B Larson: Spyware

“Damn it! Viruses aren’t supposed to hit everything at once,” Brenda said, her voice cracking. “Files, the disks, the network lines, our own sysop processes…”

Ray blinked as a dark thought came over him. “I think it’s stalling us, Brenda.”

“What?”

But even as he considered how to explain, he realized that there was no time to explain. If he was right, he needed to act fast, there was no time to lose. He rose and headed for the Door That Was Always Locked. Fumbling with the keys, he searched for the illegitimate copy of a master he had that opened virtually all the doors on the campus. He had gotten it from one of the janitors that had gotten tired of opening doors for him two summers ago.

Rhonda Wells, the Dean of Instruction, chose that moment to make her appearance. “I understand that we have a problem down here, Brenda,” she announced. “I’ve been in contact with the school President, and various authorities have been in contact with him. The FBI’s San Francisco office is in on this now, and their agents will be here within forty minutes. We aren’t to touch anything more until they arrive.” Wells was a tall woman with a firm handshake and a broad smile. Ray disliked her. She treated the faculty and staff as one would children who needed a firm but understanding hand.

“Ray?” said Brenda.

Wells seemed to notice Ray for the first time. She frowned. One of the kids was out of his seat. “What’s up, Ray?” she asked.

Ray made no reply. If he was right, it didn’t matter what the FBI wanted. The system had to be brought down. He finally had out the right key. He shoved it in the lock and twisted. The lock stuck for a moment, as the master key was a poor copy, but after a good bit of jiggling it popped open. He stepped into the darkened room full of the smell of ozone and flickering green, red and amber indicator lights. He began switching off systems, one after another. First the network switches, then the big routers that handled the feed to the internet and the grid, next the drives that were in the middle of the back-up.

“Ray? Ray!” said Wells from the doorway. She stepped inside and fumbled for the light switch. “Didn’t you hear me? We’re not supposed to touch anything!”

Ray found the main switch for the server’s CPU and flipped it. The effect was dramatic. The system made a dying, whirring sound, like a vacuum cleaner when it has pulled out its cord. Everything else died with it. He flipped several more switches. Glowing power lights dimmed and went out. Electric motors spun to a stop. Soon, the room was silent.

Wells had the lights on and now she stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She stared at Ray with a mixture of amazement and anger. “You killed it, didn’t you? Jesus, Ray, this isn’t like you.”

“It was stalling us,” said Ray weakly, suddenly feeling his tiredness and the stress of the day weighing him down all at once. He needed to sit down, but there weren’t any chairs in the room. Just dead hardware.

Wells shook her head. “How do you know what it was doing? It’s just a program some kid wrote, right?”

Ray shook his head. “No normal student wrote this monster,” he said, feeling out of breath. He didn’t have the energy to explain himself to Wells just now. He just hoped that he had acted in time.

“Probably one of your kids, I would guess. You teach all the graduate-level operating systems sections, don’t you? This is right up your alley.”

Ray was only half-listening. His head had decided to take this moment to start pounding and burning with a vengeance.

“You know, the FBI boys aren’t going to like this. They wanted to watch this thing in action, and you killed it. I think you really screwed the pooch this time, Ray,” Wells said. She frowned with a sudden thought. Her hand moved up to rub her face as she followed Ray out into the lab. “By the way, how did you get in here, anyway?”

Ray waved her off vaguely. He needed to sit. He needed some lunch and some coffee, too.

“What did you do? What do you mean gone? ” demanded Dr. Abrams, his over-sized eyes bulging more than usual behind his heavy glasses. “You destroyed my work, Vance?”

Ray looked up, met the professor’s eyes briefly, then looked away and rubbed his face. “It was already destroyed. The virus deleted the instructor’s accounts immediately.”

Abrams’ face went a shade darker. It had started out red, and was moving in stages toward purple. A vein bulged in his neck to match his thrusting eyes. “You turned it off. You stopped the backup. Those files could have been recovered. I am not a stupid man, Vance. Why do you treat me as if I am stupid?”

“I’m not,” said Ray, a new flash of pain warmed the back of his head. He heard an odd singing sound inside his mind. He struggled to maintain focus. Part of him wanted to tell Abrams that it wasn’t exactly a virus. Technically it was a worm, because it actively tried to transmit itself across the net. But he knew that a correction in terminology would not be welcomed right now. Not by anyone. “I don’t think the virus would have allowed the backup to finish. It was stalling us for time, time to get out to more servers. I couldn’t let the virus out.”

“Conjecture, Vance. Pure conjecture. You speak as if the virus was thinking, alive. It is only a program, written by one of your graduate students-”

“We don’t know that,” interjected Brenda defensively.

Abrams didn’t even acknowledge her. He wasn’t through with Ray yet. “Your ideas are absurd. You destroyed my work.”

“Yes, but I felt I had to.”

“You admit it?” Abrams demanded suddenly, excitement and victory rising in his voice. “You admit that you did this thing?”

“It was necessary.”

Abrams nodded quickly, several times. It was a bird-like gesture. He looked away. “Very well. Very well.”

“Look, Dr. Abrams, many people lost their research. You only lost the last two or three months worth-”

“The best months, Vance. The gene strand was nearly complete. The breakthrough work-”

“But you can recover. You must have some of it on your computer.”

“The files were too large.”

“Viruses are never pleasant. We must guard against them continually.”

Abrams narrowed his eyes and looked at Ray with new interest. “What we must guard against are those who create them, Vance. So, this is the kind of thing you teach our students to create, eh? Very well.”

Ray opened his mouth to say more, but suddenly the man turned on his heel and marched out of the lab.

“Boy, he really worked you over,” said Dr. Ingles. He stepped up and pulled a cigarette from his sports coat. Brenda watched with apprehension as he put it in his mouth, produced a lighter, then, just as he was about to light up, paused. Holding the lighter and the cigarette up, one in each hand, he gestured with them as he spoke. “When are you up for tenure, Ray?”

“Huh?” said Ray. “Umm, this year, I guess, Jim.”

Dr. Ingles fondled his cigarette, putting it into his mouth and sort of chewing on it. The tension in Brenda was evident. She hated smoking, especially in her lab. Dr. Ingles was one of the worst offenders, always seeming to forget that the world had changed and cigarettes had lost favor during the change.

Ingles nodded. “Second time at bat, eh?”

Ray blinked, wondering where Ingles was going with this. The man was rarely direct. “Right.”

Ingles flicked open the lighter, toyed with the thumbwheel. Brenda tensed visibly. He closed the lighter with a snap. “‘Very well.’ Abrams kept saying. I wonder what he meant?”

Ray felt a jolt in his deadened mind. “He’s on the approval committee this year.”