V. Larson - Spyware

While his brain wandered, Brenda finally saw fit to locate her key. She stuck it in the lock and twisted. She snapped on the lights and they went to the back where her office and the operators’ stations were.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Any reference to the name Santa, or Snow,” he said. “I want to see if anyone at this campus uses that type of handle.”

She stared at him for a second, then pursed her lips and nodded. He flicked on the monitors and they slowly came to life. The computers were already on, of course. They were never turned off unless there was a hardware failure or a scheduled maintenance shutdown.

He went right to work, first running a series of utilities to search the users for signs of the Huntress, or some other unusual super-user. He saw nothing that indicated that Agent Vasquez was laying in wait for him. She probably figured he was too smart to come back to the college. The thought made him smile. Maybe he was dumber than they thought.

Brenda watched him for a while without helping. She had her hands on her hips.

“What is it, Brenda?” he said without looking up.

“Ray, have you considered giving yourself up?” she asked quietly.

He looked at her. “I’ve got to find my son, Brenda.”

“But the authorities are looking for him. One man running around on the streets of Davis has got to be just distracting the police, rather than helping them. Maybe…” she trailed off.

As satisfied as he could be that no one was watching for him, Ray worked with a utility program to search each of the server hard drives for suspicious handles. Snower, Saint, Snelling and Snowman came up. He clicked on each handle in turn, reading the bio on the person that used the handle. They all turned out to be students, all of them female except for Snowman, who had dropped out of school as a psych major two semesters earlier. Ray had never met any of them to his knowledge. He sighed. What if Santa had nothing to do with the campus? It stood to reason that he was local, otherwise he would probably use a different bulletin board, and wouldn’t have met up with Nog. But what if he was just part of the community, or someone from the coast who Nog had met while making his millions in the gaming industry? A feeling of hopelessness swept over him, but quickly receded as he fought it back. He had to try anything and everything.

Finally, he noticed that Brenda was talking to him again. “They could really use your help Ray, with the virus,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Are you listening?”

“Ah, no. I was just thinking that it’s too bad that the search engines have broken down. I could really use the wider search utilities.”

“Everything is pretty much up again.”

“What? It is?” he asked.

“You’re out of touch. The NSA gave the all-clear two hours ago. That’s why I’m here in the middle of the night on a Friday. Even I have some life, you know.”

Two hours ago. “Then I’ve been wasting time,” he said. He immediately fired up a web-browser and the University homepage snapped into view. The University system was directly hooked to the net with an optical-fiber T-3 connection. With only a handful of users late Friday night and working on an operator’s station, the net was lightning fast even with all the virus problems.

Ray clicked into Gigablast, one of the less popular internet search engines. He quickly formed up a query and let it rip. It pulled up no less than sixty-two million possible web-pages to investigate. It listed the first twenty for him. Would he like to see the next twenty? At least it asked politely.

Ray sighed. He had to narrow the search. References to Santa were everywhere on the net.

Brenda grabbed his shoulder. He looked up.

“Aren’t you listening to me at all, Ray?” she demanded. Suddenly, he realized that she had been talking for some time.

“I’m sorry, but I’m really under pressure now,” he told her. “If Justin is out there somewhere, trapped somewhere, then he might not make it much longer,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “Of course, they might of… might of…” he swallowed. “They might have killed him already. I know that, but I have to work on the assumption that he is still out there and he needs my help.”

“Ray,” said Brenda, sitting beside him. “I know this is a very hard time for you. But I think you need to let the professionals work on this one.”

He finally looked at her and heard her words. His brow furrowed. “Look, they have twice as much manpower out to get me, the supposed virus-writer, as they do to find my son. I’m not letting anyone do this for me. If they can do it, fine, but if they can’t then I’ll have killed myself trying to do it where they failed. I’m not giving myself up until Justin is found.”

“But I can’t help but thinking that you’re digging a grave for yourself, Ray,” she told him. “If you’re innocent, that will come out in the investigation. You’re just making it all look worse by running.”

“If?” he asked. “Brenda, I am innocent.”

“Of course you are,” she quickly amended, not looking at him.

He turned back to the screen and started another search. “You know, it’s funny. Whenever someone is accused of something, people right away assume that there must be a grain of truth to it.”

“It’s not like that, Ray,” she said.

“The hell it’s not,” he said, turning back to her after he had clicked in another search. “Look, Brenda, are you my friend? Are you in this with me or not?”

Brenda was silent for a moment. She looked at him, then back toward the lab doors. “I suppose I’m with you, Ray,” she said quietly.

“It’s just that the virus is so advanced, and it came from here, and you really know about viruses, Ray,” she said to her hands.

“Yeah, I know it looks bad.”

“They say you’re on record for having released a virus before, Ray.”

“It was a stupid prank.”

“They found files at your house, Ray,” she told him.

He glanced at her, opened his mouth, then shut it again. He nodded to himself. “That’s it,” he said. “That must be why they took him. Justin must have seen them planting that stuff.”

“Ray?”

“What?”

“They say other things, too. Terrible things, Ray. About what you might have done with Justin. About why you are running and searching for him so frantically.”

Ray looked at her. She looked small and scared and it all made him feel sick. He didn’t say anything because he couldn’t.

Brenda stood up. “You won’t give yourself up, will you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I’ve got to go to the restroom again, Ray,” she said.

Four thousand search results. Still way too many. Ray nodded his head to her and started another search. While the search engine was working on it, he quickly dialed Mrs. Trumble’s number. He glanced back at the lab doors, but Brenda was still gone. When a sleepy Mrs. Trumble answered, he told her to write down Santa, Snowflake and the word ‘handles’ on a note for his wife. She began to tell him about her day, but he quickly begged off. When he hung up on her, she was still talking about something. He felt a bit bad about it, but he couldn’t chance anymore time on the line. After he hung up, he dialed 4–1 — 1 and immediately hung up again. That way, if someone tried the redial later, they would get nothing useful. He knew he was being paranoid, but figured that it couldn’t hurt.

Sometime later the lab doors opened again. Ray heard a different set of footsteps approaching. His stomach dropped away into a vast void that had opened up at his feet. Brenda had betrayed him. He should have expected it, but he hadn’t, not from her. He turned, fully expecting to see Agents Vasquez and Johansen, guns drawn.