The Path Read online

  Ah, debugging the program of inter-human interaction, what could be more fun? At least I’ve got Tom thinking like a codifier, everything is significant. He’s coming along. Mary’s got a thing for him but her mantra of humming his full name (Tom Makerman) over and over annoys him.

  Suze was there, as I expected, overlooking the Park at “our” table, the one we bag every day. It’s the only one that can see the baseball stadium where Strawberry Fields used to be. I heard the other day, someone thinking out loud, that it was named after a farm that used to be there in the 19th century. Idiot. I put him straight, showed him the brass plaque devoted to John Lennon now stuck on the side of the entrance to Lennon Stadium, put there by his 3rd son/self (I’m not sure which, it gets confusing, was it a reincarnation of John Lennon or one of his descendants altered to look like him with the ID switch?). I do remember the vid of the ceremony, when they sold the land lease rights to the Mets people, and glued up the old plaque.

  Out the window the game practice was underway and she turned up the gain on the pane to bring the view in closer. Live viewing was always better than replay on the wall screen. Smaller, but somehow more real. This office didn’t have the new SensorPath hookup so you can feel and smell the ballpark atmosphere, but live was almost like being there.

  “Hey Suze. Tom around? Mary’s not coming probably.”

  “Yeah, saw Mary. Fingers popping.” She called Mary’s sliding fingers “poppers” because Mary did have this old habit of tapping on the screen. “Tom’s not in. Not coming. Trouble there.” Suze had this clipped speak, drove me nuts. She was very tweek or whatever the current expression for cool is.

  Had he been caught by WeatherGood One’s little anomaly? Did he get hurt? “What’s the trouble, do you know?” Her answer was miles away from my guess.

  “Want verification his work. Lost file. ID at risk.” This was serious news. Your work file is who you are, how you exist. No work file, you’re an outcast. Sure, you don’t starve, nobody does, but what are you alive for? That’s the question.

  “Local lost file or main system?”

  “Don’t know. Tom called in from Control, upset, says system bad, gone bad.”

  “When was this?”

  “9:30 this am.” About the time of the WeatherGood One breakdown. Was WeatherGood One a whole system failure? Bang goes my simple USGS IGY 1959 guess.

  “Suze, you see any other glitch in the mock System files? What’s been handed to you for decoding?” I explained what I had seen on the NuEl. Suze’s eyes grayed over.

  We were allowed to talk about programming, openly, there wasn’t anything we were actually doing here, just messing with the parallel system and programming to teach the main System how humans work, to help teach them how to think, and plan, better for humanity, for America. It was the New Way, openness for good.

  Sony had started the process with Akibo their robot dog. All the time humans were programming it, it became more like an anthropomorphic dog. When Akibo 5 was all ironed out, it was boring. A minihuman. So they tried improbability, fractals and fuzzy logic to make it unpredictable. But then all it became was an unpredictable dog-looking (and barking) human. Useless as man’s best friend. Then a pimply youth (they still had them back then), just before the Purge, decided to let his dog program the damn thing, to implant all the dog’s mistakes on Akibo 6, the kit form, the build-it-at-home-as-a-hobby model. Suddenly the damn thing bit him. Ah, the perfect puppy. Junior pimply youth became a millionaire. The Purge saw him at the Pentagon of old, he died trying to make an anti-riot device outthink humans. He was using his own algorithms, especially hate and cunning ones, to jack up the system. It killed him right off, for a start. After the dog bit him you would have thought he would have learned.

  Anyway, his concept to program a system with a human input when it needs to deal with human needs was recognized as the way for the future. It lead to my job here and, frankly, half the main systems in place. Delving into the FarmHands programming, I often see what seems to be weird stuff and when I play the sets through a simulator, the human-ness of the activity is quirky. You can almost see the delivery trucks behaving like humans, quirks and all, but somehow always getting their prime directive accomplished. It’s like the delivery bots on each floor. The old ones were supposed to follow a line and if there was an obstacle, wait until the way was clear. The first ones with logic programs didn’t stop, didn’t hold up the mail, and sometimes they ran right over a human who got in the way. When imprinted with human algorithms, they complete their task in a more human way, avoiding contact, speeding up even if there is no need yet, to make sure they get the package delivered on time. Conscientious delivery bots. Conscious? Nope, just mimicking human behavior, good, goal-oriented, behavior that is.

  Suze, meanwhile was frowning. Looking at Manuel Render as he hit one fastball after another over the mid-field line to shallow outfield, she wasn’t watching me. She might not have been listening either. I wanted to get an answer. “Suze, please, anything special on your desk or work plan?”

  “Maybe. Can’t get what I want. To look at. Forcing me to do stuff that’s useless. WeatherGood stuff. Ops are whacky. WeatherGood’s untouched, file says so. 3 level check, perfect, untouched. What am I supposed to look for there? Want to check job stats. See if Tom needs help. Can’t get it up. Not restricted, just not made available. You?”

  “Haven’t tried to help Tom. Will do when I get back. Are we having lunch? Alone?” Said with a slight note of hope, hoping she’d get it.

  “Lunch. Soon.” She paused, “Nothing you are doing to screw things up again, is it?” I knew she was referring to my electronic tag with Tom’s name those weeks before.

  “No, Suze, that was really a mistake, sort of an honorific. I didn’t know they were going to blame him for meddling with re-coding when he’s a decoder. The job file recorded that I put it there. I made sure Tom had a copy of the file to prove it wasn’t him. I was sorry it gave him trouble.”

  “Crummy honorific. Don’t use my name.” Then coldly, “Ever.”

  Message received, all round. A pause as Manuel Render hit one back to the mound and it struck the pitcher in the groin. She smiled, a vicious little grin, “Ooh, that has to hurt. Serves him right throwing spit balls in practice, see way they broke?” The pitcher was doubled up, Render standing over him, bat in hand looking like he might put him out of his misery. The catcher took his bat away and helped the pitcher. Suze continued: “You owe Tom, find out, his backup files are missing or wiped, fttps 14 dot 214 dot 136 dot 556. Is he an outsider now?” Emotion showing.

  Didn’t know she felt this way about him. Did they already have a thing going? Wow, missed that a mile off. “Okay, Suze, I’ll check. 14.214.136.556. Got it.” To shut her up I offered, “Now, lunch?” We selected the meals of the day, kilocalories duly noted going out, RFID annotated, your total kilocalories calculation awaiting return of the dirty plates for final subtraction, in case you left any (and it also made you clear your place as well). When they plopped down the food ramp, we each picked up our tray and ate silently, sitting in front of “our” window, set to max gain, watching the rest of practice. Me? I was also watching the sky and clouds again, in case we had a second version of this morning’s little episode.

  CHAPTER 2

  I GET SKEWERED BY MY OWN PROGRAM

  I really didn’t care what Tom did or didn’t do. It was really a bit of a shock to realize that. He was just a worker on the same floor. If I had changed floors, I wouldn’t have missed him. Suze was, in the end, really only interesting to me if there was a bit of a chance there, a cat and mouse chase, a flirtation. When she stopped, and shut that door, she became boring too.

  I’m shallow, what can I say?

  Mary? Well Mary was never interesting in that way, but I did rely on Mary, if only to boost my ego a bit, calling each other genius and stuff. Well, I was sometimes impressive, but she was also always overly generous. Maybe she had a crush and who was I to d
issuade her? I made sure it never went beyond that and we were, or maybe she only acted like, friends.

  But Suze had said she was being restricted, kept away from stuff that she normally could have pulled up without difficulty. Okay, so she could not have altered anything, only read it, verified; it was what she did. The System would have measured what she accessed and if she returned anything even remotely different, there would have been a work shut down—with her as the target for review. Me? I was different. I was there to mess these things up, but I could never put anything back into the real system (that access was barred). All I could do was run it on the parallel system, the simulator, and check out the results. In checking the results, I could, presumably, refine my approach for the next foray. I was so good now that I hardly ever checked anything all the way through. I knew what it would do. I came to feel checking was a sign of personal weakness. Ah, the ego reigns supreme, always.

  So, I went back into my little office knowing I could ask for a file, way below what I normally ask for, a copy of Tom’s work data records. If they were gone missing, I would see the path where people like Suze would never be able to look. If the files were deleted, I could find the tracers and maybe know who or what did it. I put on the dome and called up my tools platform. I called up six small subset programs I had created (so far nothing from the System, these are all my “desk” files). I toyed with one of them. The system saw I was busy, preparing my armament for a foray into its guts, I was sure I could hear that hum of anticipation, that quest to learn how I, the genius human, would tinker with the system once more, show the faults, show the deviousness, show the allegory behavior of like-sub-programs and, thereby, highlight what really should have been. Defining the negative, I called it. Know the negative and the positive becomes clearer. Calculus measures that which is missing (the hollow of a circle), defining, perfectly, that which should be. My job’s like that.

  Ready, opening the portal.

  I asked for Tom’s work data. Denied. Suggestion: WeatherGood. Ah, here we go again. Okay, so you want WeatherGood? Let’s substitute that USGS IGY 1959 data with, say, Tom’s work data fttp 14.214.136.556. A specific work request cannot be denied once I’m into the bowels. Ah, see? There is a record with Tom’s fttp on it. Okay, I’m not in the primary system, but surely even Tom could have checked the work level copies of all the data files. His file size match was uneven with the USGS IGY 1959. I evened it; with one of my little programs I called a stretcher, Grow, (basically, it copies a load of irrelevant invisible marker data again and again until the file size matches perfectly). Dropping in Tom’s file, which should be gibberish to the WeatherGood program, okay, it’s an easy fix and will spoil my average a little. I can take the heat. Still, I want to give Suze something, even in the heat of rejection, she’s cute. Plopped the USGS IGY 1959 file on my platform for study later.

  Job’s done. Am not bothering to run a check. Duh, WeatherGood obviously won’t run. Data’s all screwed up. My psyche file might take a hit for the obviousness of this one. Oh, well. The headphones are saying something about seconds, don’t bother to listen.

  Dome off, out door, find Suze. Told her where to look for my failed botch attempt on WeatherGood (especially as she’s being pointed there anyway).

  “You found a copy of his file and dropped it, in there? You tag it, his fttps number?”

  “Do I look like a moron? I re-tagged it with a random fttps, made sure it’s random, unused. It’s 136.136.212.412. Find that tag, unscramble the program, take the applause and hand Tom his file.” Suze knew that anything she removed from the rogue program could be sent to trash on her desktop, and copied or forwarded later, to Tom of course.

  “Wait. Session?”

  “Didn’t wait for the number. Do a time search.”

  “Okay. Here. Open. Oh, wow, it’s angry, red flags all over. Dead code markers with blue and red. You’ve really screwed this up. Should have dumped his data and shut down.” She paused, deadly silent. “Wait! It’s running! It’s more than running, it’s doing something.”

  I looked over her shoulder down at the desktop and, sure enough, the program was growing. It shouldn’t be. Something was replicating itself in there, growing functionality, becoming active. A program running could not be edited. It was in the system design, even if this was the redundant system, offline of the main system, a parallel system unattached to the main system. We watched, it changed faster.

  “Go back, maybe you can re-enter your own work, shut it down. Tom’s data isn’t worth this. I’ve never seen a rogue system program, but this looks like one. There’s going to be trouble.”

  I ran back to my office, told bodiless Meg “open up bitch” and got a “how dare you” as the door slid open. I picked up the dome and . . . collapsed.

  I thought I was dead. I am lying here, aware that the dome is crackling slightly, suspended by the wires above my stool, looking like a jellyfish in the old Natural History Museum. What was it called? Portuguese Man O’ War, that’s it. Why is it crackling?

  Trying to move, limbs are stiff. I must have shouted as I fell, my ears are ringing. Was I pushed? Was I standing, ever? Wow, the floor feels solid, magnetic. Got my head up. Bad idea. Lay down idiot.

  Mary has come in, I can see her leaning over me.

  “You okay? You awake? What happened? Your door is unlocked, I didn’t use the secret pass you gave me, it was just open. My screen has gone blank. What have you done now?”

  It was my fault, I could see it coming. When wasn’t it?

  I lifted my foot, leg, thigh, rotated hips. Okay, let’s try and sit up. “Mary, give me a hand here, okay?” Sitting. Phew, tired and aching. Little jerks and spasms like . . . wait a second, a massive electrical shock, now I remember. Head feels slammed from inside, like a vehicle crash when you hurdle about inside the capsule when it hits something. Like on that damn asteroid. Ow.

  “Don’t touch the damn thing Mary. It’s hot, electrical. Short circuit.”

  “No way, that can’t happen, it’s only 12 volts, 2 milliamps, that’s all they’re built to take.” Trust Mary to remember the specs. Probably rewrote them. Or at least memorized them.

  “Whatever it was supposed to be, it ain’t now. I tried to put it on and, bang, I’m on my ass.”

  “Is that what you call it?” she harrumphed. “Stay there. I’ll get maintenance.”

  “No, hold on Mary, give me a second. There’s something else . . . listen, don’t touch, listen.” The headphones in the dome were still speaking. We got real quiet and turned an ear each towards the open door.

  “. . . 20 minutes, 14.2 seconds to final shut-down. This is a grade 2 event. Evacuate the building. 24 minutes, 35 seconds to final shut-down, evacuate the city.” Then a pause. “4 minutes, 22 seconds to system shut down, evacuate the building. 20 minutes 2 seconds to final shutdown. This is a grade 2 event. Evacuate the block. 23 minutes, 50 seconds to final shutdown, evacuate the city. . . .”

  I was standing now, adrenaline kicked in. “Mary, did you hear that? We’ve got less than 4 minutes to get out of the building before the system shuts down.” Mary looked stunned. “Mary, snap out of it, what’s a grade 2 event?”

  “Honestly? I have only one damn idea . . .” she ran out the door and went straight for the main stair emergency door and snapped it open. Mary was the fire drill warden. She keyed the building’s PA system and started the drill “Everybody out, this is an emergency, this is Not a drill, everybody out you have 3 minutes 30 seconds.” Then, keying the repeat and timer buttons, she dashed out through the door, her words already playing again over the PA, already counting down to the 3-minute warning siren, and she was gone.

  Everything was suddenly pandemonium. People were spilling out of every corridor and office, running for the stairs. Not pretty. 45 floors emptying into the stairwell in less than 4 minutes was never going to be pretty. But the building isn’t collapsing and once you are in the emergency stairwell there are no electronic or system barr
iers to egress. All you have to do was get into the well in time. If you don’t, the fire extinguisher gas on each floor will kill you.

  Getting into the stairwell? Easier said than done. Our floor has two people in power chairs. They block the way, of course. They don’t mean to, but they do. People were shoving them, roughing them up in passing. I grabbed one, hoisted her over my shoulder and went through the door. As we started down, people were pushing, Mary’s recorded words were ominously counting down, panicking people unnecessarily. I shouted for them to stop, they didn’t listen. I lost my footing on the 20th and went down, my bundle landing on a fat guy who was surprisingly agile. He caught her, sees me in a tangled mess on the floor with several others. “I’ve got her buddy, get up and get out, I’ll take her from here.”

  I see a young man under me, bleeding pretty heavily from a gash by his temple. He is half-unconscious. I took off my blue vest, the anti-static one they wanted you to wear at work, and wadded it up and pressed it to his temple. “Keep that there, start walking, slowly. Here, you, give him a hand.” I shout to a passerby over the now really annoying PA. Mary’s voice was sickeningly down to one and a half minutes.

  People went fast and slow, as they were able. A constant speed was needed for safety. Some couldn’t manage. As more and more people crowded onto the landings between flights, looking for a clear shot on the next metal stairs least they fall, voices were raised, people damning each other, cursing to gain courage or simply to promote self-interest. Some pushed. The youngest, the least afraid of death, seemed the most calm and heroic. I saw many people slow to help others, and many stop to comfort the fallen.