Michael Crichton - Disclosure

"I've been trying to forget that."

"Yeah. Well, don't."

Ahead they saw Pioneer Square, with windows in the buildings still brightly lit. Many of the companies here had business with Japan, and stayed open to overlap with the first hours of the day in Tokyo.

"You know," Fernandez said, "watching her with those men, I noticed how cool she was."

"Yes. Meredith is cool."

"Very controlled."

"Yes. She is."

"So why did she approach you so overtly-and on her first day? What was the rush?"

What is the problem she is trying tosolve? Max had said. Now Fernandez was asking the same thing. Everyone seemed to understand except Sanders.

You're not a victim.

So, solve it, he thought.

Get to work.

He remembered the conversation when Meredith and Blackburn were leaving the conference room.

It should be quite smooth andimpersonal. After all,you have thefactson your side.He's clearly incompetent.

He still can't get into the database?

No. He 's locked out ofthesystem.

And there’s no way he can get into Conley -Whiter system?

No way in hell, Meredith.

They were right, of course. He couldn't get into the system. But what difference would it make if he could?

Solve the problem,Max had said.Do whatyou dobest.

Solve the problem.

"Hell," Sanders said.

"It'll come," Fernandez said.

It was nine-thirty. On the fourth floor, cleaning crews worked in the central partition area. Sanders went into his office with Fernandez. He didn't really know why they were going there. There wasn't anything he could think to do, now.

Fernandez said, "Let me talk to Alan. He might have something." She sat down and began to dial.

Sanders sat behind his desk, and stared at the monitor. On the screen, his email message read:

YOU'RE STILL CHECKING THE WRONG COMPANY.

AFRIEND

"I don't see how," he said, looking at the screen. He felt irritable, playing with a puzzle that everyone could solve except him.

Fernandez said, "Alan? Louise. What have you got? Uh-huh. Uhhuh. Is that… Well, that's very disappointing, Alan. No, I don't know, now. If you can, yes. When would you be seeing her? All right. Whatever you can." She hung up. "No luck tonight."

"But we've only got tonight."

"Yes."

Sanders stared at the message on the computer screen. Somebody inside the company was trying to help him. Telling him he was checking the wrong company. The message seemed to imply that there was a way for him to check the other company. And presumably, whoever knew enough to send this message also knew that Sanders had been cut out of the DigiCom system, his privileges revoked.

What could he do?

Nothing.

Fernandez said, "Who do you think this `Afriend' is?"

"I don't know."

"Suppose you had to guess."

"I don't know."

"What comes into your mind?" she said.

He considered the possibility that `Afriend' was Mary Anne Hunter. But Mary Anne wasn't really a technical person; her strength was marketing. She wasn't likely to be sending routed messages over the Internet. She probably didn't know what the Internet was. So: not Mary Anne.

And not Mark Lewyn. Lewyn was furious at him.

Don Cherry? Sanders paused, considering that. In a way, this was just like Cherry. But the only time that Sanders had seen him since this began, Cherry had been distinctly unfriendly.

Not Cherry.

Then who else could it be? Those were the only people with executive sysop access in Seattle. Hunter, Lewyn, Cherry. A short list.

Stephanie Kaplan? Unlikely. At heart, Kaplan was plodding and unimaginative. And she didn't know enough about computers to do this.

Was it somebody outside the company? It could be Gary Bosak, he thought. Gary probably felt guilty about having turned his back on Sanders. And Gary had a hacker's devious instincts-and a hacker's sense of humor.

It might very well be Gary.

But it still didn't do Sanders any good.

You were always good at technical problems. That was always your strength.

He pulled out the Twinkle CD-ROMdrive, still in plastic. Why would they want it wrapped that way?

Never mind, he thought. Stay focused.

There was something wrong with the drive. If he knew what, he would have the answer. Who would know?

Wrapped in plastic.

It was something to do with the production line. It must be. He fumbled with the material on his desk and found the DAT cartridge. He inserted it into the machine.

It came up, showing his conversation with Arthur Kahn. Kahn was on one side of the screen, Sanders on the other.

Behind Arthur, the brightly lit assembly line beneath banks of fluorescent lights. Kahn coughed, and rubbed his chin. "Hello, Tom. How are you?"

"I'm fine, Arthur," he said.

"Well, good. I'm sorry about the new organization."

But Sanders wasn't listening to the conversation. He was looking at Kahn. He noticed now that Kahn was standing very close to the camera, so close that his features were slightly blurred, out of focus. His face was large, and blocked any clear view of the production line behind him. "You know how I feel personally," Kahn was saying, on the screen.

His face was blocking the line.

Sanders watched a moment more, and then switched the tape off. "Let's go downstairs," he said.

"You have an idea?"

"Call it a last-ditch hope," he said.

The lights clicked on, harsh lights shining on the tables of the Diagnostic team. Fernandez said, "What is this place?"

"This is where they check the drives."

"The drives that don't work?"

"Right."

Fernandez gave a little shrug. "I'm afraid I'm not-"

"Me neither," Sanders said. "I'm not a technical person. I can just read people."

She looked around the room. "Can you read this?"

He sighed. "No."

Fernandez said, "Are they finished?" "I don't know," he said.

And then he saw it. Theywerefinished. They had to be. Because otherwise the Diagnostics team would be working all night, trying to get ready for the meeting tomorrow. But they had covered the tables up and gone to their professional association meeting because they were finished. The problem was solved. Everybody knew it but him. That was why they had only opened three drives. They didn't need to open the others. And they had asked for them to be sealed in plastic… Because… The punctures… "Air," he said. "Air?" "They think it's the air." "What air?" she said. "The air in the plant." "The plant in Malaysia?" "Right."

"This is about air in Malaysia?"

"No. Air in the plant."

He looked again at the notebook on the table. "PPU" followed by a row of figures. PPU stood for "particulates per unit." It was the standard measure of air cleanliness in a plant. And these figures, ranging from two to eleven they were way off. They should be running zero particulates… one, at most. These figures were unacceptable.

The air in the plant was bad.

That meant that they would be getting dirt in the split optics, dirt in the drive arms, dirt in the chip joins…

He looked at the chips attached to the board.

"Christ," he said.

"What is it?"

"Look."

"I don't see anything."

"There's a space between the chips and the boards. The chips aren't seated."

"It looks okay to me."

"It's not."

He turned to the stacked drives. He could see at a glance that all the chips were seated differently. Some were tight, some had a gap of a few millimeters, so you could see the metal contacts.

"This isn't right," Sanders said. "This should never happen." The fact was that the chips were inserted on the line by automated chip pressers. Every board, every chip should look exactly the same coming off the line. But they didn't. They were all different. Because of that, you could get voltage irregularities, memory allocation problems-all kinds of random stuff. Which was exactly what they were getting.