He sighed. “No.”
Fernandez said, “Are they finished?” “I don’t know,” he said.
And then he saw it. They were finished. They had to be. Because otherwise the Diagnostics team would be working all night, trying to get ready for the meeting tomorrow. But they had covered the tables up and gone to their professional association meeting because they were finished. The problem was solved. Everybody knew it but him. That was why they had only opened three drives. They didn’t need to open the others. And they had asked for them to be sealed in plastic . . . Because . . . The punctures . . . “Air,” he said. “Air?” “They think it’s the air.” “What air?” she said. “The air in the plant.” “The plant in Malaysia?” “Right.”
“This is about air in Malaysia?”
“No. Air in the plant.”
He looked again at the notebook on the table. “PPU” followed by a row of figures. PPU stood for “particulates per unit.” It was the standard measure of air cleanliness in a plant. And these figures, ranging from two to eleven they were way off. They should be running zero particulates . . . one, at most. These figures were unacceptable.
The air in the plant was bad.
That meant that they would be getting dirt in the split optics, dirt in the drive arms, dirt in the chip joins . . .
He looked at the chips attached to the board.
“Christ,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Look.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“There’s a space between the chips and the boards. The chips aren’t seated.”
“It looks okay to me.”
“It’s not.”
He turned to the stacked drives. He could see at a glance that all the chips were seated differently. Some were tight, some had a gap of a few millimeters, so you could see the metal contacts.
“This isn’t right,” Sanders said. “This should never happen.” The fact was that the chips were inserted on the line by automated chip pressers. Every board, every chip should look exactly the same coming off the line. But they didn’t. They were all different. Because of that, you could get voltage irregularities, memory allocation problems-all kinds of random stuff. Which was exactly what they were getting.
He looked at the blackboard, the list of the flowchart. One item caught his eye.
D. Σ Mechanical √√
The Diagnostics team had put two checks beside “Mechanical.” The problem with the CD-ROM drives was a mechanical problem. Which meant it was a problem in the production line.
And the production line was his responsibility.
He’d designed it, he’d set it up. He’d checked all the specs on that line, from beginning to end.
And now it wasn’t working right.
He was sure that it wasn’t his fault. Something must have happened after he had set up the line. Somehow it had been changed around, and it didn’t work anymore. But what had happened?
To find out, he needed to get onto the databases.
But he was locked out.
There wasn’t any way to get online.
Immediately, he thought of Bosak. Bosak could get him on. So, for that matter, could one of the programmers on Cherry’s teams. These kids were hackers: they would break into a system for a moment of minor amusement the way ordinary people went out for coffee. But there weren’t any programmers in the building now. And he didn’t know when they would be back from their meeting. Those kids were so unreliable. Like the kid that had thrown up all over the walker pad. That was the problem. They were just kids, playing with toys like the walker pad. Bright creative kids, fooling around, no cares at all, and
“Oh,Jesus.” He sat forward. “Louise.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a way to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Get into the database.” He turned and hurried out of the room. He was rummaging through his pockets, looking for the second electronic passcard.
Fernandez said, “Are we going somewhere?”
Yes, we are.”
“Do you mind telling me where?”
“New York,” Sanders said.
The lights flicked on one after another, in long banks. Fernandez stared at the room. “What is this? The exercise room from hell?”
“It’s a virtual reality simulator,” Sanders said.
She looked at the round walker pads, and all the wires, the cables hanging from the ceiling. “This is how you’re going to get to New York?”
“That’s right.”
Sanders went over to the hardware cabinets. There were large hand-painted signs reading, “Do Not Touch” and “Hands Off, You Little Wonk.” He hesitated, looking for the control console.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Fernandez said. She stood by one of the walker pads, looking at the silver headset. “Because I think somebody could get electrocuted with this.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sanders lifted covers off monitors and put them back on again, moving quickly. He found the master switch. A moment later, the equipment hummed. One after another, the monitors began to glow. Sanders said, “Get up on the pad.”
He came over and helped her stand on the walker pad. Fernandez moved her feet experimentally, feeling the balls roll. Immediately, there was a green flash from the lasers. “What was that?”
“The scanner. Mapping you. Don’t worry about it. Here’s the headset.” He brought the headset down from the ceiling and started to place it over her eyes.
`Just a minute.” She pulled away. “What is this?”
“The headset has two small display screens. They project images right in front of your eyes. Put it on. And be careful. These things are expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“A quarter of a million dollars apiece.” He fitted the headset over her eyes and put the headphones over her ears.
“I don’t see any images. It’s dark in here.”
“That’s because you’re not plugged in, Louise.” He plugged in her cables.
“Oh,” she said, in a surprised voice. “What do you know . . . I can see a big blue screen, like a movie screen. Right in front of me. At the bottom of the screen there are two boxes. One says `ON’ and one says ‘OFF’.
‘Just don’t touch anything. Keep your hands on this bar,” he said, putting her fingers on the walker handhold. “I’m going to mount up.”
“This thing on my head feels funny.”
Sanders stepped up onto the second walker pad and brought the headset down from the ceiling. He plugged in the cable. “I’ll be right with you,” he said.
He put on the headset.
Sanders saw the blue screen, surrounded by blackness. He looked to his left and saw Fernandez standing beside him. She looked entirely normal, dressed in her street clothes. The video was recording her appearance, and the computer eliminated the walker pad and the headset.
“I can see you,” she said, in a surprised voice. She smiled. The part of her face covered by the headset was computer animated, giving her a slightly unreal, cartoonlike quality.
“Walk up to the screen.”
“How?”
`Just walk, Louise.” Sanders started forward on the walker pad. The blue screen became larger and larger, until it filled his field of vision. He went over to the ON button, and pushed it with his finger.
The blue screen flashed. In huge lettering, stretching wide in front of them, it said:
DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS DATA SYSTEMS
Beneath that was listed a column of oversize menu items. The screen looked exactly like an ordinary DigiCom monitor screen, the kind on everybody’s office desk, now blown up to enormous size.
“A gigantic computer terminal,” Fernandez said. “Wonderful. Just what everybody has been hoping for.”
“Just wait.” Sanders poked at the screen, selecting menu items. There was a kind of whoosh and the lettering on the screen curved inward, pulling back and deepening until it formed a sort of funnel that stretched away from them into the distance. Fernandez was silent.
That shut her up, he thought.
Now, as they watched, the blue funnel began to distort. It widened, became rectangular. The lettering and the blue color faded. Beneath his feet, a floor emerged. It looked like veined marble. The walls on both sides became wood paneling. The ceiling was white.
“It’s a corridor,” she said, in a soft voice.
The Corridor continued to build itself, progressively adding more detail. Drawers and cabinets appeared in the walls. Pillars formed along its length. Other hallways opened up, leading down to other corridors. Large light fixtures emerged from the walls and turned themselves on. Now the pillars cast shadows on the marble floors.
“It’s like a library,” she said. “An old-fashioned library.”
“This part is, yes.”
“How many parts are there?”
“I’m not sure.” He started walking forward.
She hurried to catch up to him. Through his earphones, he heard the sound of their feet clicking on the marble floor. Cherry had added that-a nice touch.
Fernandez asked, “Have you been here before?”
“Not for several weeks. Not since it was finished.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m not exactly sure. But somewhere in here there’s a way to get into the Conley-White database.”
She said, “Where are we now?”
“We’re in data, Louise. This is all just data.”
“This corridor is data?”
“There is no corridor. Everything you see is just a bunch of numbers. It’s the DigiCom company database, exactly the same database that people access every day through their computer terminals. Except it’s being represented for us as a place.”
She walked alongside him. “I wonder who did the decorating.”
“It’s modeled on a real library. In Oxford, I think.”
They came to the junction, with other corridors stretching away. Big signs hung overhead. One said “Accounting.” Another said “Human Resources.” A third said “Marketing.”
“I see,” Fernandez said. “We’re inside your company database.”
“That’s right.”
“This is amazing.”
“Yeah. Except we don’t want to be here. Somehow, we have to get into Conley-White.”
“How do we do that?”
“I don’t know,” Sanders said. “I need help.”
“Help is here,” said a soft voice nearby. Sanders looked over and saw an angel, about a foot high. It was white, and hovered in the air near his head. It held a flickering candle in its hands.
“Goddamn,” Louise said.
“1 am sorry,” the angel said. “Is that a command? I do not recognize `Goddamn.’ ”
“No,” Sanders said quickly. “It’s not a command.” He was thinking that he would have to be careful or they would crash the system.
“Very well. I await your command.”
“Angel: I need help.”
“Help is here.”
“How do I enter the Conley-White database?”
“I do not recognize `the Conley-White database.’ ”
That made sense, Sanders thought. Cherry’s team wouldn’t have programmed anything about Conley-White into the Help system. He would have to phrase the question more generally. Sanders said, “Angel: I am looking for a database.”
“Very well. Database gateways are accessed with the keypad.”
“Where is the keypad?” Sanders said.
“Make a fist with your hand.”
Sanders made a fist and a gray pad formed in the air so that he appeared to be holding it. He pulled it toward him and looked at it.
“Pretty neat,” Fernandez said.
“I also know jokes,” the angel said. “Would you like to hear one?” “No,” Sanders said.
“Very well. I await your command.”
Sanders stared at the pad. It had a long list of operator commands, with arrows and push buttons. Fernandez said, “What is that, the world’s most complicated TV remote?”
`Just about.”
He found a push button marked OTHER 1311. That seemed likely. He pressed it.
Nothing happened.
He pressed it again.
“The gateway is opening,” the angel announced.
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“The gateway is opening.”
Sanders waited. Then he realized that the DigiCom system would have to connect to any remote database. The connection was going through; that was causing a delay.
“Connecting . . . now,” the angel said.
The wall of the Corridor began to dissolve. They saw a large gaping black hole, and nothing beyond it.
“That’s creepy,” Fernandez said.
White wire-frame lines began to appear, outlining a new corridor. The spaces filled, one by one, creating the appearance of solid shapes.
“This one looks different,” Fernandez said.
“We’re connecting over a T-1 high-speed data line,” Sanders said. “But even so, it’s much slower.”
The Corridor rebuilt itself as they watched. This time the walls were gray. They faced a black-and-white world.
“No color?”
“The system’s trying to generate a simpler environment. Color means more data to push around. So this is black and white.”
The new corridor added lights, a ceiling, a floor. After a moment, Sanders said, “Shall we go in?”
“You mean, the Conley-White database is in there?”
“That’s right,” Sanders said.
“I don’t know,” she said. She pointed: “What about this?”
Directly in front of them was a kind of flowing river of black-and white static. It ran along the floor, and also along the walls. It made a loud hissing sound.
“I think that’s just static off the phone lines.”
“You think it’s okay to cross?”
“We have to.”
He started forward. Immediately, there was a growl. A large dog blocked their path. It had three heads that floated above its body, looking in all directions.
“What’s that?”
“Probably a representation of their system security.” Cherry and his sense of humor, he thought.
“Can it hurt us?”
“For God’s sake, Louise. It’s just a cartoon.” Somewhere, of course, there was an actual monitoring system running on the Conley-White database. Perhaps it was automatic, or perhaps there was a real person who actually watched users come and go on the system. But now it was nearly one o’clock in the morning in New York. The dog was most likely just an automatic device of some kind.
Sanders walked forward, stepping through the flowing river of static. The dog growled as he approached. The three heads swiveled, watching him as he passed with cartoon eyes. It was a strange sensation. But nothing happened.
He looked back at Fernandez. “Coming?”
She moved forward tentatively. The angel remained behind, hovering in the air.