“Don’t get killed,” she mumbles innocently.
I stand in chilly stillness. The marina is modest, and a throwback to a less-expensive time. Many of the boats seem to belong to bygone hippies. One boat is called
I don’t see another soul awake and walking these planks. Some are still asleep on their boats; others probably come only on weekends.
I walk down the aisles until I come to it. The
I look around the marina. Seeing no one, I step over the edge of the pier and onto the boat. I walk to the cabin, and peer into a window. The dark tint makes it difficult to discern what is inside.
I take a breath and hold it, and then reach for the handle on the cabin door. To my surprise, it turns.
Inside, a modest cockpit; along the sides, a small refrigerator, fishing equipment, industrial-size food supplies, like two large plastic jugs of orange juice.
It also seems ordinary. Except that there’s a table in the center with a laptop chained to it.
Chapter 61
My cell phone buzzes and, surprised and anxious, I nearly hit my head in the small space. I pull my phone from my pocket. It is a text from Polly that reads: “Craving maple frostd.” I text back: “Cmng up.”
I turn off my phone.
The laptop is sleek, black, relatively new. I hit the space key. The monitor flickers to life. On the screen is an icon for a program I’ve never heard of: “InterneXt.” The word is enclosed in a graphic of the human brain. I click on it.
Onto the screen pops a rectangular login box. The user name says: “LaneElizaIdle.” The password is blank.
I stand. I walk to the door of the boat. I open it, and I poke out my head. I look around the dock. Halfway down the pier, a woman sweeps the deck of her boat. I duck back inside. I lock the door. I sit.
Into the password section, I type: “NatIdle.” I hit “enter.” A message returns: “Your password is incorrect. After three incorrect attempts the program will be permanently locked out.”
I stand. I clench my fingers together, hang my head, squint my eyes. I’m scouring my brain for connections, memories, mnemonics, cryptic references that only Lane Idle would know. Would she know anything at all?
Twinsons, Lovesreading, doublelife, Voted4Kennedy, SnakePuker, Maverick, EnglishTeacher, Coloradan, DadwasBAKER.
Can Grandma’s life be summed up with a phrase or word? What connection or concept or secret of hers has someone inserted as this password?
I sit down at the computer. I put my hands on the keyboard and I type: “Pigeon.” I hit “enter.” The message returns: “Your password is incorrect. After three incorrect attempts the program will be permanently locked out.”
Screw it. Screw all of it. What does it matter?
One more password, then I will let this all go. I will return home with a maple donut and kiss Polly’s belly. I’ll take an editing position or a staff writing job at a magazine. I’ll put this behind me, the Chasing and the Coming Up Just Short. I’ll help raise a beautiful son or daughter or twins and I’ll let them use the computer all they want because it will hinder their ability to remember that their dad was a sometimes malcontent.
Let the fates decide.
From my back pocket, I extract my wallet. I pull out a piece of paper on which I’ve written the series of numbers and letters I generated before leaving home from the binary decoder.
The code looks like this: “214–5682 89Marina”
I know that “89Marina” stands for the address. What do the other numbers stand for?
I type them into the empty password spot. I put my finger on the “enter” key. I pause. Maybe they’re supposed to go in the reverse order, like Newton said. And like I said: Screw it. I hit “enter.”
The login screen starts to dissolve. In its place, a document starts to materialize. The first page reads:
Internet 2.0
Human/Data Transfer Technology
The information herein is copyrighted and classified. Use or copying of this information is strictly prohibited and may have deleterious medical consequences.
At the bottom of the page is the word “Next.”
I inhale deeply, hold my breath, and click.
A new page appears.
The first Internet protocols were developed in 1973, leading to the creation of the World Wide Web and mass adoption of the technology by consumers, corporations and governments. It has continued to serve its initial purpose of providing a decentralized communications medium that cannot be easily destabilized. But it has also become a liability. Confidential information delivered via computers can be intercepted, decoded, and changed. That presents problems for ordinary citizens, whose information can be compromised, but even more so for corporate or government (military) entities that need to rely on secure transfer of information.
In 2007, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the agency responsible for funding the original Internet, endeavored to create a new, more secure version of the Internet: InterneXt or Internet 2.0. Working secretly with several handpicked scientists, they undertook to study whether data could be stored and transferred — not on magnetic computer chips — but in human memory cells. The basic idea was to determine whether the expanse of human memory space might be used to encode information, unbeknownst to the carrier. Farfetched as it sounds, the prospective uses could be extraordinary, such as: having an unsuspecting civilian (child/old person) carry data across enemy lines; having someone encrypted with launch codes or mission critical information but who could not be hacked via a computer; eventually developing the ability to “program” fallow human memory centers with vast stores of data.
Unwitting human hard drives. The ultimate mobile storage devices.
I was one of the scientists involved in the project. At the time that I began working for Chuck Taylor, his intentions were not clear to me. I believed that we were exploring technology that might strengthen human memory capacity, not overwrite it.
I hope that I have met you in person. If so, you probably didn’t have cause to discover this file and read it (because I’ve told you the important parts and you’ve already written a front-page scoop).
If we haven’t met and you’re reading this, I’m probably dead.
I have discovered the extent of the project and its real purposes. I have learned that Chuck plans to send a group of Vietnam and Iraq War veterans to China. The reason given for the trip is the Pan-Asian Games taking place over Thanksgiving. Unknowingly, the vets will be carrying secure data. I am not certain if this is encoded information for mere testing purposes or if Chuck is actually transferring important military data to the Chinese.
I don’t know if any of this will make sense to you. It doesn’t have to. What I need from you are two things: expose the perpetrators and then destroy this file.
Without the information in this file, Chuck and his partners cannot reproduce their efforts. Herein are the scientific protocols that dictate how computers must be programmed to stimulate memory loss and to overwrite it.
