Off to College
Can you get e-mail from a dead person? Looking at his inbox Alan concluded that you could.
It was just shy of two weeks since he had learned of the death (maybe?) of his mentor, Dr. Jean-Pierre Massimo, and receiving his ring in the mail. Jack had sent him a message through the ring, or, perhaps was using the ring to communicate from another plane of existence. All he knew was that Massimo's Seed, his earthly manifestation of heavenly power, was within the silver band Alan now wore on his left middle finger.
The e-mail read:
Alan,
Please go to the savings bank on the northeast corner of 80th Street and York Avenue, in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. I have a safety deposit box there in your name. The branch manager has a key waiting for you, and with your powers, have him give it to you. Inside the box you will find compact discs which contain about one-third of my research, as well as all of the information (not much, regretfully) I have managed to glean about our opponents. The information you will find on the discs will lead you to the rest of my research.
Buy a laptop computer. It should have no Ethernet or other networking capabilities. The data on the discs should never be uploaded to a computer which can be connected to an internet connection or even a simple telephone line.
Further instructions will be in the materials you get from the bank.
Jack
* * *
Following the instructions which he read off the card, which had been scotch-taped to the outside of the package in the safe-deposit box, Alan took it unopened to an office in midtown Manhattan, the same office he had went to to procure his fake I.D. that he used for his trip to Atlantic City. The office belonged to a middle aged lawyer named Wilkins, a solo practitioner.
As he sat in the office's anteroom waiting for Wilkins to appear Alan studied his surroundings; the office consisted of four rooms, including this anteroom where the matronly secretary sat behind a polished oak desk. Three rooms were arrayed behind her. The middle room was a conference room, a large oblong table dominating its center, the walls lined with bookshelves groaning under the weight of volumes of New York Code and Federal Registers. The attorney's office was on the left of the conference room, its door closed at this time. The other door was locked; where the doorknob usually would have been was a rather sophisticated piece of electronics, a complex lock with a reinforced keypad, plus a hand and fingertip scanner. Unlike the doors to the other rooms, this one looked to be made of heavy-duty steel.
Wilkins ushered him into his office, the East River and the United Nations visible from the window. "Please sit down, Mr. Sutherland. This whole thing is a complete shock to me. If it wasn't for all of the work Dr. Massimo's death has caused, I fear these past few weeks would have found me staggered from the shock of it all." Alan (in the guise of his alter ego, Carl Sutherland) nodded, and the lawyer continued. "Dr. Massimo was my only client, the only client I have ever had. He hired me straight out of law school and set me up in this office, so my grief is not just professional, but personal as well.
Alan offered his condolences, which were accepted graciously.
"Once I received official confirmation of his death from the British authorities I broke the seals on several envelopes Dr. Massimo had left for me in the event of his death. Most of his estate will be transferred to his son in Geneva, but some of it will go to you, particularly certain items in his person collection of artifacts, as well as all of his field research notes, and most of his papers, too. One of the subsidiaries of his personal corporation, Cyaxares LLC., will now be under your control. Dr. Massimo instructed that upon his death all shares in it shall be transferred to you."
Wilkins placed the first document back into a folder and grabbed another off his desk and removed a second set of instructions. "The
office on the opposite side of the conference room was Dr. Massimo's
personal space for when he was working in New York. It is now
yours." Wilkins handed over yet another envelope to Alan, and Alan noted that this one had remained sealed, and was addressed to him. "Instructions for getting past the security door," Wilkins informed him.
"Thank you. Is there anything else you need to tell me?"
"No sir, that is all," Wilkins told him, but Alan could sense by the tone in his voice he wanted to say something else; he scanned him briefly.
"Are you sure?" Alan asked him, and understanding the nervousness on the lawyer's face.
"Ah, well, uh, not to be indelicate at this sad point, and I know we don't really know each other so well, but, um, I was wondering if you were going to continue to, ah, retain the services of this firm for all of your legal needs."
Alan agreed and saw Mr. Wilkins relax visibly. He had the lawyer send his secretary out to lunch; he wanted the anteroom clear when he tried the door of Jack's office. Alan entered the code contained in the letter on the keypad. A small screen appeared in the middle of the apparatus, a small metal panel sliding away to reveal it. Alan spent the next half hour or so answering multiple-choice questions by pressing on the keys of the keypad.
Jack had written a program to authenticate him, the questions asking for information only Alan, as a Vessel of a Seed would know the answers to. When the computer in the door was satisfied that it was really Alan Marshall standing before it Alan was prompted to flatten his hand up against the sensor so his palm- and fingerprints could be recorded. The machine also asked for a new access code, and a voice print.
Alan thought he as done, but the machine also asked for a "danger" code, a false password which would delay the opening of the door of the office by ten seconds, while small explosive charges in the computers detonated, obliterating the stored data on the hard drives, and incendiaries similarly caused all of the files in the file cabinets to go up in smoke, then triggered halogen fire extinguishers mounted in the ceiling.
At long last, Alan gained access to the office. A windowless space, with a lacquered wooden table in the center, the tabletop half taken up by a large computer monitor; one wall was lined end to end with black metal file cabinets, heavy duty-looking ones, made of the same thick steel as the door, each also sporting miniature versions of the same locking mechanism. The other walls were covered with maps and diagrams made on Massimo's expeditions; most were yellowed, and some even had frayed edges. Alan rested the steel case he had that morning removed from the bank in Yorkville next to the monitor; he examined it closely for the first time; not wanting to attract too much attention in the bank, he had merely placed it in a canvas zip-up bag and left. There were no hinges, no releases to press to pop it open. He knew it wasn't a solid block of steel, not only by its weight, but also because he could feel the box's contents shift within, and anyhow, hadn't Massimo's e-mail message tell him that there were computer discs inside? Running his fingers over the whole of it Alan was confused; just as he was going to give up and start looking at the computer in front of him, he heard that voice.
"Don't try to open it with your hands. It only opens at the command of the Seed's Vessel."
"Jack?"
"I am here," the disembodied voice uttered.
"Is there some specific command that I need to use to open the box?"
"No, just will it open, and it will be."
Alan looked at the box, and in less than a second he heard a pop. The top of the box was raised and slightly askew, and he took the lid off completely and set it to the side. Inside were the discs as promised, and he examined the jewel cases, reading the labels and putting them back in order. Satisfied he was organized now, Alan replaced them in the box, refit the lid to the top, and
locked it using his power. He took a cab to a large chain electronics
store, and bought a laptop using the credit card with the name Carl Sutherland, his Atlantic City alias. By the time he returned to Wilkins's office the secretary was gone for the day, and the lawyer's office door was shut. Deciding it was safer to leave the original discs behind the impressively secure office door, Alan transferred all of their data to his new laptop, filed the disks in one of the cabinets, then placed his computer into the now empty steel box, and put the box in his canvas bag. Exiting the building, he hailed a cab and told the driver he wanted to go to Grand Central Station; he had a nagging feeling, impossible to pin down, that he was being watched.
* * *
"Four to One, We have a visual. Out." His partner picked up the telephoto and shot off as many pictures he could before the mark got into the taxi.
"Copy zat, I see him," a heavily accented voice said, his voice distorted by the speaker of the radio. "Remember your instructions. You and Eight are to follow him, and no more. Surveillance only. Repeat, repeat, do not approach too close. Out."
"That's affirm. Four to One, I copy instructions. Out." He put the car in drive, and pulled out to follow the cab his target had just hailed. He didn't know why he was following this man. All he did know was that he had spent the last two weeks sitting in a parked car on Forty-sixth street between Second and Third, waiting for the signal for whom to follow. Seven hundred dollars a day he was getting paid for this; nice work, if you can get it. The agent he knew only as "One" had spent the last two weeks working as an elevator operator in this office building, waiting for the mark, whoever he was, to enter the office on the twenty-sixth floor. Once he was identified it was his job, "Agent Four," to follow the mark home, and set up surveillance there. "Easy," he thought to himself, counting his money in his head.
"He's getting out," Eight said. "Look, up there." The cab had stopped, and the dome light on its roof was lit, indicating a now vacant cab. Two pulled to the curb, twenty yards behind it, and Three jumped out, following the mark into the station.
Grand Central Station was teeming with people, this being start of rush hour. Three followed the mark, figuring that he would head for the ticket windows, but instead he followed him straight to the platforms. Must have bought a round trip ticket, indicating he lived in the suburbs. He relayed this information over the radio.
"Shit! Where in fuck did he go?" Agent Eight swore to himself. Just as the mark neared the north side of the station a great group of people came streaming out of an arched passageway, interspersing themselves between him and the mark.
