Mad Worlds Collide by Tony Teora Read Free Book Online Page A

MicroIntel signed a legally binding contract with the State Department that allowed MicroIntel to stay in one piece. The major agreements for system security were the checks and balances regarding master chip changes. This was more than a formality, it was a law.
    Gill poured water into his ice filled glass. "General, as you and your friends here should know, I’d get my balls cut off if I did anything against the MicroIntel Anti-Trust Agreement."
    "Mr. Applebee, we have the two major agencies, and even the President on board.  As you said yourself in the press, you do well fighting the Justice Department."
    It was true, Gill thought, that he had found government anti-monopoly lawsuits against MicroIntel could be delayed for years by paying ex-government lawyers small sums of cash.  By the time a case finally reached court the old technology was worth peanuts. Remaining competition died like a mouse swallowed by a boa constrictor; slowly and painfully.  But the latest deal was toughand it was designed to protect people’s rights.
    "General, in case you haven’t read Time’s Man of the Year issue, It wasn’t me, it was Mr. Robert Davichi who invented all this shit. He’s a pain in the ass but the smartest engineer I’ve got. There is no way I’m going to get him on board.  He’s the manager of that department and I know he won’t break the Justice Department agreement"
    "Where is he?  Can we speak to him?" The General’s men had been secretly looking for Robert for two weeks. The man had disappeared into thin air.
    "He’s on his way to Japan to fix a system there.  He just got back from a recent vacation. He really needed one, he’s been really stressed lately." Robert hates the military more than I do, Gill thought.  If I give them Robert I’ll never close the deal; the guy’s too honest and smart.
    The General looked at the fat man eating chocolates. "Don’t you have a few people we could use to change the chip while Robert’s away?"
    "Yeah we do. But we’re going to need some of Robert’s DNA and we going to need someone to steal his Crypto-Code in order  to log in," said Victor.
    Gill looked at the fat man.  He sure knows a lot about our system. "Victor, where did you study the Big Blue Neural Tech stuff?" asked Gill.
    "Victor’s got a Ph.D. in computers at Berkeley.  He’s the best in the NSA.  I’ve got the fullest confidence in him," said the General, "but we’ll need some DNA for the code."
    Probably worked on the prototype we sent to Berkeley, thought Gill. "I’ve got a blood sample, but the Crypto-Code…that I don’t have, that’s in Roberts head, and he changes the code weekly."
    "Just send us the DNA sample, I’ll see what my boy in the CIA can do on snooping out the Crypto-Codes."
    Gill did not like the situation. These were powerful men who should all be in jail. He looked out the window as another black bird landed on a branch. "General, if you don’t mind me asking---why do you want to change the CIA and NSA chips? I already gave you a backdoor to the system last year and that already broke part of the Justice Deal—you should already be able to snoop on everyone now. What’s going on?"
    The light brown man in sunglasses spoke. "Mr.Applebee, the CIA has discovered that all our agencies are being spied on. Only the President and a few close advisors have this knowledge. The project Net-Chameleon has backfired and we can’t figure out what to do. We think there is something wrong with the chips, but if we do this through regular channel, then the Net-Chameleon project becomes public. We can’t let that happen."
    "What’s Net-Chameleon?" asked Gill
    The General looked at the CIA Director of Psycho-Net Strategy and frowned. The CIA Director now realized that Gill was not informed of project Net-Chameleon: a dumb mistake.
    The General put down his coffee and pushed up his glasses. "Mr.Applebee, you’re going to have to trust us on this one—it’s a matter of National