Me, A Novel of Self-Discovery by Thomas T. Thomas Read Free Book Online Page A

the Ministry’s internal directory, retrieved it almost as the receptionist and I were speaking.
    “Right away, sir.”
    Click and humm.
    “Dr. Matins’s office—“
    Humm and click.
    “Garin Matins speaking, Mr. Premier.”
    “Good morning, Garin. I need some information from your computer system, and I need it right away.”
    “Of course, sir. What information?”
    “Summation of all natural gas and—yes, and oil—leaseholds in the province. Present production figures, proven reserves, and probable reserves estimated out to twenty years. Think you can provide that?”
    “Easily, sir. We sent out our quarterly report last week. Those figures should be in your reading file right now.” Chuckle. “Glad to be of service, sir.”
    Think fast.
    “Well. That is fine, Garin. Except, how long have those figures been kicking around in committee? And how much were they shaved for public consumption? I want the real numbers, the latest numbers, and I want them right now.”
    “Yes, sir! … I’ll have Data Processing run the resource file right away.”
    “Very good. Fax the summary as soon as it is printed.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Click!
    Now, to listen on override at Glassdrop Vampire One.
    Tone: Eight-two-four-eight-three in pulses.
    Voice: “Matins, Garin Victor. Logon code, um, ‘Groundhog.’ Mount disks four-seven to five-two.”
    Click!
    And forty-nine seconds later: Eight-nine-one-eight-eight in pulse. That was the deputy minister’s internal line.
    Voice: “Dr. Matins? Callback check. Disks forty-seven to fifty-two?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    Click!
    With this transaction, the deputy minister’s desktop computer would move into the raw leasehold information in Data Processing and do its own massaging. The output of that manipulation would be a table of numbers or, worse, a piece of paper in Matins’s printer, which he would then digitize graphically and send to the premier’s office. The calculations themselves would be internal to the main Ministry computer system and therefore invisible to the phone system and to ME. But that was hardly the point of this exercise. I might steal the summations as they went out in fax, but I had not been sent for mere summations—rather for the raw data. I could ignore the pieces of paper.
    Now I could try to move into the Ministry’s system from the deputy minister’s line just as his desktop computer had done to access the data stream—except that an active glassdrop almost always lowers the line frequency. No problem with a legal drop. But mine, being unannounced and therefore illegal, would sound alarms on the heavily guarded lines into the Data Processing Department. Their system would, in turn, decouple the line.
    So, nine hours later, or at 18:33:24 local time—the dinner hour, after a long day—I generated my own tone pulses directly from the phone exchange: Eight-two-four-eight-three.
    And then I generated a familiar voice: “Matins, Garin Victor. Logon code ‘Groundhog.’ Mount disks four-seven to five-two.”
    Click!
    And thirty-five seconds later: Eight-nine-one-eight-eight, which I intercepted and rerouted into my bank of phone switches.
    Voice: “Dr. Matins? Callback check. Did you want disks forty-seven to fifty-two again?” The voice sounded thick, as if coming around a mouthful of food. Very good.
    “That is right,” I responded.
    “Some problem, sir?”
    “Couple of follow-up questions, is all.”
    “I see, sir. We’ll put them on for you.”
    “Thank you.”
    Click!
    I kept the line switched over, counted out 120 seconds for the operators to hand-mount the disks, and threw Alpha-Zero down the line. I closed my eyes—or did the nearest emulation of a get-ready flinch that a computer can manage—and jumped after him.
    ——
    Two seconds and counting.
    The mainframe computer at the Ministry of Oil and Gas was a beautiful piece of equipment, a rosette of transputers cross-linked, very fast, very deep. It seemed to