A novel by R.C.PeterGabriel, all rights reserved.
I woke up because the sheet pulled as Toni sat on the edge of the bed. She was putting on her shoes but didn't have anything else on. I felt cross. I was angry with myself, for allowing Toni to suggest strip poker, to begin with. I had no idea how I could have allowed things to get so out of control.
"What are you doing?" I asked somewhat curtly.
Startled, Toni spun to face me. "I didn't think you'd be awake so early, it's only five-thirty." I watched as she crawled across the bed and kissed me. She looked a little guilty, then answered my question.
"I'm going over to the Clemons'. Bill wants me to come over every morning by six o'clock. He said ..." She paused for several moments as a multitude of emotions streamed across her face. "He said that he wants to fuck my ass every morning because he can't think of a better way to start his day. I have to go."
"No, you don't! I wasn't myself, and never would have agreed otherwise."
"Robert, I know you were drunk, but it was my fault. I suggested strip poker. I could have said no when you bet me as the prize. I was the one who encouraged you to raise the stakes. I also sealed my fate by taking your cards and playing them, even though I could tell you were hesitant.
"Please, don't make this any harder on me than it is. I love you with all my heart, but I messed up. I have to pay the price."
She gave me another kiss, then rolled away to stand by the bed looking at me as she picked up the robe she used to answer the door when the pizza guy showed up. It was plush, designed for cuddling after a bath, and covered her completely to about mid-shin. I hadn't noticed it lying on the end of the bed.
I just lay there, as Toni started to say several things. Finally, in resignation, she shrugged and shook her head. "I'm sorry Robert." Then she turned and walked out.
She took the kitchen stairs and was gone from sight in just a few seconds. I stared at the spot where I had last seen her but wasn't really seeing anything. I was wondering how my life could have taken such a dramatic turn. I felt Toni slipping away from me. It hurt like hell, and I flashed back to the Underdark, seeing Sam walking away from me."
"Verdammt nochmal!" I shouted, only to have my head feel as if it had split open.
Throwing the sheet off, I went to the window and dug in the bench seat for a pair of binoculars. After retrieving them, I watched Toni walk across the hundred-yard space between ours and the Clemons' houses like I was watching a fatal car crash. It was horrific but I couldn't look away. My head started to pound more, and I could barely hold the binoculars steady as I started to tremble.
I moaned out a lament, as Toni having entered the rear screened porch, stood at their back door for several moments, then kicked off her shoes and dropped the robe on a nearby chair.
I whispered "Damn it!" again, this time in English, as I watched my wife open the neighbor's door and walk in naked as the day she was born.
I'm not sure how long I stood there trembling when Jessie put her hand gently on mine and lowered the binoculars. She was standing before me, wearing a pair of silk pajama shorts, and a matching crop top. Her expression was one of pure concern. She was also raising a glass into my field of vision.
"Drink this," she ordered in a tone that didn't leave room for debate. "You're dehydrated, and your serotonin levels are dangerously low."
"Jessie, I don't know how to tell you how badly I messed up last night. All I can think about is kicking that fuckers' ass!" I grabbed my skull as the passionate declaration tried to explode my head.
"Fuck!" was whispered trying unsuccessfully to not cause a repeat skull-splitting throb.
"Dad, I'm not going to discuss it at the moment. You need to drink this and drink it now. After the raging headache that I'm sure you have has subsided and your serotonin levels are back to normal, then we can talk."
"What? How do you know what my serotonin levels are?"
"I'll tell you after you drink the shake and you're a little more yourself."
I drank the shake she offered me, then looked back out the window, brooding. Jessie reached up and cupped my face. "Dad quit beating yourself up. Come away from the window."
She took the binoculars and set them on the bench, then took my hand and guided me away from the window. I was deposited in a chair near the fireplace, then she sat opposite me, with her feet tucked under her butt.
We studied each other for only a few minutes before she pulled her phone out of the waistband of her shorts and read the text she'd just received. She met my eyes and smiled.
"Your headache gone?"
I gave myself a brief self-assessment and realized that in fact my headache was gone. I met her eyes and nodded. She was giving me the same look she gave me last night after she had exposed her undergarments. She was testing me. Could I figure out what she saying with her eyes? A few moments later it hit me.
"When did you gain access to Hal?"
Her smile beamed out at me. "You have no idea how long I've wanted you to ask me that question. At first, I was scared to death that you would find out, but by the time I realized that I was in love with you, I had already begun hoping you would discover my secret."
She held up a hand to forestall my interruption. She knew what I was going to ask and wanted to table the topic. "I wanted you to include me in your world. Hal was the door to that world. But, to answer your question, I gained access to your computers on February twenty-third, twenty-eleven."
"That was before Hal was fully online. You were barely fifteen." I gapped.
"You were decommissioning 'Deep Thought' at the time and kept disappearing. I started keeping an eye on you and realized you kept vanishing after your showers, so I hid in your closet and waited for you to take one. You went into the drying booth and didn't come back out for over four hours.
"I was of course very curious. There was already a huge amount of mystery surrounding you with all of the government bigwigs calling, and your trips overseas. So, I waited until I knew you went out of town and searched for the entrance to your 'bat cave'. I found the latch after a half hour or so and got all the way to the security door. Quite a hike before I realized there was an elevator."
I chuckled, then realized I was no longer depressed. She must have been right about my serotonin levels.
"How long did that take? It's three hundred and twenty feet of very steep stairs to that door."
Jessie's smile turned a bit sardonic. "Yes, I'm quite aware of that thank you, but I'd call them a series of ladders, not stairs. If I hadn't been training my whole life I probably never could have made it back up. As it was, my legs were burning so bad I could hardly move."
"Ah, that was why you started running long distances." I deduced.
"Exactly, I realized I lacked endurance. Fortunately, I only climbed the stairs one other time. After that, I dropped my water bottle and it bounced through the back of the steps. So, I looked behind them and found the elevator. However, I realized that running was a good excuse to be gone for several hours at a time."
"How did you get past the security door?"
She rolled her eyes at me. "It only took me four tries to guess your password.
'Toni09/12/2004Jessie' isn't exactly a difficult password for someone who knows you, but I'm glad Hal wasn't online yet or I might be dead."
"Hal would never have harmed you," I pointed out. "Giving you and Toni protected status was one of Hal's first programs. Although, I would have found out what you were doing. So, you got inside, then what? You didn't have a suit that would fit you."
"You had already started to program 'deep thought' to use the monitors instead of the helmet. I didn't need to wear a suit. I don't know why you went to the using the suit anyway. According to your journal, you designed the suit to focus your scanning waves so you could use them to heal. You added an extra difficulty level when you upgraded from Majel to Joshua. I do like you making outsiders use them though.
"Anyway, I spent the next few days creating another administrator account and a soft partition to hide it behind. Then I made sure that if you or anyone else specifically looked for an administrator account, all they would find would be any accounts you set up. Unless they used my voice print, and by that time, you already had over three-hundred-ninety-million lines of code written. I didn't figure you'd search for my voiceprint on a whim."
I sat stunned for several moments. "You figured out how to write using my machine code ... in less than two days! Deep Thought used base three hundred sixty!"
Jessie looked at me as if I were a beginning student.
"Dad, you made Deep Thought to assist you in designing Hal. It didn't take me long to discover that he could write his own code using my instructions.
"It's a good thing you hadn't launched the Guardian Program yet or I'm sure someone would have stormed the castle, so to speak, and captured everything! You were utterly careless!" she admonished me with a shake of her head. "I was able to add code that allowed my administrator account to upload to Hal when he came online!"
I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to cover my astonishment. I don't think it did. "So, lay it out. How much do you know?"
She gave me a crooked smile. "I of course read all your projections and assessments of the Guardian Program, including your work on Hal's replacement 'Jarvis'. I've read the fiscal analysis of most of your companies and read your wall-o'-business as often as I can.
"I do need to sincerely apologize, but through Hal, I read your journals. I did it because I was worried about what Hal told me was your objectives for creating him.
I wanted to be sure you weren't being as careless with the program as you were with Deep Thought. I'm sorry for the invasion of privacy, but I'm glad I did it. It answered a lot of questions about why you do the things you do, and it made me feel closer to you.
"I know about the fire in Tokyo. I know you're still planning on announcing the twenty-g phone at the China Electronics Fair in Shanghai at the end of October. That the phones are integral to the success of the program. That they're actually just watered-down versions of the Black Knights. That you slow down their processors, because they use subspace transmissions and not radio, and if you didn't slow them down, they'd have instantaneous downloads.
"Um ... I know all about Sam. I've been watching her since you met her.
"And, I know that when you read my business proposals, you'll want to merge your companies with mine, because I have six satellites completed using your specs, and nine more in production. I'm just waiting for your signature. You'll have to arrange for their launches though, I don't have the connections you have. The way I figure it, I can run all your companies that produce satellites, phone chips, and Black Knights. That way you can concentrate on computer design and hard wire signal production like the coax company you just purchased, as well as keeping up with all the government contacts."
