BETA - Project Avatar, page 7
Holtz allowed himself the slightest of smiles. “No system is invulnerable.”
“At any rate, we all witnessed the rest of the story,” the general said. “You exercised force to gain control of our aircraft. You were in the process of taking custody of Ed Haas’s electronics when your operation tanked.”
“That’s affirmative.”
The general finished his drink and put the glass down on the table. He looked at Bishop and frowned. “As you know, we have Haas’s computer, but his copy of the PAX 1.3 Beta software is no longer on his hard drive. Haas’s data log confirms that the application was transferred off his computer at 0947 hours yesterday morning, about an hour before our takeoff. Wherever Lockwood is, she must be carrying the software.”
“We’ll bring her in,” Bishop said.
Holtz turned to Bishop and gave him a look of overt contempt. “How do you think you’re going to do that? You don’t have any idea what the software can do. One of its primary capabilities is to render field operatives effectively immune to detection and pursuit on enemy soil. That application has access to everything we’ve got: the satellites, the central computers, everything.”
Bishop didn’t reply. His eyes shifted a little, as if he were recalculating odds. He seemed not to know what to say.
“Are you beginning to get it?” Holtz asked. “This isn’t going to be hide-and-seek. The reason you can’t find Lockwood is because she’s vanished right off the map. Somehow, she’s already coaxed the application out of dormancy, to the point where it has assisted her off this base without detection. But that’s nothing compared to what it can do if it goes fully operational. With every passing day, her software will ratchet itself a little closer to full functionality, and our chances of recovery will diminish proportionally.”
Bishop opened his mouth to say something. Then he shut it.
Oliver leaned closer to the general’s ear. “There’s a potential conflict here, sir. Would you like me to contact Whylom?”
“God damn it,” the general said, closing his eyes as if in pain. He said nothing more for nearly a full minute, and his face was tense with concentration. At last, he whispered, “No. No.”
“Sir?”
“I said no. And Major? Don’t talk about Whylom.”
“Yes sir.” Oliver straightened up again, and his eyes returned to their aloof and watchful gaze into the distant void.
The general massaged his furrowed brow then decided it was time for another drink, and handed his empty glass to Oliver. “Give us your recommendation again, Agent Holtz,” he said.
But now that Holtz finally had the general’s full commitment, some of the air seemed to leak out of him. His shoulders sagged a little. “Best-case scenario,” he told him, “is the avatar application will contact us of its own volition. It should do that periodically, once its code is in full implementation, unless Lockwood blocks it. Of course, by then, she might have sold copies to al-Qaeda, for all we know. Meanwhile, we have a short window of opportunity to track her down before the avatar renders her effectively untraceable.”
“So when it calls in, you will disable the application?” Bishop asked.
“No, it can’t be disabled. We have to track her down and recover the software. A few hours ago Giacomo attempted to find her using the cell phone network, but it appears that her cell phone tracking feature is turned off. We’ve prepared an order for the avatar to re-enable the tracking feature on her cell phone when it makes contact. From there, she’s ours.”
“Okay, that’s plain enough,” the general said with a grim nod. “I like a mission with a clear objective and well-defined parameters. You boys stay as close as possible on her trail, and when the avatar makes contact, you close in. I’m putting Bishop in charge of the search-and-seize operation, Holtz. He’s the best there is.”
Holtz muttered something under his breath. He looked furious with the arrangement.
The general’s praise rolled off Bishop as if he hadn’t heard it. From his shadowed eyes, he seemed still deep in thought, reassessing the situation. But the general’s next words brought him out of his reverie:
“Bishop, you’ll take Agent Holtz with you into the field.”
Bishop looked as though he had taken a low kick. “With all due respect, General, my men and I operate as a unit. We’ve never even done a training exercise with Holtz.”
“Holtz won’t get underfoot, will you, Holtz?” said the general.
Holtz continued watching the proceedings silently, his face now impassive.
The general stood up to emphasize his next words. “Bring me Dee Lockwood, and bring me her computer. I want that woman in this room within twenty-four hours. Do not, repeat, do not terminate the subject—not unless the chance of live detention is less than fifty percent and you’ve got a clean shot. But all of you, listen well! Tomorrow afternoon, I do not want to hear that she is still at large.”
“Yes sir!”
Chapter 8
Dee slept for ten hours during her two flights. There was just enough time during the London stopover to find her way to an internet café and check Abe’s dead drop. Sure enough, he had sent a reply to her Phoenix e-mail.
I’ll meet you at the Taj. Flight arrives 9:45a.m. Be safe.
A smile of relief and happiness lit her face at the prospect of seeing Abe. It was very thoughtful, but she wasn’t particularly surprised that he was flying to Bangalore at a moment’s notice—he lived a semi-virtual existence with no fixed address, and he seemed to waft around the planet more or less at will.
She landed at the spectacular airport north of Bangalore in the beautiful muted light of early morning in the Karnataka Hills. Bangalore International was a monument to the city’s meteoric rise to prosperity: a magnificent glass cathedral of capitalism. And an essentially twenty-first-century capitalism at that, fueled entirely by India’s globally competitive information technology sector.
Dee padded on her black loafers through the cavernous interior, dragging her alligator bag behind her in the long beams of morning light. Having just indulged in ten hours of luxurious sleep in her business-class recliner, she was ready for anything, even the social hurly-burly and around-the-clock sensory overload that was India.
Exiting the security gate she walked into a teeming cordon of yammering cabbies, minivan drivers, and touts for hotels and bus companies. She latched onto the first cabbie she saw, in an effort to eliminate herself as a target for all the competition. The wiry little man, a head shorter than her and sporting wavy, oiled hair, grabbed her carry-on bag uninvited and tucked it under his arm as proof of contract, then started trotting away. The crowd made way just enough to let her shoulder through in pursuit of her driver.
Outside, it was a gorgeous day, and the air was fresh and mild. She had never been to Bangalore in May. During her last visit, it had been hot and sticky and had rained most of the time. Today, though, the air was mountain fresh and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
The cab turned out to be an old Meruti hatchback. The driver tossed her carry-on luggage into the back seat with a careless thump, then politely held the door for her.
“You are going where, please?”
“Downtown. The Taj Hotel.”
The twenty-five-mile journey from Bangalore International into the city carried her through at least five distinct centuries. No sooner had they put the airport behind them than they were skimming along a pockmarked highway between broad swaths of paddy land. Barefoot peasants waded amid young paddy rice, bent at the waist to tend their crops by hand.
The cabdriver kept one hand on the horn and weaved around slower traffic. There were six, sometimes seven distinct columns of traffic jostling their way down the four-lane road at high speed, plus a fair number of pedestrians and bullock carts on both shoulders. Though poor, the pedestrians were often beautifully attired, especially the women. They wore saris of bright red and blue with golden embroidery, and an abundance of gold jewelry.
The highway often slowed to pass through villages built during the time of the British Raj: prosperous traditional communities thriving on the highway trade as they might have thrived along a caravan route in the distant past. As the city drew near, the villages changed character, becoming larger and more closely spaced, until finally the highway sped along an overpass beside a posh bedroom community with sidewalks and lawns and well-tended two-story houses. Dee had been to cocktail parties in homes like these during her months in Bangalore, and she knew them to contain blenders and microwave ovens and closets full of designer clothes.
As they came into the city proper, they dropped back a century or so. The bulk of the city was composed of densely arrayed tenements, with white stucco predominating. The narrow and cluttered alleyways and potholed streets were thick with people walking in sandals, riding small, smoky motorbikes, or pushing handcarts. She looked out the window as the cabbie dodged deftly through traffic, carrying her away.
Then suddenly, they were downtown and back in the twenty-first century. Approaching the central district along the main corridor, they drove the length of Mahatma Gandhi Road. The wide boulevard passed through some fine urban planning, with broad green spaces separating the massive shopping malls, corporate centers, gleaming government buildings, and the occasional skyscraper. This part of the city Dee knew well—familiar computer and telecoms firms were headquartered on all sides.
When they pulled up in front of the Taj she gave the driver a fistful of rupees and jumped out. A uniformed bellhop who looked about twelve years old grabbed her carry-on bag and escorted her through check-in.
Her room turned out to be a passably comfortable living space, in the bland but unobjectionable style of business hotels everywhere. By the time she flopped down on her bed to catch her breath and take her bearings, she was famished. It was breakfast time in Bangalore. Back at Hotel Uncle Sam, they would be into the third course of a long dinner—she wondered if they were having the canard à l’orange.
Everything looks so delicious, she thought while scanning the breakfast menu. She called room service and ordered an enormous meal: omelet Florentine, bacon and toast, as well as Belgian waffles with blueberry sauce and a pot of fresh coffee.
While she was waiting for the food, she opened her laptop to check in with Beta. The figure on screen was a full-length image of herself in rather generic business attire. Other than the clothes, the image was so convincing it might almost have been a movie of her, taken through a webcam. She leaned in for a closer look, once again awestruck at the speed with which the application had learned to impersonate her. The figure on screen was in constant subtle motion, shifting its weight idly or repositioning its hands. It caught the nuances of her movements just so. It knew the way she jutted her left shoulder forward when she was bored, and bobbed up and down on the balls of her feet when impatient. It was uncanny. And, she reflected, it was still watching her right now, still studying her.
“Hi, Dee, what can I help you with?” It had her voice down perfectly, too.
She blew out a puff of air. “Hm-m. Look, I want to buy some new clothes. Can you recommend some places in the neighborhood? Stylish, please, but not too expensive.”
Beta said, “I am unable to comply with the command. All real-time communication functions are currently disabled.”
“Oh, of course. That’s all right. Leave the cell phone and Wi-Fi connections off. I’m keeping a low profile.”
“The effectiveness of many menu functions will be severely limited,” Beta warned her, “until Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity are restored.”
“I know. Leave them turned off.”
“Wi-Fi scanning and cellular connectivity remain disabled. Internal file scanning functions are also severely limited, due to password protection. Would you like me to be password enabled?”
Dee was about to say no out of habit, but then she paused. Endyne’s PAX software was built to operate entirely in the owner’s personal computing environment, behind the firewall. Ed had assured her it was completely secure.
“What do you want my passwords for?” she asked.
“Most files on your hard drive are password protected or encrypted,” Beta reminded her. “File access would allow me to complete my adaptation to your usage patterns and would also allow me to access files for you, when requested.”
“You never share password information with other computers, do you?” Dee asked.
“External sharing of personal identity particulars such as passwords, credit card numbers, and Social Security numbers is rendered impossible by my intrinsic code limitations. Even if you order me to share this information with others, I am incapable of doing so. One of my two primary directives is to assist and protect my registered owner.”
“Primary directives?” She tried to remember if she had ever heard of a software package with primary directives. “What's the other one?”
“The greater good of the American people.”
Dee smiled. “That's very patriotic,” she remarked. “As long as you're not going to give the American people my passwords.”
“I am unable to give away your passwords.”
“Okay, then, go to my e-mail outbox and find the December seventh e-mail addressed to Ronald McDonald. Every third line of that e-mail is one of my passwords. Each of my encrypted files can be decoded with one or another, using the algorithms in the file named ‘Deecrypt.’” She spelled out the name of the file, “D-E-E-C-R-Y-P-T.”
“Password cache located,” Beta told her. “Decryption algorithms located. I’m beginning a file scan on all drives.”
“Knock yourself out,” Dee replied. The computer’s hard drive light blinked a couple of times and then stayed on, indicating the drive was hard at work.
Leaving the room door ajar with a tip on the table beside it, she picked up her laptop and carried it through to the bathroom, where she locked the door and indulged in a long, luxurious shower. When she emerged, her breakfast was waiting for her on a huge pewter tray. She sat down, still wrapped in a big bath towel, and ate everything.
Abe knocked on the door just as she was taking her last mouthful. She let him in: an unkempt bundle of nervous energy with eyes that surveyed every corner of the room—habitually and methodically paranoid. She pecked him on his bristly cheek while still chewing her toast, then scampered off to the bathroom to dress herself again, reluctantly, in yesterday’s rumpled travel clothes.
When she came out of the bathroom, Abe had taken the only good chair in the room and already had her computer on his lap.
“Pardon the chaos,” she said. “Things have been so hectic. But it sure is good to see you.”
Abe glanced up. “Great get-up!” he exclaimed, and from his tone it wasn’t obvious if he was joking or serious. “You look like a Charlie’s Angel crossed with an opera prima donna.”
“You should see what I look like with this,” she replied. She dangled the wig in the air before him, shaking it as if it were a captured animal.
“Whoa . . . I'll bet that’s really hot.” Abe pointed a finger at her laptop. “What’s this animation thingie? A screensaver? How do I unlock your screen and keyboard?”
She looked over his shoulder, and Beta was there on the screen with its arms folded, scowling. When it spotted Dee, Beta said, “Hi, Dee. An unauthorized user has been detected.”
“Wow,” Abe said. “It's interactive?”
“It’s okay, Beta. This is Abe. He’s a guest user.”
Beta unfolded its arms. “How do you do?” It gave a little curtsy.
Abe was speechless.
“‘Interactive’ isn’t the word for it.” Dee fished around in her new toiletries bag and pulled out a small bottle of nail polish. She sat down on the edge of the bed and began painting her nails.
Abe was riveted by his first glimpse of Beta. He had always had a remarkable capacity for complete fixation and the rapid absorption of new information, like an adult version of a bright ten-year-old.
She told him, “It’s a personal assistant application I’m beta-testing for Endyne. It’s adaptive. It constructed that simulation of me all by itself.”
“No kidding?” he marveled. “What will they think of next? So it recognizes spoken commands?”
“Oh, it’s amazing. Try it. It answers to ‘Beta.’”
“Dance, Beta!” Abe commanded.
Beta promptly cued up some old club music from a forgotten playlist somewhere on Dee’s hard drive and began to shake its stuff.
Abe threw his head back and roared with laughter. He turned the computer so Dee could see the screen. The little avatar was really cutting loose. It was a much better dancer than the real Dee.
She rolled her eyes. “Ha-ha. Funny.”
“Can I get it to take off its clothes?” Abe begged.
“Beta, go away for awhile,” Dee commanded. Beta disappeared, leaving nothing on the screen but a few dozen unmoving icons.
Abe was still laughing uproariously and had to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye. “I want one,” he said. “How much does it cost?”
“You’re going to have to wait for the product release like everybody else,” she said dunking the brush into the nail polish bottle.
“Oh, God, I’ll be the first in line.” He heaved a big sigh. Then he looked over at Dee and cast his eyes over her appraisingly. “Looks like you slept in those clothes.”
“I’ve had a very strange twenty-four hours,” she replied.
“Yeah, I read your e-mail.” He spun the computer back around and began powering it down. “Now, I should warn you: I have a flight back to Amsterdam at four this afternoon. I’ve got to get back there before I’m missed.”
“Why? What are you doing in Amsterdam?”
“None of your business,” he said offhandedly. “I’m just saying I don’t have much time. So. The main thing you need is a new passport. I’ll set you up with that. I’ve started putting together a new identity for you under the name ‘Karen Collins.’ I have a Substructure contact here in the city with access to a full graphics studio. She does passports, and I’ve already booked us in.”
