“You need to learn to handle people, Dr. Staffman,” the Coach said. “You catch more bees with honey, as the saying goes.”
“Right, Coach,” Staffman said absently. His hands fluttered across his keyboard, preparing to increase the draw from the botnet.It didn’t take long.
“It’s ready,” he said. “Just hit the enter key and it will start.”
“No, Professor, you start it up. You made the decision to do this. You need to take responsibility.”
Staffman gritted his teeth. He extended his index finger and tapped his keyboard. On the map of the globe, red plague spotsbegan to appear in the midst of the green, expanding quickly, like bloody welts on the surface of the world. Immediately,the progress bar on the third monitor began to speed up, clicking through the 1 percent mark in just under a minute.
Staffman watched, awed.
“How long will it take?”
“I didn’t think it would be so fast. The virus must have infected more computers than I realized. It’s . . . amazing.”
He watched, mesmerized, while his creation did its work. The botnet chewed its way through the world, behaving exactly asdesigned. Pride filled his chest.
The Coach stood next to Staffman’s chair, hands on her hips, peering through her glasses at the monitors.
“Say,” she said thoughtfully.
“Yes, Coach?”
“Something occurs to me. The way you explained it, your virus will take over damn near every computer system in the world,so they can’t do what they’re supposed to do. They’ll be working on our little Oracle problem instead.”
Yes, Coach, Staffman thought, the sky is blue. Yes, Coach, two plus two equals four.
“Well,” she continued, turning to look directly at Staffman, “doesn’t that include the power grid?”
Staffman stared at the Coach for a moment. He lunged back to his keyboard and began to type furiously.
“Your face just went like a slaughterhouse cow after it gets hit with the air hammer, so I guess that answers my question,”the Coach said. “How will all those machines keep working on our project when the lights go out?”
Staffman didn’t look at her, just continued to type.
“Come on,” he muttered.
“Boy, you’ve got an answer for me?”
Staffman bit back the withering response that leapt to the front of his mind.
“I built some degree of control into the botnet, Coach,” he said, not taking his eyes from his screens, his fingers flying.“I can give it commands—explain that it needs to keep the power on, but it’s not easy. It’s just a piece of code—it’s smart,but it’s stupid. It doesn’t remember what I’ve told it to do, so I have to keep pulling it back from power nodes over andover again. It’s like . . . it’s like putting out a forest fire by dumping glasses of water on it one by one.”
The room fell silent, except for the rattling of the keys.
“Will that work?” the Coach asked.
“Does it sound like it will work?” Staffman snapped. “I’ll keep it going for as long as I can. We’ll lose parts of the gridfor sure, but hopefully I can maintain enough processing power to crack the Oracle’s security before we lose too many machines.”
The Coach rested a hand on Staffman’s shoulder, its psychological weight all out of proportion to its physical weight.
“Listen, son, if there’s anyone who can do this, it’s you. I wouldn’t have put you on my team if you couldn’t do ten impossible,sorry, ten improbable things before breakfast, as Lewis Carroll put it. I’ll let you work, but just know I’ve got all the faith in the world inyou.”
Despite his personal distaste for the woman, despite knowing that the Coach had threatened his life not ten minutes ago, Staffmanfelt a blush of motivation flow through him. The lady had a gift, that’s all there was to it.
“Wait and see, Coach,” he said. “We’ll have him.”
Chapter 23
“It’s a bad idea, Will,” Hamza said. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s all you’ve been saying for three days,” Will answered. “How about you just let it go?”
The light changed, and they crossed Lafayette. Hamza watched, frustrated, as Will stopped and peered along the street.
“Was it on Great Jones?” Will asked.
“I don’t know,” Hamza said. “Look it up.”
“I’ve been to this place before. I know it’s around here. Let’s go this way, and if we don’t see it in a block or two I’llcheck it on my phone.”
“Or you could just look it up now.”
Will shot him a glance.
“What’s your problem tonight, Hamza?” he said.
“My problem is not tonight. My problem is long-standing and eternal. My problem is this: it makes no sense to give our wholegoddamn game away to some stupid website. I mean, Christ, Will, if we had to do this, at least we could have gotten it onTV. Or the New York Times or something.”
Will rounded on Hamza.
“TV? Every stupid talking head on every news show takes potshots at me. And all those televangelists preaching that I’m thedevil—that fucker Branson and all his cronies, with their Detectives for Christ bullshit.”
“Easy,” Hamza said.
“Branson’s almost mellow compared to some of the stuff coming from people overseas,” Will went on, his eyes tight. “They’retalking about declaring a . . . shit, what the hell is it? The Salman Rushdie thing.”
“A fatwa,” Hamza said. “I did notice that, actually. You’ve got both Sunni and Shiite leaders united on that point. That’simpressive. Get a rabbi on board and the Oracle might just get peace going in the Middle East.”
“Hilarious,” Will said, a sharp edge to his tone.
Hamza held up a hand, palm out.
“Peace. Listen, I’m just saying—you don’t have to do an interview,” he said. “You could post something about the Oracle’sintentions up on the Site.”
“The Site’s the problem!” Will answered. “The only real contact anyone has with the Oracle is a bunch of words on a computerscreen. When I was down in Florida, talking to the Ladies about the Oracle, they were terrified. And they work for us!
“We kept the Site up once we figured out that the predictions were connecting so we could speak to the world if we
