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Once I’d decided these things, I thought of Cassie. Had she been kidnapped? Was Patton even now gathering forces to spring me? Did anyone back in North Dakota care if I’d been gone for many days without contact?

Then I just thought of Cassie. The real Cassie, not the lookalike Cassandra. I missed her terribly. A head librarian. With a background in acting. And good at it. I’d seen her make it work. No meth addict. Hardly even drank. Beautiful and brilliant. Quite a combination.

By then, my body had fully recovered. I could tell. And I sat up in bed, letting the dizziness slowly diminish and my head fully clear. Within a few minutes I was back walking again, letting the kinks of so many hours lying down work themselves out. As I did I looked down at the floor. Wall to wall carpeting. Hard to hide a doorway there. At the same time, the only place it could really be. I’d have to investigate. But later. Now it was time for lunch, breakfast, dinner, whatever, and back to the job.

15.
As expected, breakfast was waiting for me in the kitchen. So it was morning. Maybe this was the only way to tell the actual tie of day. What kind of meal was being served? Just like in a real prison, or so I imagined. Hot waffles and eggs.

After I’d washed up and dressed, I returned to the main room, half expecting it to be different somehow. The door cemented shut. A cage connecting my apartment door to the supercomputer with no way out. But wrong. Nothing had changed at all. Cassandra was busying herself at one of the stations, and the sanctity of the room hadn’t changed one bit. As if we’d never left.

She didn’t look up at me. So I broke the ice.

“Good morning, Cassandra,” I said, loud and clear so no mistaking it.

“Morning,” she mumbled without looking up.

“Don’t worry. I’m not mad. From your point of view it was the only choice. I just wished you’d have given me a chance to get away. But even then you’d be punished. And we both know how. I understand.”

That caught her off guard. An apology of sorts from the one she’d given up. She looked up at me with, now I could see, a slight tear in one eye.

Suddenly she rushed at me and wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a kiss on my lips. And not a sister-brother job either.

“Wait a second,” I said, as soon as I could breathe again. Had they told her to do this? To make me forget about escaping because I’d want her so bad?

“We need to get back to work. I just wanted to clear the air so it wouldn’t keep us from doing the job.”

She wanted nothing of that. Went immediately back to my lips and began trying to rearrange my teeth with her tongue.

I pushed her away gently and stood her at arm’s length.

“Don’t think I don’t appreciate this,” I said, but we have to get back to work.” And I stared at her. I could see the dope in her pupils. She was awake now. No kidding. But I couldn’t fall for it.

“No more codes,” I told her. “Let’s just get back to doing the job.” I hesitated for that to sink in. “I’ve decided the only way to get back to where I came from is by simply doing the job. Do you hear me?” And I gave her a little shake as I said it.

She nodded slowly, probably a little frustrated that her amorous attentions hadn’t gotten more of a rise out of me.

“Listen carefully,” I said, “I’ll complete the virtual life stuff, in pieces so that it can rearrange itself when it finds an appropriate host in a users memory, and you get me a clean, or at least relatively clean, delivery system. We can make this work. It won’t be invisible, but the parts by themselves won’t pose any threat, so the antivirus software will let it pass.”

She nodded again.

“And then we collect our dough and live the rest of our lives happily ever after.”

More nods.

Of course, that last part was more for listeners outside of the room rather than her or me.

Then the noise began.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Don’t know for sure,” she said, “but my guess it’s something to protect whomever’s in here from you.”

“Well, they better do it somewhere else if they expect me to get any work done.”

Immediately the sound stopped. Power.

And we went back to work again. No interruptions. Coding, experimenting, building tiny digital beasts to do their dirty little job for them.
With plenty of sleep behind me and a power breakfast in my belly, I worked feverously, compared notes with Cassandra, and basically followed my plan. When quitting time came, I went back to my apartment and visually began my search for the entrance. Figuring that the place was as bugged as the lab, I pretended to read one of my books rather than crawl around on the floor inspecting each fiber for some sign of entry or exit. Not much to go on. Must be under the bed, or in the kitchen. The latter making sense for that was the place I least visited and where most of the action took place.

When I slept that night, I had a strange dream. All about a single number. Thirteen. I’d had dreams like this before. Of a single number. The last time had proven useful, my eleven steps to define life. But what could thirteen mean? A provocative but unhelpful number as far as I could see. So I let it sit there, at the edge of my consciousness, hopefully to associate with something meaningful during the new day. And back to the grindstone.

By noon, I guessed, we had something that seemed to work pretty well, At least as a prototype. I spoke to the room loudly and told it that we were ready for a simple demonstration if anyone were interested.

Before I had finished, I was interrupted by the booming voice of you know who asking us to show him. Immediately.

“Come look,” I asked him.

“Not on your life,” he said. “Just run it in the system. We have complete access. If you tell us what to do, we’ll see it fine from here.”

Not anxious for a repeat performance of his visit just before our escape.

And so I began.

“In simple jargon,” I began, “I’ve created a prototype of virtual life.” I presented a small graphic on screen that I assumed he could see as well.

“This little guy weighs only a few kilobytes, but has many built-in instructions in its DNA. Most importantly, it can divide into different smaller pieces, each with its own DNA as to how to seek out the appropriate counterparts of the beast itself upon finding a host and then putting itself back together again. Make sense so far.”

“Yes,” the voice boomed back.

“Okay, then, I’ll let Cassandra take it from here.”

She looked up and smiled at me. Amorously. What the hell, made for some excitement at least.

“The delivery system forces the beasts, as Professor Francis calls them, to dismantle themselves before then leave the transmitting system, producing infinitesimally small pieces of code floats along in the Internet’s bloodstream as completely inert objects, each connected by location memory so they still act as one beast even though detected as separate and harmless units.”

My God, she was incredibly articulate and thoroughly understandable. Could this actually be the same person who sat with me in a dark alleyway at some Godforsaken hour of the morning breathing in crystal meth fumes?

“When they encounter a portal and proceed through,” she continued, “any virus screen will simply detect nothing but harmless random bits of code appearing for all the world like a plug-in for whatever application or data their accompanying. Once in the host computer, the bits of code rejoin automatically and begin their programmed jobs of disrupting the machine.”

We then ran a simulation. Looked great.

“But that’s a simulation,” the bodiless voice said. I need to see the real thing.”

“Coming shortly,” I said. “I haven’t created the antivirus we’re going to sell yet.” I used “we’re” hoping he would catch the implications. “If we ran it now, it would drive both of us nuts while we tried to disarm it.”

“Great work,” he said. “How long?”

“A day maybe. Not much longer than that. We need to test it as well as create it. No room for error or it could cause some real damage. Maybe even I couldn’t fix things. We wouldn’t want that.” I waited for confirmation. Got none. “Would we?” I added.

“No, surely not that.”

And the demonstration, such as it was, had concluded. No words of encouragement or even suggestions as to how long he would permit us to continue. Just silence.

“That went fine,” Cassandra said.”

“Good work on your part,” I agreed. “But I need something to eat. Give me an hour and we’ll get back to work.”

“I’ll document while your gone,” she said.

I’d forgotten the energy surge for her drug of choice.

16.
I spent my time eating lunch by staring at every square centimeter of visible wall and ceiling space. Nothing. The floor was linoleum. Hard to tell where a door might hide given all of the lines filled with grout between them. These small tiles were cemented into place. Solid as rock. Nothing there I could see.

I pretended to look for something under the sink and investigated its floor. Solid cement. Not imagining any surveillance equipment down there, I knocked on it to make sure the apparent hard surface was real. It was. No way a hidden door there.

Sitting back in my chair to finish my lunch, I looked around once more. Not much to see. A microwave. Not large enough for anyone to crawl out of. A refrigerator full of fresh food. False back? I checked, pretending to get more relish for my sandwich. No go. A stove. I tried a burner. It worked. Looked in the oven. A real oven. Not a chance.

A small closet near the rear looked like a possibility but when I investigated, after dropping a crumb and apparently looking for a broom to clean it up, found a real closet with a solid cement floor. Apparently the constitution of the separation between us and the floor below.

That was it, I suddenly thought. Thirteen. We were on the thirteenth floor. The one that most architects leave out of their plans but with this one somehow had left into the blueprints. A good connection. But what difference did it make? What did the thirteenth floor of a building have that any other floor wouldn’t as well?

Pained by my lack of progress, I finished my sandwich, and cleaned up by putting my plate in the sink. Then I got an idea. Not much of one, but why not? I scrounged around in my pockets for a slip of paper, found one, and jotted a note of thanks to my invisible, non-existent cook and bottle washer. Maybe I could learn something. What, I had no idea.

Then I rejoined Cassandra in the mausoleum we called a place to work, and set about to build the precious antivirus that would make our virus impotent. The whole idea seemed insane. First to build something that did a certain thing, and then build something that would stop it from doing so. But I understood its economic advantages. I also thought about what I would include to ensure that either one of them really worked. That was the harder part. Not that they could ever figure out what I’d done exactly. At least not before it went to market. But they’d eventually know. When they were all carted off to prison for their lust for the big kill.

And then, of course, I became curious about what would happen if we pointed each monitor directly at another. Feedback? Like the endless images of mirrors reflecting ever smaller images of themselves in hotel rooms that have mirrors on each side of the bathroom sick. Not likely in this case, given that the images of the cameras themselves were invisible in the other monitor. But the sound might build to a crisis point that could be interesting.

I went back to work. Knowing that my keepers could look directly into my eyeballs as I worked didn’t help me think much, but at the same time I was pleased to have solved another one of the many problems that confronted me.

The afternoon, if that what it was, passed quickly, and before I called it a day I had roughed out a version of the antivirus with nothing left but to test and retest it and then work with Cassandra to make the whole package function.

I bid her goodnight and went back to my apartment.

Not long after I’d closed the door, I heard a soft but insistent knock. Who’d knock? I thought. The door had no lock, and CM wouldn’t be so polite. In fact, he’d come in with an army to protect him.

I opened the door and as soon as I did the came fully open and Cassandra jumped into my arms.

“You saved my life,” he nearly yelled. “No one’s ever done that for me before.” And she gave me another of her patented open-mouthed kisses.

Part of me didn’t want to struggle, but another part did. The second one won.

When I pulled her away from my face, I gasped for breath. She’d caught me in between and I was quickly running out of oxygen.

“What are you doing?” I stupidly asked her. For I knew all too well what she was doing.

“What do you think, stupid?” And she aimed for another plunge into my mouth.

“Wait,” I said. “Just wait as second. Please.” And she stopped.

“I didn’t save your life. I needed you. You know Queens, I don’t. Besides you were in need. Every pusher you’ve ever bought a hit from has saved you.”

“They wanted to be paid,” she said. “You don’t expect anything.”

“Well, then,” hunting desperately for something to fend her off, “I’m spoken for.”

“You married?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Engaged to be married?”

“Not really.”

“Then you’re not spoken for.” And with that she made her next move. A hand down below where she’d spread-eagled me around my stomach.

“Wait,” I said, now getting worried things would really get out of hand quickly. After all, even though an addict, she was quite attractive and not without other attributes. “Did they put you up to this?”

“They? What do you mean?”

“Them. Christopher Masters and his bunch.”

That did it. I should have begun with that tactic.

Rather then kiss me then, she climbed down off me and shoved her fist into my groin and promptly walked out of the room.

Actually I guessed that last part because I was already half doubled-up in a ball. But I did hear the door slam. And for the next few minutes, I could think of nothing much at all, except that I wanted everything to stop of a minute. Especially the damn pain that enveloped my entire body. It did finally. And I lay there on the floor looking up at the ceiling as I had in bed a couple of days prior. Letting my body regain some of its former self.

That’s when I saw it. Something moved. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. But no, I’d really seen it. Directly above me, in the ceiling, a shadow had briefly appeared and then disappeared. From right to left. As if the surface was a bit more translucent there than everywhere else. Or that a portion of the solid cement between floors was missing.

O stood up slowly, to make sure that I didn’t go down again, and then stood on my toes and touched the area I’d seen the shadow move across. Seamless. No indication that anything was amiss. No sign that a hidden door could open up and let someone through.

I gave it some thought. If the architects of the building had created a hole above me, for whatever reason, could they have done the same below me as well? Some kind of abandoned idea for a continuous shaft from the top to the bottom floor.

I got back down on the floor and inspected the carpet both by eye and by running the palm of my hand slowly across the soft fibers of the cloth. Nothing I could see or feel. But, of course, that would be the point. Maybe the only way to make it possible to enter was a force from the room below me. A door there with its plot of carpet so well matched with the surrounding one that it wouldn’t or couldn’t be seen or felt. The wouldn’t part was understandable. The couldn’t part didn’t seem possible.

I put my nose down on the surface and moved it slowly around hoping I’d smell a new smell or feel a slight waft of a different temperature air hit me. And it did. Almost imperceptibly. After a moment of two I could trace a definite square about two feet in diameter in the middle of the room’s floor. At the foot of the bed. I’d found it. But so what? It was either locked, my guess, or I wouldn’t be able to pry it open with any tool available in the apartment.

I got up and looked in the kitchen. As I’d guessed, nothing there to work into a crack to get hold of a door as flush as the one I’d found. Not possible to figure out if it was locked or not. I’d never get that far. But, I’d found it, and like a little kid could feel the adrenalin surge through my veins. My cooks simply climbed a ladder from below when they were sure I wasn’t home, push open the hatch above them, leave it open while they delivered the goods and cleaned up, and then went back the way they’d come, pulling the hatch door down after them with a rope or other device. Simple. Quick. Effective. And, if I could figure out how to open it myself from above, a possible route out of this place when the time came for me to vamoose. This time without Cassandra.

17.
The next morning I asked those outside listening to get the rest of the group together. We were ready for a demonstration. Apparently most were available. Probably just somewhere else in the building doing whatever they did. Within an hour or so, they assembled in the lab along with an armed guard to keep me from bashing all their brains in. The guard had two pistols and some kind of large automatic rifle that he kept at the ready for immediate use. Bokator was good. But guns are guns. No kind of protection from that kind of firepower.

CM led the group initially looking suspicious, but once all in the room, the group seemed to drain his caution away. He introduced me briefly and I began my partly prepared speech.

“Bear with me now as I try to put this into a form that you can understand. No insult intended, but the technology for this is pretty complex and I want you to get a full picture of how it works.” I looked around and everyone smiled.

“Okay, then. Let me begin then with a description of something very much like what I’ve built.” I waited a second until I had their complete attention. “The Portuguese man o' war looks like a jellyfish. But it’s not. In fact, it isn’t even a single creature, but consists of four separate animals. One of these is a gas-filled bladder, a kind of sail that enables the organism to float. This sail is equipped with a siphon, which allows it to be deflated for submerging to escape enemies. Another of its animal parts makes up the tentacles, typically thirty feet in length. Yet another type fishes for food using venom-filled thread-like structures that sting and kills small fish and shrimp. Yet another digests the food and passes it along to the other animals. The last is responsible for reproduction. All these separate animals work in symbiotic ways so that that entire colony works as one being.”

“Professor Francis, what has this got to do with anything?” CM asked. Not so politely.

“Everything to do with it actually. You see, it’s the model around which I’ve built the MOR, short for man o’ war. Like the living model, it consists of four separate parts, all needing each of the other three in order to function. Each has a different DNA that, when reconstructed, creates the code for the full animal to work. Essentially we throw these tiny MOR parts into the Internet’s bloodstream. They attach themselves to any kind of data they find and begin looking for three other compatible parts. They’re completely undetectable both because they’re very small, and because once attached to a host, they don’t harm it in any way.”

I stopped for a second. Let this settle into their non-computational brains. No questions. Yet.

“As long as they remain in the fast moving Internet, they stay inert. No harm done. When they’re downloaded into a single computer, the antiviral software that every computer has actually does the opposite of what it’s designed to do. It wakes up the little pieces of code so they once again look for partners to recombine to make a full little creature. Since they’re still separate, they cannot be detected as causing any kind of a problem. Invisible you might say. Cassandra here was responsible for writing all of the code to make the creatures move to the Internet and then from it to individual computers.”

Again I waited for her to get the proper credit. She smiled as I did.

“Once the creatures reassemble themselves, the action begins. They’re programmed to excite certain parts of the operating system to produce windows at random times and for random durations. These windows cannot be bypassed. In other words, as long as they appear on the screen, users are simply stuck for the duration. Nothing works.”

“What do these windows say?” A member of the group. No CM.

“Right now they say ‘Hello.’ That’s it.”

“And you’ve built a antivirus for this?”

“Yes. It simply deconstructs the recombinant organism into its separate parts, now inert, and that’s the end of that.”

“And how fast can somebody else figure it out?”

“Not for a long time. My guess would be months if not years. These MORs are a new type of viral critter. No one’s had a chance to study them. Even I haven’t all that much. They might never be able to do it, though never is a long time.”

“Can you give us a demonstration?”

“Absolutely. That’s why we’re here.”

And so we did. Cassandra had used her considerable skills at CGI to create visually appealing little creatures that split up into fours after entering her version of the Internet bloodstream and then, after downloading into an unsuspecting computer reassembling. She’d even made a version of the window that opened saying ‘Hello.’

When we’d completed our dog and pony show, CM asked his group of yes men if there were any further questions.

“Have you considered quantum entanglement?” one of them asked. Staring at me when he said it.

Quantum entanglement? Who was this guy? Maybe I’d have to reconsider my opinion of the ‘yes men.’ Maybe, like me, they’d been harpooned against their wills.

I stared at him to see if he was serious. Apparently he was.

“No,” I said. “First, I’m not a physicist. Second, and more important, I don’t think anyone could quantum entangle two tiny bits of compiled computer code. Lastly, if it were possible and would make the code itself smaller yet, it would make things harder. Entanglement, if I understand it well enough, requires that two particles relate precisely to one another. This would mean that there would be precisely four individual bits that would need connections. The way I’ve got it, any four different ones can recombine.”

I waited for a minute. Had I given him a rational answer? Had even he understood his question? But he nodded as if I’d passed some kind of entrance exam to Physics 101. Who were these guys?

“Anything else?” CM asked after an appropriate time for further questions had passed. No one raised a hand. Thankfully. Another question from left field like that one and I’d turn the whole mess over to the bunch of them.

“Okay, then. We’ll let you be for a day or two. Cassandra, you know what to do. Francis, you can relax.”

“What?” I asked, before I could stop my mouth from working ahead of my brain.