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For a few long seconds the screen's update pulses showed green and secure on every circuit it monitored. Slater's eyes didn't move off the display. They didn't even blink.
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| Slater: |
Bob, what does your power monitor say about that blink I just saw?
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| Bob: |
Says we didn't have a blink, Jim. Last power dip outside tolerance was 267 hours ago.
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| Slater: |
Can you explain that, Bob?
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| Bob: |
No sir, I can't explain that right this minute. I could write a little routine that would . . .
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| Slater: |
Shut-up Bob. Leslie, how's the mainframe performance monitor look?
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| Leslie: |
Shows normal, Mr. Slater. Bouncing between twenty-five and thirty-five percent busy.
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| Slater: |
Cache hit rate?
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| Leslie: |
That's normal too, Mr. Slater. Right around sixty percent and steady.
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Jim Slater had pulled himself away from the security model console. Now he was moving around the Pod looking at each station's display. Everyone's eyes followed him until Slater shouted for the first time in his career.
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| Slater: |
Everybody, eyes on screen! We're missing something. We're missing something. Somebody tell me what we're missing!
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| Bob: |
Jim, I know it's weird that we don't have the power blip recorded, but everything seems okay.
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| Slater: |
No, it doesn't Jim, it doesn't seem okay at all. It feels wrong. It doesn't even sound right. Jack, what do you think?
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| Jack: |
My environmental monitor shows green across the board, but I agree with you, Jim. I can feel it. Something's wrong.
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| Slater: |
Jack, I want you to go up to the machine room. Crack open the doors on one of the disk controller cabinets. Get me the cache hit rate from the machine's own LED display. Use controller R2-A.
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| Jack: |
Right.
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| Slater: |
Leslie, get me your number for that device. Plot it across a one-minute time period.
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| Nancy: |
You're calibrating the performance monitor?
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| Slater: |
I'm rubbing my eyes to see if this hallucination will go away. The hardware can't lie.
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| Leslie: |
I've got the plot ready, Mr. Slater. Looks like an average disk string. Cache hit rate sampled every five seconds. Twelve points give us the most recent minute's activity. You can see the rate always above fifty-five percent with an occasional bump up to around eighty.
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| Jack: |
Jim, it's down, way down. Only two or three percent.
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| Slater: |
Oh my God! Pull the plug! Pull it now! He's already inside. Leslie, kill all the initiators. I want T-1 and T-3 circuits cut. Pull the cables out of the wall if you have to.
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| Jack: |
We've got another problem, Jim. Temperature is going up fast. The air handlers are running, but there's no coolant circulating. It must be ninety-five degrees in there already.
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| Slater: |
That won't matter much when we turn it off though will it?
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| Leslie: |
Mr. Slater, initiators are not responding to shutdown commands. No effect for any intervention commands. I'm getting responses only from display requests. And look at this.
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The young technician pointed to the upper right corner of her monitor. Slater leaned over to look closely. In the place that had always read SF-FRB it now displayed SF-FBR. 333 had created an artificial source of systems information. He transposed two similar letters in the label and then linked the Pod into the false data feed. Slater recognized the trick as soon as he saw the label.
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| Slater: |
We've been looking at the answer all along. People listen up. Your consoles are not interacting with the system. You will have to conduct procedures directly with your component subsystems. Jack, go back up there. Hit the emergency shutdown on the mainframe CPUs first and then everything else as fast as you can. Nancy, can you help him do that? I need to call Washington to have them cut us loose from the Federal Reserve net.
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Nancy was already moving before Slater finished talking. She didn't bother responding as she ran out the door behind the engineer. Reaching the computer room door, Jack grabbed the knob to open it. The emergency security lock was engaged. The heavy glass and steel door was not going to give way. The engineer spun around and looked at Nancy not knowing what to do next. Over his shoulder, Nancy caught a glimpse of something moving on the far left side of the room. Then she remembered, that's where she had seen the robotic tape cartridge loader. Now that she knew what she was looking at, Nancy could tell the thing was in overdrive. It was monotonously moving tape after tape into the stacked drive bins.Nancy ran back to the Pod where Slater was already talking on a red telephone. He was giving someone a long security code to identify himself. Nancy of course, butted right in.
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| Nancy: |
The computer room door is locked. We can't get to the machines and it looks like it's erasing the tape library!
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Slater covered the telephone with one hand and got a set of keys from his pocket. He reached down to a panel on the floor under his desk and lifted it open. Inserting a key, he turned it one-quarter revolution. Then he entered a series of numbers into a small numeric pad. A tiny light went green and the door to a small safe opened. While still listening on the phone, he lifted a hand-gun from the dark compartment. It was a huge .357 magnum. The site of it shocked and scared Nancy. She could tell it weighed a ton by the way Slater held it.
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| Slater: |
Here, take this.
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| Nancy: |
Me?
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| Slater: |
You've got to get that door open. Blow the lock off!
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| Nancy: |
I don't know if I . . .
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| Slater: |
You can do it. Pretend you're in a movie.
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She took the gun. She was right, it did weigh a ton. She carried it with both hands as she went back out through the Pod door and into the hallway. Nancy was staring straight ahead at the door knob in front of her as if it were her worst enemy.
Pushing the door open two things struck Nancy immediately. One was the heat. She remembered Jack, saying it was getting hot. The needle on the wall thermometer was above its maximum 115 degree reading! It was difficult to breath air that hot. She set the gun down on a desk just inside the room and covered her mouth to keep the heat from hitting her throat directly. She was already beginning to breath hard. Her second problem was that without Jack to hit the mainframes' emergency shutdown switches, Nancy would have to find them on her own. It had been years since she had even seen one. She turned right and moved down the center walkway to where the four identical systems were placed. Each one filled three cabinets that were cabled together under the floor tiles. She examined each device looking for the switch that she only vaguely remembered. After circling one of the mainframes completely, she moved back against the wall to get away from the intense heat coming from the computer itself. She was dripping in sweat and began to wonder how long she could stand the heat. Would she lose consciousness from the heat? Her mind briefly wandered to questions of desert heat and survival techniques. It was getting hard to concentrate. As she leaned against the wall and wiped sweat from her face, Nancy spotted the switch she had been looking for. It was on the computer across the aisle from the one she had been searching. She ran to it, pulled off the protective cap, spun it until its six slots lined up, and then pulled the switch out to shut down the computer. Repeating the process on each of the remaining three systems brought all four to a complete halt. Nancy bent over to catch her breath. All she could hear was the ringing in her ears. She needed to get out of the heat, but then remembered the tape robot. Could it still be running? Nancy staggered back to the door she had just nearly blown off its hinges. From there she could see the robot. Fifty feet away, its arm was in its same pattern of feeding tapes to the drives. Back and forth, back and forth. Nancy felt the heat pulling at her. The back of her throat felt dry and raw. She couldn't last much longer. Why hadn't anyone come to help her. It seemed like hours ago that she left Slater in the Pod. She wondered if she could make it back to the door if she went to turn off the mechanical robot. Nancy leaned on a desk to hold herself up and saw the gun still there. She looked back at the robot. Back and forth, back and forth it moved. It was just like the arcade games she had always wanted to play when she was a kid. She had to try it.
Turning to the hallway Nancy could see Slater helping Jack to his feet. Slater was saying something to her. He was yelling, but with no sound came from his mouth. Nancy walked toward the two men straining to hear. Slater was pointing, pointing at something. She looked down and realized that her hand was still wrapped around the gun, she dropped it to the floor. What she hadn't seen were the two bank guards behind her with their own weapons drawn and trained on her. They had come in the front entrance of the computer room just after Nancy's final shot took out the robotic tape librarian. All that was left now was the ringing in her ears. An hour later a heavy dose of aspirin was starting to relieve Nancy's headache. She spent the time alone in a staff break room drinking glass after glass of water. The hearing was returning and the ringing in her ears was almost completely gone. Dunn and West had rushed down when news of the excitement reached their meeting. Slater told them what happened and Dunn called back to Roger, Pete, and Spike. It was a good thing Spike and Roger didn't see how fried Nancy looked. Dunn came into the break room where Nancy sat with her head down on the table. She tested her hearing by saying something to him.
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| Nancy: |
I guess we've got their attention now. How bad is it?
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| Dunn: |
Real bad for these guys. They're still assessing the damage. Slater and his people already left for their disaster recovery site. They've got a backup mainframe somewhere near Salt Lake City.
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| Nancy: |
What about MEMOREX 333? Did he get out before they cut the circuits?
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| Dunn: |
Looks like he saved himself one as an escape route. He just waltzed out after everybody thought the lines were cut.
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| Nancy: |
It was so fast. I couldn't believe it was happening that fast. You should have seen Slater. He went white as a ghost as soon as he knew 333 was inside his system.
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| Dunn: |
He should have listened to us. Slater had a chance to avoid this, but he screwed up.
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| Nancy: |
He was good under fire though. When he heard the cache hit rate was nearly zero, Slater knew he wasn't processing normal transactions. That's what told him 333 was already onboard. If the emergency lock hadn't sprung on that door, 333 would have gone down with that mainframe. I know we would have gotten to him.
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| Dunn: |
Come on. Let's get back to the lab. We can talk more in the car.
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| Nancy: |
It's funny, just before the trap sprung on Slater, he was yelling at his people about missing something obvious. He could feel that he was being setup even though he didn't know how it was happening. It may just be an aftereffect, but I've had that same feeling for the last hour. Something is wrong with this picture.
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Malcolm Dunn held the door for Nancy as she left the small lounge. His firm grip on her arm physically steadied and emotionally reassured her. But the look on his face told Nancy that he too was worried. She instantly realized that she hadn't seen Dunn look deeply concerned until that very moment. As Nancy started down the hallway she wondered, why is it getting to him now?
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