With the FBI failing to get results in the Caribbean, Roger was inclined to stop worrying about it. If the government couldn't save itself the money, it could just transfer some from another part of its wasteful budget. What was $140 million to the United States Government? But Nancy felt personally committed to helping Jim Slater out of the position he was in. Somebody would have to be the fall guy for the$140 million. Slater was the perfect goat. If he had acted in time. . . If he had not rushed through his recovery procedure in record time. . . Nancy knew how to get Roger motivated.

Nancy: We have to do something! I wish Spike was here.

Roger: Pete, I've got an idea.

Warwick: I'm so desperate I'm glad to hear you say that.

Nancy: Do I want to know about this?

Roger: We're going to use your supercomputer to crack the bank.

Nancy: I knew I didn't want to know about the details.

Warwick: Of course, the MEMOREX 333 build is still on-line. We can take the financial routines he's using and run them straight off the system to get us in. But then what do we do?

Roger: How should I know? I can't balance my checkbook, but I can get us into that computer.

Nancy: I'll talk to Slater again. Maybe he can at least tell us what to look for.

Roger: Good idea. Go!

Pete got his team busy bringing the routines up on the computer while he and Roger linked in a network circuit to take them straight to The Bank of The Bahamas Net ID. Five minutes later, they were greeted by the security access screen and Nancy returned from her call to Salt Lake City.

Warwick: Okay, I'm handing it over to our system. It's going to take us in. Nancy, I hope you know what to do from there.

Nancy: Slater said it should be easy.

Roger: Isn't he the one that said his bank would be safe and sound?

Warwick: Here it goes. . .

Nancy: "Pulling lock." What does it mean, "pulling lock?"

Warwick: It's copying the lock program so that it can run candidate access codes here until it resolves the security key. Much faster than running it across the Net and on their machine.

Roger: "Trying keys." This should be good.

The supercomputer was now kicking into its overdrive mode. With only half the electrical and half the cooling capacity of standard operation, the sound was nothing like that of the previous night when MEMOREX 333 was created. It was, however, the first time Roger and Nancy heard the machinery wake up from its sleep. They both just looked at each other wondering how loud it would get. As they saw the screen cycle through millions of attempted access codes, they knew where all that power was going.

As suddenly as it had started, the program now completed its brute force method of cracking the bank access key. The environmental control equipment beneath their feet followed suit and wound it way back down to the routine gentle hum.

Roger: We're in!

Nancy: That computer of yours should be illegal.

Warwick: It's not the computer really, it's the software.

Roger: Let's chit-chat later, shall we ladies. Nancy, what did Slater say to look for?

Nancy: He said we should find an administrative function called "Scheduled Transactions." He figures they'll have this account set up to scatter the money around to different countries and banks. Then, each of those banks will do the same thing until it's impossible to separate the stolen funds from legitimate transactions.

Roger: Okay, here's the Administrative menu . . . enter the account number . . . and . . . Scheduled Transactions, let's see what we have scheduled.

Warwick: Hey, look at that account balance. There's over $140 million dollars in this account!

Roger: Think we could. . .

Nancy: Roger, don't even say it.

Roger: All right. All right. I'll just cancel these scheduled transfers and set them all to transfer it back to The San Francisco Federal Reserve. Then we'll go over here and change the electronic deposit code so any new transactions will reject until Slater gets his problem fixed. There, how's that?

Nancy: Well done, Roger.

Warwick: Yes, well done. Of course you do realize we didn't cover our tracks as went. They'll see this access tomorrow and know where it came from.

Roger: I figure Agent West can have some guys with mirrored sunglasses meet them at the bank when they open in the morning. He should be able to straighten this out. After all, we just saved his employer $140 million.

Nancy: And it's almost midnight. I wonder how Spike is doing with MEMOREX 333. We should have heard from him by now.

Spike was frozen still. He tried to cover his location by remaining as motionless as possible. He even squeezed the memory output of his cognition process by having it wrap over itself in a tight loop. 333 seemed to be looking straight at him, but appeared not to notice that he was still there. Was the matrix deterioration interrupting his sensory input. Spike could only hope this were true.

The useless weapon was still nearby. Spike thought about issuing the call that would activate it to try again. Then it occurred to him that 333's weapons may not be functional on this hardware platform either. They are identical programs. But just as he was starting to feel optimistic about his chances of that being true, 333 opened fire. His weapons did not fail and they hit their target with a single crushing blow. The memory locations that had held Spike's weapon, were now filled with nothing but zeros. MEMOREX 333 had recognized the weapon and destroyed it.

Spike knew that he now must be labeled an aggressor in 333's field profile. Only moments remained before he would follow the weapon program to oblivion. His mind raced for options that would allow him to escape when he hit on a long shot and put it in action at the same instant. Spike quickly substituted alternate values in the systems memory lookup table. Taking the location pointers of 333's own processes and duplicating them where Spike's had been, gave the monster an image of itself to target. When 333 fired, the faltering program could make no corrective interruptions as its own weapons bounced back on itself with the same deadly accuracy they had displayed moments earlier. The weapons disengaged as they erased their own control program and the mortally wounded hulk spun out of control and floundered across reserved memory blocks. The operating system moved quickly to terminate the offending program fragments and cleanup its memory map. All traces of MEMOREX 333 were gone.

Spike dove for the network card to get off the system in case any fatal OS corruption had occurred. Arriving safely on another server, Spike noted that the whole harrowing episode had taken only six seconds. They were the longest of his young life.

Spike rejoined the others at the Boreskovich Lab. It was just after midnight when he arrived. Everyone was watching the newscast to see what would happen to the New York Bank. Spike's news of his victory over MEMOREX 333 was a great relief to everyone. Agent West called in the report so the New York Bank could relax. On that same call West was told that Tony White had been found in the short term parking garage at the San Francisco International Airport. A single, small caliber bullet delivered to his left temple was all the evidence of his death.

As Spike finished telling his story, Nancy noticed something on the television monitor. Two men were holding what looked like an impromptu news conference with the Washington, DC media. They stood behind a podium fronted by the seal of the FBI One wore the suit of a high-ranking FBI administrator, the other was a two-star United States Army General.

FBI: I'll read our statement first. . .

The FBI is happy to announce that the threat facing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has now passed. In a cooperative effort between our two organizations, The FBI and the United States Army have successfully used defensive measures to neutralize these terrorists. Unfortunately, no further details of the operation can be made available at this time because international law and the governing treaties are still being evaluated for determination of appropriate jurisdiction. We will be making available whatever information we can over the next several months.

We'll take a few questions now. . .

Reporter 1: Sir, we are not aware of any previous cooperation between the FBI and the Army regarding computer security enforcement. Why was the Army involved?

General: I'll answer that one. . . The Army is always happy to help civilian branches of the government when we can be of service. This case is an excellent example of the strength of our teamwork.

Reporter 1: Then it's not because the threat stemmed from the escape of a software agent program under development for the Pentagon?

General: We consider those rumors inflammatory science fiction. They not only exaggerated this threat, they became obstacles to our own team's work against it.

Reporter 2 General, let me ask you this then; I've received information from a group in the Midwest. These computer networking experts tell me they witnessed the "defensive measures" that stopped the attack just before midnight. They tell me a second software agent with the program name "Spike" was involved in turning back the attack. Did your organizations cooperatively or independently develop this "Spike" program and what exactly is it capable of?

General: Unfortunately, national security interests prevent me from. . .

FBI: What the General means to say is that we know of no such cyberspace shoot-out between two software programs occurring in Cleveland or anywhere else.

Reporter 2: Did I say Cleveland? I'll have to check my tape recorder.

Reporter 3: What about it, General? What can your "Spike" program do? It was developed with taxpayer dollars, wasn't it?

FBI: Thank you for attending our briefing. That's all for tonight.

It was only two days later when Roger got a call from his friend Pete Warwick. After thanking him again for all everyone had done, Pete gave Roger an update on the project and the incident cover-up. The Pentagon was quite impressed with MEMOREX 333's capabilities. They wanted more safeguards put into it and a slew of backdoor control options. The project budget had been doubled and they had already relocated the entire team to a different secret site.

Dr. Boreskovich was on a hardware buying spree with his new budget money. Working with Spike had given the scientist even bigger plans for a bigger design. It was all going through federal procurement channels on another "weather prediction" justification. The two men laughed and wondered how many weather projects Congress and The General Accounting Office thought the country needed.

File End.



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