Program Alpha-Omega 5

Episode 5: Alpha finds Omega

Zack thought he probably looked pretty silly standing there, his mouth agape, his hand on the door, his eyes as big as golf balls.

“You’re… you wrote… I mean, you tried…”

“Yes, Zack. I wrote the initial program that you have obviously been working with. May we come in, please?”

Zack could hardly have stopped them. They could have knocked him over with a single finger, so startled was he at this revelation. They walked past him into the house, and he shut the door rather mechanically. They seated themselves comfortably on the couch, and waited for him to settle. After a great deal of effort, he was able, barely, to manage this, and moved across from the couch, but didn’t sit down. He felt vulnerable, and he needed to be standing to keep his cool.

“How in the hell… I mean, how did you find me?”

Adam chuckled. “You led us on a merry chase. It did take us quite a while. You missed some special coding we put into the program.” Seeing Zack’s eyes narrow, he quickly added, “Don’t be too offended: the code looks very innocuous by itself. But when the lines are put together, well… they become less so. It informs us when the program is used for the first time on a computer… or for the first time after it’s been compiled. That’s how we knew you were using it. Of course, we had to break through your security defenses, but… well, we have a lot of resources to do that sort of thing.”

Zack was suspicious. “That can’t be all. I am a very careful person.”

Adam nodded. “You’re right, it’s not. We pretty much knew where you were, but we needed proof. Your friend Valkyrie works for me.”

Zack’s expression darkened. He muttered, “Bitch.”

Adam nodded again. “I understand your feelings, but, realize, she does work for me…”

Zack abruptly changed the topic. “What do you want?”

“Well, dear boy, I thought that would be obvious. I want my program.”

“You expect me to just give it back to you, after all the work I’ve done?”

“No, no. You misunderstand. I don’t expect you to give it up, but I would like a copy. After all, I did have my reasons for writing the thing in the first place. I would like to continue with those reasons.” Adam and William rose, not threateningly, but just because it felt more natural if all of them were standing, rather than just one. “I know you’ve spent a lot of effort on this program. Our last report suggests you’ve made some major modifications to it. I wouldn’t think of asking you to just hand that over.”

“So, I give you a copy of the program, and you go away?”

“Well… no. Actually, Zack, I’d like to make you a proposition.” Zack stood straighter, but Adam continued as if not noticing. “Although you obviously have the intelligence to make the program work, you do not have the resources of our company. Your ability to use the program has to be severely limited by that.”

Zack stiffened. “Hey, I’ve been doing just fine without your help, thanks.” He kept speaking as William moved toward him slightly, hoping to calm this boy down. “For your information, I’ve managed to get pretty much whatever I wanted.”

William reached him, and went to place a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Zack, we just – WAAHGH!” The rather undignified scream was the result of William watching the world rotate very quickly, and then feeling a very hard surface connect with his back. He was staring up at the ceiling, waiting for his vision to clear.

Adam stared, rather impressed at the Aikido move that had been rapidly applied to his subordinate. Adam said, with some degree of mirth, “It appears you missed something in your evaluation, William.”

William shook his head and struggled to his feet. “No way. There’s no way you can have taken martial arts classes without us finding out!” William was very nearly livid, but also knew he was completely outmatched. He had never learned any self-defense style.

“Actually, you’re right. I’ve never set foot in a dojo.” He paused, and, seeing the look he expected from them, simply said, “It’s the program.”

“The program turns you into Bruce Lee?”

Zack sighed. “The program allows you to learn anything. Very quickly. I studied the basics of martial arts under the effects of the program. I hadn’t realized until just now that it had been so fully incorporated into my brain. I wouldn’t advise touching me like that again, though.”

William stifled a hot-headed reply, and just nodded instead. Adam was far more interested in this application of his – was it really his anymore? – program than he was William’s bruised ego.

“You say that the program allows you to learn? How did you get it to do that?”

“Good grief, that was easy! You just write a script for it that makes you remember everything you read, see, hear, whatever, during a certain time period. I suppose, you could have it make you remember everything, forever… I never tried that.”

“I see. Well, I know this is probably a stupid question, but, as I wrote the program initially, I must ask: What did I do wrong?”

Zack actually laughed. “Yeah, I suppose, if you’re anything like me, that would be bugging you. Come on back to my room, and I’ll show you.” Zack led them back to his bedroom, sitting down at his computer. The men sat down on the bed. Zack pulled up his journal, and paged it to the first entry. “There were six spots where you had flubbed the code. It wasn’t anything major, but in two cases, you’d gotten the frequencies wrong. And that threw off the whole thing, since they were the base frequencies off which everything else modulates.”

“Shit,” William said. “How the fuck did we miss that?”

“Well,” Zack offered, “Chances are that you assumed that this research had been done properly, and you didn’t actually look here. When I started working on the program, I didn’t know anything about it. I analyzed everything.”

Adam could tell by William’s deflated look that Zack was right. We could have had this thing working months ago?

“Anyway,” Zack continued, “It wasn’t the only problem, anyhow. Your will matrix was off, as well. Actually, I still don’t have that worked out yet.”

“How do you mean?” Adam inquired.

“Well, your original matrix worked on me, though there are some changes I’ve made since even to that, but it didn’t work on women at all. My initial subject,” Zack slipped into scientific-speak to try to conceal his unease at what he and his “subject” had done, “did not react to the matrix until I had made a few seemingly minor alterations.”

“Hmm,” Adam commented.

William, however, was more vocal, “Seemingly minor? You changed a quarter of the code!”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t for this… subject. Once I got the program to work with the first female, I also had to make some alterations to the matrix to get it to work with both genders at the same time… but at this point, the program was still… um… ‘user-specific’. The matrix had to be tailored for each individual that I used it on. Now, I ran across a subject who was extremely resistant to the program… due, I found out, to her extreme dislike for me.” Adam and William both reacted to that. Neither had thought that human emotion would play any part in the program.

“How did you overcome that?” Adam asked.

“Well, that’s where the big change he mentioned came in. After Shirley sent me that file, I found the information I needed, and I had to make some significant modifications to the will matrix. It’s a lot stronger now… though I’m still worried that the changes may have long-term side effects.”

“Perhaps I could look it over for you. I am familiar with what it’s supposed to do.”

“Maybe,” Zack allowed. “Anyway, once I had gotten over that hurdle, I also created a video version of the program-“

“What?” interrupted William.

“I made a version that can be played on a TV. The normal program won’t work if you just convert it to video… the TV interlacing fucks it up. Anyway, I did that, and got it to work… it has been tested on at least three subjects.”

Adam looked at William. “William, I think I can handle it from here. Why don’t you go back to the hotel and wait?”

William was about to protest when he realized that his boss was about to try to strike a deal with the young man, and that Zack would probably feel more comfortable if he wasn’t outnumbered in his own home. “Yes, sir. Zack, nice meeting you. I hope we can talk about this in the future.”

“Yeah.”

Adam waited until he heard the front door close. “Look, Zack, I’ll be honest with you. All of this impresses the hell out of me. I spent two years designing and writing the program, and in just a few weeks, you’ve managed to fix all the problems in it, get it working, and expand the function of it beyond what I had ever planned. I’d like to offer you a deal.”

“I’m listening,” Zack responded cautiously.

“Look, TV and computer screens are great, but they’re hardly portable, are they? What we really need is a portable version of the program. By the way, how long does it take to run?”

“A little over four and a half minutes for the stronger version.”

“Any thoughts about getting that time reduced?”

“That’s already down from an original time of six minutes. I suppose there are ways to refine the algorithms, but I hadn’t wanted to mess with that too much.”

“See, that’s where my company can come in handy. I’ve got mathematicians who can refine the algorithms for us. And, if we can figure out how to do it, perhaps we can make a fully portable version of the program.”

“What do you mean, fully portable?”

“Put it into a device… oh, like a PDA. But one with good speakers, and a really good LCD screen.”

“It would be expensive,” Zack noted.

“That’s… not really a concern.”

“Ah.”

Zack and Adam talked for some time, and they finally came to an arrangement. Zack would put all his materials together, and send a copy to Adam. Adam would provide Zack with the information and equipment to continue his own research. They would share all information.

Well, not all. Zack still didn’t trust Adam completely, and so he would not give him the one major change he’d made to his own matrix: that he could not be programmed by anyone without a special code to do so. It was vital to his security, and his peace of mind.

Zack spent the next couple of hours until dinner putting together and vetting the information that he would send, via email, to Adam. There were certain bits and pieces of information that he just wasn’t going to let him have. With that job done, he zipped it all into one file, and emailed it off to the address Adam had given him, then he went down to dinner.

—–

After dinner, Zack returned to his room. He didn’t bother telling his parents about Adam. After all, they wouldn’t understand what was going on, anyway. He did, however, call Brian.

“Hey, Bri. What you got going tomorrow?”

“Nothing much. Dad moved out yesterday, things are real quiet around here. What’s up?”

“I wanted to come over. I have to… uh, get that project going with Bonnie and Wendy, and I wanted to talk to you about something, but… um… not on the phone.” Adam’s visit had made Zack even more paranoid than usual. If they were tapping the program, what else might they be listening in on, now that they knew who he was?

Brian got the message loud and clear. “Gotcha. Sure, I can come get you a little after noon, if that’s cool.”

“That works perfect. See you then.” He hung up, and turned to his computer. “So, you’ve been spying on me, have you? We’ll see about that.”

Zack didn’t know how many lines of code he had to find. He didn’t know exactly what the program was telling them, nor when or how. He’d have to figure out what lines in the program were causing the program’s tattling before he could disable it.

But if I disable it, Adam will know. He’ll know then that I don’t trust him, and what kind of confrontation might that cause? Hmm. But I suppose… once I find out what the program is telling them, I guess I can write up a fake program, and have it inform them every once in a while… give them some bogus numbers or whatever. It depends on what it does, exactly.

And Zack knew that the only way to find out what it did was to trace the program’s execution. And he’d have to be very specific about it. He dug out some old work he’d done; a special debugger for finding special network-related issues. It would require heavy modifications to fit this task, but he would spend the entire weekend on it, if necessary. He didn’t want Adam looking over his shoulder.

—–

Zack was up until four in the morning trying to get his old program up to specs. He fell into bed, exhausted, but not having completed the task. It looked as if it would take him another six or seven hours in order to have it ready, and then he could only hope it would find what he needed it to. His thoughts were disordered as he fell asleep, and his dreams were unpleasant.

∼∼≈≡≈∼∼∼≈≡≈∼∼∼≈≡≈∼∼

Zack awoke with a start, unsure of where he was for a moment. He’d had some horrid dreams, and he knew they were caused by the appearance of Adam. Zack was worried, and until he knew exactly what Adam was up to, and what he wanted, Zack would not be comfortable with the situation.

It was nearly noon when Zack got up, and so he hurriedly made himself something to eat. His program could wait until after he got back from Brian’s house. He wolfed down a sandwich and chips, and then headed back to his room to get dressed. His parents were once more off looking for a car, but he had told them the previous night where he was going, and they had not objected.

When Brian arrived, Zack packed his stuff up in his backpack and they hustled over to Brian’s house. Things were, indeed, quiet. Much quieter than they should have been. No one was making any excessive noise, and the attitude was beyond subdued.

“Hi, Mrs. Selman,” Zack offered as he walked into the kitchen with Brian.

Mrs. Selman looked up, her expression brightening on seeing the young man. “Oh, hi, Zack! How are you today?”

“Oh, can’t complain.” Seeing that Brian had wandered off somewhere, Zack settled down in the chair next to his mother. “Mrs. Selman, what’s the matter? I mean, it’s so quiet around here. Normally on a Saturday, you guys would be off doing things, and busy. I know that Mr. Selman moved out and all, but…”

Mrs. Selman smiled at him. “Yes, but. It’s hit us all a little hard, I’m afraid. We just don’t seem to be adjusting to the loss. Twenty years, down the drain. How am I supposed to get over that?” Her face fell again, and Zack could see she was close to tears.

Putting his hand lightly on her arm, he said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. S. If there is anything I can do, or that my parents can help with, you just say the word, okay?”

Mrs. Selman smiled at him again, and though her eyes were watery, the smile was warm. “Thanks.” She reached over and hugged Zack, and he enjoyed it immensely. He wished there was more he could do for his friends, but he couldn’t think of anything that would help the situation. She broke the embrace after a few moments, and said, “Well, where’d Brian get off to? I’m sure you came to see him, not to console a lonely old woman.”

“You’re hardly old, Mrs. S,” Zack said without thinking. “And I like talking to you. But yeah, there was something I needed to talk to Brian about.”

“You go do that, then. Will you be staying for dinner? We’re having spaghetti.”

Mrs. Selman’s spaghetti should be a food group, or so Zack thought. “You bet, if you don’t mind.”

“I never mind having you here, Zack. You’re like a member of the family.”

“Thanks. Well, I’m gonna go find Brian.” Zack wandered out of the kitchen, but looked back just long enough to notice that she was watching him go down the hallway. I wonder what’s up with her?

Zack found Brian in his room. “Hey, man.”

“Hey. Sorry I kind of abandoned you, but Mom’s been so depressed the last couple of days, and I just can’t stand to see her like that. I hope you managed to cheer her up a little.”

“I tried. Shit, you guys are taking this hard. Not that I can blame you; I can’t even imagine what it would be like if my Mom and Dad split. Hell, my life is complicated enough without that sort of thing. Did you at least get him to watch the tape before he went?”

“Oh, yeah. Let me get that for you.” Brian pulled the tape out of a drawer and handed it to Zack. “Thanks. At least I don’t have to worry about us getting kicked out of the house.”

Zack stuffed the tape into his book bag, and sat down in Brian’s computer chair. He looked at his friend. “Now’s probably not the best time to talk about my problems, is it?”

“Hell, yes it is!” Brian retorted. “Anything to take my mind off all this crap. What’s up?”

“Remember I told you that the program was written by a guy named Adam?”

“Yeah…”

“Adam came to see me yesterday.”

“Oh, shit. What did he do? I mean, you’re still in one piece…”

“He offered to work with me. He wants to develop the program even further. He wants to make a device, kind of like a PDA, specially designed for using the program on people.”

“Can you do that? Make it that portable, I mean?”

“If the screen’s got enough pixels, sure. And if there are decent speakers on the thing. But I’m worried.”

“About what?”

“Adam. He told me that he found me because of some lines of code. If he’s been peeking over my shoulder like that, what’s he going to do with the program?”

“Good point. I don’t know. Any way you can find out without him knowing?”

“I’ve thought about that. I have one contact inside his company. The bitch lied to me, and squealed on me to him. I think I could program her without him finding out.”

“Might be a good idea to have an inside source. Just in case, you know?”

“You’re right. And I’m going to try to disable the snooping code in the program.”

“Won’t he notice that?”

“He would, yes, but I’m going to mimic the output in another program that sends him false data.”

“Good idea. How does this change what you were going to do at the media presentation?”

“It doesn’t. He says he doesn’t care what I do here in Martina. He wouldn’t elaborate on what he wanted the program for, though. I couldn’t get him to tell me why he’d written it.”

“Shit. He could want it for anything. I mean… what’s his company do?”

“They make hardware and software, they do some network stuff. It’s a basic medium-sized computer corporation.”

“So… what could he want the program for? I mean, maybe he just wants to do what you’ve been doing with it.”

“Then why the need for portability? Also, he wants to get the run-time down below a minute. What’s the need for that if you’re only going to use it on a few people to have some fun?”

“Shit. You’re right. I don’t know.”

“And he knows about you, by the way. Which is my fault. The code that tells him about the program ran on your sisters’ machines, so he knows all about you, too.”

“Fuck!”

“Sorry, man.”

“Not your fault, you didn’t know about it. I just don’t like people spying on me.”

“Yeah.”

“So, what are we going to do?”

“We?”

“Hey, I owe you big time for the program. And I can’t leave my best friend dangling at the mercy of some corporate scum.”

“Thanks.”

The two spent the next few hours considering how to protect themselves against whatever Adam might do. Zack ran a protection script on himself and Brian, so that neither of them could be programmed without the proper code, which each had entered on their own, so Zack couldn’t even program Brian without his say-so.

—–

It was about an hour before dinner when Zack figured it would be a good idea for him to deal with the girls, before he forgot. There were only two weeks left in the school year, so he’d have to work fast. Brian left the room as Bonnie came in. Zack gave her the orders she would follow, and she responded as expected. She was quiet, but polite, and accepted her instructions without question. Zack handed her the disk with the screen saver on it. This one had been modified to run on the school’s computer systems One of the things in the program said that no teacher or student would deactivate the screen saver.

Zack knew he wouldn’t reach all of his targets this way. Not everyone went to the computer lab on a regular basis, and some of his subjects might not be exposed to the program. It was Bonnie’s job to steer as many of them as she could, without undue notice, to the lab to see it.

Similarly, Wendy would do this job with her grade. She came in next, a minute after Bonnie left. Wendy, however, did not stand facing him, as Bonnie had. Wendy sat down on his lap and leaned back against him. Zack’s arms automatically wrapped around her waist, and she snuggled in Zack was confused by her behavior, as he had not written any such thing into her command script, but he didn’t object to it, so he let it slide. He gave similar instructions to her, and she nodded in acceptance of them.

When he was done, he didn’t tell her to “go play”, but instead gave her another key phrase that merely told her he was done instructing her. “Go play” was also an order that would make her leave, and Zack was curious to see what she would do now that he was done giving her orders.

For several moments, she did nothing at all, just sitting in his lap quietly. Finally, she turned so that her legs were across his, and she could face him. With her height, they were nearly eye-to-eye, even with her in his lap. He could see the concern that had been written into her face by current events, and there was something else there, as well.

It took her a few moments, but she eventually got up the courage to speak. “Zack, do you think I’m cute?”

“I think you’re way beyond cute, Wendy. I think you’re gorgeous.” While this was true, Zack would have said something like it anyway, just to cheer her up. He wondered where she was going.

She smiled at him in kind of an odd way. “Am I… sexy?” she asked, wiggling her hips.