The Oracle Year(59)

“Coach, I can’t. People would die.”

The Coach perched on the edge of Staffman’s desk. The scientist unconsciously leaned back in his desk chair, as far away from the woman as he could.

“Dr. Staffman, listen to me. You aren’t a good person. You know it and I know it. You’re selfish and you’re cowardly. That’s all right. It’s not like you’re unique. Most people I’ve met are just like you.

“And so,” she continued, “I think we also both know there’s no way you’ll give up your life to save the lives of a bunch of people who may die when you fulfill your duty as a member of my team. You don’t know any of those people. The truth is, the only person you give two shits about is yourself. So save your life, save me the bullshit, and do it. Now.”

Staffman stared at the Coach. He thought about the money he had been promised as payment for successfully breaking through the Site’s security. Almost a decade ago, he had done another job for her, and the money from that effort had funded his own research for years. Years without groveling before university tenure boards, and worse, teaching cow-eyed, dull-minded, disinterested undergraduates. That money was almost gone.

“Okay, Coach,” he said.

“Good,” she said, her voice cold. “Get on with it.”

Staffman cleared his throat.

“Stop monitoring the nodes,” he called to the rest of the technical team. “Shut down your workstations and leave. I’ll contact you if I need anything else.”

A chorus of questions and complaints arose in the room. People wanted to know if they were getting paid what they were promised, why the project had stopped. Staffman’s mouth tightened.

“Just get out!” he shouted. “You’ll get your money. Just go.”

No one moved.

“Now, Doctor, that’s not the way you handle a situation like this,” the Coach said. She slid off Staffman’s desk, getting carefully to her feet.

“People, you’ll all be taken care of. You have my word. Now get on out of here and enjoy yourselves. Hell, you’ve just been given the rest of this beautiful spring day off. What are you still doing inside? Go throw a Frisbee, or ask someone on a date! You’ll like it, I promise.”

She chuckled. The technicians looked at one another uncertainly.

“Go on, now,” the Coach repeated, more firmly.

A tech near the door shrugged. She hit the switch on her computer and powered it down. The rest of the team followed suit. Within a few minutes, the room was empty.

“You need to learn to handle people, Dr. Staffman,” the Coach said. “You catch more bees with honey, as the saying goes.”

“Right, Coach,” Staffman said absently. His hands fluttered across his keyboard, preparing to increase the draw from the botnet. It didn’t take long.

“It’s ready,” he said. “Just hit the enter key and it will start.”

“No, Professor, you start it up. You made the decision to do this. You need to take responsibility.”

Staffman gritted his teeth. He extended his index finger and tapped his keyboard. On the map of the globe, red plague spots began to appear in the midst of the green, expanding quickly, like bloody welts on the surface of the world. Immediately, the progress bar on the third monitor began to speed up, clicking through the 1 percent mark in just under a minute.

Staffman watched, awed.

“How long will it take?”

“I didn’t think it would be so fast. The virus must have infected more computers than I realized. It’s . . . amazing.”

He watched, mesmerized, while his creation did its work. The botnet chewed its way through the world, behaving exactly as designed. Pride filled his chest.

The Coach stood next to Staffman’s chair, hands on her hips, peering through her glasses at the monitors.

“Say,” she said thoughtfully.

“Yes, Coach?”

“Something occurs to me. The way you explained it, your virus will take over damn near every computer system in the world, so they can’t do what they’re supposed to do. They’ll be working on our little Oracle problem instead.”

Yes, Coach, Staffman thought, the sky is blue. Yes, Coach, two plus two equals four.

“Well,” she continued, turning to look directly at Staffman, “doesn’t that include the power grid?”

Staffman stared at the Coach for a moment. He lunged back to his keyboard and began to type furiously.

“Your face just went like a slaughterhouse cow after it gets hit with the air hammer, so I guess that answers my question,” the Coach said. “How will all those machines keep working on our project when the lights go out?”

Staffman didn’t look at her, just continued to type.

“Come on,” he muttered.

“Boy, you’ve got an answer for me?”

Staffman bit back the withering response that leapt to the front of his mind.

“I built some degree of control into the botnet, Coach,” he said, not taking his eyes from his screens, his fingers flying. “I can give it commands—explain that it needs to keep the power on, but it’s not easy. It’s just a piece of code—it’s smart, but it’s stupid. It doesn’t remember what I’ve told it to do, so I have to keep pulling it back from power nodes over and over again. It’s like . . . it’s like putting out a forest fire by dumping glasses of water on it one by one.”