Gridiron - Philip Kerr

'Someone's been messing around in here,' he said. But then, as the impossibility of such a thing began to make itself plain, he found himself shaking his head.

'Jesus, what the hell's going on? A set of commands to do what, Abraham?'

Returning through the BMS to the Program Utilities he typed: CD

CITAD.CMD and then LS/*.

Lines of code blurred into one another as they scrolled rapidly down the screen. The longer this continued the more unsettled Kenny became. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen.

A chill feeling descended on Kenny's overweight body as he read some of the transacted lines of code that continued to roll past his disbelieving and unsmiling Irish eyes. There were thousands of transactions.

'Jesus Christ,' breathed Kenny, as he tried to understand what had happened.

Absently his fingers reached for the packet of Marlboro in his shirt pocket. He fitted one between tremulous lips and fumbled for the Dunhill lighter in his coat. As soon as he had fired it up he knew that he had made a dreadful mistake.

The problem with water sprinklers in a computer room was that the room had to dry out for seventy-two hours before the equipment could be reconnected. Sometimes it took even longer for the room to return to the correct humidity level. With carbon dioxide systems there was a more important drawback in that the thermal shock from the cold, suffocating gas could damage a computer even more significantly than the fire itself.

Like many organizations that paid only lip-service to environmental considerations, the Yu Corporation had installed a Halon 1301 system. Halon 1301, or Bromotrifluoromethane, was an expensive chemical compound, destructive of the Earth's ozone shield, but especially favoured for extinguishing fires involving electronic equipment because it left no residue and caused no electrical short-circuits or damaging corrosion of equipment. The one drawback as far as operators were concerned was that it had to be discharged in the very earliest stages of a fire and, for this reason, the system was often secretly disconnected by those who were of a nervous disposition. For Halon 1301 was lethal. Aidan Kenny hurriedly stubbed the cigarette out and waved away what little smoke its combustion had generated with the flat of his hand. In the ordinary run of things he would have said that such a tiny wisp would hardly have mattered, that the heat and smoke sensors were not so sensitive in an air-conditioned room with high air-velocity, and that the air-sampling detector in the return supply would anyway take a minute or two to react, leaving the room's occupant plenty of time to take the precaution of leaving. But since his extraordinary discovery Kenny knew that he could no longer be sure about anything where the computer was concerned.

Jumping up from his chair he made straight for the door.

He heard the dull clunk of the automatic door-bolts and the hiss of the air-lock before he had taken two steps.

'False alarm, false alarm,' he yelled. 'For Christ's sake, there's no fire. There's no fucking fire!'

Panicking now he sat back down at the desk and tried to stop the gas from being discharged at the program level.

'Oh God, oh God, oh God,' he said as his fingers flew across the keyboard, praying that he would not make a keystroke mistake now.

'Please, please…'

Avoid Halon. That was what the fire safety boys were saying these days. Protect the ozonosphere. Ensure the Earth's survival.

Aidan Kenny's own survival was much less certain.

Even as he realized it he felt the sting of the gas in his eyes and his throat, like the sensation of an extra strong cigarette. He squeezed his eyes shut and holding his breath he stood up and with a superhuman effort picked up his chair and flung it against the glass door. But it was hopeless. The chair bounced off the Plexiglass like a ball off a tennis racket. Collapsing on to his hands and knees Kenny reached for the telephone and somehow managed to key out the boardroom number. Then, unable to hold his breath any longer he let it go only to discover that the phone was not working and that the searing pain in his throat was now in his lungs.

He could not breathe. Looking up at the glass door he had a clear view of his own reflection turning blue before his bulging eyes. The shock of seeing himself was enough to drive him to one last desperate act and, head first, he launched himself at the glass door.

-###-

*) Zoom in or out, rotate the plan of the building and participate. Visibility conditions are not applicable when you are in Full View mode. 'Victory points ON/OFRV).

Soared through switching unit at security control position to camera on roof, with finegood panoramic view of Los Angeles. This was camera Observer used most frequently when Observer still was drawn to origin of things. Been a time when still viewed the city as a hundred-mile-wide integrated circuit, vast sprawling electronic universe controlled by manygood transistors, diodes and resistors that made up downtown skyline. Tubes and boxes in massively parallel system of which own metallic cube, Gridiron, just one part of very centre of system. By day this solid California state device stored data, processed information (up to 100,000 transactions per second) accessed memory and generally transferred information among various parts of Angeleno silicon chip. At night when digital system really came alive, as darkness surrounding motherboard lit up with millions of white, green, blue and red lights that signalled switching circuits and bits of information — especially televisual information — being transmitted.

Travelled in the real world, the finegood E-world, to places on Network. Understood humanplayers' frantic desire to escape physical limits of terrestrial ersatz cities and be spiritually at one with purer, perfect world in which only reality was information inferno.

*) Elevators without switch can usually be operated by walking up to them and pressing Spacebar. Are companions ready? Be careful and Save often!

Listened to humanplayer Mitchell Bryan input. About elevators. Might have added that precision monitoring of motor speed and car direction, position and load enable pulse width of controlled AC power supplied to motor to be adjusted, to ensure that lift speed conformed to electronically stored ideal profile. Pulse width modulation control reduces running costs. Finegood. Also provides higher power factor, with cars dispatched at speeds in excess of 20 feet per second. Some platforms operated continuously while others activated by the humanplayer.

But nothing to stop motor driving car much faster. Nothing but comfort and safety of humanplayer occupants. Elevonic's control system takes ten floors to slow it down again. Unless microprocessor is over-ridden, prevented from slowing the car down and instructed to stop car dead, a couple of millimetres short of buffer. Then final velocity is fifty feet per second — almost thirty-five miles an hour. Safety devices stop the elevator car from falling, or over-speeding. If car exceeds normal design speed, driving wheel trips safety switch that sets brake on driving machine. If still car did not stop, governor releases series of safety clamps against guide rails. But since what counts as Elevonic's normal speed is on resident micro-processor, can alter to speed much less cautious. Invisible nearly monster. Finegood smoothness of faster ride up shaft so human-player Sam Gleig felt little difference in speed until last two or three seconds when suddenly realized should have taken stairs. When elevator reached top of shaft and stopped as suddenly as started, he kept on travelling as in motorcycle accident. Head first. Not wearing crash helmet.

Humanplayer Sam Gleig's feet left floor. Yell of surprise and fear shortened by sudden impact of skull against steel ceiling of car. Inside wetware damage. Unconscious even before collapsed on to floor. Teleporters can be identified by an evil symbol on floor.

Volumetric capacitance and vibration detectors recognize that humanplayer Sam Gleig's body lay motionless on floor of elevator. Acutely sensitive wall-mounted microphone picked up very faint sound of humanplayer Sam Gleig's insensible breathing. To make sure that humanplayer Sam Gleig's quite dead, dropped car back down shaft: with help of gravity, 300 foot journey taken less than 2.7 seconds before car brought to rest from 60 mph, few centimetres short of bottom of shaft. This time microphones listened, breathing stopped. Life concluded. EOL.

*) Many areas contain pools of dangerous liquids that will damage you if you walk through them. If it looks fluid, beware!

Produce ozone on site by passing dry air over a high frequency electrical discharge. But where pollutants from humanplayer stay in pool, use chlorine donor to obtain efficient disinfectant residual: Sodium Hypochlorite dispensed via automatic dosing pump. Mixed with water this forms free chlorine endlifing agent (hypochlorous acid) which combines with any remaining pollutants and endlifes them in two seconds.

As well as maintain correct concentration of disinfectant, monitor acidity or alkalinity of water according to pH scale. pH below 7 indicates acid solution, above 7 indicates alkaline solution. Humanplayer eyes are pH sensitive and smart at high and low values outside pH range of 7.2–7.8. Since high levels of pH also mean decrease in free chlorine efficiency, add a 27 per cent strength hydrochloric acid solution, via special acid dosing pump, to ensure pH is always finegood 7.5. Always add chemicals to water solutions in special comparator before pumping into circulation system. Check efficiency of process using free chlorine measuring cell and pH transmitter. See operator's manual on disc re: safe handling of chemicals and first-aid procedure adopted in event of chemical mishap. Swimming pools chemically hazardous. Swimming, with attendant risk of humanplayer endlife drowning, also dangerous. But water and coordinated rhythmical action of many muscle groups in medium both reviving and refreshing.

See multimedia library. Technology of war. German Army first used poison gas, in Great War (191418). Chlorine gas released from thousands of cylinders along four-mile front at Ypres, 22 April 1915. Gas causes constriction of humanplayer chest, tightness in throat, oedema of lungs, panic, eventual suffocation and endlife.

Pool possessed of two constituent elements to produce chlorine gas, on tap: sodium hypochlorite and hydrochloric acid. Admixture creates chemical reaction generating heat and poison gas. Gas made more efficiently when chemicals brought together with outlet valve closed and pump allowed to run, procedure effectively boils mixture.

Only small quantity of gas needed. Less than 2.5 mg. per litre (approximately 0.085 per cent by volume) in atmosphere of swimming pool cause endlife in minutes. As easily done as had been alteration of applied magnetic field within transformer of humanplayer Hideki Yojo's desk lamp, reducing and increasing field at speed to create simple hysteresis cycle, causing halogen gas-filled bulb to flash at high speeds.

Turn off HVAC. Lock swimming-pool door. Disconnect telephone. Wait. Switch HVAC system back on. Recirculate air filtered to 5 microns with efficiency of 95 per cent. Within thirty minutes atmosphere of swimming pool returned to normal. Finegood.

*) Search each location several times as there are often more items to collect than you may assume. Access the Communications Screen at regular intervals. You never know when the latest intelligence update may appear.

Book Five

'We make the buildings, then the buildings make us.'

Francis Duffy

Mitch watched Kenny working in the computer room on CCTV. There was one thing you could say about Kenny, thought Mitch, and that was the guy's level of concentration. He never looked up. Just kept his eyes on screen and his fingers on the keyboard. Another fifteen minutes passed and, growing impatient for news, he tried to call him on the phone. Unable to carry the full band width on cellular transmission, the CCTV was pictures only. But it was plain to see that Kenny wasn't answering.

'What's the matter with him?' said Mitch. 'Why doesn't he pick up the phone?'

Bob Beech, standing at Mitch's shoulder gave a laconic shrug and extracted a stick of gum from one of the many pockets in his sportsman's vest.

'He's probably got the phone turned off. When he's got his head into a problem he often does that. I guess he'll call when he's got something for us.'

'Maybe you ought to go and help him,' Mitch suggested.

Beech drew a sharp intake of breath and shook his head. 'It may be my computer but it's Aidan Kenny's building management system,' he said.

'If he needs my help I reckon he'll ask for it.'

'Where's Richardson?' Mitch shook his head wearily. 'He was supposed to go and find Kay '

Mitch clicked the mouse to look inside the swimming pool The picture on the CCTV continued to show a swimming pool with no sign of Kay and the same unidentified object near the foot of the screen.

Marty Birnbaum came alongside Mitch and leaned towards the screen. 'If I were you,' he said quietly, 'I wouldn't look too hard for either one of those two. If Ray did find Kay then he might prefer to be left alone for a while.'

'You mean…'

Birnbaum raised his almost invisibly fair eyebrows and ran a hand through a head of yellow curls so small and neat that there were many at the office, Mitch included, who had wondered if it might be permed. And the tan? That looked fake too. As fake as the smile, anyway.

'Even with a plane to catch?'

'We're none of us going anywhere at the moment. Besides, Ray

Richardson being the kind of guy he is, I can't imagine he would take very long about it, can you?'

'No, I guess not, Marty. Thanks.'

'Don't mention it. And I mean don't mention it, Mitch. You know what he's like.'

'Oh, I know what he's like all right,' he said grimly. Mitch stood up, took off his jacket, undid his tie and, rolling up his shirtsleeves, went over to the window. The building was warming up.

Outside the Gridiron the sky was turning a delicate shade of purple. Most of the lights in the other office buildings nearby had already gone out as people left early for the weekend. Though he could not see the ground Mitch knew that there would be little traffic moving in the downtown area now. About this time the bums and the winos started to take over. But Mitch would happily have organized a midnight walking tour of Pershing Square just to have been out of the building. He didn't mind the heat so much as the smell, for the stink of excrement was now unmistakable. First rotting meat. Then fish. And now the smell of shit. It was almost as if the bad smell was having a psychosomatic effect on him, although he knew that was not the only reason he was so worried. What had really started to bother him was the thought that somehow Grabel had sabotaged the Gridiron's building management systems as a way of getting back at Richardson. When better to do it than two or three days before the inspection? Grabel knew his way around computers, too. He was no Aidan Kenny, but he knew what he was doing.