Wells nodded and blinked faster. Ray hid a smile. Wells was overly impressed by authority figures. He suspected that was why she had sought to work her way up as far as possible.
“This is Brenda Hastings, she is the director of our main computer science lab,” Wells continued as smoothly as possible. Her tone seemed to indicate that the agents were on a field trip rather than conducting a criminal investigation. “And this is Dr. Ray Vance, computer science faculty.”
The agents eyed him and he nodded back. No handshakes were offered. Ray was too tired and irritated to care.
They began an impressive series of questions, quickly isolating the events of the morning. Johansen, a stocky man of medium height, recorded everything with a hand-held voice recorder. Vasquez took occasional notes.
“So it was you, Dr. Vance, who shut down the system. Why?”
Ray had known this question would be coming, and he felt he was ready for it. “Because I believed that the virus was stalling us, making it look like we could recover if we allowed the disk backup to finish before shutting down. I believe that it was using the time to infect more systems.”
Vasquez raised her eyebrows a fraction. The silent Agent Johansen frowned and aimed his recorder at Ray. The red indicator light on the device glowed. “On what do you base this belief, Doctor?” asked Vasquez.
“First, the lines were all coming alive, showing a lot of activity on the ports that wasn’t our doing. Second, the virus was very sophisticated, and could have easily been devised to destroy the disk data thoroughly-but it didn’t. Instead, it disabled the Optical drive, messed up the disk, not completely mind you, just enough to panic us, then left us an out with the backup drive system.”
There was moment of quiet while everyone looked at Ray blankly. “Dr. Vance, are you aware that there is no record of any virus that would be so sophisticated?”
“Yes, I teach the operating systems classes here.”
“I see, so viruses are definitely in your field of expertise.”
Ray nodded. Uncontrollably, he yawned.
“Haven’t you been sleeping, Doctor?”
Ray shook his head. “We had trouble with the system last night. Brenda and I were working on it until three.”
Agent Vasquez nodded and made a note in her notebook. Ray began to wonder how long they would want to go over this. He had already cancelled his 1:00 PM class and planned to leave early to get some sleep before Justin came home and tackled him. To be sure, he would come in and spend the evening and much of the night in the lab again to try and isolate the virus files. Sarah was going to be pissed.
“How did you get into the room with the computer hardware, Doctor?”
Ray blinked. “I-ah, I have a copy of a master key. It works with most of the doors on campus. A lot of the faculty have them.” He felt a guilty heat rising in his neck. He looked around and noticed that everyone was staring at him seriously. No one was talking or smiling. Their lack of movement was disconcerting.
“Dr. Wells,” said Agent Vasquez, turning to face the dean. “Are you aware of an informal agreement among the faculty to have access to such a key?”
“Certainly not,” she said. She avoided Ray’s eyes.
“Wait a minute, here,” said Ray. “I think we’re getting a bit off track. Aren’t we supposed to be isolating the virus and finding out how to eradicate it?”
Agent Vasquez nodded in agreement. “There is another team coming up from Los Angeles tonight. They will work with the system all night until the virus is isolated and understood.”
“I’ve got it rebooting now,” said Brenda.
“Good,” Vasquez said. She turned her ever-serious gaze back to Ray. “Does that concern you, Dr. Vance?”
“No, not if we’ve cut out all the external lines.”
“So, if we keep the machine isolated, disconnected from the internet and from the outside lines, the virus can’t get out of the system?”
“Ah, no-wait,” Ray said, as things finally began to sink in. He flicked his red, burning eyes over the four of them. Only Johansen met his gaze. The man never stopped flatly staring at him, watching him, as if he expected him to do something at any moment…
His mind raced ahead. He had overreacted, they were right. All he had needed to do was pull all the external lines. If he had cut the connections to the outside world, he could have stopped the virus from damaging anything more than their local system. He had made a mistake. In a flash, he recalled Dr. Ingles’ words: Don’t leave something out that looks bad later. That cagey bastard. He had foreseen all of this.
“Okay, I see what you are driving at,” said Ray. “You have a point. I could have just cut the outside lines. I think I overreacted. But I just didn’t want it to get out. As a data-destructive virus, it had to be stopped before it trashed every other server it could reach.”
Vasquez turned to Johansen. “Are there any reports of data-destructive behavior outside of this lab?” she asked.
“No,” answered Johansen. He gazed coldly at Ray while he spoke, “The virus is spreading with frightening speed, but so far it hasn’t done any damage other than eating up resources. The only erased files we know of are right here.”
“Well,” said Ray, trying not to stammer. “I wasn’t even sure which of the peripherals back there controlled the external lines, so I killed them all to be safe. I just didn’t know what the thing was doing,” he finished lamely.
“A moment ago, you claimed to know exactly what it was doing, Doctor,” said Agent Vasquez. “I quote: ‘Second, the virus was very sophisticated, and could have easily been devised to destroy the disk data thoroughly-but it didn’t.’“
They were all looking at him again now, with a new coldness in their eyes. For the first time, he felt something more than embarrassment. For the first time, he felt alarmed.
“Whoa, hold on a minute here!” he said, laughing tightly. “I see where this is going. You people don’t actually believe that I would release a virus, do you?”
“That remains to be seen, Dr. Vance,” said Agent Vasquez.
… 78 Hours and Counting…
It was Wednesday and Justin’s school always let out at 1:30 PM on Wednesdays. When Justin left for home, he was glad that the gray van was nowhere in sight. He was in such a good mood that he walked on the edge of the curbs almost the entire way home-the whole three blocks-his Nikes slipping off into the gutter only twice. It was a personal record for him, and he felt that today would be a lucky day. He practiced his whistling, which he really couldn’t do yet, but he tried. As he walked he shaped and reshaped his mouth to make hissing and peeping sounds vaguely like cartoon theme songs.
When he reached home, he realized right away that no one was home. This was not the usual for a Thursday, as Daddy was generally home by this time, but it wasn’t unknown, either. What he was supposed to do was go to Billy’s grandma’s house and watch TV with Billy until his dad got home. But he didn’t want to do this, because Billy didn’t watch the same cartoons as he did in the afternoon and because Billy’s house and Billy’s grandma smelled kinda funny. So instead, he used his secret way in.
Going through the side gate and around to the back, he found the window into the guest bedroom that never shut right and pulled off the screen. Within a minute he was inside and climbing down off the bed. He began to whistle again, proud of himself, when he heard something.
There was a rattle and a thump. Something was in his parents’ bedroom; something was in the drawers. Justin thought of the bird that had flown into the living room last summer and had to be caught in his dad’s jacket and tossed outside. Or maybe it was the neighbor’s cat, who always seemed to be sneaking in and running around on the counters in the kitchen.
Then he heard the creak of floorboards. It was a person, a robber, almost certainly. Justin thought about climbing out the window again, but he was worried that the robber might hear him this time. There was no easy way out the front door, so Justin crept down the hallway to the study. He lifted the phone handset. In the dimly lit room, the glow of the keypad seemed bright and the drone of the dial tone seemed like the roar of an engine. With shaking fingers, he dialed 9-1-1, just as the kids always did on those real-life rescue shows.