David Gerrold - When HARLIE Was One

Auberson dabbed at a spot on his shirt. “Right.” He moistened his napkin in his water glass and dabbed again. “To tell the truth, it’s been kind of unnerving to realize HARLIE can tap into any console be wants. It’s like having him peering over my shoulder all day long. I’m almost afraid to type a memo now — HARLIE can read it from inside the typer.”

“At least he hasn’t rewritten them for you yet.”

“Oh, no?” Auberson told him about the company’s annual report — how HARLIE had been displeased at not being mentioned in it and reedited the tape while it had been in the magtyper composer. “All they needed was one usable printout for the offset camera — and HARLIE wouldn’t let them have it.”

“How did you find out about it?”

“Annie. She mentioned it in conversation, day before yesterday. Of course, when I found out, I made HARLIE put it back the way it was supposed to be and erase all evidence of his meddling. But still, if he can do it with the annual report, he can do it with any of the company’s documents. Suppose he got it in his head to rewrite contracts or personal correspondence? Theoretically, it’s possible for him to order a million pounds of bananas in the company’s name. And it’d be legally binding too.”

“Mm,” said Handley. “Let’s just hope he never gets an urge for a banana split.” He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed it thoughtfully. “Still, it’s not as bad as it could have been. We discovered this in time to control it.”

“There’s more,” said Auberson. He told Don about the postcard.

The engineer nearly choked on his last bite. He swallowed hastily, took a few quick gulps of water, and said, “Do you have it with you?”

Auberson pulled it out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. Handley read it silently. “Notice what it’s printed on,” Auberson said. “A standard bank form.”

Handley nodded. “He reprogrammed the bank’s computer by telephone, right?”

“Right.”

“I realized he had that capability when we wired him into the Master Beast, but I didn’t think he’d use it.”

“Why shouldn’t he? Nobody told him not to — and even if we had, I doubt it would have done any good. You can’t tell someone not to use part of his own body.”

“Is that how HARLIE perceives it?”

“The Master Beast, he does,” Auberson said. “Other computers are merely a resource to be tapped as needed — when the time is available.”

“Hm.” Handley finished his coffee, then reread the postcard. His face creased into a frown. “One thing, Aubie, I don’t understand — why did he send the card in the first place?”

“Um, he did it as a joke.”

“A joke? Uh uh, I doubt he’d reveal a capability like this for a joke. And why through Annie?”

“The joke wasn’t on her. It was on me. Or actually, it was on both of us.” He gestured in annoyance. “There’s more to it than that.”

Handley glanced at him sharply, decided not to pursue the matter. He waved the postcard meaningfully. “Anyway, this confirms something I’ve been worrying about for a while.”

“That HARLIE can reprogram any other computer he can reach by telephone?”

Handley nodded. “Do you realize what that means? It means that HARLIE is effectively every computer in the world.” He decided to qualify the remark and added, “Or every computer he can reach.”

Auberson said hesitantly, “Well, I knew he could reprogram them, but—”

“Do you remember the VIRUS program?”

“Vaguely. Wasn’t it some kind of computer disease or malfunction?”

“Disease is closer. There was a science-fiction writer once who wrote a story about it — but the thing had been around a long time before that. It was a program that — well, you know what a virus is, don’t you? It’s pure DNA, a piece of renegade genetic information. It infects a normal cell and forces it to produce more viruses — viral DNA chains — instead of its normal protein. Well, the VIRUS program does the same thing.”

“Huh?”

Handley raised both hands, as if to erase his last paragraph. “Let me put it another way. You have a computer with an auto-dial phone link. You put the VIRUS program into it and it starts dialing phone numbers at random until it connects to another computer with an auto-dial. The VIRUS program then injects itself into the new computer. Or rather, it reprograms the new computer with a VIRUS program of its own and erases itself from the first computer. The second machine then begins to dial phone numbers at random until it connects with a third machine. You get the picture?”

Auberson was delighted at the audacity of it “It’s beautiful. It’s outrageous.”

“Oh, yeah,” Handley agreed dourly. “It’s fun to think about, but it was hell to get out of the system. The guy who wrote it had a few little extra goodies tacked onto it — well, I won’t go into any detail. I’ll just tell you that he also wrote a second program, only this one would cost you — it was called VACCINE.”

Auberson laughed again. “I think I get the point.”

“Anyway, for a while there, the VIRUS programs were getting out of hand. A lot of computer people never knew about it because their machines might be infected and cured within the space of a week or two, but there were some big companies that needed every moment of on-time — even with time-sharing. After a couple of months, that VIRUS program was costing them real money. It was taking up time that somebody else should have been using. Because it dialed numbers at random, it might stay in one computer for several months and another only for several days.”

“But there was only one VIRUS program, wasn’t there?”

“At first there was, but there were copies of it floating around, and various other people couldn’t resist starting plagues of their own. And somewhere along the line, one of them mutated.”

“Huh?”

“Evidently, there was some kind of garbling during transmission, perhaps a faulty phone link or a premature disconnection. In any case, copies of the program started appearing that didn’t have the self-erase order at the end. In other words, one machine could infect another and then both would be infected, dialing numbers at random until ultimately every phone-link computer in the world would be infected.”

“Not really—?”

“No,” admitted Handley. “The VACCINE program took care of most of them. Although, to tell the truth, rumor has it that there are still a couple of VIRUS programs floating around loose, ones with an immunity factor.”

“The whole thing is just crazy enough to be true, you know.”

“Believe me, it is. Or was. Anyway, what I’m getting at is this: There were a few people, programmers mostly, who realized that the VIRUS program was more than just a practical joke. For instance, why did it have to dial phone numbers at random? Why not provide it with a complete directory of other computers’ phone numbers?”

“Where would they get that?”

“The phone company.”

“Would they release such information?”

“You don’t even need to ask them. You feed a modified VIRUS program into the phone company’s computer. It searches the memory banks for phone numbers assigned to computers, makes a list of them, then dials your phone number and injects itself and its stolen information into your machine, where you can examine it at leisure.”

“Wow…” whispered Auberson.

“That’s not all. Once you have that list of phone numbers, you can tap into any computer you want, raid it for any information you want, and do it all without any possibility of being detected. Or , you could set the VIRUS program to alter information in another computer, falsify it according to your direction, or just scramble it at random, if you wanted to sabotage some other company.”