The Media Candidate (28 page)

“You see, I knew what really happened that day.
You thought I was just a kid and those skis and your big scene were
so important to me. But I was a smart kid, and I saw what happened.
You saw your little girl being stepped on and insulted, and in a
way that would leave some indelible imprint. So you attacked that
bitch, Dobbs, in my behalf.”

Susie reached for Elliott’s hand and held it.
“You might have been a little more delicate about it.” Elliott
fought back a grin, but Susie encouraged it with her own. “But you
sure as hell let everybody know what you thought of her, and they
better not pull any more crap like that with you around.”

Father and daughter held hands and laughed to
each other. Then Elliott’s smile faded and he said, “But then I ran
away. Your hero abandoned you.”

“Yeah. And that’s what I held against you for so
long.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I finally realized that I was the one who
kicked you out of my life.”

“But you were just a kid and very upset.”

“I knew you’d come home and apologize to me. I
had a couple hours to think about it. I was a very smart kid. I
knew exactly what I was going to say to you before you ever walked
into my room. I’m not sure to this day why I had to hurt you. Maybe
it was really Dobbs I was trying to get.”

“Maybe you weren’t as smart as you thought.”

Susie nodded her head. “There is that
possibility.”

“So why was it so important for you to come here
today and tell me this?”

“Okay. Now I’ll tell you what precipitated this
trip. I heard through the grapevine that you’ve been stirring up
trouble again.”

“What do you mean?”

“COPE trouble—with a guy named Sherwood.”

Elliott squinted his eyes. “Did Martha tell you?
But wait, I never told her Sherwood’s name.”

“Mom had nothing to do with this. You see, I’m
somewhat of an insider at COPE. I’ve been doing some consulting
work there, and I’ll tell you one thing, Dad. Don’t cross swords
with COPE. Or Sherwood.”

Susie sat back in her chair and began her tale
of computer development in the grand style of COPE and Dr. Planck.
“Then a while after Planck’s supposed suicide, I got a call from a
woman right in the guts of COPE named Jenner, just Jenner, a real
nerd. She wanted me to help her sort some things out with the COPE
main frame, but the funny part was that she didn’t want me to visit
her or even call her. She came up to see me a couple of times, and
the kind of stuff she was asking told me she was right in that
computer’s brain and plucking strings that should never be plucked,
at least if you have any regard for self preservation.

“Day before yesterday, she came to see me with
this wild scheme for sending the computer back to the Stone Age,
and I helped her refine it. But mostly, I was the Planck history.
Planck never documented what he was doing.”

“So you and Jenner are the only ones who know
what’s going on at COPE?” Elliott said.

“Don’t worry about me, Dad. Jenner took very
careful precautions to keep me clean. There’s no way to tie me to
her scheme. But here’s the interesting part. On this last visit,
she was just talking over lunch about this really weird guy named
Sherwood. Apparently, she and Sherwood collaborated on some
super-secret program at COPE that had something to do with
enforcement robotics. That’s all she’d tell me, but you can
probably guess what it means.

“Anyway, she was telling me about this Sherwood
guy who is apparently a cross between an Einstein and a Dracula. He
wears some different hats at COPE, but his latest job is a Field
Liaison Officer right here in this district. And his first case is
some physicist who just retired from the Hyper Collider and is an
anarchist. It didn’t take me too long to figure that one out, so I
thought I’d better get over here and give you some sound advice—get
off your white horse, Dad. Whatever you’re doing, stop. It isn’t
worth the risk.

“Don’t try dueling with this Sherwood creep. He
plays with some very dangerous toys. And it’s no game.”

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is
wrong.”

— Voltaire

A distant bolt of lightning cast subtle beacons
across the bedroom ceiling. Elliott lay in the darkness waiting for
each illumination and its thunderous sibling. Other spectators
closer to the storm endured its savagery, but here the softer
strokes prevailed.

Martha lay beside him, sedated by her
multi-media day, oblivious to nature’s multi-media night. Her face
turned toward him, scintillating in the bursts. Her lips tight and
her face intense, she may have been refining some dream, condensing
it, mixing applause, replaying the action, adding a laugh track,
saluting the trivia. He wondered if he figured into her dream, or
if it was reserved for her real family.

Another flash, then a longer delay. The flashes
grew dimmer, the crashes rumbled longer and lower until they lost
their discrete identities and merged into a single chorus.

This light show took him back to the
Fourth-of-July fireworks displays he enjoyed as a boy. But this
time, a blue explosion spotlighted Guinda’s eyes. In a green burst,
he saw Guinda in her forest green dress with the single button
undone. In a multicolored star, she stroked every part of him,
slowly reviving the man who had lived in another century. Then a
flood of other images returned, beckoning him to follow, drawing
him in, and at the same time offending him. There were Halvorsen,
Sherwood, the bouncing ponytails, the synchronous tits and peckers,
the hype and gimmicks, the childlike followers, the fraud.

Elliott suddenly became aware of the silence.
The storm had vanished, bathing the room in uniform emptiness and
steady breathing. Images blended, then faded one by one into the
darkness.

A few minutes later, Elliott found himself where
he knew he would end up. He logged on to his computer at the lab,
wove his way through the security labyrinth, and transferred the
Halvorsen files to his machine at home. He logged off and began
sifting through the mass of documentation. GAMES 46 was slightly
more interesting than the nonsense he and Guinda had reviewed at
her house. Some of the files were multi-media videos of various
election game shows from recent years while others were
transcripts. Elliott didn’t know what he was looking for, adding to
the tedium. He watched several videos on double-speed, jogging
through the advertising. He slowed it to normal speed for a
while.

“
Campaigns
for $6000.”

“In 2036, a nationally aired videotape of
Senator Ted Cassidy giving oral sex to the First Gentleman
inadvertently began this now-common political strategy. … Yes,
Gaff?”

“What is
Blowing Your Way to the
Top
?”

“Right, Gaff, and you’re certainly blowing away
your competition tonight. That puts you in a commanding lead.”

“
Presidents
for $8000.”

“
Soap Digest
has given this man the crown
for the championship Presidential Erection. … Yes, Gaff?”

“Who is Bondo Longo?”

“Right again, Gaff, and you’re a long way ahead
of the competition.”

“
Drugs-in-Office
for $8000.”

“First Gentleman, Darin Nightly, advised parents
across America to give this drug to their teenage children daily. …
Gaff?”

“What is
hormone-atrol
?”

“Right again, Gaff, and you certainly have
control tonight!”

“You know, Alan, I have a confession to make. I
still use hormone-atrol every day. It keeps me clearheaded under
pressure, but the best part is it prolongs my orgasms. I just can’t
say enough good things about it.”

“That’s some good advice and the end of
tonight’s round. It looks like Gaff Trolley is well on her way to
becoming California’s next senator. One more performance like this
next week, Gaff, and I’m sure everybody back home will be convinced
of your qualifications. After your spectacular career in the Soaps
and MTV, you’re one of the best-known faces in America. Your
political career will be just as spectacular … and rewarding,”
Allen said with a wink.

The video portion of the multi-media file ended.
An editor’s note appeared immediately:

“End of test clip 7. (6APR46) Trolley – no
shadows.”

Elliott wondered what that meant. He’d zipped
through similar notes, so he backed up a couple of minutes and
replayed.
Hmm, that’s interesting. There really aren’t any
shadows on Trolley. I wonder how they did that.
He froze
several frames and inspected them. There were shadows on the others
but none on Trolley’s face.

According to the note, this tape was made
over two years ago. Trolley must be a senator in California by now
with all that network hustle behind her. … I wonder.
Elliott
performed some brief magic with menus, and he quickly had an
up-to-the-minute almanac on his display. US SENATORS he queried.
Hmm, Trolley isn’t there
. He tried HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
Trolley wasn’t there. Then he tried SOAPS.
Hmm, Trolley isn’t
there either. How about MTV? … Nope. ENTERTAINERS? … Not there
either. Strange. How could Gaff Trolley be such a superstar and not
even appear in this almanac? They list thousands of entertainers.
Maybe she didn’t get elected after all and just decided to retire
with her billion dollars. Could be, I guess.

He registered the problem and continued,
reviewing several more test clips in various game-show settings.
Finally he happened upon a file called “test-clip index.” It listed
nine test clips dating from 2045 to 2046, each with a cryptic
descriptor like “Felter – eyes/lips synched” or “Wacker – without
gestures” or “Wacker – with gestures” or “Trolley – eyes
muted.”

Elliott sat back and stared at the screen in
disbelief. Suddenly all those test clips began to make sense. “So
that’s what those bastards are up to!” he shouted. “Could this be
what got Halvorsen murdered?”

Elliott thought about the files he had left on
his computer at the lab, the same files he was now reading.
Maybe I ought to hide those things or put access restrictions on
them
, he thought. He reentered the lab computer and asked for a
directory of his files.

ZERO FILES. ALL FILES DELETED 04:22: 36 JULY 23,
2048.

Elliott looked at his watch, 5:11. While he’d
been watching Trolley and the others, someone broke into the lab
computer and erased all his files. He wondered if they were totally
gone or if he might retrieve them as he had done at Guinda’s.

He menued a command, and the computer responded:
ALL FILES DELETED
AND SCRUBBED
04:22:36
JULY 23, 2048.

The lab computer had a special SECURE DELETE
command that wrote over the deleted files with random numbers to
prevent them from ever being retrieved. The hacker knew how to use
it.

Elliott queried the system to find out how this
hacker had entered. The computer responded:

USER: FIELD SERVICE

FILE EDITOR: GNU-EMACS.

So that’s it
, Elliott thought.
He used
the field service account and then got super-user privileges
through the Gnu editor. I thought that bug had been fixed years
ago, in fact decades ago. That was a classic bug when I was in
college. What the hell good is our computer security department if
they can’t close a simple trap door in I-don’t-know-how-many
years.

The hacker knew what he was doing. Computer
manufacturers frequently leave an account open that their service
reps can later enter to debug system problems. In this case it had
the tricky password SERVICE. Once into the system, the hacker used
an old bug in an old editor program to gain privileged status as a
super-user, that is, they could access any account in the entire
system. Elliott was sure that his account with its stolen Halvorsen
files was the target.

If the hacker could break into the lab
computer, would it be possible to break into my computer here at
home? That’s unlikely, but I
am
on a network.

Elliott quickly wrote a copy of the Halvorsen
files on a portable optical disk. Then he decided to retrench to
that archaic form of communication called paper. All the fancy
electronic and optical data-storage media were fine for most
purposes, but he would feel so much better now if he could just
hold in his hands a pile of old-fashioned sheets of paper with
printed words and pictures. No electronic necromancer would be able
to spirit that away from him with some digital wizardry. No more
electronic cat-and-mouse. He transferred the files once more to the
lab computer for it to spit out a copy on paper. It would be a
considerable stack of paper, but it would be totally his, not
subject to the whims of some cowardly hacker in front of an
anonymous machine electronically snooping from a million miles
away. Just to make sure, he disconnected his computer from the
network as soon as he received the cue that the transfer to the lab
was complete.

Now with the immediate crisis resolved, Elliott
had time to reflect on the meaning of it all. He sat back and
cupped one hand over his mouth as he stared beyond the computer
display before him. COPE must have either followed him to Guinda’s
house or had her under surveillance. But is COPE a human or a
machine? The candidate fraud he’d witnessed a few minutes ago
seemed like humans deceiving other humans. But how can you tell
anymore? Whoever’s behind it, COPE knows about the Halvorsen files
and Guinda’s theft of those files. They know about her
collaboration with Elliott. The bottom line is that Guinda is in as
much danger as he, but she doesn’t realize it yet. Elliott weighed
various options.