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Rational Conduct

By Kevin Tatro (US)

Chapter Five

Seeking Help

Chapter 5 – Seeking Help

As far as David knew, Artie was the world’s ultimate computer geek.  When he used to work, he never had fewer than six monitors on his desk at any time.  Most times there were more than ten, and who knows what they were connected to.  As he rapped out music on the three or four keyboards anyone could see, the computer processors would hum generating so much heat they had to move him to his own air conditioned area with fans blowing cold air up through the floor.   And those machines were just the connection boxes to the massive mainframe systems that ran the crazy programs he worked on night and day.   Artie was a computer geek of the most serious kind.

There were many other computer geeks David knew and respected, but none were like Artie.  Few even knew who Artie was.  Those who did know him knew he was brilliant but could never get anything out of him.  His employers never really knew what he did at work, but they assumed this mad scientist was the reason they always had the programs they needed to run their multi billion dollar trading floors.  The other computer geeks never said a bad thing about Artie.  Even they didn’t know what he did, and they secretly resented that they seemed to do all the work while Artie got all the best equipment and time to do what he wanted.  No one would ever question him or say a bad word about him, as he was the guy who always got them out of the deepest shit.  They would seek him out begging for help, only to have him continue to click along with his back turned, rarely responding or asking more than a question or two.  Yet somehow, mysteriously, their programs would be working by the time they reached their desks.  Yes, management assumed all the computer geeks they hired were brilliant, but they knew they kept their jobs because of one especially weird, antisocial guy with his own air-conditioned room.

It was a strange day when this computer geek left the den of the moneymakers.  The brain surgeons in management who lived for profits paid a fortune to replace him with more computer wizards.  But the new wizards came and went.  Most were arrogant, without family and friends.  They spent full days and nights at their stations, devising new mathematical models to make wealth for their employers, and be the new superhero.  But eventually, they all crashed and burned, one by one.  Artie was strange and brilliant, and even he didn’t know exactly how much he was worth when he finally walked from his office, having E-mailed the Directors that he was leaving that day and not returning.

The day had come when the computer giants of the world had finally given Artie the money to build the super dooper, high end, massive, crazy big and powerful computer systems that only Artie could conceive of and actually build.  The prototypes sat in an old telephone switching station, which was cooled like a cold storage warehouse.  This concrete bunker sat right on top of the fiber optic and electrical power grids of the world’s financial capital.  The bunker was immune to the problems of the world with nearly indestructible construction, connections to every major communications line known to man (and probably a bunch he had no right to access), and enough power generation capacity in its own walls to power the rest of Manhattan for a year or two.

Artie, of course, had designed the computers, patented parts of them he wished to sell, kept the best ideas for himself and designed programs for them all while working for the crazy moneychangers.  The minor diversion of his job had simply slowed him a bit, but now he had patent rights on things NASA, the NSS, the CIA, FBI, IBM, Microsoft, Google, and every other company and government in the world wanted.  And best of all, he was really the only one that knew how or why any of it worked.  He was worth immeasurable millions that would only matter when he needed more parts to make his machines, faster, and better.  And that happened every day.

Artie had been working on something called data mining.  The concept was simple, but pulling it off had been impossible until Artie figured it out.  The idea was to develop super fast, super capacity mainframe computer systems that could gather and view all the data that existed.  This meant tapping into every computer that was attached the net, whether it was through governments, businesses, hospitals, schools, phone lines, old banking records, credit card transactions, library books, everything.  These supercomputers would then analyze all this data and look for relationships.  Connections between a ring purchased in Hong Kong, a book taken out of a library in London, and a social security check cashed in Albany, New York.

The concept was simple, with the result being the ability to know everything.  Artie was the only one to be able to make it happen. There were two parts to making this happen.  The first was equipment.  The fastest computers in the world belonged to Japanese and American computer companies and government agencies.  These machines were amazingly fast and could process phenomenal amounts of data.  They were used for experiments like replicating the world’s biological and ecological processes, and playing military games with end of world life scenarios like the use of atomic weapons.  The best minds of the world worked on these things.  It was serious business.

 The second part of the success of data mining was the applications.  Thousands of engineers all over the world worked on software that would be used once the machines were invented.  This software would allow their owners to monitor the world.  The FBI could match the credit car purchase of tons of fertilizer in Ohio, to the rental truck from Illinois, the diesel fuel purchase in Tennessee, the hotel room in Memphis, all the knowledge in the library of congress, and the military record of a man from California who was tied to a white supremacist group, and intending to repeat the Oklahoma city bombing feat of Timothy McVeigh.

  This technology was to change the face of law enforcement.  It was also to change everyone’s lives in other ways as retail companies and marketers would determine the buying patterns of the world, and customize products and sales pitches to assure they sold everything they could to everyone.  Wal-Mart wanted this technology as badly as the CIA.

Artie had different ideas.  He had no agenda other than knowledge for knowledge’s sake.  He had no intention of selling his ideas to men with simple minds and dreams of gross profits or world domination.  He had used the CIA, the FBI and others to help fund and build his machines, but he would only tinker with these machines until the equipment exposed its true value.  With everyone wanting the machines to solve problems for them, Artie understood the machines and the code, and he waited for the ultimate nature of the machine to reveal itself as it wanted to be. Once he fully understood the creature, and only then, would he let a select group have parts of it. For a price, of course.  Arties smartest benefactors were often angry with him, suspecting he knew more than he revealed.  Being an introverted computer geek had its benefits as the weird factor kept Artie from being bothered with meaningless questions.  They hated him for it, but even the government was afraid to piss him off.   Nobody knew for sure, but it looked like a guy named Artie knew everything.

In a happy tone … “David.”

“Artie, I need your help”

David was one of the few people who had this phone number. David was one of even fewer who Artie picked up the phone for.  Though anybody who knew him liked him, few could connect with Artie.  David and Artie became good friends over the years, not just because Artie thought David was in awe of him, because David was in awe of him.  But David was smart enough and understanding enough to keep quiet around Artie.  And Artie liked quiet. Contemplative silence. They both let their minds do its thing in its comfortable home, preferring not to slow it down through communication with the outside world.

David was not typically in awe of anybody.  He found most of the bloody rich moneychangers to be less than brilliant egomaniacs who were so foolish as to find money and numbers the most interesting things in the world.  Stupid foolish men and women of greed who immersed themselves in work, made millions, and seemed brilliant, mostly just because they’d rather be at work than home with wife, kids, friends and family they couldn’t relate to.

David was in awe of Artie and could actually sit for minutes at a time just looking at him.  Sensing his brilliance without ever saying a word or caring what he was working on.  Never asking questions, trying to suck up or learn … just soaking up the aroma of brilliance.  He didn’t worship Artie.  He wasn’t a groupie or anything, but like standing in the eye of a hurricane, being near Artie was peaceful, yet all the powerful forces of God seemed to be there swirling around.  That mysterious God that people made lame attempts to describe seemed to be close to where this man operated.  His connections to the keyboards somehow separated him from the discomforts of human life and almost made this misfit of nature immortal.  Unaware of his surroundings, yet totally in tune, Artie probably would have starved to death if born sooner than the computer era, yet David felt him as a peep hole in the veil that separated man from God.  And Artie liked  David just because he did.

“I know you’ve got problems, what can I do for you?  Name it.”

It was always amazing to David that Artie could even talk, because he rarely did.

 “Ashley is gone.”  “Someone’s taken her” 

“Who?” 

“Don’t know.”  “Grabbed her right from my front yard twenty minutes ago.”

“Ya know the cops are looking for you.  It’s all over the wires.  Shit.  You were on the radio?  Good move.  Still driving that Beemer too fast!  Damn.  What do you want from me?”

“Find anything you can.  Pictures of her on the net.  Stories.  A motive.  Maybe one of those sicko child molesters has her.  Maybe a sheik wants a new daughter.  You’re the God. …  Do something.”

“I’m a hundred percent yours.  I’ve already been on it.  Got a great staff in New York.  Is there anything you can tell me?”  “Ok”  “I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear anything.”

The phone went dead.  Artie was like David.  Said his piece, and gets on with it.

“Josh.  Watcha got for me.”

Josh was a great employee and knew how to do his job.  David knew he would have the FBI on this with full force.

 “Nothin.  But I do have some good news.  This thing’s has got nationwide media coverage, and attention from every agency in the country.  That radio thing went nationwide and the entire planet is looking for her.  FBI already has priority on it.  Your wife supplied pictures that are already all over the place.  As we speak they’re going out on the wires and should be in every police department, tollbooth and airport by tomorrow morning.  I’m not allowed to get out of my current mess, but I called my buddy Gerry in missing and he says everyone is on it.  Not much more I can do.”

Tomorrow morning was the worst thing David could have heard.  He had hung up the phone on Josh, and almost died on the spot.  Tomorrow morning was forever.  If she wasn’t back in two hours, she would be dead.  Tomorrow was an eternity away.  If not found in the next hour or two she would be gone forever.  Too hot a target.  No one was going to take that kid anywhere.  They’d ditch her.  Have to kill her so she couldn’t identify them.  Lying in the woods by the side of the road, throat slashed.  Looking like she never knew what happened.  She was already dead.  Time to go home and comfort the grieving wife.  This sucks.