Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spartacus File

Well, there was the obvious one, the only other thing the mysterious R.S. Chi had sent him. Casper brought up PXP, and listed the first key as: “DearMr. B.: IfI'mmistakenaboutyouridentity, Iapologize, butIassumeit'syou. IfyoureallyarewhoIthinkyouare-friendlyg hosttree-Ithinkyou'llbeveryinterestedintheattachedfile, SPXPTA. DOC-it providesthebasicworkingspecsforanoptimizationprogramthatwasaccidentall yrunatNeuroTalents'Philadelphiafacilitynottoolongago, aswellassomeotherrelevantinformation.”

That was presumably the private key; now he needed the public one. He had an idea how to find that; he googled on newsgroup posts by “R.S. Chi.”

768 articles were listed; he picked one at random and opened it, and sure enough, the signature file at the bottom included a public PXP key. He plugged it in and clicked on “Display.”

The decrypted file immediately began to scroll across the screen in plain English. Casper leaned forward and watched. When it was completed he read it through carefully, then read it again.

When he had finished he sat back in his chair and stared at the screen.

If Casper's guess was right, “R.S. Chi” was really someone named Robert J. Schiano, whose name turned up all through the notes in the file. And this Schiano was proud enough of his handiwork that he'd wanted Casper to see some of it clearly-because Casper Beech was intimately involved in it, whether he liked it or not.

At least, Casper thought, he now had a name for the thing in his head, and a pretty good idea of what it was supposed to do.

The thing in his head was the Spartacus File. And he, Casper Beech, was supposed to be the new Spartacus, the slave who would lead an army of slaves in a rebellion against the oppressive republic that had enslaved them.

Spartacus, the gladiator. Spartacus, the rebel. Spartacus, the great general.

Casper Beech smiled as he thought that over. It wasn't anything he would ever have asked to be, it wasn't anything he had ever imagined becoming, but here it was, thrust upon him whether he wanted it or not.

And he had to admit to himself that he rather liked the idea.

Rose didn't like her assignment. She didn't like it at all.

Casper wished Colby had asked Tasha or Ed or one of the others to help him instead, but they weren't around or weren't willing, and Rose had been agreeable right up until Casper had explained where he wanted her to go.

Now, though, she wasn't happy.

“When Colby said I should help you out, I thought you just wanted me to, like, put things in the bank, or sign checks, or stuff like that,” Rose said. “Nobody said anything about talking to reporters.”

“You don't have to talk to any reporters,” Casper assured her. “You just drop this disk off at the station, with the note. You don't have to talk to anyone. In fact, the fewer people you talk to there, the better.”

“Well, how do you know they'll put it on the news, then?” she demanded.

Casper just smiled. “Don't worry,” he said. “If they don't we'll try again.”

Rose wasn't crazy about that idea, either, but she didn't want to be unreasonable. She picked up the little pouch with obvious distaste, and left.

Casper and Cecelia watched her go.

“Just what are you trying to accomplish, Casper?” Cecelia asked.

“I'm trying to take over the country,” Casper said, quite sincerely. Cecelia snorted derisively.

“I thought you just wanted to stay alive,” she said.

Casper shrugged. “They programmed me to overthrow the present regime and set up an American-style democratic government-a real one, not the oligarchy we have now. I'm trying to oblige them.”

“You do anything like that, and they will kill you,” Cecelia retorted.

“They're going to kill me anyway, if I let them.”

“They've lost track of you, haven't they? Why can't you just stay underground?”

“Because first off, they're going to keep looking; and second, they programmed me not to. I didn't just get an ordinary imprint, where I can use it or not as I please; I got optimized, and the optimization's got compulsions built into it. I'm compelled to rebel against the present government, and authority in general.”

“Then don't you have to rebel against your programming, too?”

Casper smiled. “I am,” he said. “They programmed me to stage a violent revolution-armies, battles, death and destruction. I'm not going to do it that way, because it won't work here.”

“But you're still trying to take over the country?”

Casper nodded.

“You're nuts.”

“Maybe,” Casper agreed. “Or maybe I'm as sane as anybody. Sure, I'm following the programming from the Spartacus File, but why is that any crazier than following the patchwork programming we all build up from our parents, and our genes, and our schools and friends and jobs?”

“Because it's going to get you killed.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“And what makes you think you can?” she demanded angrily, her hands on her hips. “Casper, you say they've programmed you to be the new Spartacus-has anyone pointed out to you that Spartacus died? The Romans crucified him! He died on a cross on the Appian Way-I looked it up. So are you planning to wind up nailed to a cross somewhere on the Jersey Turnpike?”

Casper blinked at her, surprised and pleased by her anger. He took it to mean that she still cared for him; he'd begun to wonder. Since his optimization he and Cecelia had been drifting apart; they shared a bedroom upstairs, courtesy of Colby's housing arrangements, but they hadn't done much but sleep in it. Cecelia didn't seem to like the new, more assertive Casper Beech as well as she'd liked the wimpy original.

“More likely a bullet-riddled corpse in the Schuylkill River,” he said. “And no, that's not what I want-but Celia, it's too late to stop now. They're already determined to kill me.”

“Are you sure? ” she asked, and he thought her eyes looked moist. “Are you sure that's not their damn program, telling you that, making you assume they're after you, when they aren't?”

“They did try to kill me,” he said. “They started it. They came after me before I'd done anything, before I had any idea what they'd put in my head. Why would they stop?”

“I'll make them stop,” she said. “I can do that, Cas-I'm a lawyer, and a damn good one. It's a matter of political economics, a P.R. problem and a legal problem. If we make it too expensive for them politically, they won't kill you. You don't have to take over the fucking country, Cas! If you do that they will kill you.”

He stared at her thoughtfully.

“You know,” he said, “I think we may have come up with the same answer to two different questions. The first step in my campaign is to make it too politically expensive to kill me. After all, dead men don't win elections. They may vote in them in Chicago, but they don't win them.”

She stared back. “Is that what you meant when you said that video is the first step in taking over the country?”

He nodded. “It's the next step in my campaign to stay alive,” he said.

“But it's just a bunch of ordinary loony-fringe rhetoric, half socialism and half libertarianism.”

Casper grimaced. He didn't think his speech was “loony fringe rhetoric"; he'd thought it was fairly reasonable populist stuff. Boring, but reasonable.

That wasn't the point, though. “That's just cover,” he said.

“What are you talking about? You put some sort of coded message in there?”

He shook his head. “No. Look, you know there's no way they're ever going to put that whole video on the news, right? Maybe on C-SPAN 4 or something, but not on the news, not even on CNN.”