I don't know.
I'll call Czerski. You head over.
Dr. Kirstin Czerski sported a white lab coat and a frown as yielding as a former East German
swimmer's. Myron tried Smile Patent 17 moist Alan Alda, post-M*A*S*H.
Hi, Myron said. My name is
The diskette. She held out her hand. He handed it to her. She looked at it for a second and
headed for a door. Wait here.
The door opened. Myron got a brief view of a room that looked like the bridge on Battlestar
Galactica. Lots of metal and wires and lights and monitors and reel-to-reel tapes. The door
closed. Myron stood in a sparsely decorated waiting room. Linoleum floor, three molded plastic
chairs, brochures on a wall.
Myron's cellular phone rang again. He stared at it for a second. Six weeks ago he had turned the
phone off. Now that it was back on, the contraption seemed to be making up for lost time. He
pressed a button and brought it to his ear.
Hello?
Hi, Myron.
Pow. The voice walloped him like a palm blast to the sternum. A rushing noise filled his ears, as
though the phone were a seashell clamped against him. Myron slid into a yellow plastic chair.
Hello, Jessica, he managed.
I saw you on the news, she said, her voice a tad too controlled. So I figured you'd turn your
phone back on.
Right
More silence.
I'm in Los Angeles, Jessica continued.
Uh-huh.
But I needed to tell you a few things.
Oh? Myron's Smooth-Lines Fountain he just couldn't turn it off.
First off, I'll be gone for at least another month. I didn't change the locks or anything so you can
stay at the loft
I'm, uh, bunking at Win's.
Yeah, I figured. But if you need anything or if you want to clear your stuff out
Right.
Don't forget the TV too. That's yours.
You can keep it, he said.
Fine.
More silence.
Jessica said, We're being so adult about this, aren't we?
Jess
Don't. I called for a reason.
Myron kept quiet.
Clu called you several times. At the loft, I mean.
Myron had guessed that.
He sounded pretty desperate. I told him I didn't know where you were. He said that he had to
find you. That he was worried about you.
About me?
Yes. He came by once, looking like absolute shit. He grilled me for twenty minutes.
About what?
About where you were. He said that he had to reach you for your sake more than his. When I
insisted that I didn't know where you were, he started scaring me.
Scaring you how?
He asked how I knew you weren't dead.
Clu said those words? About my being dead?
Yes. I actually called Win when he left.
What did Win say?
That you were safe and that I shouldn't worry.
What else?
I'm talking about Win here, Myron. He said and I quote 'he's safe, don't worry.' Then he
hung up. I let it drop. I figured that Clu was engaging in a little hyperbole to get my attention.
That was probably it, Myron said.
Yeah.
More silence.
How are you? she asked.
I'm good. And you?
I'm trying to get over you, she said.
He could barely breathe. Jess, we should talk
Don't, she said again. I don't want to talk, okay? Let me put it simply: If you change your
mind, call me. You know the number. If not, have a nice life.
Click.
Myron put down the phone. He took several deep breaths. He looked at the phone. So simple. He
did indeed know the number. How easy it would be to dial it.
Worthless.
He looked up at Dr. Czerski. Pardon?
She held up the diskette. You said there was graphic on it?
Myron quickly explained what he had seen.
It's not there now, she said. It must have deleted itself.
How?
You say the program ran automatically?
Yes.
It probably self-extracted, self-ran, and then self-deleted. Simple.
Aren't there special programs so you can undelete a file?
Yes. But this file did more than that. It reformatted the whole diskette. Probably the final
command in the chain.
Meaning?
Whatever you saw is gone forever.
Is there anything else on the diskette?
No.
Nothing we can trace? No unique characteristics or anything?
She shook her head. Typical diskette. Sold in every software store in the country. Standard
formatting.
How about fingerprints?
That's not my department.
And, Myron knew, it would be a waste of time. If someone had gone to the trouble of destroying
any computer evidence, chances were pretty good that all fingerprints had been wiped off too.
