Caldwell and Kat headed back towards Waterloo station. Her frail form moved beside him with surprising agility. She had the Sim Unit going but the goggles were perched on her forehead like the sun glasses of a beach bum seeking a moment’s relief from a harsh summer sun. He could hear the soundtrack to whatever movie she was watching buzzing in her ears. His knapsack containing Kenzo Yamamoto’s console and the sum total of his personal effects was slung around his left shoulder and he carried one of Kat’s duffels in his other hand. The sky above the station was pitch-black with industrial pollution.
They caught an almost-empty Maglev to the Isle of Dogs. Kat and Caldwell sat in the deserted carriage in total silence. A silence underscored by the low-level hum leaking out of her headphones. He wondered what anyone who saw them sitting there would make of them. This odd couple brought together by fate, circumstance and a strange inexplicable mental connection. What would they make of their ability to say nothing and yet everything at the same time?
“I am thinking of looking for my birth parents,” Kat said suddenly. “You’ve found out about yours, where you come from. I think now, I want to know.”
Caldwell had known the awful truth about Kat’s past for a few months now but could not bring himself to tell her. The consequences were too unpredictable. Kat was a clone. A clone manufactured at University College London’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Kat was lab material for medical research students. According to computer records at the university, Kat was cloned from a fledgling Hollywood actress who wished to have a second shot at stardom even after her death. There had been no records of the name of the donor. A bit more drilling down in the database had revealed that one of the lab assistants for the project had been expelled from the university for removing sensitive material from university premises. That sensitive material was Kat. She had left the infant beside the HoloDome, wrapped in insulating material, her little fingers clutching a lukewarm bottle of formula.
Should he tell her now, what he knew? Here, several hundred meters underground being bombarded with holoverts and subliminal advertising for cloning services. Should he tell her she was one of them? Destined to be discriminated against by the masses? He decided to wait until he returned from Hong Kong. At least, if he was around she’d have somebody to support her as she dealt with the knowledge of who she was. What she was. Did she suspect anything? Was she subconsciously searching for her identical other in the flickering images of old movies? She deserved to know.
Was there a void deep inside, a flaw that flared bright in her mind leading her to suspect that she was different? This was one question Caldwell knew he could not answer although occasionally a look came over her eyes that suggested that she suspected something. That would explain her reluctance to trace her parents for so long.
They arrived at the Isle of Dogs station and rode an elevator to the surface. The station was almost empty. They jumped the barriers at the exit to a cacophony of alarms. These alarms often went off during off-peak hours but the station wardens more often than not ignored them. They despised their faceless corporate owners even more than the passengers who refused to fill their overflowing coffers. They were sometimes happy to let the law breakers protest the only way they knew how, especially at night. And the offenders relished the privilege of letting the system know what they thought of it. The CCTV cameras that dotted every single block of the Union were the perfect platform for this non-conformist kind of dissent.
They headed up East India Dock Road in the direction of Blackwell.
“I think I am going to give Mr. Fouler a call. I don’t know exactly where Glyph lived but it is somewhere around here. Fouler mentioned something about his people searching Glyph’s trailer,” Caldwell said to Kat when they came up to a Teleplex booth. Kat simply nodded and continued concentrating on her Sim.
Caldwell picked up the headset from its groove and spoke the numbers Fouler had given him into the mouthpiece. The line connected. There was a click and then another set of rings, different from the first. Then there was another click and a screeching noise. The clicking and screeching continued for about half a minute then someone picked up on the other end. Caldwell found the protracted process vaguely familiar. It was as though he had done this countless times before. He knew exactly what to do. He waited.
His conversation with Fouler was brief and to the point. Kat was going to stay in Glyph’s trailer and Fouler was going to tell him where the trailer was, otherwise the deal was off. Fouler protested initially but soon relented. He seemed eager to go back to whatever he had been doing when Caldwell called.
“You see, that wasn’t so bad. He agreed to let you stay,” Caldwell said to Kat as they walked towards the back of The Puzzle.
“He’s probably granting you your dying wish.”
Caldwell tried to say something but the words refused to come out.
Glyph’s trailer was approximately forty feet long. Entirely one half of it was packed with computer equipment and other gizmos, some intact, some with their guts spilling open like the aftermath of a macabre robot war. Transistors, motherboards, add-ins, memory modules and all manner of integrated circuits were strewn all over a long black makeshift worktop, which was fashioned from used Samsung mini refrigerators stacked two-high and three-wide and covered with a black silk cloth that had collected a fine patina of dust. The kitchen looked like Glyph hadn’t done any washing up for weeks. Dirty plates were piled up everywhere and either Fouler’s people or the Yakuza had made things worse by hurling pots and pans out of cupboards onto the vinyl-covered floor.
They had left the computers intact although most of them were on, suggesting that someone had quickly scanned the hard disks on the chance of finding something useful. In the bedroom and the living area the contents of cupboards had been emptied out on to the floor, sofa and mattress torn open and panels removed.
Caldwell and Kat spent the next two hours putting as much as they could back together. Amazingly not a lot had been broken and where particleboard or plastic had been ripped apart, cracked or broken, Glyph’s incredible duct tape collection came in very handy. It was 3.00AM in the morning before Kat collapsed on Glyph’s bed and Caldwell sat in front of Glyph’s refrigerator worktop staring into space.
The hacker’s wheelchair had left visible marks on the vinyl floor over the years. You could almost retrace his daily routine from the depth of the marks. Caldwell could picture Glyph motoring up the ramps outside, opening the door and coming straight to the worktop to check on his computers. The marks in front of the worktop were deeper than anywhere else. The wheelchair had cut harsh grooves in the vinyl. Glyph had obviously spent most of his time in cyberspace.
Caldwell spent the night mulling over everything that had happened and running through scenarios of what might happen in Hong Kong. The good news was that he was still alive. He now knew something about his past. In a few hours he was headed for Hong Kong, apparently his birthplace. The bad news was that this was obviously a fool’s mission with only a narrow chance of making it alive. If it wasn’t the Yakuza who got to him, it’d probably be the Chinese, the intrusion detection AIs or even Fouler’s HYDRA outfit. He needed to be at the airport in just a few hours and Fouler had warned that it was going to be a tough day and the operation would exact a heavy toll on his body. It was a price worth paying at any cost.
Caldwell contemplated catching a few hours sleep and leaving Fouler’s parting gift, the card with the single Chinese character, in the envelope in his pocket till he was in Hong Kong. But given the obstacles he faced on his fool’s mission why not arm himself with everything he could beforehand, he reasoned. There might be something in there that would help him out when he least expected. He decided sleep could wait and he’d rather get as much of his memory of Hong Kong as he could before the trip. He looked over at Kat, who was still curled up on the bed with her Sim unit blaring in her ears. The girl was totally non-stop.
He slipped Fouler’s envelope out of his pocket and slowly pulled out the card with his thumb and index finger. This time he knew what to expect. This would be Fouler’s last-ditch attempt to get Caldwell to trust him. He was sure that Fouler never ever did anything without an ulterior motive. Caldwell looked at the card and the interior of Glyph’s trailer dissolved away to reveal fragments of his memories.
***
Caldwell is outside the gates of a school. The sign, in both Chinese characters and English, announces that this is the Hong Kong International School. Flashes of the Xian car crash that killed his parents are corroded into his mind. He can access this memory of a memory because the story of their death has already been recounted by Fouler. That particular dark compartment has already been unlocked making it available to the larger memory block currently being unleashed by that single red Chinese character. An image of flesh and metal made one in a single moment of chaos crosses his mind. It is an image faded with the ravages of time.
A newspaper. The article in the Beijing Post. Caldwell reading disbelievingly. His teenage eyes are swollen with unshed tears. The couple could only be identified through DNA analysis. There hadn’t been much left to bury. There was no suspicion of foul play. And on and on the article goes in that cold objective way that newspapers use to cover death. He could not remember whether he had attended the funeral service. He felt no related residual guilt.
Memory rewind. Summer holidays skateboarding down the hutongs of what he figured was Beijing. Hanging out with the diplobrats, drinking beer in the bars that dotted the Sanlitun diplomatic quarter. Lots of time on computers. Lines of code flying by like November rain.
Caldwell staring intently at a computer screen, while a man, who looks like the man in the picture, his father, works. The gobbledygook the man is typing on the screen goes right over his head but he still stares at it like it is the key to another world. He recalls an underground study full of computer and communication equipment, the secret weapons of GCHQ, the British communications and electronic eavesdropping agency that Fouler says his father worked for.
Forward. He is in a cyberspace chat room. His nickname is rAZor. He is a teenager, yet he is a regular of dozens of hacker dens and chat rooms and on the A-lists of most information warfare agencies and corporate IT departments. He knows this because now as though by magic he remembers. He is infamous. He recalls gaining access to hundred of computer networks, breaching their security with ease. He remembers his peers talking to him, with reverence. He is way above the norm. He bestrides the binary world of code like a colossus. He is supernova.
rAZor: Fizz, how is it going dude? Long time no see. What have you been up to?
Deus: Yeah man. What’s up?
Fizz: Not a lot. Was arrested by the Helsinki Pigs man. Had all my gear confiscated. Had to do 600 hours community service. Banned from the space.
rAZor: Bummer man. Not too good. How did you get caught?
Deus: Motherfuckers. I feel you man.
Fizz: Yeah Dudes. Thing is, haven’t a freakin clue y’ know.
rAZor: Like they just busted in no reason?
Fizz: Pretty much like you say. HP, the pigs, says that some foreign outfit asked for me to be arrested and warned. Said they know what we are up to and arrests will be made in other countries.
Deus: Shit man. Think they are talking BS?
Fizz: Dunno man. They busted me, that’s for sure.
rAZor: They probably got some tracker system following your electronic footprints. Any idea which system it was?
Fizz: Yeah it’s a system I got from this phreaker from England I know. Said they had this cool AI that knows shit and can be accessed on a console or over the phone. It’s like, I got to see this, right? So I am there that same day, scanning its ports and bombarding it with passwords and nothing gives. So I like spend a whole fuckin week doing nothing else but still no joy. I ask this British phreak phriend of mine how he got in but he says he can’t remember. Says he just woke up one morning and his software was logged in as root, right in the AI’s command line. He said there were like two thousand lines of text where the AI was talking to itself, reasoning with itself, berating itself because there was no answer from this phreak’s computer.
rAZor: Whoa cool. I gotta see this.
Deus: Dunno man. That’s probably what got Fizz busted.
rAZor: They won’t bust me. Fizz, what’s the IP6 on this.
Fizz: It’s a revolving allocation system. But it’s coming out of the Union, some .gov network.
Deus: So you have a finite table.
rAZor: That’s good enough for me. Coming Deus?
Deus: Nah, my father will be using the puter in 5 minutes got to get off. Mine was busted by that virus worm thingy last month. Can’t wait to be able to afford a new one.
Fizz: Be careful man.
rAZor: No worries. I’ll log this AI’s ramblings and post it here for your enjoyment hehehe.
Deus: OK.
Fizz: Laters!
rAZor: Laters!
There’s a striking but intense-looking Chinese girl staring at Caldwell. Shiny black eyes focused, unblinking. Epicanthic folds lend a feline beauty to her angular dimpled face. She has skin the color of fresh tofu.
He has hidden software agents on the university computer system. His agents are Trojan. They conceal other agents and themselves. His agents are masters of digital disguise, electronic cover-up, pixel clean-up. His agents’ routines precede everything he does on the terminal, clearing pathways, rewriting logs or locking them, bombarding the system with heuristic password sniffers, re-writing router tables to hide the origin of their actions.
He fires up about five of these agents and heads out into the cryptic world of router tables. Everything is clear all the way to the US. In New York, he hitches a ride on telco traffic headed out to the Union and jumps off on to intra-university traffic. This memory, unlike the others, is more coherent. Caldwell thinks Fouler, and the people who repackaged his memory in these little closets, locked them and threw away the key, have made it deliberately so. The intent is to give him a strong sense of his own invincibility. These memories could be planted but he is convinced otherwise. He likes what he sees. He wills it to be true.
Caldwell transgresses the VPN’s elegantly and surfs the secure connection all the way to the Union’s central Internet traffic exchange. He wakes up his sniffer bot, which goes through a massive list of handshaking routines until one of them gives the necessary secret handshake. Boom. He scores big. Some internal government domain system. He can’t access it from outside. So he slips into one of the government’s extranets and deduces a username with enhanced privileges. Admin. Some people never learn. The password bot goes to work.
He looks up and smiles at the girl, who is looking at him as though she knows what he is up to. He’s seen her before around the school but his interest in her, at this time, is minimal. He has better fish to fry. He is on a roll. Boom. Password cracked. [email protected] Sounds like a lovesick system administrator or a jilted sysop. Types it in. Boom. Screen goes blank except for a prompt like this:
:>
:> Hello.
:> Hi Cad.
:> What did you call me?
:> Cad. Cad Caldwell to be exact. Would you like me to trace back your family tree?
:> Shit.
:> Exactly. We’ve been waiting for you. You are so busted my friend.
:> Oh yeah? I am out of here. No way you can bust me that fast, wise guy.
:> We’ll see about it Cad Caldwell of Hong Kong International School. By the way, your grades are slipping big time. What’s your excuse?
:>
:> Yeah what? Mummy and Daddy die in car crash? Does that give you the excuse to live with your hands perpetually down your Y-fronts.
:> You shut the hell up. I swear I am going to shut you down.
:> You’re good Cad, but not that good.
:> We’ll see about that.
:>
:> [User connection terminated.]
The girl is gone. Caldwell’s heart is beating so fast he reckons it’s going to burst right out of his chest. He looks around. Nothing but dozens of students going about their business. The bullet lifts shoot up the library wall dropping students off at the various floors and picking them up. He recalls that he had once hacked the computer system that managed the lifts and increased the speed of one of them by about twenty percent. He and his friends had laughed out loud as a sea of green faces had emerged shaken from the lift. One anemic-looking girl had hurled all over the white marble floor.
That AI, or whatever it was, was just bluffing. But how the hell did it know his name? Maybe it was one of his buddies just playing tricks on him. And that jive about school grades. It wasn’t far out. Not that school computer systems were difficult to crack. It was the intent that scared him. It was the first time anything like that had happened to him and he is visibly shaken by it.
He logs out of the shell, sends his bots to sleep and backs out into the library’s graphical Book Catalogue user interface. When he stands up to leave, his legs wobble. He picks up his rucksack and makes his way out the front of the library.
The memory dump cuts to the front of the school. He is walking out the school gates with his mind in turmoil. What is he going to do with his life? He is sixteen, an orphan.
There’s a big black car at the gate. It has no license plates and the windows are so dark he can see his reflection in the black glass. As he walks past, wondering who the owner of the vehicle could be, a gangster, pop star, dodgy financier, the black windows roll down smoothly and a fiery setting sun reflects from a pair of mirrored shades. A smooth sloping jaw moves. Thin pale lips part and click back together. Some kind of supersonic aircraft thunders by overhead. The world takes on a slow-motion quality. He hears his name, spoken by the lips below the mirror shades. It’s a dry voice and it reminds him of autumn and dried leaves.
The door opens and he finds himself in the back seat of the car with the well-dressed gentleman whose eyes are masked by the expensive Ray Ban mirror shades. Hands have pulled him in but they are so gentle he doesn’t feel them. The shades come off to reveal steel gray eyes. There is a flicker in the lenses of the man’s shades that suggests some kind of computing activity in the glasses. The jaw moves again, this time upwards and the lips thin even more into an approximation of a smile. The driver sits motionless in the front seat. All Caldwell can see of him is a matt of black hair and the base of his driving cap. He was sitting very still.
“My name is Bruce Fouler. For now let’s just say I am in the service of the Union government,” rasps the man.
“I bet its lip service, mostly to its rear.” Caldwell replies. In Glyph’s trailer, Caldwell chuckled to himself. He used to be funny. It was in his DNA.
There is something darkly magnetic about Fouler, like a pedophile holding out invisible candy. There is something mysterious about the man’s face. It’s a face that seems to understand the fallibilities of humanity. There is a digital quality to him, the neat efficient way his features are put together, the voice that sounds like it has been run through some computer sequencer. And the huge black Bentley.
“Cheeky aren’t we? I am looking for a student here called Cad Caldwell. I wonder if you know him.”
Something in Fouler’s eyes tells Caldwell that the man knows who he is talking to and is daring him to spin a yarn. He rejects his initial instinct to tell a lie.
“That would be with me. What do you want with me? I am not into old guys?” Caldwell says. He has already made the connection between the Union AI and this man but he doesn’t know how.
“Sorry to hear about your parents, Cad,” Fouler offers. Caldwell detects a faint moistening of the man’s eyes. Or was it the fading sunlight reflected in the car?
“It’s cool. So what do you want?”
“OK, I am not going to beat around the bush. We’ve been watching you for many years, Cad. Your activities on the computers.”
A look of alarm comes over his face. Like Fizz, he was busted.
“Don’t worry son. If we were going to arrest you, we would have done it a long time ago. You’ve breached the security systems of some important institutions you know.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and some of those have been embarrassing for us, given the fact that your father also served the Union government.”
“He was only a professor at Xian University,” Caldwell countered.
“That may be the case but he was an important professor. Can I trust you, Cad? There is something I think you should know but I need to be guaranteed absolute trustworthiness.”
“I swear on Madonna,” he said, images of the dead pop singer flashing past.
“That’s good enough. Have you heard of GCHQ?”
“Yes, satellite eavesdropping, telecommunications monitoring etc. I am intimately familiar with their computer networks.” He grins cheekily.
“Well your father was one of the leading designers of their systems. You heard of Blue Ray? Your father designed it.”
“I cracked Blue Ray and was able to listen to my headmistress talking to her boyfriend on the phone. I’ve had a nervous twitch ever since.”
“Well, like father, like son. One builds them, the other cracks them.”
“Yeah, yeah. So what’s all this got to do with me? I’m just a high-school student.”
“As I said, we’ve been watching you for many years. You would have been incarcerated many years ago if it wasn’t for whom your father was and the important work he was doing in New China. The irony of the situation was not lost on us. Maybe one day you’d grow up to be as good at breaking into secure computers as your father was at building them. I think you’ve proved us right. Although you are not as invincible as you think.”
“Who says?”
“Ever wonder why you were never caught in hundreds of hacking sessions?”
“Because I am so damn good?”
“Wrong. Sometimes you left electronic trails that would have landed you in jail but we covered up your ass because even with those fuck-ups your record was very impressive. More impressive than even our best ethical hackers.”
“Trails? Like what?”
“Like NASA. They had a distributed intelligent logging system that you did not see. It had complete records of your activities, the time and what terminal you used. We employed CCTV footage from our friends at the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corporation to place you at that interactive kiosk at that time. We were surprised at the audacity of the intrusion, from a public place.”
“Ha, ha, ha.”
“You may laugh, Cad, but these are serious breaches that would have got you in enough trouble to last you through retirement.
“Sorry. I guess.”
“The bottom line is this. In light of your situation, the fact that you are obviously not interested in school, the organization is offering to take you on board.”
“What organization?”
“You’ll know when the time is right. As I said, I am in the service of the Union authorities. Let’s just say you’ll be able to hack into some of the world’s most advanced computer systems using bleeding edge technologies. You’ll also help us build better defenses against outside intruders and you’ll get paid a competitive salary. On top of that we’ll give you a Union passport chip, allowing you to continue residing in Union if you so wish.
“Wow, you are pulling my leg right? Jerking me off?”
“Dead serious. Do I look like the kind of guy who gets off on practical jokes?”
“You don’t look like the kind of guy who gets off on anything,” Caldwell retorts.
Fouler lets the affront slide but something in his face tells him that the man has filed it away for future reference.
“Enough of the wisecracks. So, what do you say? We can talk to your principal today and you’ll never have to return to school again. Instead, you’ll get trained in the Union and travel the world doing what you love and getting paid for it.”
“Sounds too good to be true.”
“It’s a once in a lifetime offer, son.”
“I’ll take it then.”
“Good. Welcome aboard.” The man offers long thin fingers.
“Er, thanks.”
“We’ll let you know the details once we’ve finalized everything with your principal.”
“I can trust you, right?”
“Of course, swear on Madonna.” The man called Fouler smiles, unnaturally even teeth clenched tightly together.
“How will you find me?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Oh yeah, you are omnipotent or was it impotent?”
“Do you need dropping anywhere? Home?”
“No, I’ll take a walk.” The computer-cooled interior of the Bentley was suddenly stifling.
“OK. Your call. And no more unofficial hacking.”
“Is that an official request?”
Fouler lets that one go too.
The doors of the Bentley open automatically and Caldwell steps out on the curb. The driver still has not moved. The Chinese girl from the library is standing against the school perimeter wall looking at him. Out in the evening air, she is even more beautiful. He walks straight past her. He has too much on his mind to focus his attention on her, as much as he wants to. She catches up with him, her books held close to her chest. There is a faint smell of lavender and the heady musk of teenage skin.
“So, who were those men?” she asks, as though she’s known him forever.
“Acquaintances. What are you doing here so late?”
“Waiting for you?”
“Waiting for me? Why?”
“I don’t know. It just felt like the thing to do.”
“Well thanks, I think I am old enough to walk home by myself,” he jokes, smiling so that she wouldn’t get offended. Why does the girl bother him so much?
“I know that. It’s just that I got a feeling in the library that I might not see you again for a long time.”
“Well, that’s true. I won’t be coming back to school ever again.” Why was he telling her this?
A sharp intake of breath.
“Why not?”
“I’m going to work for the Union government.”
“That’s what those men in the car were about?”
“Something like that.” He is surprised at how quickly he feels at ease with this girl, whose eyebrows are now furrowed with concern. He detects a slight Mandarin accent in her English and places her family as recent immigrants from the mainland.
“So my intuition was right.”
“I guess so. I am Cad Caldwell by the way.”
“I know who you are. Don’t think there is a single girl in the school doesn’t know that. The mixed-blood nerd who loves computers more than he likes girls. They talk about you in the girls changing rooms all the time.” She giggles.
“Really?” he asks incredulously.
“And you know what? Your name is scribbled on the walls in the girls’ toilets.”
“Yeah? Nothing bad I hope.”
“Not really? Just some girl wishing she was a keyboard so your gentle hands may type upon her QWERTY keys.” Another giggle. This one brings a smile to his face.
“What’s your name?”
“Mei Lin.”
“Nice name.”
“Yeah. Cad Caldwell. I guess I could learn to live with yours.” She giggles again. They walk in silence.
“I catch my bus here,” she says.
“Really? So quickly? Do you have a UID, so I can contact you online?”
“Yes I do but I only use it at school. Granddad does not let me use a computer at home. It’s 5200603,” she informs him. He commits it to memory.
“So I’ll message you at school then.”
“OK.”
Her smile is worth a thousand words. Suddenly a huge weight pulls at his insides, from his chest down to his stomach. He watches her and realizes that she feels the same thing, whatever it was that he was feeling. In the short few minutes that they have become acquainted with each other, something remarkably special has taken place, like they were destined to meet on this day, at this exact time and place.
He leans over and kisses her. She expects it. She’s read his mind. It is the first time he has kissed a girl and it’s like he just discovered the mysteries of the universe. And the feel of her lips, the taste of her mouth will stay with him forever. And as he holds her, he feels the rhythm of her heart pulsating against his chest and the gentle rise and fall of her adolescent breasts. They break away and she opens her eyes. Caldwell sees in their black depths something as old as time itself.
“Wow, I’m sorry about that.”
“No need to be sorry. It was meant to be,” she says as though she possesses all the wisdom in the world.
“It’s just that I am leaving Hong Kong and I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we were both true to our feelings. We will meet again. Ah, here comes my bus.”
A number 8 bus pulls up to the deserted bus stop and the girl called Mei Lin boards it holding on to his hand for the longest possible time.