Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

of the joint was an enormous boulder where the log cabin and trailer homes collided in a mesh of logs and aluminum siding. An old Toyota Land Cruiser was parked off to the side.

It took a while to get there, and when we did, Ellie switched off the Ford truck and we sat there looking at the place.

I said, “That’s a hell of an oddity.”

She agreed. “We could get Helen together with Mister Lawrence and win all kinds of architectural prizes.” Ellie took the keys out of the ignition and twirled them on a finger. A feather hung from the rear-view mirror. She fisted her keys and popped the latch on the driver’s side door. I did the same on my side and came down off the truck onto gravel and dirt.

Helen was the woman whom I had met at the fire tower, with her son, Hank. The front door was glass, and gave directly on to the kitchen, which in turn opened to the living room. There were multi-colored crystals arranged in several areas of the house, like small shrines to Alaskan’s mineral heritage. A tie-dyed peace sign was framed above the kitchen sink. So far, so good. Helen offered us her own lemonade. I tried to be polite and show interest. Helen said that she worked on the internet as something called a Mechanical Turk. I asked what that was, and she said, “Anything really, particularly things that a robot cannot do.”

I said, “Give me an example.”

“Sure, what I was working on right now. They gave me a bunch of pictures, like three thousand of them, all dogs. My job was to mark out the ones I thought were cute.”

“A highly subjective task,” I said. “I’m guessing that the least threatening dogs are the cutest.”

She smiled. “That’s right. Highly subjective, so it depends. The other day I had to take a survey on things I like to do on the weekend.”

Ellie said, “Do robots have weekends?”

Helen’s son Hank walked in. He was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of sheepskin house shoes. Hank was the computer geek. He looked tired but smiled when he saw me. Hank looked out of the big square glass set into the front door. The sky was gray. He said, “Crappy weather, means it’s a good day to stay inside and do computer stuff.”

Helen said, “Nothing illegal, I hope.”

Hank said, “Ellie’s the police.”

Helen said, “Kind of.” She looked at Ellie. “No offense, Ellie.”

“None taken.”

Hank’s room was like a computer dungeon. Machines on every available surface. And noisy, not only with the buzzing and cackling of electricity, but the loud whirring hum of cooling fans. If Hank had been a little limp out of the room, in it he gained a whole new aura of confidence. I produced George Abrams’ laptop.

“We tried twice on the password. I figure maybe there’s one more try left.”

Hank spoke with authority. “Forget the password. I’m going to get it into recovery mode. Bypass the front end.”

I said, “You already lost me there, Hank.”

He said, “I’m trying the back door. No big thing. I do it all the time.”

Ellie said, “Okay, whatever.”

Hank placed the laptop on a purpose-built stand fitted to a clean wood board serving as a desk. He examined the accessory ports on the laptop and plugged in the power cable. A tiny green light blinked on to prove the thing had juice. The screen remained blank, like a robot poker player. Maybe it was on, maybe not, it wasn’t saying.

Hank removed a fist-sized black box from a drawer and connected a cable between the box and the laptop.

I said, “What’s that?”

“Like a brain, but not exactly intelligent, more like an idiot savant.”

Ellie said, “That’s real helpful, Hank.”

Hank rolled his eyes. “The box goes between the laptop and my other machines. Like a circuit breaker in case there’s something malicious in there.”

I said, “Malicious how?”

“You are trying to break into some guy’s computer, right?”

“Right.”

“So, the next assumption is that the computer might have belonged to someone engaged in criminal activity.” He looked at Ellie. “I mean, after all, Ellie’s kind of police.”

“Okay.”

Hank said, “So the tertiary assumption is that the possible criminal might have installed code that guards against intrusion, right?”

I said, “Like having a guard dog in a house.”

“That’s correct. Only that in my world, if you disturb the guard dog, he doesn’t necessarily stay in his house when the intruder runs out of it and shut the door. In my world, the guard dog comes over to your house, burns it down, and kills your family.”

Ellie said, “So you’re protecting your own stuff with that black box.”

Hank said, “You done asking questions? Want me to get on with it? I’ve got other boxes that I plan to connect, and if you ask me about each one we’ll be here for a long time.”

Ellie said, “Go on, Hank, we won’t bother you anymore.”

Hank turned back to the machines. He connected other boxes to the Abrams laptop, then he connected his own laptop to two of the boxes. Then he flicked a switch and sat back. Hank’s laptop came to life in the form of lines of white text on the black background. Abrams’ laptop remained a blank. Over on Hank’s machine, lines of text began to scroll. Hank was peering closely, surveying the unfolding situation. He seemed pleased.

He said, “I’m in.”

I said, “Back door?”

“Back door. Easy. Now I’ll be able to get the files off of this computer, and onto one of my external drives. Then we’ll have them in quarantine.”

“In case they are infected with something?”

“Yup. They’ll be all locked away and harmless.”

Hank manipulated his laptop, a flurry of fingers flying, clicking and dragging and scrolling and entering codes and commands. He sat back and watched for a minute. The cursor on his laptop was blinking in place, a small vertical yellow rectangle. We were watching Hank’s screen. I looked closer. Lines of text were writing themselves, then moving up a line while a