'According to one of the scientists working on the thing, somebody
sneaked in and stole something from their computer.'
'Who would bother? The technology is moldy, goes back to Tesia, more
than a hundred years ago.'
Michaels shrugged.
'Got me. I did a little web walking in VR, and it does look as if
somebody got into their computer.'
'Kid hacker, maybe,' Jay said.
'Could be. You want to check it out, be my guest.'
'Soji is gonna be busy for the next couple days. I'll take a look at
it, get a jump on work.'
'Background and what I saw is in the work file under
'HAARP.'
' 'Copy, Boss. See you Monday morning.'
'My best to Soji,' he said.
Jay went to his office and looked around, but there wasn't much new to
see. Some hardcopy reports was all.
He had checked his e-mail and phone messages using a virgil he'd
checked out and taken with him, so he was pretty much up to date.
Just for grins, he lit his computer and read over the information on
HAARP the boss had given him, including the hidden cam vid of the
interview with the scientist, Morrison.
Very interesting stuff. Mind control? That would be worth stealing,
but that also didn't seem likely. People had been playing with
low-frequency stuff for a long time without much in the way of results.
Still, it was intriguing.
Jay logged off his computer. He'd been here for a E
couple of hours. Time to head home. Soji didn't have to be on-line
all the time ... But as he started for the door to leave, his com
chirped, and the sexy, throaty female vox he'd programmed into his
computer said, 'Jay! Priority One com. Jay! Heads up! Answer the
phone, you hunk of burning love!'
Friday, June 10th Longhua, China
When he had been a member of the Chinese Army twenty years before, Jing
Lu Han had apparently at some point collected a Russian Makarov pistol,
and kept it hidden away for two decades afterward. No one had ever
seen him with it--at least no one alive who could testify to that.
There seemed no other way he could have come by such a thing, there not
having been any Russians in or about Longhua in anybody's memory, and
Jing having lived there all his life, save for his time in the army.
However he came by it, it was with this pistol that Jing proceeded to
shoot seventeen members of his home village in the wee hours of Friday
morning. He walked calmly through the town, pl inking at anybody who
came out to see what the noise was about, and he did not discriminate
as to sex, age, or familial relationships. By dawn, he had shot men,
women, children, friends, and relatives. He had two dozen rounds of
ammunition remaining for the pistol after he shot number seventeen-his
butt-ugly and ignorant cousin Low Tang--but it was moot as to how many
more he might have wounded or killed, given that he was overwhelmed at
that point by half a dozen villagers and hacked to pieces by their
