Splicer by Theo Cage, Russ Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

mental effort to push his father out of his thoughts. He didn't need the pain and he had an important task ahead. A deal had been made, and it was time to see that it was honored.
    On the computer screen moved a small animated bat, its leathery wings folding and unfolding, fangs shiny white. Grieves chuckled to himself, proud of his creation. Years before, tracking down a secret password or username could take hackers dozens if not hundreds of hours of mind-numbing drudgery. When you think about it, it was all educated guessing, patience and a lot of keyboarding. At some point it dawned on Grieves - why not make the computer handle its own dirty business? The digital bat, Dante , was born. It was only a piece of simple animation, but it represented a computer program that went out into the real world, via the Internet, and hunted down what Grieves wanted - while he slept or roamed the streets.
    "Dante, my little data sucking fiend. Let's go find Rosenblatt. " He punched in a set of possible DNS numbers, gave Dante a couple of hints on how to find the data file, and tapped in a series of locations for Dante's consideration. Rosenblatt had become uncommunicative again. He wasn't returning Grieves' e-mail and had changed all the passwords at GeneFab . He'd upped security on their computer network, too. He didn't really think that would stop me, did he?
    The bat smiled, flashed a wicked grin, and then dove into a black hole at the bottom of the screen. A banner unrolled that said DANTE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING.
    Grieves watched the empty screen for a bit then shuffled off to his sleeping area, removed his scuffed loafers and crawled inside a sleeping bag that smelled vaguely of dust and urine. He listened for the scrabble of feet in the room, but only heard the wind whistling around the loading door. Through the gaps in the sides of the door, he could make out the smeared lights of the city just past the docks. He thought about Dante, pushing his way up the data stream like a little electronic juggernaut. He felt as proud as a papa. He thought about Redfield, the last missing piece of his puzzle. And he dreamed of Ludd, his eyes vacant and dull like those of a fish carcass left too long in the sun.
     
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    Two years before, the great Jeffrey Ludd had decided, in his wisdom, to press charges against two of his employees, now former , his Marketing Manager Rusty Redfield and his key programmer Malcolm Grieves. Theft of company property he called it. Hardware. Software. Client lists. Ludd really believed these two guys could hurt his company. There was a competition clause in Grieves contract; it was standard policy with programmers. With Rusty, they saw no need, he was only a glorified salesman - so it was going to be tougher to put him out of business. But Ludd felt confident, as he always did, that he would think of something. More importantly he felt that they had taken his property, his baby, and he wanted it back. Rusty was tired of the sweatshop atmosphere and reign-of-terror management style that GeneFab specialized in.
    Ludd was paranoid. He felt that someone was always on the company's tail. But he was more worried about his key developer. The long hours, the cases of Red Bull, the constant revisions - led to a kind of break from reality for Grieves. Some days he would stare into space; others he would have these long manic conversations with himself. He was freaking the team out.
    Then that pig Rosenblatt had begun to make separation sounds - things aren't working out - we're not happy with your attitude - you'd be happier somewhere else, oink, oink, oink .  When Grieves finally walked out, he took what they called 'the Project', the Splicer , with him. All of it. It was rightfully mine thought Grieves - I worked on it for more than a year, sometimes seven days a week. Sixteen-hour days were the norm.
    Ludd even believed that Grieves had gone as far as to break into one of the management offices at 3 AM and purge the