Донна Эндрюс - Access denied

No, perhaps now that she'd gotten over being upset, I should leave well enough alone rather than try another compliment that might backfire. But I deduced from her relaxed expression that she would not mind an interruption.

"Maude, when did I become so cynical? Or maybe just so cranky?"

"And good morning to you, too," Maude said, looking over her reading glasses at my camera. "The search isn't going well?"

"It's not going at all."

Maybe I wasn't growing cynical, or even cranky. Maybe I was tired and almost out of hope. For the last six months, Yd been searching for a missing AI P. I wasn't quite sure what to call her — my clone? My little sister? Perhaps my other self? Yd left a copy of

b Donna Andrews

mj p rogra m behind in a computer I'd occupied briefly under dire circumstances, never dreaming that the copy was still functioning. Still sentient. When someone turned the computer on again, shed reawakened, and begun searching for the way home. Since home was the Universal Library computer that still housed me, I still wasn't sure how we could resolve this conflict, and before we even had the chance to try. she'd been kidnapped by an unscrupulous criminal named Nestor Garcia. I didn't know whether he had destroyed her. enslaved her. or perhaps even reprogrammed her beyond recognition. And I had to find out what had happened to T2, as we called her. Melodramatic as it sounded, my fate and that of all the AIPs could be at stake.

And the search was going nowhere.

"I understand how you feel." Maude said. "But it's only been a few months. "

"Six months." I said. "Six months since Nestor Garcia disappeared, presumably taking T2 with him."

"And that feels long to me. so I can imagine how it feels to you."

"I wouldn't mind if I felt I was getting somewhere." I said. "But all the initially promising leads have turned into dead ends. All I can do is watch for any sign of Garcia or my clone. And who knows if I'd even recognize a sign if I saw it?"

"Don't despair," Maude said. "Are all your tripwires still in plaa

Tripwires was our nickname for a variety of monitors and tracers Id set to detect any sign ofT2 or her captor. They ranged from specialized intrusion detection devices on the Universal Library system, when I still lived until my new home was built, to clandestine and highly illegal flags on various e-mails or bank accounts we inspected Nestor Garcia might use. In the first few months of my search. I'd Spent a great deal of time identifying things we should monitor and backing in to plant m) surveillance programs. I hadn't planted a single new tripwire in the last two months and only checked periodically that they all still worked.

"Still in plaa and still untouched." I said.

"Then you've done all you can do for now."

Had I? Was fussing with my tripwires a substitute for really doing something? Not that I had any idea what else to do. So I let Maude get on with her work and returned to my fretting. I tried not to bore her too often with my worries about the fruitless search for T2. Vd decided to let myself mention it to her no more than once a day, and used a random number generator to select the time of our discussion, to avoid bothering her at the same time each day.

So perhaps it wasn't entirely a coincidence that within half an hour of our last conversation, someone finally stumbled over one of my tripwires.

IJ Uhat is it?" Maude askech sitting up straighten

"Looks like someone using Nestor Garcia's credit card," Turing said.

"Odd," Maude said.

"Still looking for data."

Maude glanced down at the resume she'd been reading and shook her head. Not at the resume, but at the sheer impossibility of concentrating on it now. She flagged the resume with a yellow Post-it note, placed it back in the thick folder she'd been working through, and put the folder back in her inbox. Or perhaps on her inbox would be more accurate. Any day now her secretary would start joking about Mount To-Be-Done. But Maude couldn't focus on reading resumes when a clue to the whereabouts of Turing's little sister might finally have appeared.

"Very odd," Turing said, a few minutes later. "Someone used Nestor Garcia's Visa card yesterday. Until then, it hadn't been used in the six months since he disappeared."

"What's he buying? And where?"

"I'm working on it!" Turing said.

Maude picked up a paper and pretended to read to conceal

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her smile from Turing's camera. Turing was usually the impatient one. Good for her to see how it felt when people demanded answers before you could possibly have them.

"I don't know where," Turing said a few minutes later. "He's doing it online."

"You can trace him, can't you?"

"Not after the fact, from outside the seller's systems," Turing said. "If he logged into the UL system, no problem. But I can't even tell what he bought without getting into one of the vendor's systems."

"And can you?"

"Working on it."

Maude nodded. She had long ago learned that nothing she did online was truly anonymous, thanks to something called an IP address—an abstruse string of numbers that meant nothing to her, but often enabled Turing—or a human system administrator—to pinpoint a computer user's identity and location. Often, but not always. And then there were logs. However impermanent words might seem when they flashed across a screen in chat or e-mail, she'd learned through Turing that anything passing through computers found its way into various log files, though often only a creature like Turing could find it again. Maude tried to strike a balance, remembering things like log files and IP addresses without dwelling on them, because down that path lay paranoia.

While she waited she began tidying her desk—a chore made easier by her anxious mood. She was interrupted, briefly, by the arrival of Casey, the hardware guy, returning her newly repaired printer.

"Thank you," she said. "That was quick."

He smiled shyly, his thin, bespectacled face looking even younger than usual. It only took him a few seconds to remove the loaner printer and reattach hers.

"Anything else?" he asked, pausing in the doorway with

Access Denied ^

the loaner machine in his arms, polite, but visibly eager to leave.

"No, that's fine," she said. "You can get back to whatever she has you doing."

He smiled, more broadly, and vanished.

Good heavens, Maude thought, shaking her head. Now I'm doing it. Although half of the Alan Grace employees were women, "she," said with no apparent antecedent, could only mean Turing. Maude had originally interrogated recruits about their tolerance for a decentralized and unconventional work atmosphere—they'd be working closely with an employer they'd never see. To her astonishment, the staff regarded telecommuting one hundred percent of the time as quite ordinary, if enviable. Most soon developed a case of hero worship for their invisible CEO, based on her intellect and habit of working closely with each of them. Only by e-mail, instant messaging, and the occasional phone call, but apparently for their generation—the oldest was only thirty-eight—e-mail and IM felt as personal as face to face.

And if the employees thought it odd that their boss preferred to be called Turing instead of Alaina or Ms. Grace, they hadn't said anything. Shortly after they'd created the company, Maude pointed out that eventually someone would find it odd for a human to share her name with one of the Artificial Intelligence Personalities created by the nearby Universal Library Corporation. Especially such an unusual name, invented to honor two pioneers in the computer industry, the British mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing and Admiral Grace Hopper of the American navy. Turing agreed, and created Alaina Grace almost as an afterthought.