Lawrence Watt-Evans: The Spartacus File

“Do you know much about that sort of thing?” Casper asked, looking up, wondering if Leonid might actually have a brain after all.

“Leonid works for a security firm,” Mirim said.

“It's part of my job to know what's going on,” Leonid said smugly.

“And there's been a lot of this going on?” Casper asked.

Leonid shrugged, then held up his hand for silence. “The SWAT team's on now. Let's see them take this guy down.”

They watched as the cameras followed the SWAT team moving into position. Leonid grunted with pleasure when a team sniper fired a single round, killing Polnovick as he sat in the cab of the crane.

A thin stream of crimson trailed down the rusty metal siding below the cab window, and the news camera zoomed in.

“Oh, God,” Cecelia said, flinching at the sight. Casper took her hand and squeezed it.

“It could have been a lot worse,” he said.

“Sure,” Leonid agreed. “Only nineteen dead and twenty injured. Why, just last month a dam in Kyrgyz was blown up. Over four hundred people were drowned. And the fighting's still going on in Russia.”

“Let's not dwell on it, huh?” Mirim asked.

“Just pointing out how lucky we are to live in the States.”

“I'd feel lucky if I could get something to eat,” Casper interrupted.

“Good idea,” Cecelia quickly agreed. “Give me a hand, Cas?”

“Sure.” Casper followed her to the kitchen. As soon as they were around the corner, he lowered his voice and asked, “Where'd Mirim find that ape?”

“Shh. I don't know. He doesn't come by here very often. Mirim usually goes over to his apartment.”

“Probably just as well. What do you have for dinner?”

“Chicken sounds good.” Cecelia pulled the instruction strip off the end of the box of a frozen chicken diner, put the box into the heat chamber of the oven, and fed the instruction strip into the oven's control panel. The defrost cycle began immediately.

“Have you got any plans for after dinner?” Casper asked.

“I'm open to suggestions. You got any?”

“Not offhand, but tomorrow's Saturday-no work even if they get the mess cleaned up. It's a good night to stay out late.”

“Sounds like a good idea. I'll order a newspaper and we'll decide what to do after dinner.” She leaned back and kissed him.

When they got back from the movie Cecelia decided that it was far too late to send Casper home-especially with the headache he had developed. Instead she demonstrated that she had some interesting ways to take his mind off the pain.

A single window near the top of NeuroTalents LLC building showed a light long past closing. Behind that window five men and three women were holding an urgent meeting, called hastily that afternoon. All of these people were unhappy. Half were angry, and the other half were more than a little frightened.

“You're sure it was our doing?” the man at the head of the table asked, glaring at one of the young executives.

The executive replied unhappily, “We're still investigating, sir, but it does look that way. Yesterday the subject in question, Lester Polnovick, had an appointment for an ordinary pre-programmed imprinting to learn accounting, personnel management, and computer skills. This wasn't a corporate contract; he'd saved up for it himself, to improve his employment prospects. He showed up on time, and was handled according to normal procedure, but our records indicate that instead of the package he had requested, he received an optimization imprinting. One that had nothing to do with the skills he had wanted.”

“How did that happen?” the man at the head of the table demanded. “Don't we have technicians watching for this sort of thing? My lord, what are we paying them for?”

“Well, uh… well, yes, sir, we do. They saw that there was an optimization in progress, but the technicians don't necessarily know what a particular client is in for. That's all supposed to be taken care of by the computer; when the contracts are drawn up the computer is told what's wanted, and from then on it's all up to the machines.”

“Nobody checked? After all, we don't do a lot of optimizations.”

“Nobody checked. The computer said it was following the contract, and the technicians believed it.”

“All right, then, was the contract drawn up correctly?”

“Yes sir, it was, and the right information was fed into the computer at that time. We have a hardcopy record, with print-out time and date, and it was correct.”

“So it was changed? What this man was supposed to get changed somewhere along the line?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, then, why did the computer make the change? Who told it to?”

“That's not my department, sir.” The executive looked with relief at the woman who sat across the table from him. She cleared her throat nervously.

“Mr. Yamashiro,” she said, “it appears to have been a hardware failure. A bad disk sector, compounded by a previously-unknown bug in the error-handling code.”

The chairman glared. “How could that happen?”

“Uh… poor maintenance, apparently.” She looked embarrassed.

Yamashiro stared at her for a moment, then demanded, “Who's responsible for that?”

“We don't know yet.”

Yamashiro snapped, “Find out.” Then he sighed. “All right, what's the damage? What exactly happened? What did this bad disk do?”

“Well, sir, when the client came in for his appointment, he was scheduled for a pre-programmed imprinting in small business accounting and management. The computer lost a variable, and defaulted to an optimization program.” She paused for breath.

“Go on,” Yamashiro told her. “What sort of optimization?”

“Well, that's the tricky part,” the woman said. She glanced at her notes. “The switch appears to have bypassed three entire levels of security-if I may say so, sir, whoever put together the unified software should be fired and blacklisted, because that shouldn't have been possible. The error-handling code apparently assumes that any lost variable should be assigned the maximum available value-I suppose the idea was to go for maximum flexibility, but the effect is to bypass limits and safeguards. That's bad programming.”

Yamashiro nodded. “We bought it from the lowest bidder,” he said. “Sometimes you get what you pay for.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go on,” the chairman said. “What happened?”

The woman nodded and continued, “The computer accessed highly classified files, material we developed jointly with… with a certain client.” She looked up. “You will recall that transaction two years ago?”

Yamashiro nodded. “You mean the black-budget government work. I don't think you need to be coy; we're all grown-ups here tonight.”

“Yes.” She continued, “The computer examined only these classified files as its available options, and finally chose the Godzilla File as the best fit for this particular subject.”

“The Godzilla File,” Yamashiro said. His fingers tapped the table.

“Yes, sir.”

“There's something in there called the Godzilla File?”

“Yes, sir.”

After a second of angry silence, Yamashiro demanded, “Who the hell gave it a stupid name like that?”

“Well, sir, the names are generally chosen to reflect the nature of the file. For example, the Ninja File programs the recipient as an assassin, the Houdini File…”

Yamashiro interrupted, “I don't need the whole list. All right, they've all got cutesy names. So what, exactly, is this Godzilla File?”

“Demolitions and other related skills, primarily-intended for sabotage and terrorism overseas, I suppose. It's mostly concerned with the destruction of urban areas. The title refers to the old-time movie monster, for obvious reasons. And it's a compulsory patterning-the recipient feels a need to use his new skills.”