[Steven Lyle Jordan]

4: Still stymied

Thus physically and mentally refreshed, I returned to Pete’s place and his dining room, aka my Borg alcove, where I did my serious IT work, and luddites feared to tread. It was time for a brilliant plan to emerge, so I could save the day.

But the moment I sat in front of my Toughbook, I froze. I didn’t have an idea. After a night up, then sleeping through a solid day, I still didn’t have an idea.

Pete came out of the kitchen with two beers, and deposited one on the dining room table within my reach. Presently, he said, “I know that look. You don’t have a clue, do you?”

I winced before I responded, “No. And I can’t wait too long, or they’re liable to spring Merc before I’m ready.”

“Little bit of a time-crunch, huh?” Pete nodded and tipped back his beer. “Well, you don’t know they’ll trigger it soon… maybe there’s no crunch at all. Look at it that way.”

“Don’t think I can afford to do that,” I said.

After a moment, Pete pulled up a chair and sat opposite me at the table. “Okay, let’s think about this.”

I looked at my brother, who was no tech guy by any means. “This cannot be good…”

“Hey, I’m trying to help!” Pete protested amiably. “Okay: These guys have a program that will spoof NASDAQ, make them a s**tload of money, and add to the tarnishing of your reputation. They’ve already used it once, but it didn’t work, and they framed you for a DOS attack to cover it up. If they use it again, they could implicate you again, which could even get you arrested.”

“Good recap,” I said sourly.

“Thank you,” Pete nodded. “So, you know about the program, but they don’t know that yet. They’ve probably been working on improving the program, so it works the second time… but you don’t know how far along they are.”

“Right,” I said, waiting for more.

Pete stared at me. “Well, don’t ya see? They obviously don’t have it ready yet, or they would’ve triggered it already! No one waits to earn a s**tload of money if they don’t need to!”

“Hmm.” That was a good point.

“So if you can force them to trigger it before it’s ready, you’ve got a good chance of its not working again!”

“Yeah, but what if it does?” I asked. “Can I afford to take that chance?”

Pete considered that. “Hmm.” I had a good point, too. He went silent for a moment, considering the problem. I went silent, too. After a few minutes, Pete said, “It’s a program, right? Can you get a virus into it through that guy Cooley’s e-mail account? Corrupt the program?”

“I thought about that,” I replied. “Can’t get at it that way, it’s in a protected file on their server.”

“Anything else in there you can corrupt?”

“Nothing that would help. I’ve been through their server—that much I can do—but they’ve got everything pretty well protected and backed up.”

“Oh.” Pete and I went silent again for a few minutes. Pete started to raise a hand and open his mouth, when the doorbell rang. Without missing a beat, Pete said, “Thank God,” and bolted out of his chair. He opened the door, and I saw Reilly standing there in a practically translucent sundress that was over a flowery bikini. In her hands, she held two Starbucks cups. She smiled at Pete, a smile that would have melted steel.

I smiled at the Starbucks cups with a smile that would have melted titanium. “Nectar of the Gods!” I exclaimed, and hopped out of my seat.

“One grande double-shot skim milk espresso with room,” Reilly said, and held out the cup for me. “How you feeling, hot-shot?”

“Sooo much better now,” I said as I accepted the cup and took a sip. My knees threatened to buckle from the pleasure: It had been over a day since I’d had my espresso; another and I might have gone into withdrawal.

“Glad to hear it,” Reilly said, and she sipped from the second cup as she slipped her now-free other hand around Pete’s waist and looked up at him. “Are you helping your brother with his problem, then?”

“Well,” Pete replied, “there’s helping… and there’s helping.”

“Not so much, huh?”

“‘Fraid not,” Pete admitted. “I’m no strategist.”

“Well,” Reilly said, “fortunately, you have lots of other good traits.”

She hugged him and beamed up at him, and for a moment, I just enjoyed the glow that was coming off of them. The next moment, I realized they were still staring at each other and glowing, and I was feeling like a fifth wheel. That had happened fast. So I started to back up, and said, “Thanks for this, babe. I’m gonna get back to work.”

“Don’t mention it,” Reilly said without looking at me. After a moment, she started to draw Pete in the direction of his bedroom, and Pete, being the guy he was, put up no resistance. Their door was closed before I was seated in my alcove again.

So about five hours passed, with me continuing to struggle to find a way to get in and wipe out the Merc program, to the muffled sounds of my brother and his girl having a good time in his bedroom. Some days, it was a mystery to me how I’d managed to get to the point where I could actually tune that out and keep working. Fortunately, Pete and Reilly had apparently managed to find a new, quieter way to have sex, and it was pointedly less distracting than it usually was. I have to admit, though, that I began to realize some of the ideas I found myself toying with could only have been inspired by submerged thoughts of copulation, from various angles, at different stages of the process, and at varying… intensities. When I found myself musing over electronic condoms, therefore, I finally knew it was time for another break.

I was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and finishing off a beer, when I heard Pete’s bedroom door open. Momentarily, Pete padded into the kitchen, thankfully wearing shorts (he had been known to blow off even those when walking around his apartment… but hey, I’m only a guest, who am I to complain?), and looking rested and happy. “Hey,” he said, amiably patting me on the shoulder as he passed and reached for the refrigerator door.

“Hey,” I said. “Grab me another, I’m about out.” I watched as he pulled out two bottles of beer. “None for Reilly?”

“She’s fast asleep,” Pete said with a grin. He popped the top on one beer and handed me the other. I popped my top, and we clunked the bottles together before taking a sip. “How’s it going with you?”

“No better yet,” I said. “And I gotta tell ya, some of the most outlandish ideas have been coming to me.”

“What’s the most outlandish?”

“Disrupting the space-time continuum by reversing the polarity on the warp field generators. I figure creating an MP3 of Mannheim Steamroller playing backwards at one hundred times’ speed, sent as a signal down the electrical grid, would do it.”

Pete considered my words straight-faced. Finally he nodded. “Yep: That’s pretty outlandish, all right.” He seemed to consider a moment. “I wonder if some kind of an electronic condom—”

“Oh, please, do not go there!” I stopped him, and we both laughed.

“Don’t worry, bro,” Pete said, “you’ll get it. You’re the best at what you do… a little IT Wolverine.”

“Who’s little?” I smirked. Pete grinned back, and the two of us held up the beer caps we both still held in our hands. With a simultaneous flourish, we tossed the caps side-armed at the trashcan across the kitchen.

As we watched, both caps arched through the air, on target for the trashcan’s mouth. Then, in one of those “you couldn’t do that in a million years” moments, the caps neatly impacted each other and caromed away, both passing the can on either side and landing on the floor.

Pete snorted out a laugh. “Dee-nied!”

“Ha!” I laughed. “What’re the odds?” We glanced at each other in amusement, then started over to pick up our beer caps. We bent down on opposite sides of the can to retrieve each cap, and as my hand closed over mine, a sort of “ding” sounded somewhere in my mind. It was the signal to start an avalanche of information flowing out of my subconscious, and it hit me like a cartoon anvil on my IT brainpan. I had it.

I straightened up abruptly, and cried, “Holy s**t!”

Pete nearly had a heart attack. He jerked upright, looking like he’d been nailed like a jailhouse bitch bending over to pick up a soap, bobbled his beer desperately, and cried, “What? What happened? Did you hurt your back?”

“No, man, no,” I said. “I figured it out! I know what to do! Yes! ” I bellowed loud enough to alert half the west coast as I ducked past him and headed for my alcove.