4. Retribution
Wearing special goggles that let her view code actions from several perspectives at once within the system, and with a lagging time scale that allowed for her limited human senses, Penny Winston watched as Rover dealt with his spasms of forgetfulness. What she saw reaffirmed the claim of the AI’s original programmer, that his software was more than a collection of canned responses, that it was truly intelligent and could reason, plan, and learn. She also concluded that Rover must have been assembled with a few engrams traced from feline neural systems.
Because Rover could not both spot a new piece of data when it appeared in any of a number of random databases and then trace it when it immediately disappeared, he quickly figured out a way to bait a trap. Working from the partial data structures and code fragments he retained from his nano-second captures of the disappearing objects, he fashioned a bogus entry of the same shape and size from one of Callista Praxis’s old expense reports. Penny hoped Rover would have the good sense to track down and kill the false data later, or else it was going to play hob with the company’s monthly and annual accounting rollups.
Rover dropped the bogus entry into one of the databases that seemed to be compromised. Then, like a cat at a mouse hole, he watched that database. Whole seconds passed—a lifetime on the time scale at which the system worked, and long even at the speed shift built into Penny’s goggles. But after almost a minute of waiting, a retrieval order came and took the prize. Rover was paying full attention, tagged the order, and followed it back to the originating application.
When he identified the culprit for Penny, she sat up in surprise. That piece of software was operating way outside its parameters, entering databases that had nothing to do with its original function. And she knew for a fact, seconded by Rover’s appraisal, that it was not supposed to be intelligent—not by five sigmas.
Penny did not want to take the news to Callista or John Praxis, or not just yet. For one thing, she wasn’t sure about her position with them: both the president and the chief executive officer—older people who were set in their ways—seemed to have taken a dislike to her manner or her style or something. Maybe they just weren’t comfortable around creative people. For another, Penny understood that they shared some secret about the origins of the malfunctioning piece of software—it actually met her definition of malware—and she wasn’t sure how an accusation in that corner would sit with them.
But she did trust Brandon Praxis. Despite his seriousness and his bad-boy aura—ex-military, extra-legal, and with the hint of death and danger about him—she had felt a bond growing between them. They also shared a secret, one that made them both vulnerable. Brandon wouldn’t turn on her, even in a family matter.
She called him on his smartphone and suggested they have lunch again.
“Is this like, our second date?” he asked. She could sense him grinning.
“If you want …” she said coyly. Then she sobered. “No, really, it’s follow-up to the problem we discussed the last time. I think I have a target now.”
“Oh, good. What is it?”
“I don’t like to say over the phone.”
“Is somebody there with you? Somebody listening?”
“No, but voice packets go through the system. And this has to be verbal—sound waves only and through the air.”
“Lunch in the same place?” he suggested. “Say about an hour?”
“Let’s do barbecue instead.”
* * *
Brandon Praxis watched in fascination as Penny licked sauce off each fingertip, sucked the pad of her thumb, wiped them on a paper napkin, and picked up another rib. She waved it in the air before she started speaking again.
“So Rover followed the fetch order back to its send point,” she said. “And what do you think he found?”
“Nothing good, I imagine,” Brandon said.
“Bingo! The order came from a fifth-generation version of the Stochastic Design and Development package, installed by Tallyman Systems.” She bit a chunk of fat meat out of the rib and chewed it, waiting for his response. “Ring any bells?” she finally prompted him.
“Vaguely. It has something to do with building sewers or transit systems, doesn’t it? I really don’t know much about the engineering end of the business.”
“Right! It has everything to do with sewers, subways, and anything else that grows like a vine or a root system and responds to pressures like demographics and usage patterns. But it has no business looking into the company’s accounting system and personnel files. But that’s not the weirdest part.”
“Which is …?”
“It comes with its own mother-ass big database—freeform structure, not related to any of its programmed inputs or outputs, and three times larger than the app’s deepest stack. Dimensionally, it’s way more overhead than the SD&D software needs. But that’s still not the reason I called you.”
“Okay, why did you call me?”
“Because it has a trapdoor. Two way. Machine keyed. And leading right outside your system into the worldwide open web. Bypasses your security checks, firewall, and everything.”
“I take it that’s not supposed to happen?”
“Damn straight! That’s a pirate operation. Rover pushed on the door, but just a little. He’s discreet, being designed to live on other people’s systems. He knows his limits. But when he heard the echo of empty space out beyond that door, with no guardian protocols to protect it—I’m speaking metaphorically here, you understand—he backed off and reported immediately back to me.”
“But why then bring it to me?” he asked. “Sure, I’m head of security, but that’s more like guarding construction sites and keeping drunks from falling into the cement mixers. Computer stuff is—”
“I know, I should have taken this straight to Callista,” she said. “But I also know, from something she said in passing, who it was that works for Tallyman and installed that SD&D application for your company.”
“My uncle Richard?” he suggested.
“Yeah. And I don’t know if he’s allowed to, or not.”
“Allowed to do what?”
“Take a piece of everything you know. That extra-big database is crammed with stuff—cash flow reports, invoices, bank statements, client lists, contracts, property deeds, bonding agents, expense accounts, salary and benefit records. SD&D has just vacuumed up half your company and prepped it for sending somewhere else.”
“Has it sent anything yet?”
Penny shrugged. “The thing’s been in operation for a while now. I did some raw guesswork, based on how often, over the past two weeks, Rover has been ‘forgetting’ something he’d just seen. That database could have been filled and emptied two or three times by now, maybe four. The safe bet is, someone out there now knows exactly how Praxis Engineering lives and breathes, including what your chairman had for lunch last week.”
“This is bad,” Brandon said.
“So, I’m guessing, Uncle Richard’s not allowed?”
“Based on our family history? Hell no!”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Take this to Aunt Callie.”
“I can provide files—”
“No, you come, too.”
* * *
Callie Praxis listened as Brandon and the Winston girl explained their reason for calling an “urgent meeting” with her. When they got to the point about having found “some curious anomalies” in the Tallyman Systems application, she put up her hand.
“I want John to hear this as well,” she said. She knew any complaint against Richard’s company had to come to her father’s ears from the original source. If it was just Callie reporting on their findings, he would probably discount it as her long-standing animosity against her brother. “Would it help if we met at the window wall with the Rover present?” she asked.
“Only if you want to interrogate him,” Winston said. “But what I saw was kind of like looking over his shoulder. He might not give the exact same interpretation of what he found.”
“Are you saying he’ll tell a different story?”
“No, just … He’s very bright, but he doesn’t yet have a suspicious mind. He has a pretty good definition of a system malfunction, but he’s still coping with the idea of evil intention, of malware. So he can put two and two together, but he doesn’t quite leap to four.”
“Huh!” Callie said. “We don’t want to give your darling boy any bad ideas, do we? So we’ll meet in here for now.”
“That’s probably best,” Winston agreed.
When John Praxis came in and took a seat, the report by Brandon and Winston got two more steps into their findings, and then he put up a hand.
“If this isn’t some kind of glitch,” he said, “then it might be a legal matter. I want Antigone to hear this, too.”
It took more minutes to bring in the Law Department, and she came carrying a gray plastic bassinet that held Callie’s half brother. Antigone set it down by her chair, leaned over to make sure little Alexander was comfortable, cooed at him briefly, then sat up ready for business.
“Shall we proceed?” Callie asked.
“By all means,” Antigone said.
Once again, Brandon and Winston started over from the beginning. Brandon introduced the story about Rover “forgetting” things. Then Winston told about watching him bait a trap with the fragment of a modified expense report.
“Whose?” Callie asked.
“Yours,” Winston said.
“Damn!” she replied.
Finally, together and tripping over each other’s sentences, the two young people explained about the invasion of databases that the Stochastic Design and Development® package had no business going into—like employee files and personnel accounting—and then the trapdoor that let it flush everything it had learned out to some database waiting beyond the firewall.
“Is there any way you can clip its wings?” John asked.
Winston stared at him. “You mean, like limit its access and close that back door?”
“Whatever it takes to make the stochastic software behave.”
“Not without—” The young woman whistled. “—pulling apart its entire codebase, examining, excising, and ligating whole command structures, then chasing call prompts and returns through, like, a million lines of binary. And if I got any one of them wrong, the system would crash and you’d need the Tallyman people out here to fix it. That would certainly tip off whoever’s receiving stolen data from the app.”
“I take it your answer is ‘no’?” John suggested.
“More like ‘hell no’ … sir,” Winston replied.
“Can you disconnect it?”
“That’s—” She paused.
“Software used to have an off switch,” John said with visibly rising frustration. “And operating systems used to be able to override and delete it—along with all its data files—in just a matter of minutes.” He turned to Callie. “Are we actually employing that Stochastic Design software on any of our projects?”
“Three, Dad. All of them hard at work. And all with use of that program written into our contracts. I’m afraid just pulling the plug is not an option.”
“I see.” He turned to Antigone. “It sounds like Richard and the Tallyman people sold us a bill of goods. They installed a piece of software that’s also, to put it kindly, full of bugs or, rather more harshly, a dedicated robot spy, a piece of malware. Can we sue them?”
“I’d have to read the contract again—really study it this time,” their attorney said. “I can’t think of a reason why that application would go into personnel files and accounting systems not related to its own projects. But such access may be spelled out, or simply implied, in the user agreement. Same thing for the back-door access. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing we’d agree to. But maybe it has some diagnostic purpose.” She turned to Winston. “Don’t other software systems also have a trapdoor?”
“Sometimes,” the girl admitted. “But they’re more … polite about it. And it’s not good form to bypass the firewall altogether.”
“Still,” Antigone said, “without examining the documentation, I couldn’t say that we did not agree to all this by default or through our own—my own—carelessness.”
Callie lost her cool. “This wasn’t just anyone at Tallyman! It had to be Richard!”
John stared at her. “But he’s a vice president, dear, not a programmer.”
“Dad! He was programming computers before he hit puberty.”
“That doesn’t mean he can just go into a modern—”
“Could we clear the room for a family conference?” she asked.
John raised his eyebrows but nodded. Penelope Winston stood up and headed for the door. Brandon stood up to follow her.”
“You stay, Brandon,” Callie said.
Antigone looked uncertain. “Do you want me to—?”
“You may not want to hear any of this, Counselor,” Callie told her.
Antigone nodded, picked up the bassinet, and left the room.
When it was just the three of them—Callie, John, and Brandon—and the door was closed, she spoke plainly. “Richard attacked and broke this company once. He’s at it again. I want him stopped.”
“Antigone has already said we don’t have a legal position,” John objected. “I could ask her to look into—”
“I don’t mean legally,” Callie said. She looked at Brandon. “Richard himself is the threat. I want that threat eliminated.”
The young man stared back at her. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“Put him in a position where he can’t attack us again.” She decided what she was thinking had to be said out loud. “I want him to stop … breathing.”
John bristled. “That’s my son you’re talking about. Your own brother.”
“Yes, the son who attacked me, who led a coup against you—”
“That was Leonard’s doing,” John said.
“But Richard engineered it!” she stormed. “He turned on us once, and he’s doing it again. You can’t trust him! He’s a rabid dog!”
“He saved my life on the golf course,” John said quietly. “He gave me mouth-to-mouth for half an hour while others just stood by.”
“He still had a use for you,” she said—but she knew that was being too cynical, even for her.
“What do you want me to do, Aunt Callie?” Brandon asked. “As your head of security, do you and Grandfather have an order for me?”
“Kill him,” Callie said coldly.
“No,” her father said.
And there the question remained—for the moment.
* * *
After they left the meeting in Aunt Callie’s office, Brandon’s grandfather put a hand under his elbow, steered him into the chairman’s office, and closed the door.
“You have to understand Callista …” John Praxis began.
“She’s beyond angry,” Brandon said. “She wants me to go down to Texas and kill him, a family member, and all over a piece of software.”
The old man shook his head. “Richard hurt her badly. He didn’t just force her out of the company, he blackened her name, destroyed her career, damaged her pride. She can never forgive him for that.”
“And so she wants him assassinated?”
“Almost ten years in Italy, living among the social circles in which she moved, has given Callista a different perspective, and different psychological reflexes.” He sighed. “In many ways she is—well, not quite American anymore. She’s on a vendetta.”
“What do you want me to do, Grandfather? We can’t let that app just sit there and spy on us, either.”
“No, of course not.” The elder Praxis chewed his upper lip for a moment. “As head of security, you’re also in charge of cyber protection. You go to Texas, talk to Richard. Tell him we know exactly what his package is doing. Tell him we want it reinstalled, a whole new version, but without all the special features.”
“What if he claims innocence? Or refuses to take it down?”
“Tell him we have software that sees through his game.”
“I can’t talk the lingo. Why don’t I take Penny along?”
“No. He’d just laugh in her face. You’re more impressive.”
“And if he still refuses to do a reinstall? Do I talk to his boss?”
“He doesn’t have one, except the Tallyman Systems chairman. No, if he won’t authorize a reinstall, I’ll send Antigone down to talk with their legal staff.”
“Why not send her in the first place? Leave Richard out of it?”
“No, you must go because you’re family, and you have a special message to communicate, one that neither Antigone nor the Winston girl can give. Tell him it’s from me. Use my name. Tell Richard to cease and desist, to leave Praxis Engineering and Callista alone. Tell him this goes beyond computer tricks or legal tricks, even beyond blood and family ties. Tell him he’s in danger.”
“Will he believe me?” Brandon tried to smile.
“How many men have you killed?” His grandfather asked quietly.
Brandon sighed. “Too many. But that was wartime—and a period of civil unrest.”
“Just show him the face you’re wearing now. He’ll believe you.”
* * *
Two days after the meeting with Brandon and Penny Winston—close enough to just miss being a coincidence—Callie Praxis received a call on her smartphone sometime after midnight, waking her from a troubled sleep. It was Uncle Matteo, and during the initial old-world pleasantries his voice betrayed nothing out of the ordinary.
“We know what your brother has done to your company,” he said finally, coming to the point. “We are deeply disturbed by this.”
“Thank you for your concern,” she replied. “But we’re handling it.”
“Your business is our business. And now a third party has access to it.”
As she came more awake, a question occurred to her. “How do you know this?”
“Madame Kunstler reported it. She was tardy with the information.”
“Where is the Spider Woman these days?” Callie asked.
“That cannot be your concern. She is gone. That is all.”
“Maybe she paid to put in those hooks? Sounds like something she’d do.”
“She only arranged to have access, to keep an eye on your brother. But now she is out of the picture, and we are left with a problem.”
“We will get the software removed,” she said. “Seal the breech and—”
“Do you know what he has already taken?” Matteo asked.
“No, just that several downloads have occurred.”
“He shared one with her—not the others.”
“Yeah, we’re worried about that, too.”
“We are prepared to help you ‘seal the breech.’ Permanently.”
“That won’t be necessary. This is a family matter, and we’ll handle it as such.”
“It is a ‘family matter’ in more ways than one, Contessa. We insist on maintaining the confidentiality of our relationship.”
Callie could hear finality in his voice, the death she had spoken of behind closed doors, in privacy, but only to her father and her nephew. Spoken rashly, she had since come to realize.
“No—no—please don’t involve yourself,” she said now. “We’ll handle it.”
“I give you a week, Contessa. And I will need proofs, printouts, a data dump—you understand?”
“Of course, Matteo. We’ll get the information back.”
“See that you do.” And the connection went dead.
* * *
Half an hour into his appointment with his uncle in Houston, Brandon Praxis knew he wasn’t getting anywhere. When he described what he and Penny had found out about the Stochastic Design and Development® software, the older man just blinked.
“There must be some mistake,” Uncle Richard said smoothly. “Your super-intelligent application—this what? ‘Rover’? one of those artificial intelligences?—must be imagining things. They do that, you know. The Tallyman Systems package is used in many different contexts and companies and has never created a problem.”
Brandon knew for a fact that theirs was the only copy in use, because that had been a key point in their marketing strategy. However, he plowed on over the lie. “It’s our contention—that is, Grandpa’s and Aunt Callie’s—that the software you installed wasn’t the normal version. It had extra features designed to spy on our company.”
“Ridiculous! Have you seen this software in action?”
“Well, no. But our IT manager has watched the process in real time.”
“Then she must have a diagnostic—showing faulty instruction sets, erroneous command calls, port locations, data samples—to support her allegations. Do you have them?”
“I suppose she does. I can ask for—”
“You suppose? Then all you have, really, is Callie’s ravings—isn’t that right? And Dad sent you down here to get my side of the story?”
“He sent me to get you to reinstall the SD&D software. I’ve seen the end user licensing agreement—relevant parts of it, anyway—and it says you can do a diagnostic remotely. So do it, and prove that your software is operating correctly. Then Grandpa wants it reinstalled anyway.”
“That’s all?” His uncle seemed relieved. Brandon had sat in on too many disciplinary hearings to miss the signs. He had watched too many soldiers who had been charged with serious infractions like weapons trafficking or drug dealing, suddenly get offered a lesser misconduct like misappropriation or possession in exchange for their cooperation, and seen their eyes go wide and their mouths relax. Brandon knew when a guilty man thought he was about to slip through the cracks. And, like all of them, Uncle Richard now asked for clarification. “All he wants is a fresh reload?”
“That and your solemn promise.”
“To do what?” his uncle asked.
Brandon put on his commanding officer’s face. “ ‘Cease and desist’—those are Grandpa John’s exact words. He wants you to leave Praxis Engineering and Aunt Callie alone, now and in the future.”
“How am I supposed to do that and still run a diagnostic and install—?”
Brandon put on the grim smile he could always feel on his face before pulling a trigger. “You know what I mean. Grandpa remembers that you once saved his life, on the golf course. That was before you dishonored your sister and helped steal the family company. He cannot forgive those actions, but he would like to save your life in return. You fix your software problem. And then you cease all contact with the family.”
“I should call Dad to confirm—”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“But he has to—”
“He won’t talk to you. That’s why I’m here. That’s all I have to say.”
Brandon stood up slowly, consciously broadening his shoulders and flexing his elbows, like a grizzly bear projecting maximum intimidation. He held his breathing under tight control, so as not to appear either breathless or gasping. He kept looking his target straight in the eye, boring into Richard’s brain, mentally beaming images of the dire consequences, of unleashing fierce Aunt Callie upon this hapless man.
He hoped it would work with his uncle.
Some men did not react at all.
“All right. I—promise.”
“Good enough.”
Brandon turned slowly and stalked out of the room.
* * *
At six-fifteen on a Thursday evening, two days after meeting with his nephew, Richard Praxis left his office and took the executive elevator down to the building’s underground garage. His car was in a reserved stall twenty feet from the elevator door. He thumbed his key fob, heard the cheerful bee-rup! echo against the concrete walls and ceiling, and saw his parking lights flash. He was at the driver’s side door with his hand on the latch when he saw movement in his peripheral vision.
“Mr. Praxis?” A man in a short tan raincoat and a snap-brim hat came toward him along the row of sleek cars. Richard wasn’t sure where the man had started from, because no one had been standing anywhere near him a moment ago.
“Yes?” he said, turning toward the stranger.
“Phut!” The sound was barely audible, just a suggestion of a sound, compared to the chirping of his door lock. It was accompanied by a barely visible flash—or maybe just a puff of dust that caught a reflection from the overhead strip lights.
After a second or two of sheer surprise, Richard felt a burning sensation in his lower belly, just above his groin. Only then did he realize the stranger had shot him. He could also feel a pain in his butt, as if he’d fallen on his tailbone, and realized the shot must have gone right through him.
He was still standing, one hand on his car, but his legs felt rubbery. He suddenly remembered a lot of arteries and veins going through that part of his anatomy. His groin felt soggy, as if he had wet himself.
The man raised the weapon—a short, dark tube—and pointed it at his face.
“What do you want?” Richard asked. “I thought we had an agree—”
The world exploded, taking Richard Praxis out of it.