An Apple for the Creature

The Spellcaster project was vital to all of them, but for different reasons. For personal glory, for a degree, for the opportunities it would offer and the doors it would open. So, Trey could understand why the vein on the professor’s forehead throbbed so mightily.

“I’ve done extensive online searches,” Trey said, using his most businesslike voice, “and there’s nothing. Not a sentence of what we’ve recorded, not a whiff of our thesis, nothing.”

“That doesn’t mean they won’t publish it,” grumbled Jonesy, speaking up for the first time since the meeting began.

“I don’t think so,” said Trey. “The stuff on Anthem’s laptop is just the spell catalog. None of the translations are there and none of the bulk research and annotations are there. At worst they can publish a partial catalog.”

“That would still hurt us,” said Bird. “If we lost control of that, license money would spill all over the place.”

Trey shook his head. “The shine on that candy is its completeness. All of the spells, all of the methods of conjuration and evocation, every single binding spell. There’s no catalog like it anywhere, and what’s on the laptop now is at most fifty percent, and that’s nice, but it’s not the Holy Grail.”

“I think Trey’s right, Professor,” said Jonesy. “We should do a test run. I mean, what if one or more of those rewritten errors made it to the mainframe? If that happened and we run Spellcaster 2.0, how could we trust our findings?”

“No way we could,” said Kidd, intending it to be mean and scoring nicely. The big vein on the professor’s forehead throbbed visibly.

Trey ignored Kidd. “We have some leeway—”

Jonesy shook her head. “The 2.0 software is configured to factor in accidental or missed keystrokes, not sabotage.”

Shut up, you cow, thought Trey, but Jonesy plowed ahead.

“Deliberate alteration of the data will look like what it is. Rewording doesn’t look like bad typing. If it’s there, then all our hacker has to do is let us miss one of the changes he made and wait for us to publish. Then he steps forward and tells everyone that our data management is polluted . . .”

“. . . and he’d be able to point to specific flaws,” finished Bird. “We not only wouldn’t have reliable results, we wouldn’t have the perfect generic spell that would be the signpost we’re looking for. We’d have nothing. Oh, man . . . we’d be so cooked.”

One by one they turned to face Professor Davidoff. His accusing eye shifted away from Trey and landed on Anthem, who withered like an orchid in a cold wind. “So, this is a matter of you being stupid and clumsy, is that what I’m hearing?”

Anthem was totally unable to respond. She went a whiter shade of pale, and she looked like a six-year-old who was caught out of bed. Her pretty lips formed a lot of different words but Trey did not hear her make as much as a squeak. Tiny tears began to wobble in the corners of her eyes. The others kept themselves absolutely still. Kidd chuckled very quietly, and Trey wanted to kill him.

“It’s not Anthem’s fault,” said Trey, coming quickly to her defense. “Her data entry is—”

Davidoff made an ugly, dismissive noise and his eyes were locked on Anthem’s. “There are plenty of good typists in the world,” he said unkindly. “Being one of them does not confer upon you nearly as much importance as you would like to believe.”

Trey quietly cleared his throat. “Sir, since Anthem first alerted me to the problem I’ve been checking her work, and some of the anomalies occurred after I verified the accuracy of her entries. This isn’t Anthem’s fault. I changed her username and password after each event.”

Davidoff considered this, then gave a dismissive snort. It was as close to an apology as his massive personal planet ever orbited.

“Then . . . we’re safe?” ventured Bird hopefully.

Trey licked his lips, then nodded.

Davidoff’s vein was no longer throbbing quite as aggressively. “Then we proceed as planned. Real test, real time.” He raised his finger of doom. “Be warned, Mr. LaSalle, this is your neck on the line. You are the team leader. It’s your responsibility. I don’t want to hear excuses after something else happens. All I ever want to hear is that Spellcaster is secure. I don’t care who you have to kill to protect the integrity of that data, but you keep it safe. Do I make myself clear?”

Trey leaned forward and put his hands on the edge of Davidoff’s desk. “Believe me, Professor, when I find out who’s doing this I swear to God I will rip his goddamn heart out.”

He could feel everyone’s eyes on him.

The professor sat back and pursed his lips, studying Trey with narrowed, calculating eyes. “See that you do,” he said quietly. “Now all of you . . . get out.”

—4—

Trey spent the next few hours walking the windy streets of University City. He was deeply depressed and his stomach was a puddle of acid tension. As he walked, he heard car horns and a few shouts, laughter from the open doors of sports bars on the side streets. A few sirens wailed with ghostly insistence in the distance. He heard those things, but he didn’t register any of it.

Trey’s mind churned on it. Not on why this was happening, but who was doing it?

After leaving Davidoff, Trey had gone to see his friend Herschel and the crew of geeks at the computer lab. These were the kinds of uber-nerds who once would have never gotten laid and never moved out of their mothers’ basements—stereotypes all the way down to the Gears of War T-shirts and cheap sneakers. Now, guys like that were rock stars. They got laid. They all had jobs waiting for them after graduation. Most of them wouldn’t bother with school after they had a bachelor’s because the industry wanted them young and raw and they wanted them now. These were the guys who hacked ultra-secret corporate computer systems just because they were bored. Guys who made some quick cash on the side writing viruses that they sold to the companies who sold anti-virus software.

Trey explained the situation to them.

They thought it was funny.

They thought it was cool.

They told him half a dozen ways they could do it.

“Even Word docs on a laptop that’s turned off?” demanded Trey. “I thought that was impossible.”

Herschel laughed. “Impossible isn’t a word, brah, it’s a challenge.”

“What?”

“It’s the Titanic,” said Herschel.

“Beg pardon?”

“The Titanic. The unsinkable ship. You got to understand the mindset.” Herschel was an emaciated runt with nine-inch hips and glasses you could fry ants with. At nineteen he already held three patents and his girlfriend was a spokesmodel at gaming shows. “Computers—hardware and software—are incredibly sophisticated idiots, feel me? They can only do what they’re programmed to do. Even A.I. isn’t really independent thinking. It’s not intuitive.”

“Okay,” conceded Trey. “So?”

“So, what man can invent, man can fuck up. Look at home security systems. As soon as the latest unbreakable, unshakeable, untouchable system goes on the market someone has to take it down. Not wants to . . . has to.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s there, brah. Because it’s all about toppling the arrogant assholes in corporate America who make those kinds of claims. Can’t be opened, can’t be hacked, can’t be sunk. Titanic, man.”

“Man didn’t throw an iceberg at the ship, Hersch.”

“No, the universe did that because it’s a universal imperative to kick arrogant ass.”

“Booyah,” agreed the other hackers, bumping fists.

“So,” said Trey slowly, “you think someone’s hacking our research because he can?”

Herschel shrugged. “Why else?”