"The Holo" [novel in progress]

 Chapter One

3AM Wednesday – OZENOZ Media’s Headquarters- Los Angeles, CA

       The deserted parking lot beside the ten story office building looked like the promise of his demise to Tim Sykes paranoid man- on – a – mission brain. He was pulling into place with his car where he worked every day, even using the same parking space he would later this morning at seven. His mind screamed on full speed ahead for him to double back and not go through with it. But it was too late, and he had people waiting for a large portion of the fifty thousand dollars he was being paid already.

       The gig was simple. Take a hard drive he had been given, and using his FOB access to the guarded programming department at OZENOZ.COM, insert a virus. He was already sure of where in the system he would attach the viral strain, and was fairly positive he could blame entry on his security access to the virus. His employer in this venture had assured him he would be wired the money the second the virus launched and began to do their dirty work. Tim was justifying his rendezvous with the rabble rousing hell raiser that would become of the social media giant in the next days on his overworked and underpaid status at the company.

“Ahh the life of a programmer,” he sighed to himself.

As Tim Sykes put his Acura into park, and switched off the ignition, placing the parking brake into the on position to avoid a backslide while he was gone “rabble rousing” his cell phone went off. A text message had come through from Harry Sante, his employer in this venture. Harry asked “Done yet? I have your money.” Tim replied with a simple “No.” Then he thought better of it and sent another text reading “Half an hour.”

Grabbing the hard drive from the glove compartment, and absent mindedly locking it shut, he stepped out of the car into the mid – December Los Angeles air. It was fairly warm for this season at three am in the morning. He was in a hurry not to be seen and half jogged to the front entrance. His magnetic programmed key device unlocked the front door, and he warily stepped into the lobby. Avoiding the elevator, where John the night security would emerge from his rounds, Tim jogged into the nearby stairwell. Sweat was now pouring from his brow, and he wiped his eyes free of its stinging and clinging dampness.

Ascending the stairs, their white hard laminate surface clicking with each of his newly acquired Prada’s heel’s landing, Tim scurried towards the programming floor. The stone corridor was a maze of echoes he hoped John, the night security would not hear. Reaching the fourth floor, he used his magnetic key or “FOB” once again to open the door to the programmer’s floor of OZENOZ .COM. The dark space in front of him made him stumble, and he dropped the hard drive on the floor.

“Shit!”

He fumbled nervously for the drive on the floor and found it had landed on a nearby bean bag chair luckily for him placed near the exit. Grabbing the hard drive and tucking it under his arm, he waited for a few more seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Two long rows of cubicles interspersed with computer towers and various employee memorabilia stretched out in front of him. He walked to his work cubicle about half way down the back row of the room, and found the power switch for his computer terminal.

From this point, he needed an access code to get into the currently operating code in the programming that would be the insertion point. Earlier in the week he had put an imprint key stroke recording program on his terminal and had faked a problem, getting Chip Long, the crew chief to use his security code.  As it was typed his program recorded it for future use. From there he had simply written it down, and put two copies, one in his wallet, and one in his filing cabinet under “C”.

As he nervously inputted the access code into the manager bypass security window, he hoped that the handbook on the miles of code in the system was going to be an adequate map to his insertion point. The access code went through, and a new window opened with the table of contents or web flow chart to the companies programming. He had chosen his point of entry to dump the virus where it would least likely be detected, at the tables that generated the individual user account design options, and where, due to a glitch, some user content was always popping up in the code. They had rerouted the client user list generation, but for some reason this ineffective on operating status useless dribble of data still collected in the tables. The fascinating thing was the very selective accounts it was choosing to extract data from and put in here. When told about this, Harry had his programmer make a part of the viral program that would index and seek these accounts first. Tim hoped this wasn’t an oversight to recognizing the virus run lines location. Form filed data was also being broken down and redistributed to these accounts, altering the ease for recognizing the list as a possible location for the very specific part of the viral code that manipulated it into its perpetual motion within the network. Tim had been promised the fifty thousand not only for his access to the system, but for his understanding of the networks programming that had helped Harry and his friends tailor – make the virus. The fact that tomorrow people would lose children or jobs or marriages didn’t dawn on Tim at this moment. It wouldn’t be until the network news began covering the fallout he would truly recognize the depth of his crime.

Tim located the code section he wanted, the sloppiest section that had been written early on and altered countless times as the company grew, and plugged the hard drive in to the usb port. He had installed the hard drives’ driver software earlier in the day, pre- loading it from the company’s web site to speed things up for himself. It was immediately recognized and Tim opened the file he needed by clicking on the little manila file folder that popped up in the actions window. What happened next took his breath away. The file opened from his extra mouse clicks and inadvertently began to run on it s own. Like it or not, the dirty dastardly deed was being done. Tim thought he should share this moment with someone, so he texted Harry.   

“Your programming is being turbo injected as we speak. Should see its effects in just over ten minutes. That’s how long left on the upload. When should I expect the wire to go through?”

He stared at the phone for a moment lost in the daydream of his next bank statement, while watching an endless stream of file numbers and types run through as they uploaded into OZENOZ.COM’s system. Once inserted, the virus would separate and disassemble its own code, spreading it all over the social media companies programming while still able to function, though now in a mixed jumble that was like a fifty thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. This had concerned Tim, I mean he did intend on still being able to work for OZENOZ.COM, and in the end he had decided to make a “surprise” discovery a week into the cleanup in locating a way to mop the virus up based on its signature reference points running from the form field data table’s generator. This may even win him an ironic and even more profitable promotion and raise he so desperately needed. His fiancée’s parents were pushing for more house remodeling and were heedlessly expanding the wedding guest list at their every whim. They were not paying for the wedding, and they were eating up all of his reserve cash every month. His fiancée and he had recently done more fighting about the reception than shared dreaming, and if he hadn’t found himself on the receiving end of this virus venture, the whole wedding may have come crashing down around him.

“Patricia Sykes,” he said aloud while cleaning a scuff off of his new Prada dress boots.

No more spontaneous shopping sprees, and definitely no more wardrobe additions that would be too obvious for Patricia or others to notice his sudden full  house on the books.

Harry finally answered, but not as he had hoped.

“Plans have changed. You are late and I missed my marketing window with one large client prospect an hour ago. You will receive half of the money in an hour and the other half when I have had a full week to show off my wares to more prospective clients. Twenty five and twenty five, Timmy. That’s all for tonight. Check your bank. The wire is pending. My advice, don’t spend it all in one week. I need you on the inside for awhile.”

“Damn it!” Tim swore as he kicked himself, biting his cheek in dread of the week to come.

Chapter 2

4:45 AM Wednesday -Imports Warehouse- Long Beach, CA

The warehouse was like every kid’s dream come true. Row after row of metal shelving running twenty feet high packed with huge topless cardboard boxes overflowing with every type of stuffed animal you could possibly dream up. There were monogrammed footballs, inch worms, rabbits, lions and tigers and bears to name a few.

“Oh my. This is a mess.” Harry observed the cluttered walkway blocking their path to the office. Harry Sante, Derrick Chrislip, Tom Slips, and Steve Krauss were currently wading in the spilled remnants of a rainbow colored clown collection on their way to Harry’s office. The warehouse workers had not arrived on day shift, and there were so few orders pending for the night, only two crew members remained tidying things up and fork lifting popular items boxes toward the packing and shipping line.

“Fucking clowns,” Slips mused as one clown’s nose squeaked it’s annoying little trike horn honk while being trod under his boot heel.

“Look who’s talking, the squeaky wheel who always thinks he’s getting greased,” Krauss quipped, shooting him a half serious look of amusement.

“Try not to walk on them guys. I give you clowns that respect. Like us, these guys ship out for display tomorrow.” Harry put in his two cents while kicking aside a clown whose head had been half torn off by the forklift treds.

Derrick Chrislip stopped and picked up the close to headless clown and lighting his lighter, the shadow flickering over his dark features from his cigarette donning hand, twisted the clowns head the rest of the way off. He lit the cigarette and blew his first drag towards the overhead lighting fixtures hanging down from the ceiling.

“Fucking clowns get run over once and they all lose their heads.”

“He better not,” Harry put in his appreciation for the double speak on his neurotic programmers duty that had just kicked off their week.

“Yeah boss, how many times do I have to clean up after headless clowns losing their stuffing? Shit makes my eyes itchy.” Krauss spat out his gripe, staring absently at the pile of ruined toys.

“And twitchy, too.” Harry said in short.

Derrick turned to Slips, and placing his arm around him, announced “We’ll all be a lot less apt to have heads roll if we don’t run over the scary clown faces we are going to see from our clients list when this shit goes network news viral.”

“A very good point, Derrick. Wash iffeze.” Harry sauntered up the stairs to his office half mumbling in Italian as he approached the cracked and yellowing office door, perched over the mid-section of the warehouse. Obviously still in the complaints section of his late working evening, Krauss said “Boss, when are we going to get a new office?”

Steve’s hulking two hundred and sixty pound frame moved into the cluttered office while he randomly chose sections of his well formed body – builder muscles to flex and twitch to movement. Steve was most definitely the physical muscle to match Harry’s mental muscle within the group.

The office was a thirty foot by ten foot rectangle that stood perched with windows on all sides overlooking the warehouse floor from ten feet up. It contained all of the usual items you would expect in a warehouse office, including the hopelessly stained twenty year old coffee pot with its assortment of powdered creamers and sugars around it. The air stank of polyurethane from the new stuffed animals with their new toy smells, mixed with at present, burnt popcorn. Tom opened the microwave on the counter next to the invoice printouts for the week and pulled a bag from its interior.

“You burn it again, you lunk head?” Krauss chuckled in his direction.

“Francis, please file those invoices in tomorrows’ shift managers inbox. Should be listed on the schedule.”

Slips full name was Francis Thomas Slips. Only his closest friends called him Francis, people who gave him respect even though his job was underground illegal muscle moves on shady sometimes terrorist types. Slips was his general tag – name from the crew, and only his wife or the next unfortunate client to fall victim to his twenty two knew him as Tom. This seemed to give him some sort of sexual satisfaction, the name game, not the twenty two.

Derrick recognized this as his time to clear the air with their own schedule announcements, and clearing his voice, spoke up.

“Ok, my good men. Bad men are on the way for a ten – thirty. I hate to be a bringer of sleep loss on you, but if you want the great padder of pockets to bless you on Friday, I need you patting down pockets of our prospective this morning at  that meeting. These boys are homegrown locals with ties to our Syrian friends from the conventions last month. They are uptight about personal space, but they will be briefed and they will be searched. Is that understood?”

“Can Slips do the pat – downs while I shake the guns?” Steve said, making his biceps dance on either side of his enormous frame.

“No dancing with the guns, Mr. Krauss. They will be locked in a safe at the entry point of our business, and they will be given the key to retrieve them when they leave by themselves. The most dangerous part is the takeoff and the landing, so they should understand,” Harry put in his serious and rough hewn experienced viewpoint.

“Francis, did you fill the inbox?”

“Yeah, boss.”

“Then you are dismissed. Try and not scare your wife into knocking you cold in the head again this time when you go home? I don’t need you with a black eye, and besides she made me feel bad. Like you get home so seldom she thinks you’re an intruder.”

“Mr. Sante, can’t promise anything. I think I’ll just cap out in the Lincoln if it’s ok by you.”

“Have it your way, Francis. I won’t be taking the Lincoln until ten am when we leave for our little arrangement.”  Harry approvingly told Francis.

“Steve, please inform Mr. Cliff Dover that he needs to be over with the Lincoln at 10am. His number, you always forget is office speed dial number one. One.”

Harry cleared his throat, and banged the desk with a violent slam.

“We have a God- damned heavy hitter’s week, so go now! Get sleep! I don’t need jumpy watch- dogs!”

As Tom and Steve filed out of the room, Steve forgetting to call Cliff already, Derrick began to file in and thinking twice bent down over his plain brown dress shoes to retie the laces, stalling.

“Harry, we can’t move this program in too many directions. Not with the big Seals snatch of that thing next week,” he said in an almost monotone, weary voice.

“None to worry, what we can’t handle we pay as runoff to our local shriners union and say fuck em all! I don’t know why you worry so much; it’s not what I pay you for.”

No, but the details at the end of the week are going to look a lot less important if our reconnaissance converts from your old squad bring us a multiple hundreds of…”

“Yes. And two million is nothing. And you’re going to put me out of business trying to sell monogrammed Miami Dolphins teal footballs when then team sucks. That was last week. Take it easy, a deal will propagate itself”

“I forgot to tell you. We sold out of Dolphin’s monogrammed footballs on Monday.”

“Show off.”

“Never my style. Just business. Good and simple money to earn. Not to burn and learn as you go.”

“Quit that rap shit. Bugs me.”

“That was clean cut poetry, Harry.”

“Thank you. I thought so.”

“I’m going to go home. I don’t know about Slips but when I sleep in the Linc I get neck cramps.”

“Suit yourself. Lock up on your way out, please. I need some thinking time without the morning crew chief on my ass for unlocked entrances. Fucking Larry,”

“You got it.”

“And throw this popcorn bag away outside please? Stinks.”

“Sure thing.”

As Derrick exited the dusty office, he glanced back at Harry. He appeared to be already asleep. Derrick could never tell when he was asleep or when he was meditating. Harry told him not to let it bother him, he was an ex- Navy Seal and he used to sleep on his feet on long missions. This only proved to put Derrick more on edge. What if he closed his eyes at the deal at table’s end and never opened them until the deal was off? Once Harry’s eyes closed, the matter was sealed until he got a good look around again.


 Chapter Three

 August 2, 1972- Annapolis, MD- Court Marshall Hearing Room

          “Corporal, do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

”I do.”

Harry looked around the heavy air of the courtroom, observing that all eyes were on him with the exception of every member of his former Navy Seals squad, but one. The man was known as the toughest clink outside of that rink and he would lie to your face if it saved the face of one of his without batting an eye. Harry had listened to his testimony just before he had been called, and there was no thread of truth in it anywhere to even refer to it as decent. Captain McGreevy had lied under oath, but he had killed under oath too, so what did it matter if he took his own watchdogs backs when their feed was at stake?

The case was as pertinent to Harry as the hair raising on his neck when he thought of whom he could trust under fire if the crew was allowed by the panel of standing judges to reform. In an early morning raid on a small Chilean town, the men had encountered a helpless woman who was scared for her life. She threw herself at them, dancing and undressing at first while sobbing all the while in fear to try and offer what she could. She was scared for her life. Out of the squad of six, four of the men had taken their turns raping the poor distraught woman, and left her curled up in the fetal position crying to Mother Mary over and over again. Harry had abstained, and had been held down by the three not engaged with raping the woman. Captain McGreevy had also abstained, standing in the doorway of the alleged victims’ house and smoking a cigarette with his back turned. The men had never believed Harry would really speak up to weight bearing superiors about that night. They never believed that they should be sought to pay for what they did in the midst of savage killing and secret missions they rarely understood.

The panel of judges was a mixture of pained expressions as they all squinted at their dockets and witness lists which listed Harry as the key witness. After all they had heard, he was as good as in contempt for his lying game already. No one amongst the entire line of witnesses had waivered, and it seemed very open and shut. Would this Sante character now open up his can of rotted worms right in front of his temporarily ill shamed colleagues? The panel judge on the far left of the three spoke into his microphone.

“If you please, gentlemen. Sergeant Sangten the witness is yours, but I would like to know what his intent is at this moment. Sergeant, Corporal, and Captain McGreevy in the chambers please? Now.”

As the panel began to stand to exit into the chambers, each one turned to notice the dance that was happening in the courtroom. Harry and McGreevy were in a deadlocked stare at each other like two hungry warriors ready to fight over one last meal. Harry broke the silence and spoke in the Captains direction.

“You will eat your words. And you know it.”

McGreevy seemed amused by the comment and laughed out loud.

“One more open ended comment outside of chambers and I will have you BOTH in contempt. Inside those walls NOW gentlemen. We have serious slander to discuss.”

One by one they walked the circumference of the courtroom to the back entrance to the judge’s chambers. When Harry entered, coming in very last of all of them, the Sergeant and the panel were seated. McGreevy was still standing in the very center of the room, staring him down. Harry walked without missing a stride until his face was two inches from McGreevy’s now reddening cheeks.

“You think you did nothing wrong. You stink of the rape of me if I let it go down this way.” Harry spoke directly into the Captains face.

Captain McGreevy exhaled and moved his hand at the same time towards him and Harry’s faces. Harry caught his wrist, and cocking his thumb, forced his arm behind his back. McGreevy laughed and shoved his head back as hard as he could, his skull cap slamming Harry in the nose.

That was the last thing Harry remembered from that day in the chambers that had earned him his dishonorable discharge. All he knew was that in what seemed a matter of less than a minute, he was standing over a severely beaten and bloody McGreevy who was unconscious and twitching as if he were in a seizure. Harry grabbed him by the back of the neck like a pup by its mother and pulled him up by the scruff until McGreevy opened his eyes. He then chuckled, and dropped him back on his face saying “Now we get the truth. You ain’t against pussies. You are just are one."      

 Chapter Four

7:10 AM Wednesday – OZENOZ.COM Headquarters- Los Angeles, CA

    Standing in silent horror, the Vice President and his CEO took their coffee mugs from V.P. Adam Traills assistants’ outstretched hands. They were watching the network newsfeed coming live from the Brooklyn Bridge where a man was threatening to jump. Sources said that the newly revealed tryst his wife was having mainly evolved on OZENOZ.COM and had in some sort of a freak incident sent a flurry of love letters in the affair to the unsuspecting husband.

    The phone on the control room lobby floor’s front reception desk began to ring. The receptionist answered in a very calm and detached manner consistent with it being only her first round of java.

    “Ozenoz.com this is Allie.”

    “Allie, this is the Chief Producer calling with Network Access Global News, we are calling to get an official reaction on rumors that your system has been compromised. You might want to turn us on live from New York. This is getting very ugly, very quick. Is the CEO available?”

    “That is Eric Chrislip, and I do believe he is not at his desk right now. I can give you his voicemail and make sure he gets it when he returns if you like.”

    “Allie, was it? I don’t think you understand. Eric and your company are facing possible negligence charges being filed in the responsible use of private user data. One man is threatening to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge right now.”

    “Do you want me transfer you to our legal expert, sir?”

    “I’d like you to understand that your company is on every network being cited as a responsible party for what could produce mass chaos if you don’t identify officially to the public what the hell is going on! Find me anyone on the board that is permissible to make official statements to the national press for your company in an emergency.”

    “Oh, this is an emergency?”

Allie glanced up at the widescreen plasma television visible across the control room floor just in time to see a man plummet from the enormous structure that was the bridge into certain death below.

“Oh God.” Allie swore.

“Oh God.” Adam echoed Allie from across the control room floor. This was the cosmetic visitor center used to showcase the functions of the social media company’s data collections to coveting investors. Dinosaur – like sized flat screen plasma televisions connected by chrome bars weaving them into a net of unique displays of the companies multi- faceted and growing population of notable and diverse tools that were revolutionizing the business with their user – friendly interfaces. A favorite of CEO Chrislips was the sixty one inch touch screen running the optional beta versions under development.

    Eric sprang into action.

    “Allie, we need a call into the network news carrying the live feeds we just watched. I need to issue a preliminary warning to our users of unusual system errors. And to offer condolences to the recently departed’s family.

    “Mr. Chrislip, I believe I already have him on the phone. He called about two minutes ago and I didn’t know when you would be available. Do you want me transfer him to your office?”

    “Allie, I am going to take this on the fifth. My story board work room. I don’t want to sit at that extension right now. Our phones are about to go nuts, and one statement until we get further investigation is all that is kosher.”

    “I will have him waiting on line two in office five – oh seven for you Mr. Chrislip!”

Feeling tense and fearful of the coming damage assessment, Eric took the stairs to avoid the late coming employees queuing up the elevator. Keep it brief, concise and to the point without fielding too many questions that still lay in a very grey area and could cast a bad light on Ozenoz response in the face of what could be a terrorist cyber attack. There were a lot more volatile situations that were possible and twisting the knots in his stomach ever tighter.

Reaching the fifth, he was reminded of how new the interactive introductional storyboard designs for the touch screen systems were by the almost obnoxious smell of the new leather seating for the designers to sit while creating seamless integration. Setting aside his nerves, he pulled on his cold call sales background he had used so skillfully for the companies venture capital startup and forced himself to pick up the phone.

“This is CEO Eric Chrislip. Who am I speaking with?”

“This is the Chief Production Engineer here at Network Access Global News. I take it you have awareness of what is happening? I can take your statement to audio for us to air or I can cut you in live to our anchor if you like. Monica Strauss, she is standing by as we speak. Here, let me cut you in…”

“No. Just a transcribed statement would be tasteful for things this early on for us. You can record me now.”

“Ok, you are on mic in three, two, one…”

Eric heard a hollow monotone beeping sound letting him know he was being recorded.

“First off I do not want this used as audio, and will go elsewhere with my statements if you go there. This is our official reaction at Ozenoz. We are saddened by the unfortunate and tragic death of Mark Sharp and offer our sincerest wishes in staying strong through this sudden loss to his loved ones. OZENOZ.COM is immediately launching a full scale company – wide emergency evaluation of our systems. Users are advised to avoid account activity and unfortunately disregard their privacy as being secured at this present time. That is all, thank you.”

The producer got back on the line and responded with a curt “thank you.”

Eric heard an echoing hollow feed of the anchor’s voice and the clacking of keys as the line went dead. A very unsteady CEO of the world’s fastest growing social media pioneer network hung up the phone and bit his cheek.

Just down the hall in the quiet of the Vice Presidents office, Adam Traill massaged his temples, and hummed his morning mantra to try and keep cool, calm, and collected. This could be the entry point he had wished for into the COO position if he handled the situation correctly. Of all times to be thinking of promotion, only he would be delegating his own hand to be dealt in to what could be the worst social networking  systems failure ever. What with all of the new psychological programming his savvy engineers were producing it could be a disaster for a lot of people who took their Ozenoz very seriously. It was said most users who had smart phones checked their accounts before leaving their beds in the morning. They were dependent on it, and like the tempest before them, he pitied them as he prepared to assault the company code at its very core to try and salvage this before it took out their stock. He himself was heavily invested in Ozenoz and could not take the hit, what with his mothers’ cancer treatment payments sucking the life out of his yearly gains. The good news was the treatment was working and continued, and her yearly Christmas present knitted blankets were stacking up to the ceiling from the years come and gone where he had singlehandedly amongst six siblings paid for her treatments. No price tag could ever replace what his mother brought to life remaining here on Earth. She kept his siblings from destroying his life by keeping them in line as they muddled about their mundane southern bayou nine to five’s in small town Louisiana. He had flown them all out for a fundraiser for his mother’s therapy in the beginning, and he thought he would never see the end of the calls to borrow from him, or be lent from what they saw in their sibling rivalry as their fair shares of his amassed fortune.

Adam checked the screen of his desktop terminal sitting opened to the operating error files on his large double sized mahogany desk. The whole office had been done in mahogany, squeezing in his refusal to spend his expense account down with Eric, insisting rather that his office be outfitted for long hours. Eric was more than happy to oblige, having taken quite a lot of heat from the other board members in his appointment of Adam as Vice President.

The phone intercom beeped and the speaker came to life from the hi-fi speakers mounted on the corners of his desk.’”Mr. Traill, you have a call from Eric on line three. I am fending off reporters left and right, and wish you could find me something more useful to do,” Cynthia Strong his personal assistants voice came through sounding hefty and impatient.

“I’ve got line three. Cynthia, please pull up all of the operating error data files gathered since close of business yesterday and print it all out. I want that in my office in an hour sharp. That do ya?”

“That does me fine. Line three. One hour A-D.”

She called him A.D. in loving and sarcastic manner ones personal assistant does in nicknaming you for your mutually beneficial ability to shift into the prime spotlight when the company was at a loss. She said if Eric died, he would toast his board appointment prior to writing the obituary, rising from what could be his end to a new bend for some holy new cause. Besides, his middle name was Richard. Some sort of cross the line inside joke she was making by silently calling him Dick by initial.

“Only J.C. himself could walk on these waters. I will be happy to see your work, Cynthia. We need answers.”

Three floors down from Adam and Eric planning their storyboard user warning tactics, Tim Sykes had reported to the programming floor to his boss, Chip Long, Crew Chief.

Chip approached Tim from behind as Tim nervously logged on to his cubicle terminal. When Chip placed a hand on his shoulder, he nearly froze up and cried out.

“Tim, you forgot to log off last night and left your terminal open and on reserves all night. Working overtime?”

“Sorry about that, Mr. Long. What do you want me to do?”

“Tim, in the face of what we are looking at this morning, I need a good web- master P.R. technician. I am making this your official title. You are to take on the webmasters mail from this morning and when necessary, issue timely and damage assessing correspondence to the users and company workers on the issue. I want you on this now, and I want you to take your lunch here. I’ll order in whatever you like. We’re up shit’s creek here, Timmy.”

“Pho House Thai, spice level five, your choice. And two double espresso’s please. One two liter cola and some kind of chips. I’m on it.”

Chip walked away scowling at the herd of fifteen minute late arriving programmers who he was to usher into the arduous headache of breaking down and fixing their bugged out system. They were not going to have a happy hump day, the lot of them having hoped to attend the Wednesday softball game tonight and take off early. There would be no early leave for anyone anytime soon.

Tim breathed a sigh of relief, and switched his window on his terminal to the bank account window in his favorites. Logging in, he gawked openly at the account balance stuck at twenty- seven thousand dollars and six cents.

“Twenty – five and twenty- five it is.” he observed, pulling a Bermuda golf vacation planner from behind his foam basketball backboard stuck to the side of his double wide cube on programmer row.

“Life is good.”


 Chapter Five

11:20 AM Wednesday – Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Under duress, the prisoner relinquished that he would call connects to try and arrange things from his inside of intelligence lines saboteurs. The cell phone was shoved across the table in the hot hazy heat in the mid – day Guantanamo Bay sun by an agent who would not let him eat, sleep or smoke until he agreed. Abdul was three days without any of the above and could barely even speak when he received a single eight ounce cup of water thirty minutes prior.

The interrogator spoke up “You call. You say these people are so inside we will never trace it, but I have my doubts seeing as you ended up here. Give them a shout. We will see what we can do about your luck after. So, Abdul, who are you dialing right now?”

“Harry Sante.”

“Yeah right, and I am having dinner with the Queen of England. Ok, play your name game, just dial.”

The clock that hung over the supervisory punch – in machine read nine- twenty when the phone on Harry’s desk rang its queasy and warbling digital bell chirp, startling him. Harry had fallen asleep at his desk while going over the coming weeks contact list in his Rolodex and now set it aside as he glanced blurry eyed at the caller I.D. box on the cheap off – white office phone. It was coming from Cuba. He punched the keyboard next to the desktop in front of his Rolodex and clicked twice on the mouse. A map appeared on the screen and a message appeared “signal diffraction active in 10…9…8…7”

Harry picked up the phone while his line signal prepared to reroute his location information via the outflow of data from remote locations.

“This is Harry. Who is this and where are my Cuban cigars?”

“Harry. Abdul. Remember when you said your programming would carry us through or nuclear crisis? You were full of shit. Members of my family are being hung one by one back in Iraq and I am in Cuba with your men. Now you get me out or I will see your head.”

The agent across from Abdul narrowed his eyes, and mouthed words across the aisle to the equipment tech trying to track his signal.

“No luck so far,” the tech shot back his direction.

Harry grinned and pulled out his long list of awaiting thoughts on the ends of his dealings with Abdul on the virus attack he had been so lucrative in obtaining and so handy in disarming via his recommendation of the fall man. He had known that Stephen Bolsom would not let him down, and he hadn’t. In a beautiful act of selflessness, Stephen had single handedly save a warhead, the president, and gotten two thirds of the onsite regime’s militia assigned to the site that day taken into custody. It was “no news is good news” so far as the media coverage was concerned for all but the secret service men who had promotions on the line based on further prosecuting these criminals.

“Abdul, I will keep this short. You lost your head. Don’t lose your life. Lose my number. And take a number. Now if I may retire to my backseat view of your Bay area stay, I will see to it you get what you don’t deserve. Justice.”

Harry hung up the phone and swore under his breath. Using the next breath, he dialed his next in command at Naval Intelligence to report the disturbance. Forty- two years prior when Harry had thrashed Captain McGreeevy, he neither had little want nor need to have any further association with the man. Sante had been served his dishonorable discharge papers and packed his player self into a new port. Thirty years later, in the midst of his newly acquired Silicon Valley fortune and friends circle, Harry had been approached by McGreevy. He was offering a Department of Defense contract for a minor amount of reporting on intelligence issues involving some of Harry’s newly acquired acquaintances. The deal was to restore Harry’s retirement pay from the military, and incentive’s on an individual contract basis.

“First you turn your back. Then you lie on it. Now you climb on mine?”

“Come on Harry, status. You always were the most patriotic out of all of us. Swearing up and down that we were always on the easy side of doing for the greater good. This is done.”

“Yes. That was our most basic agreement. And I would have it that way without you.”

“Then let’s amend it.”

In the end, Harry had made the deal. He didn’t need the money, and he let his military retirement collect in an otherwise untouched bank account all year long until December. In December, he threw a massive charity event for the local orphanage at a five star hotel and lavished them with gifts. It was a win- win situation and the sun would come tomorrow, if he bet his bottom dollar he could pay. They were a rowdy bunch, and sometimes cleanup ran into his personal accounts.

Captain McGreevy would welcome an insider’s view on just what was plaguing them when they cashed in next week on their prize winnings from their first private venture. The next week, thought Harry, could very well send all of a dozen of them into a very long and rewarding retirement that could only be permanent by the nature of this beast. McGreevy had lined up the squad to do the acquiring in a very familiar Seal – like format one hit – one kill night drop mission when their prize arrived in San Diego via carrier. Due to their ability to get on base with credentials, the hardest part would be getting off base before the dogs were out .One man rocket packs would lift them to their chopper on the ground outside of the base on the adjacent roadway., and then their chopper would lift them directly to Long Beach on a coastal route. The men assigned to the mission were the same three by the arrangement of McGreevy as had been involved in Harry’s discharge. They were the only ones tainted enough and yet moved by Sante’s sway to take on the dozen to be killed in the hit and grab. As old as they were, they were still highly trained assassins, all with more than a decade of intense martial arts practice and full time devoted discipleship in Korea. The mission was impossible, but this team had long proven they could accomplish the impossible. This was to be their retirement payoff for the years of self – inflicted danger that had left them in loss of adequate funds in later years to continue the fast paced lifestyle to which they had become accustomed.

Harry salivated openly over an unlit cigar he chewed between his teeth for a moment, waiting for McGreevy to answer.

“Captain McGreevy here. Make it quick, Harry. I’ve got a mess of clowns waiting in the hall to debrief.”

“Well, oh Captain, my Captain. Just shipped out three thousand stuffed clowns to Disney, may his cryogenically frozen membranes rest in peace, and got a call from another brain- dead.”

“Who say?” McGreevy wheezed into the line.

“Abdul Rashaad called me from interrogation. With a trace no doubt.”

“So block his number.”

“You old fuck, I would like you to see if you can get someone in there and in his face for that. They may just figure out it really was me he contacted and I need a zone cover here with some one on one for man – down defense here.”

“Relax, Harry. Not since he got his ass handed to him last year with Bolsom’s S.S. alert has he had his lousy, gutless grease pit of a headachy hairpiece out of the can. That place is so dead end for him he won’t get the sun out of his crotch 'til way past cocktail hour on any given day from good and plenty already fitting him to be hung. The only reason he hasn’t yet is because they haven’t shipped him back to his people yet. Hear the rest of his family has been.”

“Relax, with the Holo coming up?”

“Shh. You know any orders on comment other than strategy session and planning preliminary precautions are to maintain silence. There is no Holo until we are far gone from this week. Harry, I’ve got to go. I’ll debrief you after your Friday meeting. Try and get some sleep once in a while, ya tink tank. Might help.”
    “Aye, aye sir.”

As Harry hung up the phone, he saw a crane load of stuffed clowns passing by the window. It was being lifted from the shelf and driven to the shipping and receiving for its outbound status to that nearby Disney toy shop that had placed the order the other morning. With a markup in the stock to ten thousand and double the cost, he would wrap up covering last quarter’s clean up of his money. He loved loose ends and double knots, and hoped for the big twisty tie this afternoon as he headed for the Lincoln pulling up out front. Cliff Dover rolled down the window as he stepped on the brake, and honked twice discreetly.

“Car’s waiting!” Slips yelled from the back to Harry’s perked ears.

Chapter Six

Friday – 8:30 AM – OZENOZ.COM Headquarters -Eric Chrislips Office

    Eric studied the long face of the strange intruder in front of his desk, refusing to be seated. He had received the phone call at seven, barely in time to warn him that a Central Intelligence Agency worker had been assigned to investigate the goings on at OZENOZ.COM. The agent was said to be flying into LAX on an early flight, to report to his post for a full day this very day. Matthew Sullivan was about five foot- ten with the athletic build of a man who worked out six days a week. He had a five day beard, and a sardonic smile that said he would like nothing better than to retire to the bar for breakfast rather than the office Eric had shown him. On the way to his office for a formal briefing on what exactly Sullivan required, Eric had shown him the office Cynthia had filled with a backwash of paperwork piled high in old discarded printer paper boxes. There must be ten – thousand pages just on the priority pile on the desk, Matthew had grimly noted, nodding his head at Eric.

“I want full access to all of the current company fallout from this attack as my primary concern here is that the data exposed could be used for future terrorist activities. Any and all changes in programming code launching new and fixed activities on the live site should be reported to me before running.”

“Do you need any help?”

“My shrink says I do, but then again who knows if she really just wanted another date? Bad lay, bad day, bad pay, and late for the session and she’s telling me to break up with my fiancée.”

“Sounds like you need a new shrink.”

“Doesn’t everybody. No, no help they’ll impose on my avante- garde style of single handedly handling my overworked ass. Yes, please help. As much as possible. We needed two agents on this, but I couldn’t get the paperwork through.”

“I’ll give you Cynthia Adams, P.A. for a loaner.”

“P.A.?”
    “Personal Assistant.”

“Great, so she’ll fetch coffee and donuts and also later my pipe and slippers?”

“While reading you the Wall Street, making notes on your ticker and giving you a slicker response than you could have dreamt up this morning for me.”

“Thanks, I’ll take her. So my chief primary concern here is to identify what user accounts have been targeted as it may be a clue to our perp.”

“What were you a cop? I thought this was the network terrorism specialty, not neighborhood nightly hackers.”

“If it’s ok by you, I’m going to hit the files right now. And if I can have a key and pass codes to all of the company’s rooms and terminals by the end of the day that would be nice. I promise not to step on any toes, and if I do I brought band- aids.”

“We are used to it. Stomp around all you like. But I’m telling you that’s what Cynthia is for.”

“Thanks. I’ll be next door.”

As Chris watched the fidgety half- shaven man retreat to his Mount Olympus stack of paperwork he wondered what was coming next. An IRS audit to see if there was inside involvement? Eric had an innate distrust of government agencies and their ability to do much but make political red lines hit the agenda media spots for the polls. He could feel little pity for this jet lagged man standing in his shoes from where he stood as CEO and he felt his arteries tighten for the run of luck that would renew their good standing in the public eye. He was too busy for the C.I.A at this moment, indeed. He buzzed his secretary and requested,

“Allie, please get security all access and keys and cards sent for Mr. Sullivan in office two- oh – nine. “

“Right away, Mr. Chrislip.”

Eric could not allow the investigation of his company’s new beta programming for the touch – screen functions secretly about to be released be included in this menace’s report. For this to fall in the wrong political paper- pushers hands could hold weight over the stock price of his company prior to allowing the new and ground breaking changes to be fully acclimated to the public.

The past few days, however, had left little clue as to where this attack had come from or how to disarm it. The media had seemed to push it from the headlines, but it was still being covered now as more of a business speculation piece by the networks. There had been no more circus – ring suicides and the site had lost three quarters of its user’s daily logins running on base – level setup designed for just such a case as this. Users could access instant message boards, but not old file data they had collected in their daily activities. As the affected data seemed to be targeting more recent happenings, as in within the last six months, this particular time line had been dismantled. What was it going to take, to get it all back, Eric wondered to himself.

Chapter Seven

Friday 1:30PM - Hilton – Private Meeting Room

On neutral ground that couldn’t be less inviting, Harry prepared to break ground on the first presentation of the coming week’s acquisition. This was a double presentation, with the investors having interest both in the Ozenoz virus design series, and credit for bringing “The Holo” to the plate for an interested third party. They met at The Hilton in a private meeting room that was full of fresh bouquets of flowers. Like a wedding or a funeral, thought Harry, this was going to be a vow taking ceremony ‘til death do them imparting in silence. Steve and Mark ushered the waiters out of the room, and secured the entrances as Harry fired up the laptop and its connected projector device.

“Nothing like Windows power point to bring you top – secret technology,” quipped Harry to freckled laughter.

The crowd was a dozen turban – clad Libyan ex- patriots who had come into oil money during the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The changing of hands had fallen in their favor, and though they were seen as U.S. ass kissers by their counterparts, they marked their way with their risky use of their massive funds. Thinking it best to be evasive in the face of what could be a short lived democratic run on arrangements, they ran the ramparts for hijacking business sharks. The group of Libyan oil tycoons sat in rigid stares, looking and conversing in anticipatory hushes overtones to each other as Harry made his adjustments to his laser pointer.

“I’m sorry, good fellows but you are going to have to rely on me for the audio. Lights please, Mark.”

The dimmer switch tastefully threw down the lights as it would in any theater awaiting one of Harry’s renowned presentations. He bobbed the laser pointer on the laptop across the long table the Libyans were seated around to its head where the projector awaited proper adjustment. Mark crossed the room, and swiveled the projector so that he full screen was captured on the overhead white screen at the front of the room. Harry clicked on his remote control of the slide presentation, and the presentation began.

“Holographic Disc Data Storage, gentlemen. The wave of our technological dreams of the future long in development by some of the world’s top particle physicists and various other scientist types to whom we are all in debt for decades. Now made a reality by an imparting of the one thing that stood in its way. The ability to recollect and use the data recorded on each discs fifty thousand terabyte storage capacity. What does this mean to you?”

Harry changed slides through to a visual of a standard civilian top of the line satellite phone.

“Access to NASA files in a flowing and pre- programmed collection of data on all of the currently orbiting commercial and U.S. Defense satellite’s. Two hundred thousand terabytes of what was formerly not surmountable as a rook to castle the knights of high tech orbiting surveillance now brought to the palm of our hands.

The slide projector showed a short video clip of Gulf War era surveillance satellites being launched from various commercial launching pads as they had been observed in company record footage.

“Since many a decade prior it has been the ignorance of the general public that we are far more easily observed and manipulated through orbiting technology than anyone could imagine. We can hear a cricket sing, see it jump, and turn a man into vapor utilizing giant laser cannons put into orbit more than a decade ago. These laser cannons, have a hard time tracking, but can target in still.”

“This is all well and good, Mr. Sante, but how can we be sure the phone will continue operating after it has been obtained?”

“The internal storage capacity of this phone being as it was designed, it is an autonomous example of the U.S. Military Intelligence arming its heads with more options than they could ever single man. The phone contains, however a main menu feature we have been reassured that will enable the user to continue its function, and without being traced.”

The men in the room began to clap wildly, as the projector moved to a slide of a chart of data on the adjustments made to commercial television satellites and their geometric outlining of the spaces used by covert machinery.

“Let the finger pointing with lasers that can make you breathe your enemies essence in their presence come to life for one lump investment. No control, gentlemen, don’t get me wrong, without the coinciding use of the phone’s two other clones, one of which will be in the Oval Office itself, you cannot alter the satellites functions. But you will certainly know everything else. And besides, you could maybe speed dial and hail the chief if it came down to it.”

“Mr. Sante, how is it that this phone can be obtained without being hunted by a simple tracking chip?”

“Good question. Yes, as I said before, inside sources have told us this particular model, one of three has been equipped with a main menu cloaking option as a safety precaution in case of onsite military usage needs. Essentially gentlemen, The Holo will hide itself.”

Harry moved on to the next series of slides detailing the virus just launched on OZENOZ.COM and its past few days calculated effects. As he moved through explanations of the series of viruses they had obtained through a very special designer, he knew from the hushed stares and the now nervous hands about their water glasses to perched and silent mouths, his Holo had taken the cake. Now to feed the bride and get down to the honeymoon. This was going to make one hell of a populated reception. If only he had his best man to wow them with his military status awards. This was even better than could be believed without the obligatory insider on the job. And what a prime, powerful, perpendicular payday lay in wait.

Chapter Eight 

           The sign on the door was tacked up by a wandering laid back programming geek who felt it needed its recognition. It read “007” in bold red print from the office copy machine, and was tacked over the former resident of the office’s placard on the outside. Matthew left the door open, and kept hearing chuckles from wandering passers bye who read the title on the door.

Cynthia and he were attempting to organize the stacks on countless stacks of printouts from the company’s data flow since the attack. The boxes were piled high, and the number of actual printouts Cynthia had printed must have numbered in the tens of thousands. It was going to be a long day, a very long day.

Every time Matthew looked up it seemed Miss Strong was wheeling in another box of data to be looked over, speculated on, analyzed and recorded. She was rather cute, he thought though, and he couldn’t have asked for a better purveyor of his pain. She was like his sweet librarian dominatrix, stacking him high with paper cut sheet after sheet silently sealing his fate for the next unforeseeable future.

“Hey take it easy on me. I haven’t even made it through the first box and you’re bringing more than I thought there would be total in the first place. Did I tell you I like your perfume though?”

“That’s not perfume, its air freshener. It keeps spraying on me every time I go into the fifth floor copy room. Damn stuff makes my eyes water.”

“Never knew they put pheromones in air freshener. What’s it called, Glade and you could get laid?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, there Matt. Can I call you Matt?”

“You can call me anything you want except late for dinner. We break at five. Want to join me? I see there’s a decent Italian place down the street. I’ll pay.”

“So you pop overtime on me on my bridge night, and then ask me out to dinner? I’ll get back to you.”

“I thought only old women played bridge.”

“You think too much.”

Cynthia strolled out of the room with Matthew’s eyes heavily on her figure as she was well aware by his blatant stare. He went back to his work looking over the data. There seemed to be no real selective pattern noticeable at his first surmise of the system output on the user form field data that had been interrupted, altered, and was still in a fluid flux. He shifted aside the entire box and went on to the next one. This one was a collection of the users upended interfaces that had been opened at will, starting chats for users and often times inserting text from their prior chats with other users. This thing was stirring up a shit storm. People were too damned reliant on their social media to bring them their social lives latest. Once again, he could not get a select pattern on the accounts that were being selectively targeted by the virus, and he moved on to the next box.

Cynthia returned and sat down next to his chair, cross legged on the floor. She spoke, and when she did, her cheeks flamed up in a fiery blush.

“I have decided to take you up on your offer. But you must let me put it on Mr. Traill’s expense account. The food there is good, and well…”

“And so will be the company. Don’t mind me; I just have a weakness for beautiful assistants left to spend all of their free time with me. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”

“This is dull. So, what do you want me to do?”

“Besides give me a guided tour of a good hotel I can stay at, you mean?”

She blushed furiously this time, turning to the side and to Matthews relief, laughing. She had a beautiful laugh that was reminiscent of the whippoorwills that Matthew woke up to every morning in his humble Virginia countryside house. It was a bright start to a tough assignment, he thought with renewed strength. This was going to be good, very, very good.

“If you could open the users data and see if anything at all jumps out at you from their personal information and the way in which it is being altered. This thing seems to have some sort of psychological intelligence programming of its own which is banking off Ozenoz already impressive programming. That would be the first thing. Anything at all. Recurring patterns are the key here, and then we will try and isolate the inconsistencies which usually point to the source or in its direction anyway. Unless this thing was made by one of those aliens everybody always asks me if I know about, being in the C.I.A. and all. You know? Area Fifty One?”

Cynthia looked up from her reading, and glared back at him with a faint look of amusement.

“The only aliens who could have made this are the ones who are hijacking the border every day. This shit is so tight, but not superhuman.” She quipped.

For the next few hours they moved over the data together, and were a site to watch as they danced around each other shifting through the endless piles of paperwork. Neither of them seemed to mind.

A few hours later, still huddled around their respective piles of paperwork, things began to take shape. The viral attack appeared to have targeted only certain of the V.I.P. accounts, and the activity in the accounts reeked of personal vendetta.

“I never knew so many Middle Eastern families had internet access.” observed Cynthia, flipping through piles of V.I.P. accounts.

“These are the upper echelon, the ones my coworkers will go to their graves making background information sheets about their whereabouts on high alert days. They have access to anything they want.”

“Easy access?”

“I like the way you think, Miss Strong.”

“You are going to like the way I eat I hope too, because I am starving!”

“Yeah, about that. Can we get take- out? I think we may have found a trail here and I don’t want it to get too far ahead of us before we are monitoring it live in the system. It’s more intimate here anyway, don’t you think?”

“If you say so. I have so many bad memories of this office back when our former President was in here. Taking up the slack for my boss isn’t always fun. Endless hours of various mindless tasks at times which can scare the corporate hell out of you!”

“More boring than this?”

“No, double oh seven, definitely not.”

They both laughed in agreement. Then Matthew spotted something on one of the pages Cynthia was holding. It was the picture of an F.B.I. most wanted fugitive from one of the user accounts. The man was a Pakistani terrorist thought to be hiding out in Saudi Arabia where he had ties to some wealthy land owners and real estate developers. He had not always been a terrorist, and his past life seemed to keep him afloat. He was like the Teflon Don of the cave dwelling internet attack terrorists, always loving the credit to come his way, milking the publicity as though it could do him no harm.

“Let me see that page.”

“What, this one?”

“The one on top.”

Matthew briefly explained to her the significance of this man and who he was. As they reviewed the effects the virus had on his account, under one of his blatantly known aliases, they noticed a series of chats which had touched off right around the initial effects of the virus on the network.

“Cyth, can I call you Cynth? Please run up to the fifth floor and run off all of the history of these chat meetings that went on between the hours of five am and seven thirty Pacific Time last night. I want to know what the big hoopla is all about that brought out our man.”

“Anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Within reasonable expectations, yes, anything. “

With that, she slipped out of the room to do the deed with a certain haste that said she was excited over their progress. Matthew was impressed by her ability to analyze large amounts of user data in a very short time. She seemed to have a nearly photographic memory as well, reciting data from sheets hours prior now lost in the pile hopelessly. She was damned impressive. And hot too, he thought mischievously.

She was back in less than five minutes.

“I hope you don’t mind, I took the liberty of ordering our food. I got what you wanted, the Shrimp and Chicken Bona Rosa for both with an order of calamari to start. And fresh homemade tiramisu to finish. With lady fingers that may compare to yours in sweetness.”

“You are too much.”

“I have been accused.”

“No, I mean it. I will head over there right now to pick it up. I need some fresh air anyway, and I have a feeling you need to concentrate on what I just brought to you.”

She turned to leave.

“Be a doll, and close the door, please, Cynth?”

“Certainly,” she slipped from the office in a graceful swoon, silently pulling its heavy six inch oak door closed behind her.

As Matthew read through the chat room messages, he was shocked to see the open candor the highly wanted men had with no mincing of their words and speaking very openly of a nearing acquisition of a new weapon. They were calling it “The Holo”, and were organizing an interknit community of fundraisers to try and outbid their opponents to get possession of the item. Only the information of what the item was was missing from the chats.

He was worried now. This man had been responsible for the cyber attack which had nearly frozen the U.S. financial sector in December of 2011. That virus had attacked social media as well. On this particular date, the date the virus he had launched had attacked U.S. online territory; there was a peculiar comment in his comments section. It was left by someone with a series of letters and numbers for a name. It was an online directory Meta tag for accessing the key components of the virus from a private server in order to remote launch it. And it matched the next page of data Matthew looked up in one of the adjacent boxes of form field data. This new virus had to have been spawned in its initial stages from the December 2011 virus, and this tag was pointing to its home base in the cyber space on which it was launched. Matthew ran to the nearby desk where an all access company networked computer lay in wait.

Looking through the programming codes of Ozenoz.com, he found what he was looking for. The Meta tag was pointing to an easy access pivot point common in program directories nearby where the most basic user data would be collected. It was a table of sorts, pointing the direction to the location of where the virus was attached! He picked up the phone on the mahogany desk, and immediately dialed the extension of the CEO, Eric Chrislip to let him know to alert the programming floor. He then called his report in to his colleague at the Pentagon and was met with a cold and disinterested response.

“Thank you, Matthew, but we know.”

Damned know it all’s at the Pentagon. 


Chapter Nine

    Harry was in the Orange Room, where the entire behind the scenes action warmed up before they took to the road on deals. It was tucked away in the behind the maintenance room and was next to the blowers for the warehouse winter heat to keep the stuffed animals from freezing into inactivity, not to mention the workers. Thus it received its name, as you went in pale and came out heated up and glowing orange.

    “Why do we call this fucking place the Orange Room anyway?” Derrick asked in an annoyed tone of voice.

    “Because Green Room’s make me fucking sick!” Harry retorted quickly.

    “Is it because it is so damned hot in here that we turn Orange?” Derrick observed.

    “Everyday you show me why you’re my number two.” Harry returned with a sly grin.

    “If it gets too hot in here when Slips is around, it is going to smell like number two too. Does that guy ever wear deodorant?”

Harry laughed briefly, and then turned his attention to the computer terminal in front of him.

“The Ozenoz virus built a gate for us, and I need you to access it for me, Derrick. Come over here!”

Derrick squinted into the terminals screen and looked around the gated passkey forms blinking with a blank cursor in their midst. He typed rapidly a series of numbers and letters which he had committed to memory during the review of the virus when they had first obtained it, and the screen flashed to the Ozenoz Company programming code index and directory of sections.

“In like Flynn.”

“I always hated those damned Errol Flynn movies. My mother was enthralled by them and made me watch them on weekends,” Harry related with a grimace as he sat back down to the terminal “Time to start the show, folks!”

“Welcome my friends to the show that never ends, we hope you can depend on the status of our ends, we won’t be letting sends get receivers in the bends. You know we don’t pretend.” Derrick rattled off another one of his impromptu rhymes with a brief song quote altered to his satisfaction.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop that rap shit?” Harry barked half assed in Derrick’s direction.

“Sorry,” Derrick sarcastically replied “didn’t know you weren’t a fan.”

“Speaking of fans, make yourself useful and turn on that one over there, will ya?” Harry spoke in half tone, concentrating on the directory in front of him.

“We have another whole section of this baby to activate for our decisive and immediate needs. If you could please go get Francis and Krauss please, I am ready for them.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Derrick stiffly wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, paused in front of the fan to adjust its height, and then left the room to go in search of Steve and Slips. They returned in a few moments, both Slips and Steve severely out of breath and Derrick laughing hilariously.

“Fucking goons! I told them you were getting on an attack and they thought you were getting attacked in here! Never seen Slips move so fast.  Is that why you got named that, Slips, because you just slip on by?” Derrick stammered out, barely reaching the room at the same time as the other two.

Harry’s face grew very serious, and he cleared his throat, obviously annoyed by the entire unnecessary calamity.

“Steve, Francis, listen up and pay very careful attention now. See this screen? I have remote desktop access to our office across town rented under another name. We have to be very careful about any chances of revealing our whereabouts, and I don’t trust that the higher ups won’t tail this one. I have opened up this screen for you out there on Tines Drive. I want you to go there and simply insert this file,” he handed a hard drive to the two men “in this line.”

He pointed at the gated passkey activated gate screen on the directory page for access to the V.I.P. accounts.

“Just drag and drop the file from the drive into that location, and the program will do the rest.”

“That easy?” Krauss asked warily, flexing his sore bicep.

“That easy.” Harry reassured him.

The two men were gone without a word and with the hard drive almost as fast as they had arrived. One was for certain, when they were on the move, Sante’s patience was not to be tested.

Harry sat at the terminal while Derrick slid off to the side of the room and read a worker discarded US magazine. About an hour later, Harry saw what he needed to see. The V.I.P. accounts were being tapped of their I.P. origins and a tracer leading back to their terminals was being put in place to try and extract all of the data from one of Harry’s most dangerous potential client lists from within the servers at Ozenoz. It was remotely extracting the data and sending it to storage at the Tines office across town from several of the most powerful Middle Eastern elite businessmen. Harry felt he needed to keep tabs on who this very potent and potentially world crisis causing piece of technology could possibly be getting in the hands of. He did have a conscience, after all. Couldn’t have some cave sitting missile gurus over there brandishing The Holo as a means to cause World War Three. That just wouldn’t do, that would not do at all.

Harry wiped the beads of sweat from his tension lined brow which immediately seemed to ease up, and said in a throaty hushed whisper “That’s what I call a showtime!”

The deed was done.

Chapter Ten

T

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