Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

Marilyn dropped a hand between her legs and rubbed herself provocatively.

‘What’s the matter sugar?’ she cooed. ‘You one of them, or something?’ And, right on cue, Marilyn was immediately joined on screen by James Dean, wearing nothing else but the kind of gladiator-style outfit that would have looked very fetching in the heavy leather bars of Earls Court or Chiswick.

Before Jimmy could try and tempt me with his own particular brand of sexual allure, I typed ‘goodbye’ and then the Lombroso system’s password for the day which, according to my watch was due to expire in less than fifty minutes.

Marilyn and Jimmy disappeared as the password transported me into the basic operating system. Now I had to find the root directory with all the system files stored on it, and the easiest way of doing that was to reboot the system, to shut it down completely. So I pressed the right keys simultaneously and watched the screen clear itself of everything but a flashing ‘root’ prompt which told me that I was getting closer.

Next I told the computer to list all the sub-directories which were contained in the root. First up was the directory containing Lombroso personnel, and then several others which dealt with things like accounts, payroll, counselling procedures, PET scan operating procedures; last of all came the two subs I was particularly interested in accessing, which contained the super operating system and the VMN-negative database.

My optimistic attempt to immediately view the sub containing the VMN database was, as I had expected it would be, firmly denied with a reminder of the system’s first decretal, which was the confidentiality of this particular information. It seemed logical to assume that if I was going to be able to roam freely through the system as I wished, I would have to do it from the privileged access point of the so-called super operative — which in any system is usually the person who created it. So I accessed the super-op sub, and set about the creation of a trapdoor. I hadn’t been in there very long when I met Cerberus.

It’s difficult to say exactly how I triggered him. It could have been the very fact of my using an outside keyboard. Or it could have been the fact of my attempting to create a trapdoor from the super-operating sub into the VMN database, but suddenly there he was on-screen, a three-headed black dog graphic with blood-chilling sound effects, and guarding the system from anyone like me who sought to circumvent its first decretal. From the size and number of his teeth I was very glad I had not been wearing my Reality Approximation body suit. It was clear that I wasn’t going any further until I had dealt with him.

My intoxicated mind was already racing through a number of classically-inspired solutions. Could I drag the monster away, like Hercules, and release it outside of the Lombroso system, somewhere within the BRI’s ordinary administrative program files? Or, like Orpheus, could I lull the brute to sleep with the playing of my cithara or my lyre?

Well, I have always liked music and, quickly exiting the Lombroso system program, I set about the creation of a simple tune which I hoped might, in Congreve’s phrase, soothe the savage beast.

Re-typing the day’s password I faced Cerberus once more and played him my little melody, but to my surprise and irritation he shook each of his three heads, and growled, ‘I don’t like music, and what’s more Eurydice isn’t here. There are no women allowed in this particular nether world.’

Exiting the system once more I tried to remember how dead Greeks and Romans had been able to pass into Pluto’s kingdom without molestation. And wasn’t I forgetting Aeneas and the Sybil who had guided him through the Inferno? What was it that she had given Cerberus? A bone? No, that was not it. Some meat? No. It was a sop: a cake seasoned with poppies and honey with which she drugged the dog. And this was how the Greeks and the Romans had managed it too. A cake placed into the hands of the deceased. The only question was, what sort of cake might seem appetising to a computer-generated guard dog?

Cerberus was programmed to eat up anyone who attempted to disobey Lombroso’s first decretal which was to protect the confidentiality of its information. Thus the trick would be to create a cake that would enable Cerberus to fulfil a standard legitimate routine, specifically to eat someone or something, but which would hide a piece of unorthodox active instruction, specifically to fall asleep.

This took rather longer than I thought it would and by the time the cake was baked, so to speak, I could feel the effect of the cocaine beginning to wear off Even so, I was working at a furious pace and I don’t think that I could remember the exact lines of operating system code that I used in my programming recipe. However, the general effect was similar to a computer virus, except that the basic premise was to limit the action of the binary mechanism to Cerberus himself.

Back in the super-op sub-directory, I offered the shiny black beast the cake and, to my delight, he snapped it up greedily. He even licked his chops. For several seconds I waited to see if the ‘drug’ inside the cake would take effect. Then, almost as quickly as he had appeared, Cerberus fell to the bottom of the screen with a very audible computer SFX thud, and remained motionless.

With the system-guardian out of the way I returned to the trapdoor I had partially created. It seemed there were no other safeguards for halting unauthorised entry and so all I had to do was locate a set of partially accessible pages of data on how the VMN database was constructed, and then to progress from there. Think of it as like an architect knowing which walls were there to support a ceiling and which were not, and which walls might hide a ventilation shaft, or an inspection tunnel, through which a burglar might be able to pass.

Once the trapdoor was completed, I simply dropped through into the VMN database and, like some ghastly nouveau riche in an expensive restaurant ordering the waiters around as if he came there every night of the week, I told the computer to go and search for my file. Thus, in only a matter of a few seconds I had it and, in a few seconds more, had deleted it.

As with reference libraries, most major computer systems have a horror of missing material, and it’s normally one of the cardinal rules of electronic burglary that one leaves the database in the same condition as when one logged in. And so I accompanied my own heretical instruction to delete my file with a command that the computer make a hard copy of the whole VMN-negative database, in order that I should placate the system into permitting this one excision.

I don’t know that I meant to keep the hard copy I made on disk. As I say, at first it had been my intention merely to delete my own file. But then you don’t get to visit the underworld every day of the week. The more I thought about it, the greater was the temptation to do precisely what I had imagined some other unauthorised user doing, and retain the hard copy I had made of all the other VMN-negatives which Lombroso had recorded. Perhaps it was the drug which overcame whatever scruples I might have had about doing such a thing, but in the end the temptation was too great and I kept it.

It would be wrong to say that I knew what I was going to do with the list. 1 had certainly no intention of selling it to the News of the World. Money means little to me. Apart from that I had no more idea of what to do with it than I had of ethics or morals. It was something done on impulse, for which I made no apology since I firmly believe that one should be a creature of impulse. Principles and such things seem to me to be nonsense, unless of course they are principles of mathematics.