Robert Sawyer: Red Planet Blues

“You’ll owe me a nice round of drinks at The Bent Chisel,” said Juan.

“No problem,” I said. “I’ll put it on my tab.”

Juan smiled and stretched his arms out in front of him, fingers interlocked, and cracked his knuckles, like a safecracker preparing to get down to work. Then he took the now-clean seat in front of Pickover’s computer cube, tilted the nearby monitor up a bit, pulled a keyboard into place, and began to type. “How do you lock your files?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the monitor.

“A verbal passphrase,” said Pickover.

“Anybody besides you know it?”

“No.”

“And it’s not written down anywhere?”

“No, well… not as such.”

Juan turned his head, looking up at Pickover. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a line from a book. If I ever forget the exact wording, I can always look it up.”

Juan shook his head in disgust. “You should always use random passphrases.” He typed keys.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s totally secure,” said Pickover. “No one would guess—”

Juan interrupted. “—that your passphrase is ‘Those privileged to be present—’”

I saw Pickover’s artificial jaw drop. “My God. How did you know that?”

Juan pointed to some data on the screen. “It’s the first thing that was inputted by the only outside access your system has had in weeks.”

“I thought passphrases were hidden from view when entered,” said Pickover.

“Sure they are,” said Juan. “But the comm program has a buffer; it’s in there. Look.”

Juan shifted in the chair so that Pickover could see the screen clearly over his shoulder. “That’s… well, that’s very strange,” Pickover said.

“What?”

“Well, sure, that’s my passphrase, but it’s not quite right.”

I loomed in to have a peek at the screen, too. “How do you mean?”

“Well,” said Pickover, “see, my passphrase is ‘Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes’—it’s from the opening of The Man of Property, the first book of the Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. I love that phrase because of the alliteration—‘privileged to be present,’ ‘family festival of the Forsytes.’ Makes it easy to remember.”

Juan shook his head in you-can’t-teach-people-anything disgust. Pickover went on. “But, see, whoever it was typed even more.”

I looked at the glowing string of letters. In full it said: Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen them dine at half past eight, enjoying seven courses.

“It’s too much?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said Pickover, nodding. “My passphrase ends with the word ‘Forsytes.’”

Juan was stroking his receding chin. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “The files would unlock the moment the phrase was complete; the rest would just be discarded—systems that principally work with spoken commands don’t require you to press the enter key.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Pickover. “But the rest of it isn’t what Galsworthy wrote. It’s not even close. The Man of Property is my favorite book; I know it well. The full opening line is ‘Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight—an upper middle-class family in full plumage.’ Nothing about the time they ate, or how many courses they had.”

Juan pointed at the text on screen as if it had to be the correct version. “Are you sure?”

“Of course!” replied Pickover. “Do a search and see for yourself.”

I frowned. “No one but you knows your passphrase, right?”

Pickover nodded vigorously. “I live alone, and I don’t have many friends; I’m a quiet sort. There’s no one I’ve ever told, and no one who could have ever overheard me saying it, or seen me typing it in.”

“Somebody found it out,” said Juan.

Pickover looked at me, then down at Juan. “I think…” he said, beginning slowly, giving me a chance to stop him, I guess, before he said too much. But I let him go on. “I think that the information was extracted from a scan of my mind made by NewYou.”

Juan crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Impossible.”

“What?” said Pickover, and “Why?” said I.

“Can’t be done,” said Juan. “We know how to copy the vast array of interconnections that make up a human mind, and we know how to reinstantiate those connections on an artificial substrate. But we don’t know how to decode them; nobody does. There’s simply no way to sift through a digital copy of a mind and extract specific data.”

Damn! If Juan was right—and he always was in computing matters—then all this business with Pickover was a red herring. There probably was no bootleg scan of his mind; despite his protestations of being careful, someone likely had just overheard his passphrase and decided to go hunting through his files. While I was wasting time on this, Joshua Wilkins was doubtless slipping further out of my grasp.

Still, it was worth continuing this line of investigation for a few minutes more. “Any sign of where the access attempt was made?” I asked Juan.

He shook his head. “No. Whoever did it knew what they were doing; they covered their tracks well. The attempt came over an outside line—that’s all I can tell for sure.”

I nodded. “Okay. Thanks, Juan. Appreciate your help.”

He got up. “My pleasure. Now, how ’bout that drink?”

I opened my mouth to say yes, but then it hit me—what Wilkins must be doing. “Umm, later, okay? I’ve got some more things to take care of here.”

Juan frowned; he’d clearly hoped to collect his booze immediately. But I started maneuvering him toward the door. “Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.”

“Um, sure, Alex,” he said. He was obviously aware he was being given the bum’s rush, but he wasn’t fighting it too much. “Anytime.”

“Yes, thank you awfully, Mr. Santos,” said Pickover.

“No problem. If—”

“See you later, Juan,” I said, opening the door for him. “Thanks so much.” I tipped my nonexistent hat at him.

Juan shrugged, clearly aware that something was up but not motivated sufficiently to find out what. He went through the door, and I hit the button that caused it to slide shut behind him. As soon as it was closed, I put an arm around Pickover’s shoulders and propelled him back to the computer. I pointed at the line Juan had highlighted on the screen and read the ending of it aloud: “‘… dine at half past eight, enjoying seven courses.’”

Pickover nodded. “Yes. So?”

“Numbers are often coded info,” I said. “‘Half past eight; seven courses.’ What’s that mean to you?”

“To me? Nothing. Back when I ate, I liked to do it much earlier than that, and I never had more than one course.”

“But it could be a message.”

“From whom?”

There was no easy way to tell him this. “From you to you.”

He drew his artificial eyebrows together. “What?”

“Look,” I said, motioning for him to sit down in front of the computer, “Juan is doubtless right. You can’t sift a digital scan of a human mind for information.”

“But that must be what Wilkins is doing.”

I shook my head. “No. The only way to find out what’s in a mind is to ask it interactively.”

“But… but no one’s asked me my passphrase.”

“No one has asked this you. But Joshua Wilkins must have transferred the extra copy of your mind into a body, so that he could deal with it directly. And that extra copy must have revealed your passphrase to him.”

“You mean… you mean there’s another me? Another conscious me?”