Jennifer Government Part 11

"Wichita Falls," Calvin said. "Texas. Although I think one of them made it. I mean, obviously he's all messed up from the scalding, but I think he's still alive."

"You can take freedom for granted, Hack," Jennifer said, "until you're living in a cell and you have to ask permission every time you want to take a s.h.i.+t. Don't you think?"

"Marketing guys," Hack whispered. "It was John and John, from Guerrilla Marketing."

Jennifer leaned forward. "John Nike "John Nike? Vice-President?"

He nodded dumbly.

"Brown eyes, brown hair, flat face, John Nike?"

"Yes."

"Good boy, Hack," Calvin said. "You won't regret this."

Jennifer dragged her chair closer to him. "Let's start from the beginning." She smiled. It was the first time Hack had seen her do that. She looked almost tender. "Tell me everything."

21 Violet

When Violet arrived at the ExxonMobil building, they gave her a CONTRACTOR badge, which she pinned to her jacket lapel. Her escort was a kid in a white short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt and pants so cheap his knees reflected. Violet was disappointed. Geeks didn't dress that way anymore, or rather, successful geeks didn't. Even Violet knew it was worth investing in impressive threads.

"I heard about what you're doing," the kid said in the elevator. "It sounds pretty cool. But it won't work. Eight months ago, maybe. We had a whole bunch of attacks, denial of service, e-bombs, phreaking, the works. Then management gave us a ton of money to upgrade everything." He led her down a corridor and opened a door.

Violet went in. There were computers and wires and c.r.a.p everywhere. Four men sat around the boardroom-sized table, all in front of keyboards except one, who was therefore in charge. He was very large and didn't smile.

"Violet." He extended his hand. "I'm Rendell ExxonMobil. This is my team: James, Peter, Saqlain, Hunter." She nodded at them. "If you don't mind, let's get started. We have fifteen minutes before our next applicant."

She took a seat at the thick table and snapped open her laptop case. The geeks slid their chairs inward, preparing to do battle. She powered on her laptop, snapped in an RJ45 connector. "Do you want to give me a login, or should I do it the hard way?"

Rendell looked at Hunter, who was so thin it was like Rendell had been stealing his food. "An ordinary employee pa.s.sword?"

"Yes."

"I'll spot you that."

"I can crack it if you want me to."

"It's trivial."

"That's why I'm asking."

Hunter managed to sound gracious. "I'll ghost your machine. User is 'applicants,' pa.s.s is the same."

Applications began streaming into Violet's laptop, transforming it into a standardized, centrally managed ExxonMobil PC. While she waited, she glanced at the beige box humming behind her. It had the dimensions and aesthetics of a refrigerator: a Hewlett-Packard Unix machine. "This is your server here?"

"That's it."

"And we're isolated from the company network?"

"We're safe enough."

"I strongly suggest you physically isolate this room from the rest of the network."

They locked eyes for a while. She had to resist a sigh. Violet wasn't interested in comparing d.i.c.k size with skinny geeks.

"Unplug it," Rendell said.

The kid, James, crawled under the desk. "Okay, got it."

"Buckle up," Violet said, and logged in. There was a little icon on her desktop called Fizz, in the shape of a soda can. She clicked it.

Her machine said: bing bing! A window appeared: McAfee Anti-Virus: WARNING! McAfee has detected a possible virus on your computer. Virus Type: unknown. Files infected: Fizz.exe. DeleteFixIgnore. McAfee Anti-Virus: WARNING! McAfee has detected a possible virus on your computer. Virus Type: unknown. Files infected: Fizz.exe. DeleteFixIgnore.

"Game over," Hunter said across the table, pus.h.i.+ng back his chair. "Sorry, you're dead, Violet. Thanks for playing."

"You shouldn't have let him ghost your machine," James said. He was looking over her shoulder. "He installed our virus checker."

She looked at her screen a while longer. When the network activity stopped, she closed the lid and rested her elbows on the table.

"And not only did we bust your virus," Hunter said, "but we got a copy of its signature, so we can spot it if it shows up anywhere else. You're history."

Violet glanced at the hub, a squat, plastic box routing traffic between the server and PCs. Its green lights were flas.h.i.+ng. "So my virus is getting transmitted to the server."

"No, not your virus. Its signature. Big difference."

The hub's lights were increasingly active. The geeks eyed it. Flash-flash-flash-flash. Flash-flash-flash-flash. Violet said, "Then your server transmits my virus to the checkers on every PC. Right?" Violet said, "Then your server transmits my virus to the checkers on every PC. Right?"

"No, no, no." Hunter's eyes flicked to the hub. "Virus checkers don't store actual viruses. They store patterns store patterns."

"My virus checker is updating," one of the other geeks said.

"Mine, too."

"It's meant to!" Hunter said. "Be cool, guys. It's inoculating us."

"You have a lot of faith in your checker," Violet said, "for a product with buffer-overrun issues."

Hunter stared.

"Last chance," she said.

It was a small noise, and to anyone but tech-heads, hardly noticeable. From each PC: chik-chik-chik-chik-chik chik-chik-chik-chik-chik "s.h.i.+t!" Saqlain said. "Disk activity"

"Me too"

The machines crashed together. The geeks stared at dark screens. Each computer beeped simultaneously, rebooting. Violet knew what they were looking at now, a screen that said: BOOT DISK FAILURE: INSERT SYSTEM DISK. BOOT DISK FAILURE: INSERT SYSTEM DISK. This meant that either someone had unscrewed each computer and removed the hard drive, or the disks had been trashed so thoroughly the computers couldn't tell if they were still there. This meant that either someone had unscrewed each computer and removed the hard drive, or the disks had been trashed so thoroughly the computers couldn't tell if they were still there.

"Jesus, she wiped the master boot record!"

"Did you go through the virus checker?" Saqlain asked, astounded. "Did you send a worm through the virus checker virus checker?"

She swiveled her chair to see the lights on the HP server lock up. When that was done, she turned to Rendell. "Interested?"

Rendell looked from his server to his dead PCs.

"It could have been your whole company," Violet said. "Not just this room. You tell me: how vulnerable do you want to be?"

"Whoa, whoa," Hunter said. "You know, I hate to ruin the party, but we don't need to buy anything from you. I can recover this thing. Two seconds of disk activity, it'll be somewhere somewhere."

"Whatever you can recover from those drives," she said, "you're welcome to."

Silence. Rendell lifted his chin. "James? Cancel our other applicants, please."

22 Buy

Buy woke up feeling like someone had rearranged his intestines. He staggered into the bathroom. On the mirror in red lipstick was:

HOPE YOU'RE FEELING BETTER, SLEEPYHEAD! CALL ME!

SANDY

He sank to the cool tiles. Buy didn't think he'd be calling Sandy John Hanc.o.c.k. He crawled into the shower instead. This was not going to be a good day.

He arrived at Mitsui very late, which for a stockbroker was not just improper but obscene. The stock markets had been twenty-four-hour for several years now, and Hamish would be angrily waiting for Buy to relieve him.

The elevator doors opened and he walked between the cubicles. Hamish jumped to his feet, snapping closed his briefcase. "Sorry, Hamish, I"

"That's all right." He was looking at Buy oddly. His whole reaction was odd. "They told me what happened. You don't even have to be here, we can get a temp"

"No, I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Well, good luck."

Buy watched Hamish leave, then sat down. He felt eyes watching him and turned. Suddenly a lot of brokers were frowning at their screens and flicking lint off their pants. He turned back to his screen.

He looked at it for a long time. Something was wrong, but he didn't know what. He clicked through a few pages of overnight financial summaries, but kept losing focus on the screen. His attention was drifting back to Friday night. His phone rang, and he looked at it, abruptly frightened. He didn't want to answer it.

He felt sweat on his forehead. Brokers burned out sometimes; everyone knew somebody who had derailed. It was a terrifying idea, that you could lose the motivation to keep going. That everything that used to define and sustain you could collapse into meaninglessness.

An hour later, Buy felt a hand on his shoulder. He was staring into s.p.a.ce.

It was Cameron. "Want to talk?"

He'd only been inside Cameron's fishbowl office a couple of times. Everyone outside could see you, so you knew they were speculating about you. Not the office for a paranoid, Buy decided.

"You don't have to be here today," Cameron said. "You know that, right?"

"I don't get paid if I'm not."

Cameron shrugged. "Even so."

Buy said, "I'm fine."

"How many trades have you made this morning?"

Buy was pretty sure the computer on Cameron's desk could answer that question. He was pretty sure it already had. "None."

"I'm going to help you, now," Cameron said. "All right? I've heard a whisper that ExxonMobil could be the target of a takeover."

"ExMo?"

"The word is that Sh.e.l.l likes the idea of ExMo at up to forty-seven."

He thought. "Sh.e.l.l is...half ExMo's size. It can't be true."

"I think it is."

Buy considered. This was a huge tip, even more valuable than the NRA information Sami had given him. If he remembered right, ExMo was trading around thirty-one. Cameron was offering him sixteen dollars a share. "Then thanks."

"Thank me by making trades. You're a good broker, Buy. Don't let yourself get thrown."

"I won't."