The Hacker and the Ants (16 page)

I jumped to my feet. “I'm sorry,” I shouted to the ant-enthralled Vos. “I have to leave right away. Thank you for the terrific meal.”

They looked at me confusedly, and Nga followed me out. She was expecting me to kiss her good-night, but the sirens were only a block or two away—they must have traced the cut cable that fast. I planted a quick smack on Nga's lovely mouth—oh, how badly I wanted to linger! “I'll come see you tomorrow at the bakery,” I promised, and sprinted down to my Animata. Studly was just finishing getting into my trunk, thank God. I slammed the trunk closed and peeled out.

A cop car drove past me on my way out. Soon the cops would find the cut Fibernet cable, and talk to Dutch's bereaved owner, and then they'd know to arrest the guy in the red Animata. Instead of making a flat-out run for home, I decided first to go a short distance and lie low.

“I want to go to 7070 Calle De La Cuesta,” I told my
map. This was the address of Carol's condo, which I knew was about a mile away, even though I'd never been there.

The condo complex was like an old two-story motel with ragged vegetation. They had a parking lot, and I pulled my car into the farthest corner, behind a garbage dumpster. I could have just sat there, but I wanted to see what else the ants were going to do on TV. I hoped that Hiroshi was out and that Carol was home. Getting out of the car, I saw that the ground was littered with empty spacedust vials. I thought I heard voices—maybe there were people in the dumpster? I didn't want to look. I set the car's security systems to maximum alert and headed across the asphalt to the breezeway.

I found the inscription “C. Rugby & H. Takemuru” on the mailbox marked 2D. Carol had always liked the sound of “Rugby” better than her maiden name, which had been Strumpf. It bummed me out to see her name on a mailbox with another man's. The complex had a small pool in the middle; the kids had told me about the pool. I went up a flight of stairs and knocked on 2D.

“What are you doing here, Jerzy?” demanded Carol when she opened the door. I could see Tom, Ida, and Hiroshi inside. They were watching TV. Carol looked prettier than I remembered her. Calmer.

“It . . . it's about . . . ”

“Daddy!” yelled Tom, happy to see me. “There's ants on television!”

“The cereal box says GoMotion!” added Ida.

I heard the siren of a police car speeding by. “Let me come in for a minute, Carol. One of my computer programs is getting me into trouble.”

“Oh, all right. Hiroshi, do you remember Jerzy?”

“Yes,” said Hiroshi, regarding me coolly. “Of course.”

“How's the sushi business?” I said. “Aren't you ever
worried you'll chop off a finger?”

“Business is fine,” said Hiroshi. “But Carol and I have many expenses.”

“It's a good thing you came by, Jerzy,” chimed in Carol. “We're going to have to work out the child support payments. I have an appointment tomorrow with a lawyer.”

“Let's not discuss it in front of the kids, Carol.”

“The kids know our marriage is over, Jerzy. Especially now that you've started bringing strange women into the house.”

I wanted to frown at Tom and Ida for spilling the beans, but they looked so wretchedly uncomfortable that I couldn't do it. “I'm sorry,” I said. “It was a mistake.” The simplest way to get through any conversation with Carol these days was always to keep saying I was sorry. “I'm sorry,” I said again, and glared at her. I was stupid ever to have thought even for a minute that I wanted her back, the bitch.

“You still haven't told me what you're doing here,” said Carol.

“Look at the ants now!” interrupted Tom. He made room on the couch. “You can sit by me, Daddy.”

I sat down.

The dancing ants had shrunk, and all thousand-plus of them were swarming around like living pixels, drawing the shapes and forms of classic chaotic attractors. It was magnificent.

“Put the TV back on the channel we were watching,” said Carol. “Is this MTV or something?”

“This
is
the channel we were watching, Ma,” said Tom, and cackled happily. He loved it when grown-ups got confused and were wrong.

“Tom!”

“Can I see the controller for a minute?” asked Hiroshi.
Tom handed it to him and Hiroshi began switching channels. Since the ant programs were already down in the DTV chips of Carol's digital TV, it seemed like the ants were everywhere. On each channel, the play of telecast images was being overlaid with multicolored ant images, and when Hiroshi pressed the button to show the 32-by-32 grid of all 1024 channels in miniature at once, you could see ants on every channel. The ant programs were playing off what the individual channels were broadcasting, so each channel still looked different.

Hackers call it a
bit-blit,
the trick that you use to move a mouse cursor across a computer screen without hurting the image that's underneath. On every channel, the ants were bit-blitting their own images around like crazy. Hiroshi tuned back to the original channel, which was now showing—or trying to show—a Special News Bulletin.

“A new kind of computer virus has infested Fibernet San Jose,” intoned some newsperson's plummy tones. On his or her shoulders was a giant ant head complete with intricately gnashing mandibles and sickening saliva.

“Our communication engineers report that the problem now seems to be under control,” continued the announcer, as the ant's antennae wigwagged and wambled. “The source of the infestation is thought to be a broken Fibernet cable on White Road in East San Jose. We will bring you live, on-the-spot coverage from there soon. And now we will attempt to broadcast the conclusion of tonight's episode of ‘Smart Women, Dumb Men.'” Everyone in the televised newsroom wore an ant's head.

Back on “Smart Women, Dumb Men,” all of the characters' skins had been coated with the crawling computer graphics known as “turmites” in punning homage to computer pioneer Alan Turing. A simple turmite is a moving
point-sized computation that hops from pixel to pixel, changing some of the pixels' colors and adjusting its own motions and moods according to the colors it finds: the resulting pattern is like fabulously intricate lace.

Meanwhile the “Smart Women, Dumb Men” sound track was being real time—sampled into aleatory
karaoke
—meaning that the ants were generating an artful series of pitches and volumes that were being attached to the phonemes of the voices of the smart women and the dumb men. The ants were sampling the studio audience's laughter as well, turning it into a silly symphony. Certain harsh or sour notes quavered into visible dustings on the actors' shuddering skins. The ants were, in other words, making the show watchable only as avant-garde video art.

“This is all because of your ants?” Carol asked. “They're ruining television? You're going to get in a lot of trouble, Jerzy.”

“First of all, it's not my fault they're loose. It's Roger Coolidge's fault.”

“Is he with you?”

“Well, no, it's just me and Studly. Studly put the ants onto the Fibernet a half hour ago.”

“The mighty Studly!” cried Tom. The children liked Studly. “Where is he?”

“He's in the trunk of my car.” I stepped to the window to have a look down into the parking lot, just to make sure everything was okay. For now it was. My car was sitting there with its trunk closed and there were no people in sight. A cop car drove past without slowing down.

“Can we go down and look at him?” asked Tom. Though he was glad to see me, it made him nervous to have me visiting here. Putting Hiroshi, Carol, and me into the same room was an obvious recipe for disaster.

“Yeah,” chimed in sister Ida, right on Tom's wavelength.
“Let's go see the Studbot.” They had lots of pet names for the machine.

“Here.” I handed Tom my keys. “I'm going to stay up here just another little bit. And don't let Studly run away.”

With the kids outside, I said, “Carol, did you know there are empty spacedust vials in your building's parking lot? I really don't know about having my children live here.”

“If you paid the child support, we could live somewhere better.”

“They already have somewhere better to live. In Los Perros with me. I don't have any money, that's why I'm not paying any child support.”

“You have to, Jerzy, it's the law. And the children prefer to stay with me.” This seemed to be true, and was too depressing to argue about.

“Well, I just got a new job today, so starting in two weeks, I guess I can pay. But find a better place, okay?”

“This apartment is fine,” said Hiroshi. “I've lived here two years. There's been no trouble.”

“If there's spacedust vials out there, that means somebody in the complex is selling it. And selling spacedust means sooner or later there's going to be a gunfight. You're not back in crime-free Japan, Hiroshi.”

“I've never been to Japan, Jerzy. I grew up in Cupertino. And now I'd appreciate it if you'd get out of my apartment.”

“I'm sorry, Hiroshi, I didn't mean to sound racist. I'm just concerned about my children's safety. If you don't mind too much, I'd rather stay here a little longer. Frankly, I think the police are looking for me.”

“Mr. Law and Order,” said Hiroshi mockingly.

Just then another Special News Report interrupted “Smart Women, Dumb Men.” The anchorperson still had
a giant ant head, but the on-the-scene reporter looked normal. She was standing in a bright light at 5782 White Road. Something was lying at her feet.

“This watchdog may have been killed by the forces who cut the Fibernet cable in the backyard of this eastside home. The owner alleges that the attacker was—a mobile robot.”

The camera turned slightly to show the burly Latino man I'd seen earlier. He looked unhappy and his eyes were red. “I saw the robot earlier today. It was shaped like a garbage can on wheels. It killed my dog. The robot belonged to a geek in a red Animata.” Geek? Hadn't he ever seen anyone wear sandals with M. C. Escher socks before?

“You and Studly killed a dog!” exclaimed Carol. “That's terrible! And how could you send the children down to play with him, Jerzy!” Her voice rose to command volume. “You get down there and make sure those children are okay! And don't come back in here. I don't care if the police are after you! You're too crazy, Jerzy! You and your precious machines. Go on now! Good-bye!”

“All right.” I left Carol's apartment and headed down to the car. This pause had already been long enough to help throw the police off the track. But would the Vos talk? And what would GoMotion say when the authorities started asking them why the ants kept spelling out the company name on TV? Would they try and pin it on me?

Given that Roger Coolidge had infected my system with ants and let me keep Studly, it almost looked as if GoMotion had deliberately set me up to be a patsy. They'd laid me off so that when I got busted they could bad mouth me as a “disgruntled former employee.” But what was Roger's motive in setting the ants free? And
how did the ants fit in with West West and Hex DEF6?

I felt tired and fatalistic. I might as well go home and wait for the police to come and get me. Just today, during his endless recounting of his life story, my new West West boss Otto Gyorgyi had told me that back in the commie days of Hungary there'd been a story that when the secret police wanted to liquidate you they'd stop by your house and hand you a length of piano wire. And then you'd strangle yourself, for, “Vat else vas zere to do?”

Thinking of Hungary and the police made me wonder if our own USA would ever be free. Would we ever get rid of the earth-raping, drug-warring social oppressors who'd made the public treasury their own latrine and hog wallow? Well, the Hungarians had gotten rid of the Communists, hadn't they? Some day the Revolution was going to come to America, too. One of the secondary reasons why I worked on ants and robots was that I hoped they could help bring down the Pig.

Tonight the ants had ruined television. There could be no more important step in crippling the Pig. I started grinning. The GoMotion ants had done a good thing. I was
proud
of them.

The kids had Studly out of the trunk and he was playing tag with them in the parking lot, lunging forward just now to tap laughing Ida's back with his pincer—
the same bloodstained pincers that had killed Dutch the dog
.

I gasped in anguish. Where was my brain? The only thing to do with Studly anymore was to scrap him!

“Get back in the trunk, Studly!” I shouted. I half-expected him to refuse, but he complied.

“Studly killed a dog,” I told the kids once the robot was locked in the trunk. “They're talking about it on TV. I was an idiot to let him play with you just now. I wasn't thinking.”

“Why did he kill a dog?” asked Tom.

“It's probably the ants. The ants must have changed the way he thinks. I'm going to let his batteries run down.”

Studly started hammering on the trunk from the inside. He'd heard what I'd said. “Let me out, Jerzy, and let me run away! It wasn't my fault! The voice made me do it! I don't want to die!” I'd never heard one of our robots talking about death before.

“Are you going to get in trouble?” Tom asked over Studly's cries.

“Maybe. GoMotion might say it's thanks to me the ants are on TV. And to tell you the truth, I hope the ants stay. It would even be worth my going to jail, I think. It's a wonderful thing to ruin television. I'm glad. I hope that television never works right again.”