Sentience 1: Storm Clouds Gathering (15 page)

“I’m sorry, Al,” Rear Admiral Enrico Melendez said with a smile. “I thought you might have figured that part out by now.”

The admiral turned to Commander Masterson, who was setting Al Ligurri’s refill down in front of him. “Bat, I know that you’ve never heard
any
of this because all of this happened before you joined us in’57, but can you enlighten Capt. Ligurri as to how I might have come to know so much about a file that I shouldn’t?”

“Simple,” Masterson replied. “Either you’re the greatest computer code-breaker in history, which I know from personal experience that you’re not, or you wrote the original file. I’d even bet money you know the access code for it too.”

Melendez leaned back in his chair flashing Ligurri an ear-to-ear grin. “Now do you see
‘why’
I put up with all of this guy’s shit?”

Masterson noticed Melendez’ second cup was now half empty, so with another longing glance at his own cup, he headed back to start another pot.

“Do you really think this von Hemmel guy might have done something to Bozo during those last eleven weeks that was detrimental to Fleet security?” asked Capt. J.T. Turner.

“It’s entirely possible,” Melendez answered. “Klaus might have become completely unhinged there at the end, for all we know. Regardless of his clearance and past record, I know from extensive personal experience Klaus von Hemmel harbored a tremendous grudge against the human race in general, and against the Alliance Fleet in particular. If he had decided to lash out, who would have been his most obvious target?”

“Locked in that lab with nothing more lethal at his disposal than the United Stellar Alliance Fleet Defense Command Master Computer to work with,” Masterson quipped from in front of the coffee pot. “I’d say it could be damned near anybody... or even everybody.”

Shit!

“Another thing,” said Capt. Al Ligurri. “Admiral, you said something earlier about the possibility von Hemmel might have somehow linked Bozo to the PIMS. If that were the case, wouldn’t that mean whatever he might have done to Bozo might also be affecting the computers at State?”

“Yes, that’s another possibility we need to confront. But it gets even worse. As State put up the R&D funds for the PIMS, they technically own the rights to it. When they finally got the thing, it did so much more than what they’d asked for, they were ecstatic and sang its praises to virtually every other department in the entire federal government and got them all envious and salivating. In other words, they all wanted one, too.

“This gave some bright boy over at State the idea that by leasing the rights to it to other departments within the government, the money wouldn’t show up in their regular budget and they’d have funds they could use in ways the bean-counters might find objectionable. They ran with it and now virtually every branch and department of the entire federal government is using their own version of PIMS… and before you ask, Al, no, I am
not
going to tell you how I came up with this little piece of information. It’s out of your jurisdiction anyway.”

Ligurri had been leaning forward in his chair just waiting for the opportunity to ask that very question, but with the admiral’s cutting him off, he just leaned back, shooting Melendez a grin.

“Wait a minute,” said Bat. “If everyone is using it now and Bozo had corrupted PIMS early on, couldn’t all of the clones that came after be affected too?”

“This too, is a possibility,” responded Melendez.

“Aw, come on, guys,” J.T. Turner said disgustedly. “Now you’ve got every information net in the whole damned government corrupted. There is no evidence at all… none… that any of this is actually true, so odds are all we’re doing is sitting around concocting some fantastic horror story.”

“Not entirely, J.T.,” Melendez answered him. ‘The evidence is admittedly circumstantial, but as you, yourself taught me, one of the first steps in any investigation is to look for MOM — Motive, Opportunity and Method. Klaus von Hemmel possessed a great deal of all three.”

“I hate to mention this,” Al Ligurri spoke up, “but I seem to remember reading something a while back about the State department approving the sale of governmental computers to several allied governments. Does this mean what I think it might?”

“If you suspected Klaus might have gone off his nut,” asked J.T. “why didn’t anyone drag him out of the lab he’d locked himself into?”

“You have to remember that I wasn’t an admiral back then,” said Melendez. “I’d just made light-commander just before the meeting that started the whole Bozo thing. I will have to admit that babysitting Klaus was very good for my career. Although I was still technically a part of Admin, after seeing the semblance of rapport I’d established with Klaus, the brass assigned me to monitoring him full time. All the brass wanted from me was to ‘keep him happy and working.’ That and the daily reports I had to submit. It seemed like their little brush with losing Klaus unnerved them a little. Anyway, they must have liked what I was doing because I was a full captain by the time Klaus died.

“But back to J.T.’s question,” Melendez continued. “During the whole PIMS/Bozo development project, it seemed like the only thing that mattered to the brass was keeping Klaus working 16 to 18 hours a day. Klaus told me about his ‘indigestion’ problem and he’d been to the dispensary many times for it. The Fleet doctors gave him this and that and sometimes it would help for a while, but it always seemed to come back. Eventually it got so bad that it began affecting his work and knowing the brass wouldn’t like anything that kept Klaus from working, I recommended to Klaus that he go see the gastro-internist that my wife used, to see if maybe he could find something the Fleet doctors had missed... and boy, did he. By the time my wife’s doctor first saw him, Klaus was already dying.

“I’ve often wondered if the Fleet doctors Klaus had seen for years simply misdiagnosed his condition, or if they might have discovered it much earlier, but were ordered by the brass to keep Klaus in the dark about it.”

“But why would they do something like that?” asked Ligurri. “That’s monstrous!”

“It kept him working. To the brass, Klaus was a tool... a very valuable tool perhaps, but a tool nonetheless. The guy in the chair always wants as much use of his tools as possible. If a tool breaks and isn’t available for the next guy to occupy that chair to use, ‘oh, well.’ That’s the next guy's problem.
Fleet Politics 101: How to get yourself promoted and fuck everybody else
.”

“My God, “said Ligurri. “If Klaus suspected they had done anything like that to him, that would have certainly give him serious motive to extract some measure of revenge against the Fleet.”

“That very thought has haunted me for years, Al,” Melendez responded. “Anyway, when Klaus blockaded himself in his lab, Security and a lot of other people began raising hell about it, until a direct order came down from Vice Admiral Clements that prevented them from blasting him out of there. After all, in his mind, there was no need. Klaus was working and that was all Admiral Clements and the
powers-that-be
above him cared about. They didn’t seem to care what he potentially might be doing in there. They just seemed to want to squeeze every last ounce of brilliance out of that magnificent brain of his they could get out of him before he keeled over.”

“Idiots,” mumbled Bat. “I guess now it’s up to us to clean up the mess.”

“I only hope that we can,” said Melendez softly.

“Well, I still think the whole idea is whacked,” said Capt. J.T. Turner. “Besides, even if it was all true, what the hell could we, or anyone else do about it now? Bozo came online when... ’51?”

“Yes, PIMS came up in late ’49, Melendez said. “Nobody could believe that Klaus got it built and running that quickly, but I think he’d had the whole design laid out in his head for years.”

“In his head?” asked Bat?

“Oh, I guess I forgot to mention Klaus had a holographic memory, too.”

“Yeah, okay, but like I said earlier, even if he did futz with it while he was dying in his lab, what can we possibly do about it after all this time?” asked J.T. “Bozo has been online for almost nine years now. Can anyone even begin to imagine how many systems he could have possibly corrupted in all that time? Most of which we can’t access, by the way. Where would we even start?”

“Elementary, my dear Turner,” said Bat. “That’s why I asked for all of those access codes in the first place.”

“Aw shit, don’t tell me…”

“Right.” said Masterson, breaking into a grin.

And almost simultaneously, all four of them said, “Bozo.”

“Any questions?” asked Admiral Melendez. “Everyone clear on what you’re supposed to do?” No one spoke, so after about 10 seconds of dead silence, Melendez continued. “Okay then, just let me know of anything you need that you can’t get on your own. I’ll need daily reports, because God only knows what Klaus might have done over those last eleven weeks and where it might have progressed from there.

“Fortunately for me, Admiral Clements decided that I should be the one to submit the final report on the circumstances surrounding Klaus’ death. The security director pitched such a bitch about it that Clements canned him, promoted me to captain and named me Acting-Director of Headquarters Computer Security just long enough to complete writing the file that Al was so concerned about earlier. While I had the big brass looking over my shoulder, demanding a lot of shit be deleted or sanitized where they didn’t look bad, I remember the real story. This means we know more than anyone actually getting their information from that file.

“Since J.T. really believes there’s nothing to this, I think it’s only fair I share my reasoning for pursuing it. Ever since Klaus von Hemmel died, I have suspected he
might
have done something ominous to Bozo during those last eleven weeks... something he wiped the lab visuals to hide. I honestly tried my best to convince Admiral Clements to initiate a thorough investigation into Bozo’s integrity, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Clements was just about to get his fourth star and take over 3rd Fleet, so it’s obvious why he didn’t want a potential scandal breaking that could potentially jeopardize his impending promotion.”

“More politics,” exclaimed Bat disgustedly. “Doesn’t anyone do what’s
right
, instead of what’s merely expedient for their career?”

“Politics is the grease that keeps the wheels of government turning smoothly, and Fleet is no exception. Unfortunately the grease that was used in this case is potentially corrosive enough to make the wheels fall off completely,” Melendez philosophized. “I guess that’s why I’ve always insisted on using foreign made stand-alone computers within this department. I’ve taken a lot of flak about it over the years and occasionally had to go to the wall to keep it that way. Eventually they quit hounding me about it, chalking it up to me just being eccentric. But just between us, ever since Klaus died, I’ve had this inexplicable fear of Bozo knowing too much about what we’re doing.

“I guess I’ve always known, at least subconsciously, that this day would finally come. The role that I played in helping to get the PIMS/Bozo programs off the ground has plagued me about what I may have helped to unleash if Klaus really did plant some nasty surprises inside that computer. To be truthful, I’d almost forgotten about it. Every day that went by without something terrible happening acted as a soothing balm to my conscience. But when Al came in with his anomaly this morning, all those buried fears came back with a vengeance. As our discussions revealed, the staggering magnitude of everything that could potentially be involved, I knew in my gut that I couldn’t sweep this nightmare back under the rug and just pray that it went away again. It’s time we found out for sure whether or not we’re really sitting on a time bomb. I need to know!

“I suspect this investigation will prove to be the most arduous we’ve ever undertaken,” said Rear Admiral Enrico Melendez. “We’ve got to hide everything we’re doing from Bozo for as long as we can. Naturally that won’t be possible if we can get Bat access to play around with its innards, but we need to keep Bozo in the dark as to our intentions as long as we can.

“Al, I hate to do this to you, especially so soon after getting your captaincy and taking over HQ Computer Security, but as of now, you’re working for me. You’re in too deep not to be a part of it now. I’ll have Marilyn get you set up with an office here, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask you to take orders from Bat and possibly from LtJG Fredricks as well. This business can be damned tricky, and amateurs don’t usually survive long, but we’ll all try our best to keep you out of trouble and contributing positively to this effort. You may feel like the highest-ranking
gofer
in the Fleet for a while, but try to look on the bright side. At least you won’t have Commodore Coxler jumping in your shit for a while.”

“I understand, Admiral,” Capt. Al Ligurri responded. “And as this is definitely a computer security issue, I’ll try to think of it as field-work. It’s an honor to be working with you all.”

“Thank you, Al,” Melendez responded, “but you’re going to have to watch out about saying
you all
around here, or you’ll soon be sounding like Bat.”

“Y’all taint funny, McGee!” yelled Masterson.

“Who’s McGee? Is that some kind of code-name or something?”

When the three Ghostbusters finally quit laughing, J.T. croaked out, “Never mind, Al. Bat’s from the backwoods of Indinara and that’s what we call one of his
‘Indinaranisms.’
You’ll get used to them... eventually.”

“J.T., I’m really glad that you don’t believe in any of this. Please, for God’s sake, prove me wrong.”

“It’s virtually impossible to positively prove a negative, Admiral,” Turner replied.

“I know, but if anyone can do it, you can.

“Bat, if there really is something rotten going on inside Bozo, find me something,
anything
that I can use to convince the big boys that we have a problem. They’re not going to just hand over all those access codes that you need, just because I ask them sweetly. I’ve got to have something concrete to show them, or we’re dead before we even get started.”