Netcast: Zero (6 page)

Reply: Shouldn’t you have your comm filters set to hold all other messages but mine right now?

Message: I thought I did.
Hanna commanded her communications settings menu to appear in her visual space to check.
Message: It is. Weird
.

Reply: Maybe you should have your comm-firmware checked later?

From; Unknown: Ask the question again, Hanna.

A look of concern came across Hanna’s face.
Reply: Who is this? What question?

Again there was a long pause. Hanna called up the message details in her visual space, checking for source and routing codes, but there were none.

Message; Unknown: The question you asked Doctor Benarro five days ago. Ask it again. Maybe Doctor Mesnard will be more receptive.

Reply: WHO IS THIS?
Hanna began looking around the room, hoping to see Graham laughing in the corner as he perpetrated a joke on her. But Graham was standing next to Arielle, and his facial expressions indicated that his mind was busy with the FI data stream that he was linked to. Besides, she doubted that Graham would have the expertise required to remove all source and routing codes from messages. And the fact that each message was a new message, rather than a continuation of an ongoing thread meant that each new message was being routed differently. She had interviewed enough hackers and digital security experts to know that much. Someone truly unknown to her was sending her messages, and that someone had seen the raw footage they had shot at Doctor Benarro’s office.

Message; Arielle: Who was the client for the Benarro assignment?

Reply: Tri-state, out of New York. Why?

Message: Just curious.

Reply: You need to stay focused. What’s wrong with you, Hanna?

Message: I’m focused, I’m focused.

From; Unknown: One more time, Hanna. Ask the question again.

Reply: If you work for Tri-State, then retain me now if you want me to ask a question on your behalf.

From; Unknown: I work for no one. Ask the question.

Reply: How are you getting my replies if you scrubbed the source and routing codes from your messages?

From; Unknown: My, my, aren’t you a good little reporter. Good little reporters ask questions, don’t they? So ask the question.

Reply: I’m not going to ask that question. It was a stupid question.

From; Unknown: No, it wasn’t. You were correct about the link between Twister and Klaria. Twister
causes
Klaria.

Reply: How the hell would you know?

There was another pause.

From; Unknown: Simple. I wrote it.

Hanna looked around frantically, exactly why, she didn’t know. Then she looked down at the floor. Should I tell Arielle? She wondered, but chose against it for fear that her friend would think she was making it up to justify pulling another ratings stunt and then leave her. She couldn’t make it without Arielle. She just couldn’t.

Hanna took a deep breath and concentrated, as the initial question and answer period of the press conference wound down.
Reply: Prove it.

From; Unknown: As you wish. Your friend, Doctor Gabriel Benarro, is about to die of a heart attack.

Hanna felt her skin grow cold, and a chill shot down her spine. She looked at the stage, her eyes on Doctor Benarro. He was perspiring, and he looked pale. He pulled at his collar, as if it were too tight. Realizing something was wrong, he leaned over to the woman seated next to him on the stage and whispered something to her. The woman reacted immediately, signaling for help.

Doctor Benarro slumped over, falling forward. The woman next to him caught him and eased him to the floor. It was the last thing that Hanna saw, as everyone in the room stood at once, gasping.

Hanna also stood, struggling to see through the crowd of reporters. FI orbs suddenly filled the room, whizzing over the heads of the reporters as videographers in the back of the room deployed their own gear against protocol in order to get images of what was happening on stage. The GDCOs orbs went dark, returning to the docking stations at the back of the room.

“Please! Everyone! Get back!” someone ordered over the loudspeakers.

Hanna’s personal visual space suddenly flashed another message.

From; Graham: I’m sending you live imaging.

The next message warned Hanna of an incoming video stream, which she immediately accepted. The video was standard two-dimensional video, as none of the videographers, including Graham, wanted to waste time setting up their own FI shot. In moments, the event would be shutdown and the transmissions from their orbs would be jammed by the GDCO tech guys.

The view was from above and to one side, moving from left to right as the image faded into view and filled her visual space, blocking out what her own eyes were seeing. Another message flashed.

From; Arielle: Hanna! Voice over commentary!

Hanna stumbled for a moment. Her mind was spinning, and she was having a hard time believing what was happening. I’m a reporter! she told herself. She commanded her comm-unit to send her voice directly to Graham. “This is Hanna Bohl, at the Montreal office of the Global Disease Control Organization, where respected epidemiologist and former director of the GDCO has just collapsed during a press conference from what appears to be a heart attack.”

The image in her visual space shifted about, as Graham maneuvered to avoid colliding with the dozens of orbs shifting about, all of them trying to get the best angle possible. She could see that someone was performing chest compressions, and that another person was attaching a palm-sized auto-defibrillator to Doctor Benarro’s now bare chest.

“It appears that CPR has been started, and that a defibrillator is also in place…”

Several more GDCO employees rushed into the room, followed by several security personnel that immediately began pushing the reporters back.

“Let’s clear the room!” one of the security guards yelled.

The video image in Hanna’s personal visual space disappeared. “It appears that we just lost our camera feeds,” she reported as the crowd began to move toward the exits, taking her with them. “This is Hanna Bohl, for…” Her mind went blank. Who had hired them?

From; Arielle: QNE! QNE!

“…Quebec News Exchange.”

The security guards continued to herd the crowd of reporters, and their crews toward the exits. Hanna could hear someone shouting that the conference would reconvene at a later time, but no one said when.

Moments later she found herself outside the building. She stepped to the side, feeling the need to get away from the crowd of chattering reporters and videographers. She turned from side to side, searching the dispersing crowd for Arielle and Graham, but could not see them. Exasperated and overwhelmed, she moved off to the side to get away from everyone, finally coming to rest against the wall. Another message appeared in her personal visual space.

From; Unknown: You should have asked the question, Hanna. Maybe now you’ll listen.

Reply: How is this possible? Why would you do this?

From; Unknown: I wrote it, I control it… I will be in touch.

* * *

Hanna
sat staring at her untouched cup of tea. She had lied to Arielle, telling her that she needed to use the restroom, promising to rejoin her later outside the GDCO building. She simply couldn’t be around anyone right now. She was too confused.

I just got a man killed, because I refused to ask a question.
The thought kept running through her head, making her ill.
A question!

In a single moment, her confidence, her dreams, everything she had worked for over the last decade… it all seemed to fade into insignificance. How could she live with herself?

Not once in the past had it occurred to her that her actions, or even her inactions, could be the cause of some other event, good or bad. She had always believed that she was simply bringing truth and understanding to the world, by reporting on what she had witnessed. How could she continue, knowing that she could inadvertently bring harm to others?

Hanna contemplated quitting right then and there. She could return to San Diego. Even if she had no money left in her account, her parents would pay for her ticket home. They had never liked her gypsy life-style. She could find a job in an office somewhere. She could lead an average life, maybe even meet someone…

Her train of thought was interrupted when she noticed Graham at the counter at the far end of the cafe. She lowered her head, picking up her oversized cup of tea which was now cold, to hide her face. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone right now, and certainly not Graham.

Graham noticed her as he paid for his coffee. They made eye contact.

Please don’t come over, please don’t come over…
The thought kept repeating in her mind.

Graham turned and headed toward her.

Damn it!

Graham walked up to the booth and took a seat across from her without saying a word. He added a few packets of sugar to his coffee and began to stir.

Hanna looked at him, wondering why he hadn’t uttered a word. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, then again, it was odd that he wasn’t saying anything.

Graham finished stirring his coffee and took a sip. “First time?”

Hanna looked at him, a quizzical look on her face.

“Seeing someone die,” Graham added.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Had a reporter drop dead of a stroke once, on camera, in the middle of a report.”

“Really?”

“Yup. One minute he was yapping away at the camera about some rebel attack, the next he was on the ground, on his side, his arms drawn up like a monkey waiting for you to hand him a peanut.”

Hanna said nothing.

“You know what I did?”

Hanna still didn’t speak, only raised her eyebrows slightly.

“I kept recording. I kept all my orbs on him. Caught every second of it.”

“You didn’t help him?” Hanna wondered, a bit shocked.

“What the hell was I going to do for him?” Graham said. “Besides, our producer and two security guards were already pawing all over him, for all the good it did.”

“Still, it seems awfully cold…”

“No, it’s not. It’s what we do. It’s our job. Civilization needs us. They need us to show them what is going on outside their little spheres of reality, and how it might affect them. It’s a connection with the rest of humanity. Without it, we revert back to a bunch of tribes clustered around our own little campfires to stave off the night.”

“But the guy had just dropped dead, Graham.”

“Yeah, and I showed it, in full immersion, I might add. Because of that, how many people suddenly started taking better care of themselves? How many people started seeing their doctor more frequently? How many people went ahead and shelled out the cash to get health nanites? How many people realized that life was short, and you had to live it to the fullest while you still can?”

“All that, because you recorded a guy dropping dead?” Hanna’s left eyebrow shot up.

“Probably not, but you get my point.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.” Hanna looked back down at her tea.

“That wasn’t it though, was it?”

“Huh?”

“There’s something else.”

“No, that was it.”

“Bullshit. I was jacked into Ari’s comm-streams, and I noticed the expressions on your face during the press conference. You were exchanging messages with someone, and it wasn’t Arielle.”

“Not bad,” Hanna said. “You should be a reporter.”

“I’ve been doing this a long time.”

“I’ve got to work on controlling my facial expressions while messaging,” Hanna mumbled.

“So who was it?”

Hanna hesitated, unsure if she should share what had happened with him. Finally, she took a deep breath, letting it out slowly in a long sigh. “What if you knew something? Something really big. But telling someone could cause a world of problems, possibly turning your whole world upside down.”

“You’re still holding onto that Twister-causes-Klaria idea, aren’t you?”

Hanna sighed again. “I had, I really had…”

“Something happened. You learned something new, didn’t you?” Graham could see it in her eyes.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Hanna warned.

“Try me.”

Hanna looked directly at Graham. “During the interview, I started receiving messages from someone.”

“Who?”

“There was no ID tag. It just said ‘Unknown’.”

“Did you check the…”

“No source codes, no routing codes. And each text was a new message, so he was probably routing them all over the world.”

“How do you know it was a guy?”

“I guess I don’t really.”

“What did he say?”

“He wanted me to ask if there was a connection between Twister and Klaria.”

Graham’s head shifted back in disbelief. “Really?” his head turned slightly to his right, and the left side of his face squinted. “Why you?”

“He knew, Graham.”

“He knew what?”

“He
knew
that I had already pursued that line of questioning with Doctor Benarro, and Tri-State never
aired
that footage.”

“So what?” Graham said. “We uploaded that footage over the public nets, Hanna. Any punk hacker could have gotten a copy.”

“And could any punk hacker wipe the source and ID codes from his messages?”

“Well, not any, but it’s not impossible,” Graham admitted. “Still, it was just some punk having some fun with you. Or someone trying to get you to stir up some controversy. Either way, it’s not that big a deal.”

Hanna paused, unsure of herself. She looked down at her tea cup again, then back up at Graham, looking him directly in the eyes. “He said Doctor Benarro was going to die of a heart attack, moments before he actually did.”

Graham said nothing, his brow furrowing. After a moment, he sighed. “I’ve heard of people hacking the health nanite monitoring stream before. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. Maybe he just saw it coming and used it to his advantage?”

“Or maybe he had control of Doctor Benarro’s nanites.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Hanna,” Graham argued. “Our implants control our health nanites. They can’t be remote controlled. Your physician sends them instructions, and they either comply or refuse based on your current condition. There are safety protocols that
prevent
our health nanites from
causing
harm to us. Hell, Hanna, he could have been watching the press conference and simply noticed that Doctor Benarro didn’t look right and simply guessed. It was a live broadcast, you know.”

“That’s a hell of a lucky guess, Graham,” Hanna argued.

“Yeah, you are right about that.”

“He said, ‘I wrote it, I control it.’”

Graham looked puzzled. “Wrote what?”

“Since he said that the Twister virus causes Klaria in his messages, I assumed he was talking about Twister.”