Antivirus (The Horde Series Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter 3

FutureTek Headquarters, Helena, Montana:
“Kat,” David Rivers said as he stuck his head inside her office, beaming broadly. “They’re here.”

Kathryn “Kat” Hale allowed herself to smile with him. After all, they had been working toward this day for nearly four years now, and with a successful demonstration of the new technology, not only would they all be rich beyond their wildest imaginations, but FutureTek would suddenly be on the map, a new giant among giants.

“Where’s Jon?” she asked as she stood up and pulled out a small compact. She surveyed herself critically in the small mirror, looking for anything that might detract from the long-awaited meeting with the technology world’s super power. She needn’t have worried, though. Kat Hale could have taken a four-wheel ATV through a mud bog and still come out looking just fine. She was tall and willowy, her slender figure filling out her one and only navy blue business suit quite nicely. She wore little makeup, but then she really didn’t need to. Her features were smooth and flawless, almost waifish, and her long auburn hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, giving her appearance a somewhat maverick-looking flair. She quickly smoothed her skirt and looked back at David, her ice-blue eyes flashing.

“Getting ready himself,” David said, stepping fully into the office. “And you look just fine, Kat.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “I’d better. There’s a lot riding on this.”

“Well, to be honest with you, you could look like the Wicked Witch of the West and the product will still sell itself.”

Kat shot him a withering look. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Hey, I was just kidding,” Rivers said, throwing up his hands in mock surrender.

“Well, don’t,” she replied sternly and moved around the desk toward the door. “At least wait until after the presentation. Then I can get out of this morgue attire and we can all suitably cut loose and celebrate.”

“Nervous?”

“Are you kidding?” she answered, feigning shock. “I’m absolutely petrified.”

“Well, stop worrying, will you? This is our tech. We know it works and Jon is the bomb. He’ll put on a great show.”

“Yeah, but this is live. We’re out of the box today, Dave.”

“We’ve done this lots of times, Kat.” 

“But never with a billion dollars in the swing,” she answered, “and never with an open gate.”

“Would you relax?” he cut in, exasperated. “We’re fine, Kat. Everything will work out perfectly. I promise.”

She gave him an appreciative look and then walked past him and into the hall. David Rivers, head lab technician for FutureTek, fell in behind her.

“Are the honeypots ready?” she asked as they walked.

“Online and infested,” he answered happily. “I put out the first one last night and the other two went online this morning. All three are showing various worm hits. Jon will have his pick of the litter.”

“We need to make sure the virus infestations are verified by Systemtech’s people,” she cautioned.

“Already taking care of it, Kat.”

“Where’s Drew?”

“Schmoozing as we speak,” Rivers replied. “You don’t think he would be doing anything else at this point, do you?”

“Sounds like we’re about as ready as we’re going to get, David,” she answered and then pushed through a set of double doors into the largest room in the building that was home to  FutureTek, the tiny technology firm that was about to become front page news all over the world.

The room was little more than a large working lab with numerous computer work-stations around the perimeter and enough wiring and cabling to stretch several miles. In the center of the room was a large barbershop chair, its armrests bristling with unattached electrodes, wires, and finger pads. The wires led to a bulky looking machine sitting next to it that resembled several desktop PCs cobbled together into the most bizarre-looking apparatus. From that machine, additional wires snaked across a table into three separate, normal-looking computers.

At the computer terminals, a sandy-haired young man named Alex Jordan was walking three black-suited men through a virus check using their own software. Jordan was one of FutureTek’s young wiz kids and was an absolute genius when it came to viruses and trojans and what made them tick. Kat could hear him reciting off the names of several viruses that had apparently infected the three PCs, known as honeypots for the particular configuration they used to attract the various worms and viruses that were always crawling about the internet. A fifth man, also wearing a business suit, stood nearby, nervously folding and refolding his hands as he watched.

As Kat walked in, the anxious man, Andrew Jackson—Drew, as he was known to his employees—looked toward her. He was the president of the little tech firm and brightened immediately when he saw her. “Kat!” he exclaimed, obviously relieved to have something to occupy his time while Jordan worked. He motioned to the three business men who had all straightened and turned around. “Come and meet our distinguished guests.”

Kat put on her best smile and extended her hand as she walked up to them. “Kat Hale, lead program designer,” she introduced herself smartly, firmly clasping the first hand extended to her.

“Michael Monroe,” the man intoned with a smile. “Chief operations officer of Systemtech. And may I introduce you to Allen Turner, lead programmer, and Dan Hyde, our top security specialist.”

“It’s a pleasure,” the young woman answered, flashing a brilliant smile and turning to indicate the man that had accompanied her. “This is David Rivers, FutureTek’s lead lab technician and resident technology wizard.”

Handshakes and polite greetings were exchanged all around and then Michael Monroe spoke up, taking the conversational lead and getting right down to the business at hand. “This is some pretty amazing technology you’re dealing with, Miss Hale,” he said, giving Kat a knowing smile.

“We believe it is, Mister Monroe,” she agreed. “In this high-tech world, we believe the only way to succeed is by breaking down the barriers and forging ahead into new frontiers.”

“Well, you’ve certainly done that,” the man replied. “If the presentation videos we have seen are to be believed, then you are breaking ground never before seen.”

“That’s been our goal.”

“Break it down for me once again, Miss Hale,” he went on, just the slightest trace of condescension in his voice, as if he did not quite believe what he had heard about FutureTek’s new toy. “I understand that, to date, your testing has been done on closed systems. Is that correct?”

“Precisely,” Kat answered, ignoring the hint of skepticism. Moving to the large machine that was the central hub of FutureTek’s new technology, she continued. “All of our testing has been done on closed systems simply for the sheer unpredictability of the internet.”

“But the technology is not viable as a closed machine entity,” Dan Hyde broke in, his voice almost bitter with undisguised contempt. He was certainly not afraid to show it, either. “It becomes nothing more than a novelty.”

“Agreed,” said Kat, maintaining her composure in the face of the early challenge and doing her best to ignore the man’s contempt. “But for the past two weeks, we have been conducting extended testing on linked machines, and the success has been excellent. We believe that the transition to the open world of cyberspace will be seamless.”

“You’re taking quite a gamble then,” Monroe added. “Is it the rational approach or a touch of desperation?”

“Maybe a little bit of both, if you don’t mind me saying,” she answered without elaborating. “But all things considered, if you’re present for the first live run through, the result is a little more genuine.”

“Point taken,” Monroe replied with a nod.

“How are you doing it?” This time it was Allen Turner who asked and he made no attempt to hide his amazement, which was in stark contrast to the attitude displayed by the company’s security specialist.

“With this,” Kat answered proudly, laying a hand on the large machine. “This is the hub, as we call it. It’s not pretty, but it does the job. This is what drives the process.”

“You must use an enormous amount of memory to pre-program counters and fixes,” Turner went on. “How do you know you can even cover it all? The maintenance uploads would have to be almost continuous.”

Kat smiled broadly, silently grateful for the perfect question. “That’s the beauty of the system,” she explained. “We don’t require any memory at all.”

“Impossible,” Hyde scoffed, and there was no mistaking that the man thought very little of what FutureTek was hoping to accomplish.

“No, it’s not impossible,” she countered quickly, remaining calm. “The hub is simply the vehicle. The brains behind the machine come from whoever sits in the chair,” she finished, indicating the empty barber chair next to the table. “The driver is what makes this all work.”

“So, you’re telling me that the person operating this system is doing so on his own memory and not simply manipulating pre-programmed memory packets?” Monroe asked, holding up a hand and cutting off his security specialist before he could disagree again.

“Exactly,” Kat said, her smile never wavering. “This technology is only limited by the mind behind it, and the particular mind we are talking about today is Jon Sherrard. He’s been with FutureTek since its inception and he’s a crack computer expert, among other things.”

“So memory is not an issue?”

“No, sir,” she shook her head.

“And you rely on the intelligence of the operator then?”

“We do. But to be honest, we originally approached this project from the direction you initially indicated,” she explained. “The idea was to have a driver manipulate pre-determined codes and instructions to eliminate a virus. In effect, we were simply making a human copy of an antivirus program and we quickly realized that took the intuition out of the equation and ultimately did nothing to advance or improve our ability to deal with malicious coding or damaged software.”

“But today’s worms adapt and change to given situations,” Turner put in, understanding better than the other two where the young woman was going with her explanation.

“Exactly,” Kat agreed. “Doing it the old way quickly brought into play the limitations of the technology. A cyberspace toolbox for our driver could be outdated and obsolete before he even made contact with a worm or a virus. So, we altered our direction, instead deciding to rely on the intelligence and ingenuity of the human mind. A computer virus may be smart, but its actions are still based on its programming. So its intelligence is limited to the finite area of its programming. A human mind, however, has no such limitations.”

“So the person using the technology would have to be up-to-date on the latest virus info.”

“Somewhat,” she answered, “but nothing like us having to update virus programs as we do today. You see, because the driver has the ability to think, he might find half a dozen different ways to defeat or deconstruct a virus or a worm when he’s looking directly at it. While today’s viruses are smart, they are still only so much coding, and it’s the coding that the driver repairs or manipulates.”

“How?” the security specialist snapped.

“Any number of different ways,” Kat said, standing him down. “The driver might be in the virus’s domain, but that also affords him the ability to easily see the coding, almost like it was a tangible object right before his eyes. He can then reform the malicious coding, simply delete it, or even rewrite or reformat the virus to act out a non-malicious result. The possibilities are endless.”

“That is absolutely fascinating,” Michael Monroe said, allowing a broad smile to grace his handsome face. “And all this time, we were under the impression that your driver was simply maneuvering the required programs within the system. You have taken this technology to a potential that we had only briefly considered.”

“You are impressed then?” Drew Jackson asked, beaming himself as he leaned into the conversation.

“Indeed, we are,” Monroe answered. “But obviously, we’re here to see it first-hand. Whether we remain impressed is going to rely heavily on what we see here today.”

“Then let’s not waste any time,” Jackson said enthusiastically. “Kat, how’s Jon?”

“He’s in prep,” David Rivers answered for her. “He ought to be ready to go shortly.”

“What kind of prep-work are you talking about?” Hyde asked, his perpetual scowl of suspicion still locked on his face.

“Standard medical safeguards,” Kat explained. “As successful as we have been to date, we’re still dealing with a brand new and relatively untested field. We don’t know if there’s any long-term side effects yet, and probably won’t until after years of testing. But we’ve found that the best success is attained when the human brain is relaxed and focused. So, we put our driver under a minimum of an hour’s observation before he goes and, if he’s not sufficiently calm, we scrub the run.”

“What about drugs?” Hyde pressed.

“We’ve never used them, nor do we intend to and it’s certainly not something I would recommend,” Kat replied. “There are just too many unknowns. We want the driver in complete control of his mind.”

“Understandable,” Monroe agreed. “Have you had any side effects whatsoever?”

“Nothing really,” she answered. “Our records are open for you to check, complete with video. But outside of minor anomalies or a glitch here and there with such a new technology, it’s been pretty smooth sailing.”