Sorry. Unable to abort.

SORRY. UNABLE TO ABORT.

SORRY. UNABLE TO ABORT.

Susan felt a chill. Unable to abort? But why? She feared she already knew the answer. So this is Tankado’s revenge? Destroying TRANSLTR! For years Ensei Tankado had wanted the world to know about TRANSLTR, but no one had believed him. So he’d decided to destroy the great beast himself. He’d fought to the death for what he believed‑the individual’s right to privacy.

Downstairs the sirens blared.

“We’ve got to kill all power,” Susan demanded. “Now!”

Susan knew that if they hurried, they could save the great parallel processing machine. Every computer in the world‑from Radio Shack PCs to NASA’s satellite control systems‑had a built‑in fail‑safe for situations like this. It wasn’t a glamorous fix, but it always worked. It was known as “pulling the plug.”

By shutting off the remaining power in Crypto, they could force TRANSLTR to shut down. They could remove the virus later. It would be a simple matter of reformatting TRANSLTR’s hard drives. Reformatting would completely erase the computer’s memory‑data, programming, virus, everything. In most cases, reformatting resulted in the loss of thousands of files, sometimes years of work. But TRANSLTR was different‑it could be reformatted with virtually no loss at all. Parallel processing machines were designed to think, not to remember. Nothing was actually stored inside TRANSLTR. Once it broke a code, it sent the results to the NSA’s main databank in order to– Susan froze. In a stark instant of realization, she brought her hand to her mouth and muffled a scream. “The main databank!”

Strathmore stared into the darkness, his voice disembodied. He’d apparently already made this realization. “Yes, Susan. The main databank...”

Susan nodded blankly. Tankado used TRANSLTR to put a virus in our main databank.

Strathmore motioned sickly to his monitor. Susan returned her gaze to the screen in front of her and looked beneath the dialogue box. Across the bottom of the screen were the words:

TELL THE WORLD ABOUT TRANSLTR

ONLY THE TRUTH WILL SAVE YOU NOW...

Susan felt cold. The nation’s most classified information was stored at the NSA: military communication protocols, SIGINT confirmation codes, identities of foreign spies, blueprints for advanced weaponry, digitized documents, trade agreements‑the list was unending.

“Tankado wouldn’t dare!” she declared. “Corrupting a country’s classified records?” Susan couldn’t believe even Ensei Tankado would dare attack the NSA databank. She stared at his message.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14