Davis, Jerry – The Penalties Of Pirating

Leo felt a little dizzy, trying to take this all in. “How did you do my signature?”

“I was able to pull a sample of your signature out of the memory buffer of the fax peripheral. The signature is from a letter you faxed yesterday morning.”

“Why did you fire Lolita?”

“Her pay was unnecessary overhead.”

“What makes you think I wanted her fired?”

“My purpose is to make money selling life insurance. It was a business decision which needed to be made.”

“You should have asked me first.”

“You did not specify that beforehand.”

“You, I ” Leo threw his hands into the air, and sat down in his desk chair. What was the point in arguing with a machine? The fact was, the machine appeared to be doing her job already, and with much more efficiency, and had the machine not fired her he would have never been able to bring himself to do it. It had actually done him a favor.

Sitting there, thinking about it, he suddenly had a swelling feeling of well-being. He picked up one of the freshly printed sales letters and read it over again with admiration. This program really knew what it was doing. It was most definitely the best investment he had ever made.

During the next several weeks Leo was busier than he’d ever been in his career as an insurance agent. The computer program, which he’d come to call “Partner,” kept his schedule full every single day. Even better, all his new contacts were already primed to buy his life insurance. Partner was doing most of the selling in letters and over the phone (using the seductive voice of the vox modem), and Leo was just calling on them in person to get the papers signed.

The bank account swelled. After two months Leo bought a new car, one that separated hydrogen and oxygen from water and burned it. A month after that, he put a down payment on a big new condo.

Leo was coming out of a restaurant after a terrific dinner when he ran into Dano Sharks, the software pirate from which he’d bought the AI program. Dano looked a little shocked to see Leo, and looked around nervously to see if anyone was looking at them.

They were in a parking garage and there was no one else in sight.

“Hey, Dano! That software works great!”

“Yeah, man, yeah of course it does.” Dano was still looking around nervously. He leaned close to Leo and said in a low voice, “You haven’t given a copy of it away to anyone, or anything, have you?”

“No.”

“Have you told anyone about it? About where you got it?”

“No. I haven’t even told anyone I have it. I know better than that, man. It’s pirated.”

“That’s really good man, because you’d better keep it to yourself. You know what I’m saying? To yourself.” Dano’s voice and expression was intense, like he was afraid.

“Sure, of course I will.”

“You better, and don’t you tell anyone where you got it.”

“I won’t. Why, what’s wrong?”

“You really got yourself a deal on that program, man,” Dano said. “It’s hot, it’s really hot. You say it’s working good for you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well there’s feds poking around looking for it, man. You don’t want to know who wrote it. You just don’t want to know.”

“Who?”

“The Central Intelligence Agency, man. The CIA.”

“No way!”

“Yes way. I knew it was a government program when I sold it to you, but I didn’t have any idea how heavy a government program it was. As far as I’m concerned, I never sold it to you. I never saw it. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah. And I definitely don’t have it.”

“You got it man. You don’t have it. It doesn’t exist.”

With that, Leo left and drove home. The next morning, which was the first of the month, he got a call from a representative of one of the insurance companies he dealt with. It was a friendly guy named Ted Franklin. “Jeeze, what did you do?” he said. “Hire a hit man?”

“What?” Leo said.

“You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Oh, well …” Ted’s voice assumed a more somber quality.

“Three of your clients were all killed on a bus last night.”

“You’re kidding! Which ones?”

“Three biggies, Leo. A Maxwell Stout, a John Segrahm, and a Wendy Boston. All three had policies for 5 million a piece.”

“Oh no!”

“Yeah.” Some of the humor crept back into Ted’s voice. “What are you trying to do, break us? Fifteen million new dollars, Leo!

All from clients who’s policies just barely matured.”

“You’re not saying you think that I had anything to do with it!”

“Oh, no! Leo, I’m just giving you a bad time. I just thought you’d like to know. I mean, it’s odd.”

“My God, no kidding.”

They said goodbye and hung up, and Leo had to rush out of the office to make it to an appointment. Later that afternoon, after a full and successful day, Leo arrived home and relaxed for a while in his hot tub, then dried off and sat down at his kitchen table for his monthly ritual. It was the first of the month, and his kitchen table was covered with bills.

He pulled out his pocket computer and plugged it into the phone line, then had it dial the local branch of his bank.

Accessing his account, he prepared to begin paying off the bills when he noticed his bank balance. “What the hell!?” he shouted. A half-million dollars had been deposited that very day. A half-million! Using his security code, he looked over the transfer list and found it had come from a Swiss account.

A Swiss account? He didn’t have a Swiss account! He called the Swiss bank and tried to access the mysterious account with his computer, and to his astonishment his code worked and he was in.

There was Ľ14,500,000.00 American new dollars in the account.

The transfer record showed three deposits of Ľ5,000,000.00 apiece from three other Swiss accounts, and one transfer of Ľ500,000.00

into his American account. Fifteen million new dollars total.

Fifteen million, he thought. Fifteen million! Leo broke into a sweat, wondering what was going on.

After a sleepless night, he drove to his office early and confronted his computer. “Partner,” he said, “why is there fifteen million in a Swiss account in my company’s name?”

“We have made a substantial profit,” the program told him.

“How did we make this money?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“What?”

“You don’t need to know,” the vox modem repeated.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Information on covert undertakings is only given out in a strictly need-to-know basis.”

“Covert undertakings?”

There was a sudden, loud, heavy-handed knock on the door. It was the kind of knock a policeman makes. Leo opened the office door and with a hot, sinking feeling of terror saw it was a square-jawed man with steel-colored eyes dressed in a uniform and carrying a gun in a holster. There was a big badge on his chest.

“Leo Itoya?”

“Yes?”

“Can I see some I.D. please?”

Leo looked past the uniformed man and saw a big, silver armored car sitting on the street outside. He pulled his wallet out with numb fingers and flipped it open, displaying his I.D.

“Can you pull it out, please?”

Leo pulled it out and handed it to the man. It was zipped through a pocket reader and handed back to him. “Thank you, Mr.

Itoya. We’ll bring it right in.” The uniformed man walked back to the armored car, and he and another uniformed man came back carrying a big box of blazing red Ľ20.00 bills. “Sign here, please.”

Leo signed. He was handed a receipt for the delivery of a half-million new dollars in cash and the uniformed men left. The box of money sat on his desk, more money than he’d ever seen in his life. “This is incredible,” he said.

“A man will be by here to pick that up at noon,” Partner said. “It would be best if you were not present.”

“Why?”

“Information on covert undertakings is only given out in a strictly need-to-know basis.”

“You said that already.”

“It is a tried and true policy.”

Leo stared at the machine, his mind reeling with the implications. “Okay,” he said. “I’m out of here.”

The printer spat out a list of appointments. Leo snatched them and left. He walked down the street to where he’d parked his car, got in it, and sat there thinking. This is out of control, he told himself. This is totally out of control. As he sat there, a sharply rectangular, black IBM business car pulled up (IBM cars only came in blue and black) and parked in front of his office. A tall, darkly-tanned man with a scarred-up face got out, looked casually up and down the street, then stepped into Leo’s office. A moment later he came out carrying the box of money. When he bent over to put the box in his car, the man’s business jacket flopped open to reveal a large ugly IBM business gun in a shoulder holster. For just a moment his eyes met Leo’s, and he gave a cold stare and then got into the black car and drove away.

Pages: 1 2 3

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *