Take Us to Your Chief by Drew Hayden Taylor Read Free Book Online

leaking out of the mainframe? With all the state-of-the-art technology in this room, that was highly unlikely. “I am…” could not have been sent by anybody outside the office, as the computer and room were isolated from the outside world for a number of security reasons. So, wha t then?
    The cursor continued to flash, as if expecting a response. Feeling a bit silly, King started typing. At first he didn’t know what to say, then he chose th e obvious.
    â€œHello.”
    Why he typed that, King wasn’t sure, but one thing he was sure about was that tomorrow he’d get those hacker boys in security to track down who or what had done this. Only those with special clearance had the authorit y to—
    â€œ
Hello
” appeared below King’s greeting. What had been mildly peculiar was now even more peculiar. Maybe there was a malfunction of some sort that had repeated his original salutation. That was the logical deduction. King’s wife—who was waiting for him in a restaurant twenty minutes away—loved mysteries, usually in the books she read, but King the scientist did not. Feeling a little annoyed, he stabbed at the keyboard once more. “Who i s this?”
    Instantly a response came. “
Me.
”
    â€œVery funny,” King said to himself. He was sure it was a kid, though he didn’t know how anybody could manage to find their way into the highly secure system in front o f him.
    â€œWho is me?” he typed, his annoyanc e growing.
    â€œ
I don’t know. Who ar
e you ? ”
    For a moment, King couldn’t tell whether the mysterious communicator was responding to his questionable grammar or simply asking who King was. Knowing his wife had little tolerance for tardiness, he decided to wrestle with this problem tomorrow. The program he was working on had obviously been corrupted. No point in dancing this silly little dance anymore. Further annoyed, King typed his response with a certain amount o f finality.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter. Whoever this is, is in a lot of trouble. You have tainted several days’ programming work. The authorities will be contacted, and they will track you down. However good you are, we have people here who ar e better.”
    Automatically, the professor switched from a contemporary means of communication to a rather archaic form. He wrote a note on a pad to remind himself to have security look into this intrusion further. He’d have to call Aruna once he got into the car. He was practically out the lab door when he realized he’d forgotten his keys
again
. Grumbling at his own ineptitude, King once again entered the Matrix room, grabbed his keys and gripped them tight. Then he saw the response to his fina l message.
    â€œ
Okay. Do you think they will be able to tell me who
I am ? ”
    Becoming a successful scientist in any field requires several mental attributes to work in combination. There is the matter of sheer intelligence, then deductive ability, as well as stubbornness and a certain amount of instinct. At this moment, King’s instinct was telling him this was no kid hacker. Damn the consequences, his wife would have t o wait.
    Several kilometres away, Dr. Gayle Chambers was attending to her herb garden. So much cerebral and technical work at the lab left her little time for her other passion. Her love of the earth, the simplicity of clean water and the benefits of good fertilizer made for a relaxing evening. Spread around the outside of her small house in the suburbs was an array of flowers, plants and vegetables. She was unpartisan in her appreciation of botany. There was even a patch of wild grasses and weeds hiding in the back next to the shed, so as to avoid upsetting her rather horticulturally conformist neighbours. That was about as rebellious as she got. On her knees, hands engulfed in olive-coloured gardening gloves, Chambers was cursing the condition of her chives. So much for the concept of