the principal difference between a dog and a man.” Mark Twain. Or: “It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.” Gore—
Please shut up.
Levine could feel his impatience growing. He was here to find Scopes, not bandy words with a program in this endless maze of cyberspace. He glanced at his watch: another half hour wasted. He followed the path to another juncture, then took one of the branching paths, wandering among the immense structures. The small dog followed silently at his heels.
Then Levine saw something unusual: a particularly massive building, set well apart from the others. Despite its immense size and central location, no colored bands of light played from its roof toward the other structures.
What is that building? he asked.
I do not know, Phido replied.
He looked at the building more closely. Although its lines were almost too perfect—the work of a computer’s hand, within a cybernetic world—he recognized the famous silhouette without difficulty.
The GeneDyne Boston building.
An image of the building inside the computer. What did it represent? The answer came to him quickly: it was the cyberspace re-creation of the computer system inside the GeneDyne headquarters. The network, the home- office terminals, even the headquarters security system, would be inside that rendering. The buildings around him represented the various GeneDyne locations throughout the world. No streams of colored light were flowing from the headquarters roof because all outside communications with the other GeneDyne installations had been cut off. Had Mime been able to learn more about the workings of Scopes’s program, perhaps he could have placed Levine inside, saving valuable time.
Levine approached the building curiously, taking a descending pathway to the base of the structure and approaching the front door. As he maneuvered himself against it, the strange music changed to an offensive buzz. The door was locked. Levine peered through the glass into the lobby. There, rendered in breathtaking detail, was the Calder mobile, the security desk. There were no people, but he noted with amazement that banks of CRT screens behind the security desk were displaying images from remote video cameras. And the feed he was viewing was undoubtedly live.
How do I get inside? he asked Phido.
Beats me, Phido said.
Levine thought for a moment, combing his spotty knowledge of modern computing techniques.
Phido. You are a help object.
Correct.
And you stated you were a front end to other objects and subroutines.
Correct.
And what does that mean, exactly?
I am the interface between the user and the program.
So you receive commands and pass them on to other programs for action.
Yes.
In the form of keystrokes?
That is correct.
And the only person who has used you is Brent Scopes.
Yes.
Do you retain these keystrokes, or have access to them?
Yes.
Have you been to this location before?
Yes.
Please duplicate all the keystrokes that took place here.
Phido spoke: “Insanity: A perfectly rational adjustment to the insane world.” Laing.
There was a chime from the speakers. Then the door clicked open.
Levine smiled, realizing that the aphorisms themselves must be security pass phrases. Yet another use for The Game they had once made their own. Besides, he realized, quotations made excellent passwords; they were long and complicated and could never be hit upon by accident or by a dictionary attack. Scopes knew them by heart, and therefore never had to write them down. It was perfect.
Phido was going to be more helpful than even Phido realized.
Quickly, Levine maneuvered himself inside with the trackball and moved past the guard station. He paused a minute, trying to recall the layout of the headquarters blueprints Mime had downloaded to him earlier in the evening. Then he moved past the main elevator bank toward a secondary security station. Inside the real building, he knew, this station would be heavily manned. Beyond was a smaller bank of elevators. Approaching the closest one, he pressed its call button. As the doors opened, Levine maneuvered himself inside. He typed the number 60 on the numeric keypad of his laptop: the top floor of the GeneDyne headquarters, the location of Scopes’s octagonal room.
Thank you, said the same neutral voice that had controlled his elevator. Please enter the security password now.
Phido, run the keystrokes for this location, Levine typed.
“One should forgive one’s enemies, but not before they are hanged.” Heine.
As the cyberspace elevator rose to the sixtieth floor, Levine tried not to think about the paradoxical situation he was immersed in: sitting cross-legged in an elevator, stopped between floors, jacked into a computer network within which he was moving in
The virtual elevator slowed, then stopped. With the trackball, Levine moved out into the corridor beyond. At the end of the long corridor, he could see another guard station under the watchful glare of an immense number of closed-circuit screens. Undoubtedly, every location on the sixtieth floor and the floors immediately beneath was under active video. He approached the monitors, scrutinizing each one in turn. They showed rooms, corridors, massive computer arrays—even the very guard station he was at—but nothing that could be Scopes.
From Mime’s security blueprints, Levine knew that the octagonal room was in the center of the building. No window views for Scopes; the only view he was interested in was the view from a computer screen.
Levine moved past the guard station and veered left down a dimly lit corridor. At the far end was another guard station. Moving past it, Levine found himself in a short hallway, doors flanking both sides. At the far end was a massive door, currently closed.
That door, Levine knew, led to the octagon itself.
With the trackball, Levine maneuvered down the corridor and against the door itself. It was locked.
Phido, he wrote, run the keystrokes for this location.
Are you going to leave me now? the cyber-dog asked. Levine thought he sensed a
