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They walked through
Zeke dragged one foot and then the other as he walked to the front door. The late night work and early morning disruptions were taking their toll. It was getting as bad as living with his parents. He noticed the clock said 10:30 and it vaguely crossed his mind that Jeremy should be answering the door. Why wasn't he there?The pounding on the heavy door continued right up until the moment Zeke opened it to see Molly, Nancy, and Tom Barnett. Molly made the introductions as she walked past Zeke and into the apartment. Tom recognized the McGill style and couldn't completely hold back a small chuckle.
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| Zeke: |
Jeremy's not here.
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| Molly: |
Yeah, I know that. His parking space is empty.
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| Zeke: |
You wanna wait for him?
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| Molly: |
Actually, we want to talk to you.
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| Zeke: |
Me? What about?
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| Tom: |
Son, we know you're caught up in this scheme of Jeremy's. We're here to see if you can help us keep him from hurting anyone else.
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| Zeke: |
I'm not involved in anything. You can ask anyone. I keep my nose out of other people's business.
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| Molly: |
Zeke, with Jeremy it's what he doesn't tell you that usually hurts. Come on, give us a break here.
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| Zeke: |
Look, why don't you talk to Jeremy about this scheme or whatever you want to call it.
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| Nancy: |
Jeremy is a pathological liar. He'll say anything to further his own cause and protect himself. He probably doesn't even know what he's doing.
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| Tom: |
I'll bet Jeremy has been telling you some lies too, Zeke. We know about the information you two stole from Dr. Donaldson. It's all coming unraveled, my boy.
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| Zeke: |
I didn't steal anything! Let's get that straight.
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| Molly: |
You're as big a victim as anyone else. Just help us stop him before it's too late. That's all we're asking.
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| Zeke: |
I don't remember how it started. It was like a joke at first. Jeremy wanted to try this stuff out. He told me he thought Professor Donaldson was crazy. Too much formaldehyde for too many years. I didn't really think the "D" language would do anything.
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| Nancy: |
But it did and Jeremy couldn't leave it alone, could he?
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| Zeke: |
We had the problem with Heidi, but that was just a simple mistake. I fixed it in a few minutes. I couldn't believe what it did to the Ethernaut Club members at the meeting.
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| Molly: |
But Jeremy told me there was more work to do last night. How come?
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| Zeke: |
I had to hack in some routines because we were missing a command from the specs. Jeremy got the missing command from the lab yesterday, so I put it in last night. It should increase the control power by a factor of two or more.
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| Tom: |
Increase the power? Why? Seems like it was working fine.
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| Zeke: |
Well, Jeremy wanted it in top form for a demonstration today. And don't ask me a lot of questions about that. All I know is he's got some guy coming down from the city to look at it. An advertising guy.
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| Nancy: |
When is the demonstration and what...
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| Zeke: |
Didn't I just say I don't know anything else about it? The good news though, is that he needs my workstation to generate the "D" language images. Unless...
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| Molly: |
Unless what, Zeke?
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| Nancy: |
Unless Jeremy already generated the image he needs.
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| Zeke: |
That's right. Jeremy had me build a front-end interface to the generator last night. He was here alone with it this morning while I was sleeping. We can check the generator log files. They'll tell us what he created and what instructions he gave it.
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| Tom: |
Let's do it.
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The group moved to the workstation and huddled behind Zeke to watch the screen. He clicked open the editor and loaded the log file. The time-stamped activation records showed how busy Jeremy had been. Finally, Zeke scrolled down to the generator's instruction archive and brought to the screen the messages that had been encoded earlier that morning.
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| Molly: |
Oh my God!
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| Zeke: |
I can't believe what he's done.
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| Nancy: |
We're going to need help.
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The combination of exhaustion, guilt, and shock were too much for Zeke. When he looked like he might faint, Tom helped Zeke to the other room while Molly got a cold towel. Nancy climbed into Zeke's chair and took control of the computer. A minute later she was dialed into the Internet and asking Spike to go over the machine with a fine-tooth comb. They would have to get to Jeremy, and fast!
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