Solid State Rhyme: A Novelette (Mandate) (9 page)

Oh, but that was ridiculous. Daniel argued with himself for a minute over that last thought. He was bright, but that was
impossible.
The Bots were not viruses, either—but what else would he call them? He had to admit, regardless of what they were, they certainly acted like a horde of destructive viruses invading the computers of the world.

Daniel recalled the ease in which that single micro had located the old, dead micro on his padd, and had then carried it away. Perhaps he could take advantage of this good-natured trait—or
whatever
it was—of his Bots. If they truly cared for each other, perhaps he could lure them all back to his computer and out of the Internet. Maybe he could keep them from doing any more damage.

Chapter 11

“Hello, anybody home?” Wesley peered into the semi-darkness of Daniel’s room. The door creaked as he opened it wider to gain entry. Daniel was leaning back in his desk chair, snoring softly. The digital alarm clock sitting on the desk featured bright green digits that displayed “9:15 PM.” Wesley stared at the desktop screens that had numerous multicolored line graphs and bar graphs animating in real time, surrounded by columns of incomprehensible numbers and codes that scrolled by. In the corner of one screen was a large rectangle filled with tiny dots, with similar graphs and numbers crammed in the remaining screen real estate around the edges. Wesley frowned, “Dan, my friend, you just don’t know how to relax.”

Daniel smacked his lips, shifted slightly, and continued to snore.

Wesley walked around the bed and made himself comfortable in a beanbag at the other end of the room in front of the TV. He fiddled with some tangled cords and retrieved a keyboard and a joypad controller from a shelf below the TV. He pressed the “Eject” button on the video game machine and popped out Daniel’s game disc, replacing it with his own card, which contained his favorite console games and account settings. He turned on the TV and then pressed the power button on the game system, and was presented with a familiar opening animation and trademark jingle. A few minutes later, he was logged in with several thousand other players to InterWorld. He entered the game in a large circular room, with gateways lining the outer wall around him. Several hundred other players were in the hub with him, getting ready to play. Each gateway along the wall sent the player to one of several dozen worlds, each handled by a separate game server. Wesley jumped through the gateway to his favorite world—a retro arcade realm filled with classic games from the 1980s.

Daniel awoke to some familiar but obscure 8-bit music and saw Wesley slide down a dune and enter the Forbidden Pyramid. “Wesley,” he said, groggily, “how long you been here?”

Wesley grimaced as a huge white ghost trailed him, “Uh, I dunno, not long.” He glanced at the online timer at the bottom of the screen, which read “0:38.” Wesley added, “About forty minutes.”

Daniel regretted taking a nap so late in the day. He plopped onto the bed facing the TV and watched Wesley play. He would never get to sleep now. He looked at his watch: it was going on ten o’clock. He watched Wesley play for a few minutes.

“Wes,” Daniel asked, “I’m gonna need your help with something.”

The casual statement wasn’t quite enough to stir Wesley’s concentration from the intense action of the video game.

“I think I’m in trouble.”

Wesley looked up at that remark; after seeing Daniel’s expression, he paused the game and offered his attention.

“What kind of trouble?”

Daniel rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling. “You remember the a-life project we were working on in Mr. Robathan’s class a couple months ago?”

Wesley frowned, “Yeah, what about them?”

Daniel was silent for a few seconds, considering the best way to explain the situation to his best friend.

“After we were finished with them in class, I kept working on mine.”

Wesley didn’t quite put it together how that had anything to do with being in trouble. “Hey, I’m thirsty.”

Daniel peered at him, “You’ve been playing the pyramid level in the desert is all.”

“No, really, “ Wesley said, standing up, “let’s get some drinks before you continue.”

“Alright,” Daniel said.

They returned shortly to Daniel’s room bearing large glasses of iced tea. It wasn't the caffeine hit of Wesley's usual but it was wet.

Wesley said, “You were saying something about being in trouble?”

Daniel lay on his stomach on the bed, holding his drink in front of him like a priceless chalice he had recovered from a castle.

“Have you heard about the FBI?”

Wesley laughed, “No, never heard of it!”

“You know what I mean.”

“What about it?”

“The FBI network was trashed yesterday by a virus, and they think it might have spread to all of the police stations in the States.”

“Hmm,” Wesley pondered, “I guess I should keep up with the news.”

Daniel didn’t respond, and kept quiet for a few too many seconds for Wesley’s comfort, all the while bearing a troubled, intense expression.

“Wait a second,” Wesley said, “are you trying to tell me . . . .”

Daniel gulped down the rest of his tea and then rolled over on his back on the bed. He simply said, “Yeah.”

“Wait, you’re kidding, right?”

Daniel replied in a whisper, “I wish.”

Wesley sprang to his feet, “No way! You hacked the FBI? That’s impossible!” He was beaming in the hope that Daniel was telling the truth. “No way,” he kept repeating, “No way.”

Daniel stood up and crawled into his computer chair, then said, “Look at this.”

He toggled the padd's main desktop interface. The screen came to life in a glorious splendor of chaos.

“Whoa, what’s all that?” Wesley asked.

“That’s my life experiment . . . in a nutshell.”

Wesley peered closely at the screen, trying to make sense of the random lines, boxes, and curves that did not simply flicker randomly but moved in coherent patterns. “Cool. So they’re like . . . I don’t know . . . what are they doing in there?”

“Rewriting the operating system, rebuilding the allocation tables, revising the storage partitions, rebuilding the installed software.”

“Are you serious? How?”

Daniel sat back in his chair as Wesley crowded him away to get a closer look.

“All in the name of efficiency.”

Wesley looked at him, “I can’t get anything from the computer. It’s totally wasted!”

“Now it is, but when they’re finished it will be just like new. Better than new in fact.”

“Huh?” Wesley inquired. “I don’t get it. The computer is messed up, why don’t you just restore it?”

Daniel stood so he could pace around the room while thinking. “You don’t get it? The Bots are running on both of my machines. I was using the padd to examine what had happened on the home server when they discovered the gateway port. After that, there was no getting the genie back into the bottle.”

Suddenly the screen flickered and cleared up for a few seconds before disappearing into chaos once again.

“Hey, did you see that?” Wesley yelled.

“Shhhhh! It’s late, you idiot,” Daniel said. “The Bots are almost finished.”

“So they’re rewriting everything on your computer? What for?”

Daniel explained, “Beats me. All I know is that they screw with it for a while and then take the back seat, at which point I can use it again. Only . . . .”

Wesley was stunned, “Only what?”

“The padd runs better, somehow, after they’re done. I figure they’re rewriting everything that was written by humans and making it all more efficient . . . fewer jumps, tighter loops, quicker math, condensed data. Rebuilding the OS alone makes everything else run better, you know.”

Wesley asked, “How can they rewrite everything when they’re just programs themselves?”

“That was the first thing I asked myself. The answer is that they’re adaptive programs, running in memory. By rewriting the operating system calls, they’re actually rewriting parts of themselves . . . which call on those system resources.”

Wesley was impressed, “Awesome.”

“But that wasn’t the answer.”

“Huh?” Wesley asked.

“I captured a Bot and traced it. The Bots are self-contained and highly efficient. They don’t call on the OS any more. Either they borrowed the system routines they needed or simply figured out how to do things on their own—a more likely explanation given their nature.”

Daniel dug through some notes and found the printout of the Bot, and handed it to Wesley.

Wesley dug through the list of instructions. “So this is a Bot?”

“A distant ancestor, a couple hundred billion generations back.”

Wesley frowned, “What, billions? Mate, this is crazy stuff. What’s up with all this?”

Daniel raised his voice, “In a word . . . evolution. What you see on the screen there are distant successors of my life forms from class a couple months ago. I wrote a genetic algorithm. In fact, it wasn’t a real program at all. I created a . . . sort of . . . micro generator, which took pieces of code and spliced them together in random combinations. Later, those combinations were mated, exchanging genetic—”

“Whoa, look at that!”

The screen was back, complete with desktop and icons.

“Looks like they’re finished . . . for a while, at any rate.”

Wesley asked, “So you created a genetic program and let it go on your computer?”

Daniel nodded. “There are billions and billions of them . . . alive in there. . . right now.”

Wesley smiled, “So now you’re like their . . . their . . . . “

“Don’t say it! I’ve been there already and it wasn’t pleasant.”

“Dan,” Wesley exclaimed, “you’ve gotta tell someone about this! Have you shown it to Mr. Robathan?”

“He was too busy, didn’t have the time for me to explain.”

Wesley frowned, then came up with another idea, “Hey, we could send a few to someone we don’t like . . . how about Wil?”

“Actually,” Daniel said, “that brings up the issue of my little problem.”

“What’s that?”

“The FBI, remember? The Bots escaped because I was stupid and logged on to check my e-mail from the same machine I was using to test the Bots. They screwed over the FBI systems, and it’s probably traceable . . . right back here.” He pointed to his computer.

“Can we pick them up with anti-virus?”

“Are you kidding?” Daniel asked, incredulous. “These suckers are too smart for that! As soon as they see something moving through memory, they scatter.”

Wesley said, “Really? That’s so awesome. How did you get them to do that?”

“Dude, like I said, I didn’t write anything. They evolved that way.”

Wesley laughed, “So you don’t really have any control over them, do you?”

Daniel glared at him, “Not really. But I have a plan.”

Chapter 12

“Can I help?”

Daniel and Wesley looked towards the door where Daniel’s little sister, Jade, was sitting against the door frame chomping on cookies.

“Get out of here, Jade!”

“I want to help you catch the Bots! I want to help attack the FBI!”

Wesley looked at Daniel in horror, “Great! That’s just great!”

“Jade, we’re not attacking the FBI, we were just talking about the virus that infested the FBI, that’s all.”

“Yeah, the Bots you made,” she explained. “They attacked the FBI, and now all the bad guys are gonna escape from jail.”

Daniel whispered to Wesley, “Don’t worry about her, she’s just looking for some attention.”

Jade finished licking her fingers of chocolate, and added with a touch, “I called Missy and told her that her uncle’s get’n outta jail cuz your Bots wrecked the FBI.”

“You
what
?” Now Daniel was the one who looked horrified. Jade got up and ran down the hall, afraid that Daniel was going to swat her. “This isn’t America anyhow.”

Wesley’s mind got stuck, as if often did, and he repeated, “Oh man” repeatedly.

Daniel yelled at him with a little too much force than he had intended, “Knock it off, you bloody . . . .”

Wesley looked at him with a blank expression.

“I have a plan, remember?”

Wesley just shrugged.

Daniel’s mom knocked on the partially open door to his bedroom and said, “Dan, you have more visitors.”

Wesley asked, “Who?”

As if on cue, a trio stepped through the door into Daniel’s room. They were all dressed in dark clothing, either black, dark green, or dark blue in various combinations. It was their trademark . . . what one might call their gang colors. However, these blokes were not nocturnal explorers of urban alleyways and streets, but rather explorers of information systems. It was Wil, Billy, and Nate.

“Dan, Wes,” Wil said calmly. Billy and Nate simply nodded, as usual, leaving Wil in charge of what they called “communications routines.”

Wesley grabbed the beanbag and plopped on top of it in the corner beside the paused screen of InterWorld, curiosity aroused at the presence of these reputable troublemakers.

Coming to the point, Wil looked at Daniel and asked, “So, let’s see it.”

Daniel turned the screen so they could see.

Wil commented, “I don’t get it. It’s just a plain desktop. What’s the deal?”

Daniel smiled and said, “Try it out.”

Wil bent over the desk in front of Daniel and opened several random apps: text editor, spreadsheet, database, presentation, and a few games. About a dozen apps were running simultaneously.

Billy spoke up for the first time, “What’s so special about that?”

Daniel smiled, then stretched his hand out in front of them, revealing a solid-state storage card in his palm. “There’s no storage card in that computer. It’s running entirely on internal memory.”

Wil lifted the padd out of the dock and examined the empty storage card slot.

Nate couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Are you trying to tell us that all that stuff is running in volatile memory? If so, how did Wil open the apps in the first place if they aren't stored anywhere?”

“Right now, it's using a RAM drive.”

Daniel ran the memory manager so they could all see. Without storage, the padd was using the minimal default memory that came with the machine simply for card installation and configuration settings.

Daniel laughed, “What do you think?”

Wil protested, “It’s a scam, you’re pulling off some memory hack to make us believe it. You know, not even the OS can run in that amount of memory. It’s ridiculous.”

“The Bots have rewritten everything on this machine and made it more efficient. I mean, who knows, they’re probably using some fantastic compression that we’ve never thought of. They
see
what’s going on around them and then
fix
what they think is wrong. To the Bots, all human code is full of errors and needs to be fixed.”

“So, what does that prove?” Billy said, sounding annoyed.

Daniel spent the better half of an hour explaining all that had happened with his life experiment and the Bots, right up to the point of their escape.

“You know,” Wil said, “there are a few dozen companies that would kill for this kind of technology.”

“That’s why I need your help,” Daniel replied. “We need to bring them all back and keep them from spreading or we’ll lose them forever.”

Wil asked, “I don’t see that there’s anything you can do. They’re already out. It’s just a matter of time before they infest every computer in the world.”

Wesley spoke up, “You know, that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me.”

The other four looked sharply at him, “What?”

Wesley continued, “No, no, hear me out. Look what they’ve done with that padd. Everything runs smoothly, the system doesn’t need much memory. They’ve probably rewritten the file system too so that it holds . . . who knows how much. What if they were to do that through the whole world? Everything would be faster, smoother, more robust.”

“But what about control and security and . . . “ Daniel drifted off.

Billy noted that Nathan was staring at Wesley. “Hey, what’s with you?”

Nate pointed, “Look at the TV.”

They all looked, and were shocked with what they saw. Wesley's InterWorld client was starting to fill with waves of lines and dots, as if a windstorm were blowing through the online world.

Daniel ran to the TV and yelled, “They’re in the InterWorld servers!” He looked at Wil, desperately.

Wil smiled, “Like I said, they’re out, there’s no getting them back.”

“But I thought,” Wesley pleaded, “we could lure them into InterWorld—you know, the network server—and trap them or something. I don’t know, now! But . . . something!”

Billy laughed, “You really think that would’ve worked? What’d you want us for then, to hack into InterWorld for you?”

Daniel sighed, “Why not? It’s the largest game, we could’ve drawn them—”

“Look, mate,” Wil said, “I can see that you’re worried about this. But really, what can we do? To be honest, I think it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens next.”

“What happens next? Don’t you realize, soon they’ll be into the banks, the stock markets, the traffic lights, the rail systems, the power companies, not to mention air traffic control. What about accounting systems? How is anyone supposed to get paid if everything is all screwed
up
?”

Wesley nodded his head, “Yeah, yeah, you know, he’s right. Everything’s gonna be a mess.”

Billy and Nathan nodded their approval, saying “Chaos!” simultaneously.

*

“Alan,” Daniel’s mom said as they came through the front door after a night on the town, “what is going
on
out there? It’s a nightmare!”

Daniel ran from his room to meet his parents, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Alan just shook his head as he hung their coats on hangers and put them into the closet. He headed for the living room mumbling, “Stupid computers.”

Rachel was nearly in tears, “Oh, Daniel, it’s a nightmare out there! Everything is a mess.” She followed Alan into the living room and plopped onto the couch—a very uncharacteristic action for Mom.

The four boys followed Daniel out the front door to see what the commotion was about. Down the street a few blocks was a major intersection, and they saw that the street lights were going nuts. The boys cheered, “Woohoo!”

They stopped cheering when the lights in the house suddenly went out. Daniel heard his mom scream, “Alan! Go get Jade!”

He calmed her down by reminding her that Jade was staying with a friend.

“I’m going to call to see if she’s alright.”

Alan flipped on a flashlight he kept under the coffee table and dug through a drawer for a lighter. He lit the three large candles on the coffee table and several smaller candles that were sitting on the fireplace mantle.

Daniel led his friends back into the dark hallway toward his room. The lights were off but his computers were still running from the UPS his computer was plugged into.

“It'll only last about an hour,” Daniel said.

“Why don’t you check out a few sites?” Wesley asked.

“Good idea, see how bad it is,” Wil added.

Daniel tried to check his e-mail with no response from the server. He tried several dozen sites, but none would respond. As an insight, he decided to try the FBI. He typed the address into the search field. Suddenly the screen filled with information: public relations, historic cases, the most-wanted list, career opportunities.

“We’re in!” yelled Billy.

The site was extremely fast, and it surprised them all how quickly things came up on the screen, almost before he finished tapping a link.

Daniel had an idea, “Wait a minute,” as he clicked on the refresh button. The screen went blank. “I knew it! It’s just rendering the cached version. It’s not really logging on. Look . . .”

He click the refresh button a few times, even tried typing in the address again, but it responded as all the other dead sites on the net.

“Oh, man,” Wesley said, “we’re all conspirators in the aid of a criminal!”

“Knock it off,” Wil said, forcefully.

Daniel’s dad, Alan, stepped into the room. “You guys okay?”

“Yeah,” Daniel replied, “no problem, dad.”

“Look,” he said, “it’s getting pretty late, and I can’t get anything on TV or make any calls, so why don’t we call it a night?”

Daniel realized after the adrenaline had subsided that they all looked drained. “You guys wanna crash here?” They nodded and called home to check in. At least the phones worked.

Alan retrieved some sleeping bags from the attic with his flashlight and tossed one to each boy. They each found a spot on Daniel’s bedroom floor, while he kept the bed. Daniel plugged the alarm clock in so he would be able to tell when the power came back on. They were all soon soundly sleeping despite a fear that the world would soon come to an end.

*

Wesley was the first one to wake up next morning. He was surprised to find the padd still running, and it still appeared to be working normally.

He played with it for a few minutes, then eagerly yelled to his friends, “Wake up! Wake up!” They slowly and grudgingly came into consciousness.

Daniel rolled over and said, “Shut up, Wesley, we’re sleeping.” But something was shining in his face, and it brought him all the way out of sleep. His eyes opened slowly, as if welded shut.

The alarm clock, sitting on the bed stand, glowed with the symbols “9:13 AM,” and suddenly began buzzing loudly.

“Argh!” Daniel groaned, hitting the alarm button.

“Hey guys,” Wesley called again from Daniel's desk, “It’s so fast, I can’t believe it!”

Daniel sat up on the edge of the bed. Wesley had turned on the desk lamp.

“Looks like the power’s back on,” Wil said, still lying on the floor.

Daniel trudged over to Wesley to smack him. “Dan, check it out, everything’s back online. But you’re not going to believe this!” Wesley was browsing the FBI site, scrolling down through a file listing.

“Hey, wait a second,” Daniel said. “What’s all that?”

Wesley’s face erupted into a smile. “Like I said, you’re not going to believe this! It’s a classified directory of files!”

“Whoa,” Wil exclaimed. “What was that?”

Daniel kicked Wesley out of his chair. He opened one of the files listed and brought up a memorandum between an assistant director and a department within the FBI.

“It’s a top-secret briefing on a sting about to take place,” Wesley beamed.

Wil was now standing behind them, looking at the screen. “Whatever it is, we’re not supposed to be looking at it.”

They browsed several other sites, looking for information. They logged into the BBC, MI5, NASA, the Royal Navy, and the Pentagon, before trying out various commercial web sites.

Billy gasped, “Everything’s wide open!”

The other three jumped at Billy’s comment, unaware that he was behind them.

“Uh, oh,” Nate exclaimed. He was still lying in his sleeping bag on the floor next to the TV. He was looking at InterWorld again, and he looked worried.

“What is it?” Wil asked.

Nate sat up against the foot of Daniel’s bed. “I think the Bots have found a new home.”

All five of the teenagers crowded around the TV to see what was going on. There, amidst the players, were thousands— perhaps millions—of strange little creatures running about, playing with each other and with the players, who were running away wildly. It looked like a prank.

Wesley’s laughter surpassed the others, and he said, “Dan, you’re a genius. The world will be a better place from now on.”

Daniel stood up amidst the laughter of his friends and headed for the door. As he left his room and started to walk down the hallway toward the kitchen, a thought sprang into his mind, something he couldn’t quite grasp.