In Too Deep(35)

Melina took it with only a slight tremble to her fingers, then looked at the paper. “Cameron Dane Swagger, Master's in Applied Philosophy from the University of Georgetown. Granted . . . fourteen years ago."

I nodded, taking it back from her. "When I told you that I went to the University of Arizona at Flagstaff that wasn't a total lie. I did my undergrad work there, not because of my grades, but because my family lived in the area and they were willing to let a kid who wasn't even in puberty yet take classes. Georgetown was the same, but by then I was already being recruited, so it was more logical for me to go there."

Melina shook her head in amazement. "Recruited for what?"

"At first, I thought it was the CIA, later the NSA, later on . . .” I said, shaking my head. "Later on, it didn't really matter, as the names of the agencies are just part of another screen on the whole real situation anyway."

Melina sat down in my computer chair, her eyes spreading in wonder. "So when you said you went to cold places . . .”

"I spent most of my time in northern China," I said simply. "My official job was as an assistant to the ambassador to Mongolia if you could dig that. Unofficially, I made more than a few incursions into northern China and Siberia."

"So you speak Russian?" Melina asked.

I shook my head. "Not Russian, but I do speak Chinese," I said. "以道佐人主者，不以兵強天下。其事好還。師之所處，荊棘生焉。大軍之後，必有凶年。善有果而已，不敢以取強。果而勿矜，果而勿伐，果而勿驕。果而不得已，果而勿強。物壯則老，是謂不道，不道早已。"

Melina stared at me for a second, then threw her hands up. “I don’t even know how to respond . . .” She shook her head. “What other super powers do you have?"

I laughed and shook my head. "No super powers. I'm just a man, I just learn things quickly."

“This still doesn’t explain what today was about. I doubt foreign agencies come after you because you teach Shakespeare."

I shook my head and reached into the safe again, withdrawing my special laptop. "This. Have you ever wondered about someone and looked them up online?"

“Uh, sure," she said. "So?"

I set the laptop down and connected it to the hard line. "This computer does that and more. Imagine if you can a computer that can not only find every single electronic file about you in the entire world, but can then, at the push of a few buttons, totally erase you or modify whatever it is you want. You want to change your high school transcript? Three clicks, and it’s done. And nobody can tell that it was ever modified. That's the magic of Albertine."

"What the hell is an Albertine?”

"It was named by its creator after a science fiction story in which the entire world's memory was plastic. Like, through the use of a drug called Albertine, you could literally erase someone from history. They'd simply cease to exist if you wanted them to, in the real world as well. The creator of this computer, he was a fan of that story, and it motivated him to finish the computer itself."

I sighed and continued. "Albertine knows how to crack and find every piece of data on any computer connected to any sort of network in the world. The only way to not have something visible to Albertine is to have it on a computer that has never been online in any way. So in effect, everything is available to Albertine. And it's all traceless. The computer doesn't leave a single trace, in fact, the whole damn thing can change the fabric of the world if it wanted to."

Melina whistled. "Think it could take away my credit card bill?"

I nodded, and was at least a little happy that she could still have a sense of humor about it all. "Melina, not only could it take away your credit card bill, but it could make you the richest person in the world and there wouldn't be a single way anyone could prove otherwise."

“What about malicious intents,” Melina said softly. "What about the other way around? Can it ruin someone?"

I nodded, thinking of the little spanking I'd given Tiffany via Albertine at the resort. “It can do more than just ruin someone. It could make it that the person literally doesn't exist."

"You mean, it works on anyone?"

"One time, just for an experiment when I was trying to figure out what the hell Albertine could do, I fiddled with some information on a relatively minor issue, changing the name of the author of a physics paper. It got picked up, and the wrong man right now is walking around with a Nobel Prize in physics. The guy didn't even have a doctorate at the time."

"Did you go back and fix it?" she asked, looking a bit disappointed when I shook my head. "Why?"

“Because once I saw what could be done, I wanted to find out exactly what it was capable of before I touched it again. The creator of Albertine, he went more than a little unhinged. He started to get to like the movie Fight Club more than what is perhaps healthy, and he wanted to implement the final plan of Project Mayhem. He was going to go in and totally eliminate the financial underpinnings of the world. The entire stock market, financial records for everyone and everything, totally deleted. While on the surface that sounds appealing, the immediate chaos that would have resulted would have torn the entire planet apart."

"Damn," Melina said in wonder. "So why not destroy the computer? I mean, if it is that dangerous, why not stop it?"