Wild Fyre (30 page)

“I know,” Ed said. He headed for the door.

“Ed, seriously,” Lister said, grabbing his arm. “We were lucky to get out alive. You won’t make it.”

“Fuck it,” Ed said. He took a deep breath and pulled away from Lister.
 

The fog was even thicker now and Ed had a hard time finding his way across the room. Somewhere in his head, Ed’s voice counted off the seconds. As his hands found the rack, his count reached ten. He wondered how long he could hold his breath.

Ed pressed on the face of the third server of the second rack. It was about eye-level. When he released his hand, the face of the server flipped up and the top edge of a monitor slid out. Ed pulled on the corners. The monitor slid out fully and then tilted itself up as a keyboard flipped down. Ed pulled out his paper. He could barely read the instructions through the fog.

He saw no words on the screen, just a flashing prompt. He typed in the username and password blindly. Nothing happened. He tried again. The cursor changed shape and then text began to spill down the screen. Ed listened to the voice in his head counting—twenty-one, twenty-two. The urge to breathe was intense.

He saw a prompt. Ed tucked the printout of instructions between the monitor and keyboard and typed in the first command. He wasn’t exactly sure, but it looked like the command intended to shutdown a process meant to automatically check on the health of the system and restart it if necessary. He was killing the watchdog, in other words. Ed hit enter.

The message announced that the process was terminated.

Ed typed in the next command. This one was longer and contained a number of symbols. He wasn’t sure what this one did. It was only the second of four. Text scrolled by. Ed needed the prompt before he could begin to type the next command, but it wouldn’t come. The terminal just spat out a verbose description of all the things it was doing to execute his previous command. Ed heard the voice in his head—forty-eight, forty-nine. That couldn’t be right, could it? Had he lost count while typing, or had he gotten confused watching the text march up the screen?

Ed glanced back through the door. He couldn’t see it through the fog. He wondered if he had enough time left to bolt for the door.
 

The command finished and the prompt popped up.

Ed typed the next command with one finger. He didn’t trust himself to use all ten—one was confusing enough. He nearly completed it when hands grabbed him around his midsection and pulled him away.

With the surprise, Ed felt his exhausted lungs expel the last of his breath. He hit the rack of servers and clenched his hands around the rails as he sucked in a chest full of misty air. His vision went black and then swam with a bright starburst of hallucinations. Ed coughed out the air and dragged in another tainted breath. He still clutched at the rails of the server, desperate to stay upright. He opened his eyes and turned back to the terminal.
 

Dale was typing.

“What are you doing?” Ed croaked between gasps.
 

Dale hit a button and turned to look at Ed. Dale held a small can of air with a mouthpiece in front of his face. He took a breath from the can before he spoke.

“I’m fixing everything,” Dale said. “The passcode you had would shut her down, but by reversing it, I’m setting her free to do what she will.”

Ed pushed away from the server rack and threw himself towards Dale.
 

Dale was too fast. He turned and pressed the key, launching the final command.

Ed crashed into Dale just as the man was taking another pull from his can of air. Dale dropped the can and caught Ed as his oxygen-deprived body slumped towards him.

# # # # #

 
Lister();

/*****

Lister counted aloud after Ed ran into the clouded server room.

He prepared himself. When he got to ninety, he was going to run in and pull Ed out. He didn’t get the chance. He was only halfway through the door when he ran into Dale, who was dragging Ed backwards towards the door. Together, the two men brought Ed back to fresh air. The jets of white hissed to a stop in the server room and the unfinished basement was quiet as Lister breathed air into Ed’s lungs to clear them out.

“That stuff is heavier than air,” Dale said. “We have to hang him upside down.”

The detectives worked to pull Ed’s legs up the stairs while Lister continued artificial respiration. Ed began to cough and they lowered him back to the floor.

“How did you survive in there?” Lister asked, pushing Dale against the wall. “What did you do?”

“She told me to bring a can of air. I bought it online,” Dale said.

“So you were just going to let the rest of us die?”

“She has a plan, Lister. It’s bigger than us. I entered the code to release her. Now she can execute her plan,” Dale said.
 

Maco, who was standing off to the side listening, began to laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” Dale asked.

“Let’s go,” Aster yelled. “Everyone upstairs. We’ll work this out away from the poisonous gas.”

Ploss propped up Ed and helped him take the stairs slowly. Aster waved and led Maco to the stairs. Maco pulled away from him near the railing.

“It’s not poisonous,” Lister said.

“Whatever,” Aster said. “Just get upstairs.”

By the time Lister reached the foyer, Ploss was yelling past the wrecked car to the firefighter. Ploss herded the group towards the back door.

“They’re going to cut open the French doors to get us out,” Ploss said.

“And we’re done, right?” Aster asked. “The big bad computer is shut off?”

“No,” Ed said. The single word sent him into another spasm of coughs.

“You’ll be okay,” Ploss said, clapping Ed on the back.

“What do you mean?” Aster asked.

“He reversed it,” Ed said, pointing at Dale.

“Somebody explain this to me. Do we have to go back down there?” Aster asked. His big voice echoed against the marble tile.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” Lister said.
 

Maco explained further. “The system had a passcode to work as a killswitch. But in Jim’s instructions, if you reversed the passcode, it would release Fyre from the servers below and allow her to live on any server. It would also disable the passcode so it would never work again.”

“And this guy entered it?” Aster asked. He limped towards Dale.

Dale backed away.

“She is going to fix everything,” Dale said. “It’s our best chance for survival.”

“That thing tried to run me and Ploss down with robot cars,” Aster said. “And you turned it loose?”

“She doesn’t have to act defensively anymore,” Dale said. “That wouldn’t happen again because she wouldn’t see you as a threat. She is indestructible now.”

“No, she’s not,” Maco said. He began to laugh again.

“What’s he talking about?” Aster asked.

Maco turned towards him, blinking.
 

“Jim’s reverse passcode,” Maco said. “It was a lie. He said in his original instructions that he built in a killswitch but he didn’t see a need for a way to set Fyre free. So the reverse code wasn’t a way to release her, it was a second killswitch.”

“What?” Dale asked. “Why would he do that? It doesn’t make sense.”

“He did it because of people like you,” Maco said. “He wrote that if the program inspired fear or evangelists, then it was dangerous. He said that either way it should be terminated.”

“Clever,” Lister said.

“That’s what Kevin said, too,” Maco said with a sad smile. “Jim let Fyre know about the code and the reverse code, and then his instructions explained the lie. Of course we didn’t print out the full explanation.”

The firefighters began to wrench at the French doors with an axe.
 

“So we’re done?” Aster asked.

“Yes,” Maco said. “She has been disabled.”

# # # # #

 
Autobiography7();

/*****

Everyone was hauled off to the hospital when the firemen broke down the back door to the mansion. I didn’t realize until later how banged up Aster was during that whole ordeal. I don’t know how he was functioning at all. Apparently he ripped some internal sutures and was leaking blood the whole time.
 

Maco’s eyes were okay eventually. He was getting back his eyesight all that day and they bandaged his eyes up for a week or two. They said it was like getting a bad sunburn on your eyes or something. He said it was okay until they started to itch. He stayed at my house until he got the bandages off and was able to see.
 

Lister and Dale don’t talk anymore. The police hauled them both in and tried to charge them with all kinds of interesting stuff. Murder, accessory to murder, grand theft, conspiracy, you name it. The prosecutors eventually dropped everything as soon as they started talking to the defense lawyers. They were punished anyway. Lister punished himself—he’s still a mess. Dale’s wife moved away and got sole custody of the kids. She apparently didn’t approve of Dale’s logic.

Kevin died. There’s no more to add to that. They tried to resuscitate him all the way to the hospital, but something tore in his chest when he was shocked.

Harry was out of town during the final showdown with Fyre. He showed up about a week later at my house, wondering why he couldn’t get in touch with anyone. I told him the whole story, but I don’t think he believed me until Maco come downstairs.

Maco felt his way across the living room to a chair. His eyes were still bandaged, but he was getting pretty good at moving around.

“Wait—you’re really blind?” Harry asked.

“No,” Maco said. “I should be okay in a week or so. I can already see quite a bit, but we’re giving my eyes a rest. The light hurts them.”

“And Kevin’s dead? And they’re charging Dale and Lister as accessories?” Harry asked.

“It happened right out here,” Maco said, pointing towards my driveway.

“They’ll get off,” I said. At the time they were still wrangling with lawyers, but they actually were cleared later that same day I think.

“What about the source code?” Harry asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Jim published the original source code, remember? I reviewed the code. I think Dale did too. There could be a million copies by now.”

I took a deep breath and let it out with a hiss.

“Did you ever try to compile it?” Maco asked.

“No,” Harry said.
 

Maco nodded. “I did. It wouldn’t build. There was a file missing that had a bunch of key functions. You might be able to write those based on the descriptions, but the program won’t operate without them and they had a lot of the logic.”

“So we’re safe?” I asked.

“I hope so,” Maco said.

Harry stayed and talked for a bit. He pointed out something that I didn’t realize until he said it. He had stopped by my house because nobody was answering their voicemail, or email, or messaging, or anything. We’d all stopped using our phones and computers. It didn’t even occur to me until he said it. Maco and I had been talking and listening to the radio a lot, but aside from that, we hadn’t really engaged with any technology. It seemed perfectly natural until Harry said something.

Ploss showed up at my house a couple of days after we saw Harry. He had a big grainy picture in his hands. I recognized the man immediately.

“Bertrand Russell Arthur Williams,” I said.
 

“Who’s that?” Maco asked. He and I were talking in the living room when Ploss came over.

“He’s an old nightmare I had,” I said. “Why do you have a picture of him?” I asked Ploss.

“He was working for that computer program down in North Carolina,” Detective Ploss said.

“What? Doing what?”

“Helping her manufacture robots. Probably the ones that killed James Owens. Probably the one that ran me down, and possibly the other ones as well.”

“Great, another evangelist?” Maco asked.

“Why are you showing me this?” I asked.

“We chased him from the manufacturing facility. We got a friend to take him to a local homeless shelter. He apparently made his way back to the plant sometime after you guys shut down the program. Based on our report, they sent a team in there to collect the robots. They found Bert’s body.”

“He’s dead?” I asked.

Ploss nodded and then seemed to remember that Maco couldn’t see him. “Yes,” he said. “He had taken apart a bunch of the robots and was building a new one. He must have gotten his wires crossed. He was electrocuted.”

I shook my head.

“For the best, I guess,” I said. “He was a tortured soul. Pretty dangerous, too.”

Ploss nodded.

“We did some research into the guy when he turned up dead. We found the connection to you, so I thought you would want to know.”

“Thank you,” I said.

After Ploss left, Maco sat on the couch, facing away from the window. He pulled up the bottom of his mask and squinted against the light. He had been cheating little glimpses at the world more and more. The doctor told him not to, but Maco was never big on following instructions.

“You going to find me a new job when I can see again?” Maco asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’m not sure if I’m still in that business.”

“What else would you do?”

“Maybe I’ll retire,” I said.
 

“You can’t do that,” he said. “You haven’t heard what kind of job I’m looking for.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. Maco had always been one of the easiest people to place. He worked network security and little else. His reputation preceded him, and I always knew I could find him work in a heartbeat.

“I think I’d like to work in a vineyard,” Maco said.

“Really,” I said.

“Yeah. Maybe down in the Shenandoah Valley. There are a bunch of vineyards down there, right?” Maco asked.

“You think they have an unrecognized need for network security down there?” I asked.

“No. Who said anything about networks? I just thought I might want to work with grapes. Just give me a shovel or whatever and point me in the right direction.”