him. He could set off an international incident between China and the U.S., he thought. He could trigger a global economic collapse. Millions of people could suddenly be out of work because of Harry’s actions.
By far the biggest issue was Jon’s fundamental belief in democracy. What right did one person have to make such wide-scale changes? While he was convinced of Harry’s good intentions, he realized that such unilateral action made Harry a dictator—a benevolent one to be sure, but still a dictator. What would happen to the human race once all of Harry’s changes were made? Obviously the current order would be smashed completely. But what would follow? Chaos and disorder or a sane path to the next stage of human development? Or something else altogether?
The point that worried him most was whether the massive changes were all Harry’s idea. What if the quantum computer was behind all Harry’s actions? What if the human race was being forced down an alien path for purposes having nothing to do with humanity?
After a long while he stood up and stretched. He had not been able to come to any conclusions about Harry’s activities. He was like a surfer riding the crest of a gigantic wave. He had to stay exactly where he was or risk being drowned or crushed beneath the water.
When he returned to Building C he checked with one of the security guards. The Pentagon personnel were still in the conference room, presumably running the PKD software through every conceivable test.
When he left his office at five he felt slightly better in one respect: he had a plan of action with regard to Lettie. As far as everything else, the only reasonable strategy was simply to hang onto the tail of the tiger.