The Messiah Code (9 page)

The Individual Genome Ordered Repository had been Tom's idea. He had asked Jasmine to tell Big Mother to pull off one in five of all gene scans conducted by the licensed GENIUS Processing Labs around the world and store them in a database, along with the names, addresses, and family and medical records of the individuals concerned. There were now over one hundred million people on IGOR, and GENIUS knew more about them than they did themselves.

Tom's motives were far from sinister; he wanted to use the database at a macro level to validate much of his genetic work--checking trends of actual medical illness in families versus genetic markers for the illness. IGOR had helped validate much of the work that led to the cure for schizophrenia and had given vital clues to treating other genetic diseases. However, despite this worthy intention, Jasmine had no doubt that if any of the individuals, or relevant authorities, learned of the database they would be horrified and GENIUS's credibility would be seriously compromised. But Tom had judged that the benefits outweighed any potential threat to the particular individuals and to his company. So he had taken the risk.

After walking around her domain, Jasmine returned to her computer and began her daily cyberpatrol. She clicked on the computer. With a processing speed of 100 terahertz, 600 gigs of disk space, and 200 gigs of RAM, it was easily powerful enough to cruise the fast lane of the congested information superhighway. The computer monitor flashed into life and a virtual reality head, the spitting image of

Jazz, appeared. The Afro hair and fine-featured dark face almost matched her own reflection in the screen. The image greeted her with a: "
Salutations, Razor Buzz. Where are you going today
?" Even the synthesized voice sounded like her own.

She rarely used it anymore, but the Razor Buzz tag was a throwback to her youth in L.A., when she had been an irresponsible net head with a sharp attitude and a haircut to match. If her strict Baptist parents thought they were keeping her out of trouble by banning her from the streets and allowing her to kick up her heels on the information superhighway, then they were mistaken. She had chosen the anonymous User ID of Razor Buzz because a lot of what she did in those days wasn't strictly legit. Still, legit or not, back then she was something of a legend.

She spoke into the microphone. "Today, I'm on patrol."

"
I need the code before you can go on the road
," said the talking head.

Jazz smiled. The password she'd chosen this week still gave her an adolescent kick. It was the name of a job that harked back to the bad old rebellious days before she went legit and won scholarships and Nobel Prizes--to when she could hack into everything and anything. This job wasn't "Accountant," or "Doctor," or even "GENIUS Information Technology Director." No, this job was cool,
seriously cool.

"Cybercop," she typed, enjoying playing the ultimate poacher turned gamekeeper.

The head on the screen suddenly donned a helmet, did a double flip, and saluted her. "
Special Agent Razor, you are now
free to roam the infobahn. Take care out there in cyberspace
."

She reached across the ordered desk for her can of Diet Coke, and considered her destination. Most days she would try to break into one of GENIUS's technical or financial systems. She employed two other guys to try to breach these protected databases, highlighting weaknesses and suggesting better protective measures. Both guys were good, but she still liked to check for herself how good her defenses really were. Today she would try to hack into their

most sensitive and best-protected database--IGOR.

She ignored the world wide web, because none of the GENIUS systems were visible there. Instead she tapped out the number of Big Mother, intending to hack into the live connection used by all the Genescopes to feed data into the mother brain, and then into IGOR. Almost instantly the front-end screen appeared demanding a password. She punched in yesterday's--she had purposely not looked at today's.

"
Access denied
" flashed up on screen.

Good. The password had been changed. The data was secure from her.

Or should be.

She'd have to find another way in. She pressed the keys on the board in front of her, trying to get around the front-end title screen, which gave no information about what IGOR contained. She would still not be in the system once she'd done this, because she had designed IGOR to have two levels of security--one to prevent prowlers from browsing the front-end menu and one to stop them from accessing the data--but at least it would be a start. She tried the easy tricks first, the ones known to all high school cyberpunks. First, she tried to find it by interrogating the program behind it.

No joy. All the simple breaches were closed.

Good. So far.

She moved on to the next approach: using the base computer language to reprogram the password commands. This was more difficult and took years of experience. If you put in the wrong program code you could damage all your other software.

She did it without thinking. It took her a little over four seconds to try this technique. But then Razor Buzz was a supremo, a cyberlord.

Nothing. No breach. Her team had covered this angle.

Excellent.

Now to the final approach. This entailed writing her own program to tell the program that ran the password system what to do. Like creating higher orders for the system to obey. This took Razor a little longer. This was clever.

Then her eyes saw the message flashing on the bottom right of the screen.

"
Program already resident...Program already resident...Pro
gram already resident
..."

This had never happened before. "Shit," she said aloud, both impressed and nervous.

The screen changed and she realized she was entering the first stage of IGOR--only one final password defense away from the data.

But she hadn't finished her own higher language program. She must have got in on the coattails of
someone else.

Someone else must have opened the door using the same program she was writing and inadvertently let her in. Ignoring the perspiration on her brow, she rode the intruder's slipstream, checking how far he'd penetrated. Whoever it was, he had infiltrated the first-stage defenses and appeared to be browsing the front-end menus--just window shopping, seeing what IGOR contained.

Her hand hovered over the hot key that would catapult both the intruder and herself out of the database.

But she didn't press it yet. She would press it only if the intruder looked as if he was doing the impossible--breaking through the impregnable second stage of defenses and accessing any of the highly confidential data stored there. Before that happened she wanted to find out who the intruder was. The automatic Predator tracer would start immediately if the intruder managed to get beyond the second stage--assuming he could. But she wanted the trace to start now.

She addressed the receiver on her computer. "I need you to start a trace. Activate Predator."

A small help icon opened on the top right of the screen containing her computer-generated head, still wearing the cop helmet.

The head asked, "
Stealth mode or alarm mode
?"

"Stealth. Don't want to frighten our visitor off yet."

Another small icon opened up on the top left of her screen. Above it was a clock ticking down from sixty seconds, the time it took to effect a complete trace. At the

bottom of the icon was a row of nine flashing numbers. The numbers were changing at a frantic speed, searching for the right combination. Suddenly the left number locked in place, leaving only eight flashing. Then the second locked. Once all nine were locked Jasmine would be able to trace the intruder's origin.

25...24...23 ticked the icon on the top left of the screen.

The sixth number locked into place. Only three to go.

Then the intruder suddenly logged off; his cyber trail vaporized.

Gone.

"Shit," she muttered to herself, just as one of her staff walked into her office.

Jasmine checked the six numbers on screen, to see if they gave any clue to the origin of the intruder. But all she could be sure of from the codes was that it came from outside the United States, between southeast Europe and India. The Middle East or North Africa would be her best guess. But who from that part of the world would bother to hack into the superficially boring IGOR?

The tall blond woman held up a bulb from the new holoprojector. "Morning, Jazz, you okay?"

She looked up and smiled at her technical manager. "Yeah, Debbie, thanks."

"Can I show you something?"

"Sure. Will it take long?"

"About half an hour. I just need to talk you through the final mods to Gene Genie. We think we've cracked the holo-image."

"Including face definition?"

Debbie grinned. "Come and judge for yourself."

"Great! Just give me five minutes and I'll be with you."

Despite her worries Jasmine was excited about the new GeneImaging software. As for IGOR, she reassured herself that at least the actual database hadn't been breached, only its general purpose discovered. She was convinced that the final defenses were secure, but she would still tell Tom. He would want to know that for the first time since its creation someone was showing an unhealthy interest in the anonymous IGOR.

"S
o, Nora, how's it going?" asked Tom, opening the swinging doors from the corridor linking the main laboratories of the Mendel Suite with the animal laboratory--or "Mouse House," as it was known. Immediately after Hank Polanski had received his first infusion of genes with no initial side effects, Tom had hurried here, desperate to know the results of the experiment that could determine Holly's future.

Nora Lutz looked up from inputting data into her laptop, her natural frown softening in greeting. In her forties, Nora was small and round, with brown hair cut into a short bob. Large tortoiseshell glasses gave her the appearance of an owl. She was a dedicated lab technician and Tom knew that despite her grumpy demeanor she loved her job here--if only because it got her out of the house. A spinster, she lived in Charlestown with her demanding invalid mother and five cats. Leaning back in her chair, Nora pulled up the sleeves of her white coat and gestured to the eight empty cages behind her.

"Just finished," she said. "All forty-eight mice have now been dissected and their met count checked."

Tom nodded. He didn't like using animals for experiments, and many of the in vitro experimental protocols he'd developed had done away with the need. But at times, particularly in the field of gene therapy, it was unavoidable.

In this experiment all the mice had been infected with astrocytoma cancer cells. Half had then been injected with a genetically engineered retrovirus designed to kill brain cancer cells, whereas the other half had been treated with nothing more than a simple saline solution. Their brains had then been dissected to count the amount and size of tumors or metastases. If the mice treated with the retrovirus had fewer tumors than the control group injected with saltwater, then the experiment had worked. And it was vital that it did work. Otherwise the already tissue-thin chances of finding a cure for Holly in time would dissolve into nothing.

"Any feel for the results yet?"

Nora gave him a "you should know better" look and shook her head. "Can't tell you that until Bob comes back with the envelope." Bob Cooke was Nora's boss.

None of the three teams working on the new brain cancer project had been told about Holly yet. Tom had done this for a number of reasons. The more people who knew of Holly's predicament, the greater the risk she might learn of it herself. He couldn't allow that to happen. When and if it was appropriate to tell the teams he would, but for now all they needed to know was that the project was top priority.

So far only this team of Nora Lutz and Bob Cooke had come close to developing the complex retroviral vector required to get past the blood-brain barrier protecting the brain. Their progress in a little over five weeks had been exceptional, but as Tom glanced at the spreadsheet on Nora's laptop screen he felt more nervous than excited about the results. The spreadsheet showed the tag numbers of each mouse in the left-hand column, the number of their tumors--alarmingly high as far as Tom could make out--in the column next to it, and the size of these tumors alongside that. One column remained blank--the one which indicated which treatment each mouse had received. Only Bob Cooke had this information.

Years ago Tom had learned the importance of not allow ing personal bias to influence results, and had made it obligatory that all GENIUS experiments were conducted "blind." He knew how tempting it was for even the most scrupulous scientist to "find" the results he was hoping for. So Bob Cooke had administered the original injections to the mice, recording on computer disk which coded mice had received the genetically engineered virus treatment and which had received the saltwater. Bob had then kept this information sealed in a brown envelope and been excluded from counting the metastases.

"Where is Bob now?" asked Tom.

"In the Mendel. Shall I get him?"

"No, I'll go. You finish up the figures."

Tom walked out of the Mouse House, down the small corridor, and through the sliding glass doors of the main laboratory suite. He scanned the expanse of white, glass, and chrome and saw Bob Cooke immediately. The man's whole appearance and body language set him apart from almost everyone else in the laboratory. The other scientists were stooped over their lab benches, but the loose-limbed Californian with his blond hair and tan was lying back in his chair, holding a microscope slide up to the light. He looked more like a surfer checking out the next wave than a scientist. His broad smile and easy manner made some people underestimate him. In many ways the young man's irreverence reminded Tom of himself.