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kashiwritesChapter 3
Chapter 4
“You know I’m not letting this drop,” Miaki said patiently, “so why don’t you just give in and talk about it?”
“There’s really nothing to talk about,” Toshi insisted, rolling his eyes. “I took a little jolt from poking too far into a coding bundle, and it kind of winded me. End of story.” He picked up another slice of pizza and took a large, satisfying bite, leaning back in his chair and contemplating the faint rings of Jupiter on the dining room wall looming hugely behind his cousin.
“Are you absolutely sure?” Miaki continued to probe. “That was all it was? That’s exactly the sort of thing we’re looking for, you know.”
“Maybe I should have a look at the code too,” Chika suggested, “in case you missed anything. And to let the teachers know, if it turns out just to have been coded improperly.”
“What year level was it?” Jin inquired.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Toshi shrugged. “Second, third year, something like that. Not the most advanced, anyway. It really wasn’t anything – “
“That’s not how you looked when I first got there,” Julie contradicted him darkly. “You were very shaky, and you said your chest still tingled where the electric shock got you.”
Miaki slammed his utensils onto the table, glaring at his cousin. “Now that,” he snapped, “you didn’t tell me.”
“I forgot,” Toshi shrugged. At his cousin’s continued glare, he sighed. “All right, look. I think Chika’s right: it was just improperly coded – didn’t we even comment on that, Kenji?”
“Yes. The syntax was odd,” the other nodded. “It was some kind of specification about colour or temperature, we thought.”
“So it gave me a bit of a shock,” Toshi went on. “Big deal. If it really was ‘exactly the sort of thing we’re looking for’, Miaki, it would have done a lot more than shock me. That’s what makes me sure it isn’t what we’re looking for, but is only a badly coded simulation. Which can be fixed quite easily. So stop worrying and, you know, kindly get off my back!” The last words came out with a certain unexpected vehemence.
Miaki stared, taken aback. “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it...”
“No no, I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry. I just think you’re making too big a deal of this. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
Chika stirred her soup and took a sip, then commented, “Still. I’d like to have a look at it and see if I can get someone to fix the coding if that’s the problem. We don’t want to leave it lying around for someone else to get shocks from. Which sim was it, Toshi?”
“Hm.” He thought a moment. “You know...I don’t actually remember. I looked into so many today. Kenji, do you remember which one it was?”
Kenji thought too, and frowned. “No. I can’t think which one. I guess I was so interested in the code that I forgot to notice the simulation itself.” Something about that idea didn’t quite sit right, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.
“Just perfect,” Julie snorted. “You get shocked in a simulation, that needs fixing, and you don’t even remember which one.”
“Well, excuse me for not making it more convenient for you,” Toshi snapped. Then took a sharp breath. “Damn. Sorry, Julie, what a stupid thing to say. Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she sighed. “I’m sure you’ll remember. Or we can check your logs or something.”
“No you can’t, I’m afraid,” he shook his head. “I had them set to self-destruct every time they updated.” He smiled apologetically around the table. “Last year’s cautious habits, and all that. They don’t just fade automatically.” He took another bite of pizza and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ve got a bit of a headache, and that was a lot of work this morning. I think I’ll go take a nap, and when my head is clearer, I bet I’ll remember. How’s that, Chika?”
“That will do. Don’t push yourself.”
He collected the rest of his pizza onto a small plate, pushed back his chair, and stood up. He cast a knowing smile at his cousin. “And you,” he said, “quit worrying. Got it?”
As he departed, weaving his way among the other lunch-time tables full of students, Miaki stared after him, brows drawn down in a frown of concern.
He hoped Toshi was right, but Kenji’s warning about Mr. Tanaka had made him a bit jittery. Maybe he was worrying unnecessarily over what was nothing more than just a badly coded simulation. He reminded himself that Tosh knew what was at stake, and was as cautious as he was after last year’s experiences, so if his cousin didn’t think this was anything to worry about, then it probably wasn’t.
And in fact, this interpretation seemed to be justified. The new school term began the next morning, and Toshi didn’t seem to be suffering any lingering after-effects. The entire student body met, as always, in the large assembly room facing the massive wall that featured a spectacular mountain view. Miaki, who had arrived early with his cousin, enjoyed watching the first-years and hearing some of them gasp as they encountered it for the very first time.
Some people believed that the view – set to look as though ISCE were situated high up in the mountains looking down a steep drop into a deep, shadowed valley – reflected the real location of the school. But others – most people, in fact – thought that it was, as it were, a kind of smoke screen. Given that the view could be changed if required (it had happened on one or two occasions last year), it clearly didn’t need to represent what was really beyond that high wall in the assembly hall. Just another part of the larger ISCE mystery that its students traditionally enjoyed trying to explore.
The view was dimmed as the student body underwent the standard welcoming rituals, and then each year’s students were divided up and taken to their first classes.
The next few days were spent getting back into the rhythm of school. Miaki and Jin shared in most of the same classes, and partnered together as always, in their VR studies. Kenji and Julie appeared in some of their classes too, but now that they were in second year, they were starting to diverge a little from the other two. Julie had always intended to go into terraforming studies, with an eye to working on Mars at some future time. Kenji was interested in terraforming as well, but where Julie aimed more at the biological side of things, Kenji had a more geological turn.
Jin hadn’t though to ask Miaki before, but she began to realize that he was more interested in the cyber-astrophysical realm. Which amused her a little, since she had decided over the summer that that’s where she was headed too. She knew exactly what Julie would think of that when she heard.
Though if Julie ever decided to tease her, Jin knew she could tease right back: Akio was making a definite pitch for her friend’s affections this year, and frequently mentioned that he considered himself “Kenji’s rival.” Which embarrassed and flustered Kenji immensely, of course. Especially considering that he was still so uneasy about his father’s threat, the first couple of weeks or so, that he seemed to have neither the time nor the inclination to decide if he himself was “Akio’s rival,” or just Julie’s very good friend.
Although as time went on, and no threat seemed to be materializing, he became a little more relaxed each day. Soon, Jin suspected, he might lift his head and actually think about it. Not that he needed to. The six of them from last year remained very close friends, and that in itself would be good enough. Chika’s engagement hadn’t changed that, for example. So it really wasn’t necessary for Julie and Kenji to be anything but the friends they’d always been.
As to the threat from mister Tanaka, the group began to wonder if he’d merely been trying to freak out his son (and maybe Miaki and Toshi too, from a distance), just for spite.
They met in one of the VR rooms one evening, to talk about it. They used a room in a remote wing of the school, one of the rooms intended mainly as a spare if there were a lot of students in the system at the same time, or used by students in the higher levels when working on special joint projects. They’d also had to take a roundabout way to get there, to shake off any fellow students who might get too curious about what the six of them were doing together. Things weren’t quite as bad as last year, but some first-year students still hadn’t “got” that they shouldn’t follow this group around, famous though they might be.
“Sometimes,” Julie grumbled, “it feels as bad as when we were trying to hide from spies last year.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” Jin smiled. Though she herself had been having to avoid a first-year girl named Sachi, rather a lot lately. Sachi seemed to think that by making friends with Jin, she could somehow get closer to Miaki, who appeared to be her real goal.
“It doesn’t matter,” Toshi said briskly. “We shook them all off anyway, and I think you’ve put your security barrier at the door, Julie?”
“Oh, you bet I did,” she nodded fervently.
They put on their equipment and found themselves sitting in the gazebo, which Miaki had restored for them without even being asked, before the end of the first day of school. This year he’d also added bird song, and he’d divided the walkway leading up to the gazebo, to put in a small fountain in the centre.
Now he seated himself cross-legged on one of the gazebo benches as the others took their seats on other benches. “Let’s have a quick report from all the different investigations,” he suggested, “and then we can decide if we need to keep going with this. How about starting outside and working our way in? Julie?”
“Right,” she said. She pulled up several holoscreens, one for each of them, containing the summary of her efforts thus far. “I haven’t gotten right into the prison yet,” she told them. “I thought I might not need to, if I could find any kind of hidden trail leading out. I’ve worked at eliminating all the legitimate in-out paths, to see if there are any unauthorized ones left over. I’m not quite done that operation. If I do see unauthorized paths, those would be the first I’d investigate.”
“Isn’t it a bit dangerous to assume you don’t need to look at authorized paths too?” Toshi wondered.
“Yes. Which is why I haven’t done that.” Even in the VR world, Julie’s avatar was capable of looking smug. “I’m going to code a program searching for anything that might piggy-back on one of those. And of course, any path running straight between the prison and ISCE will set off alarm bells and set red flags waving. But I’m willing to bet that that sort of path either won’t exist at all, or won’t be the source of anything nasty. It would be just too obvious, and too easily caught, and any coder worth his salt will know that. So I’ve got another program almost ready that will start to follow any path that leads through a suspicious number of extra linkages. If someone in the prison thinks they can reroute often enough that we won’t notice an eventual connection between the school and the prison – well, they’re going to be surprised.”
“So,” Miaki mused, “we still can’t say for sure that there won’t be anything harmful coming in from outside.”
“No we can’t. So I don’t recommend stopping this part, at least, until I’ve gone over everything completely.”
“Right,” he nodded. “So even if we drop other parts of the investigation, we continue that. What about you, Kenji? How do things look with ISCE’s own security?”
“They’re good,” he responded immediately. “I still have more to do, like Julie. But so far, I’d be tempted to say the school is air-tight, except...”
“Except,” Toshi snorted, “the minute you assume something like that is the minute it gets you.”
“That’s right,” Kenji nodded. “I’ve done the same sort of thing Julie’s been doing: checking for legitimate entrances and exits, looking for hacks, all that stuff.”
“And in case the rest of you weren’t aware,” Miaki added, “I’ve been helping a bit with that. I realized a few days ago that there are an awful lot of entrances and exits, when you’ve got students in and out with messages to family, online research, game-playing, and that sort of thing. So I started tackling the daily in-outs while Kenji kept looking over the larger security framework. So far, I haven’t found anything undesirable coming in through any of those paths.”
Toshi raised an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me you’re reading people’s mail and peeking at their attachments.”
Miaki smiled. “No. Just checking for types. Not reading or peeking.”
Jin mused, “We still can’t eliminate something that was already here on-site, to begin with. Have you looked for anything like that?”
“I’ve set up a spider to hunt for anything pre-term,” he nodded.
“But I wonder...,” she continued thoughtfully.
“What?” he asked. He knew better than to ignore even a casual thought or concern she might have.
“There could also be something that existed pre-term, but it looks innocuous...and yet if a trigger came in from outside...”
“A trigger that would look innocuous too, all by itself?” Miaki’s dark blue eyes became distant as his concentration turned inward. “You’re right...that would be an extra complication. It could slip right by us.” His eyes focused again, sharply, on Kenji’s face. “Should we write something to try to find that sort of trigger, do you think?”
“I think we should,” Kenji nodded soberly.
“Oh, come on, you two!” Toshi burst out irritably. “Don’t you think we might be going a little too far with this?”
Miaki regarded him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that we can’t be expected to scour every photon of ISCE’s system. Do you really want us to know their system even better than their original designers? Doesn’t there have to be a limit at some point?”
“Well...we do need to make sure we’re absolutely safe.”
“There’s safe,” Toshi snapped, “and then there’s paranoid.”
A small silence. Julie blinked in alarm, looking from one to the other. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever actually heard either of the cousins speak to the other in that tone of voice before. Certainly she’d never heard Toshi, who’d spent so much of last year trying to take care of Miaki.
Miaki licked his lips and ventured gingerly, “Do you...really think we’re being paranoid here?”
Toshi shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Maybe not, but...I just don’t know what the limit is supposed to be, here. When do we stop?”
Chika stirred. “I’m not sure we can stop entirely, Toshi. That’s the problem. Unless we know for sure that Mr. Tanaka can’t exert any influence against Miaki or you, we may always have to be on the watch in one way or another.”
“So we’ll be scouring every system we ever encounter from now on, for the rest of our lives? Talk about a stupid way to live,” Toshi retorted.
“How about this,” Miaki suggested carefully. “We go over everything as thoroughly as we can, once. And if everything seems clean, we set up guards to warn us if anything seems to change. And then we relax a little. Just enjoy our school year, and trust that everything’s okay. How does that sound?”
The avatars in this simulation were extremely realistic. The others could sense how carefully Miaki was treading, trying not to upset his cousin in this new, irritable mood. And now Toshi grimaced a little sheepishly, and nodded with an awkward shrug.
“All right. Sorry. I just...well, it’s a bit tiring, that’s all. I guess I’m not adjusted to the school schedule yet, and it’s hard to add in all this extra work. But you’re right. We do need to do a complete sweep, at least once. Sorry.”
Jin frowned at him, biting her lip in contemplation. He didn’t usually have a problem, adding in extra projects; in fact, he relished them. She was surprised that it seemed to be a problem for him right now. Thinking of him in real life, his avatar aside, it occurred to her that he did look a little tired whenever she saw him in the hall or at the table in the dining hall...
Chika suggested, “Why don’t we make a report on how the simulations look, Toshi? And then Jin can tell us if she’s found anything about the teachers this year, and we can finish up and call it an early night.”
He smiled a little ruefully. “Yeah, I guess. That sounds good. Sorry I’m being such a bear.”
“Well, like you said, it’s a new term and you’re tired. So. Let’s hear what you’ve found, and I’ll follow up.”
“There’s not much to report, actually,” he said. “All the simulations I’ve gone through seem really clean. And still no sign that any of them might trickle into real life.”
“The ones I’ve looked at are pretty much the same,” Chika nodded. “But I think I’ve found another couple that were coded improperly, like the one you ran into a few days ago. They’re all sims that were written for second or third year students. Does that sound familiar?”
“That might have been where I found that one,” Toshi shrugged. “I still don’t remember it, really.”
Jin frowned again. He didn’t usually forget things like that, and neither did Kenji. She wondered if the shock had jolted them both enough to give them a memory gap. She’d ask Miaki about it in private later.
“Well,” Chika went on, “I’m going to have a peek at the coding and see if I can unpack it a little. That is...I’ll write a program that will unpack it for me. I don’t think I’ll touch it till I know what’s in there, since I don’t want to be shocked.”
“So, what’s left, apart from that?” Miaki asked. “Just the fourth-level sims?”
“That’s about it, yes.”
“And I can make my own report pretty short,” Jin interjected. “I’ve gone pretty deep with most of the teachers here, and at the moment they’re all clean too. I’m going to check the two that left after last year – aside from Yoshida and Suziki, who we already know. Just in case someone might have left something here before they moved on.”
“Good, then,” Miaki nodded. “So...if I’m right, the consensus is that we keep going till we finish our first pass, and if nothing’s obviously wrong, we don’t bother with it any more, but just set guards.”
The others agreed, and in a few moments, they were back in the VR room, pulling off and undoing their equipment.
“I’m telling you,” Julie said to no one in particular, tossing her goggles on the desk and running her hands through her streaked hair, “even when I get into terraforming I think I’m going to design a line of more fashionable VR-wear. This stuff is ug-ly.” She regarded they greenish grey goggles with distaste.
“Purple goggles,” Kenji murmured. “That would be cool.” Julie smiled warmly at him, and he blushed.
“Well,” Toshi said. “I’m outa here. I’ll see you all later.” And he left without another word.
Chika stretched and remarked, “I’ve got some homework to do before I can call it a night. You guys have a good evening.” She followed Toshi out the door, with Julie and Kenji not far behind her, laughing at something Julie had said.
Jin had caught the flash of disquiet in Miaki’s eyes as he’d watched his cousin leave so abruptly. But he masked it as he turned to her with a mild smile. She stepped to his side and said quietly, “You’re worried about him? Aren’t you?”
“Of course not. He’s just tired.” Miaki’s eyes slid off her face and he shrugged with obvious unease.
“And he can’t remember which simulation he was in when the shock hit him, and he feels like this security project is ‘extra work.’ Is that because he’s tired too? Does that sound like Toshi to you?”
“Yes!” Then, realizing how vehemently he had spoken, Miaki repeated softly, “Yes. It does. It has to. Because...”
“Because...?” Jin prompted.
“Because if it’s not just something normal like that, then...then it’s something worse.” Finally he turned directly toward her, and she saw the worry on his face. “I can’t think of any reason he’d be feeling like he does, except the reason he’s giving us. I don’t see any other explanation.”
“Except that shock he got, the first day,” she added soberly.
“Yes, but...it’s not like the simulations last year, that someone could get into and do actual harm in the real world. There’s no sign of that so far. So...it must just be that the shock made him a bit tired. I just can’t see any sign that it’s more than a coincidence.”
“I hope you’re right, Miaki. I agree – I don’t know how the shock could have done anything but shake him up a bit and make him tired. But just in case...well, I’m glad Chika’s going to take apart that odd code.”
He averted his face and hugged his arms across his chest. “So am I,” he whispered.
“What year level was it?” Jin inquired.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Toshi shrugged. “Second, third year, something like that. Not the most advanced, anyway. It really wasn’t anything – “
“That’s not how you looked when I first got there,” Julie contradicted him darkly. “You were very shaky, and you said your chest still tingled where the electric shock got you.”
Miaki slammed his utensils onto the table, glaring at his cousin. “Now that,” he snapped, “you didn’t tell me.”
“I forgot,” Toshi shrugged. At his cousin’s continued glare, he sighed. “All right, look. I think Chika’s right: it was just improperly coded – didn’t we even comment on that, Kenji?”
“Yes. The syntax was odd,” the other nodded. “It was some kind of specification about colour or temperature, we thought.”
“So it gave me a bit of a shock,” Toshi went on. “Big deal. If it really was ‘exactly the sort of thing we’re looking for’, Miaki, it would have done a lot more than shock me. That’s what makes me sure it isn’t what we’re looking for, but is only a badly coded simulation. Which can be fixed quite easily. So stop worrying and, you know, kindly get off my back!” The last words came out with a certain unexpected vehemence.
Miaki stared, taken aback. “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it...”
“No no, I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry. I just think you’re making too big a deal of this. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
Chika stirred her soup and took a sip, then commented, “Still. I’d like to have a look at it and see if I can get someone to fix the coding if that’s the problem. We don’t want to leave it lying around for someone else to get shocks from. Which sim was it, Toshi?”
“Hm.” He thought a moment. “You know...I don’t actually remember. I looked into so many today. Kenji, do you remember which one it was?”
Kenji thought too, and frowned. “No. I can’t think which one. I guess I was so interested in the code that I forgot to notice the simulation itself.” Something about that idea didn’t quite sit right, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.
“Just perfect,” Julie snorted. “You get shocked in a simulation, that needs fixing, and you don’t even remember which one.”
“Well, excuse me for not making it more convenient for you,” Toshi snapped. Then took a sharp breath. “Damn. Sorry, Julie, what a stupid thing to say. Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she sighed. “I’m sure you’ll remember. Or we can check your logs or something.”
“No you can’t, I’m afraid,” he shook his head. “I had them set to self-destruct every time they updated.” He smiled apologetically around the table. “Last year’s cautious habits, and all that. They don’t just fade automatically.” He took another bite of pizza and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ve got a bit of a headache, and that was a lot of work this morning. I think I’ll go take a nap, and when my head is clearer, I bet I’ll remember. How’s that, Chika?”
“That will do. Don’t push yourself.”
He collected the rest of his pizza onto a small plate, pushed back his chair, and stood up. He cast a knowing smile at his cousin. “And you,” he said, “quit worrying. Got it?”
As he departed, weaving his way among the other lunch-time tables full of students, Miaki stared after him, brows drawn down in a frown of concern.
He hoped Toshi was right, but Kenji’s warning about Mr. Tanaka had made him a bit jittery. Maybe he was worrying unnecessarily over what was nothing more than just a badly coded simulation. He reminded himself that Tosh knew what was at stake, and was as cautious as he was after last year’s experiences, so if his cousin didn’t think this was anything to worry about, then it probably wasn’t.
And in fact, this interpretation seemed to be justified. The new school term began the next morning, and Toshi didn’t seem to be suffering any lingering after-effects. The entire student body met, as always, in the large assembly room facing the massive wall that featured a spectacular mountain view. Miaki, who had arrived early with his cousin, enjoyed watching the first-years and hearing some of them gasp as they encountered it for the very first time.
Some people believed that the view – set to look as though ISCE were situated high up in the mountains looking down a steep drop into a deep, shadowed valley – reflected the real location of the school. But others – most people, in fact – thought that it was, as it were, a kind of smoke screen. Given that the view could be changed if required (it had happened on one or two occasions last year), it clearly didn’t need to represent what was really beyond that high wall in the assembly hall. Just another part of the larger ISCE mystery that its students traditionally enjoyed trying to explore.
The view was dimmed as the student body underwent the standard welcoming rituals, and then each year’s students were divided up and taken to their first classes.
The next few days were spent getting back into the rhythm of school. Miaki and Jin shared in most of the same classes, and partnered together as always, in their VR studies. Kenji and Julie appeared in some of their classes too, but now that they were in second year, they were starting to diverge a little from the other two. Julie had always intended to go into terraforming studies, with an eye to working on Mars at some future time. Kenji was interested in terraforming as well, but where Julie aimed more at the biological side of things, Kenji had a more geological turn.
Jin hadn’t though to ask Miaki before, but she began to realize that he was more interested in the cyber-astrophysical realm. Which amused her a little, since she had decided over the summer that that’s where she was headed too. She knew exactly what Julie would think of that when she heard.
Though if Julie ever decided to tease her, Jin knew she could tease right back: Akio was making a definite pitch for her friend’s affections this year, and frequently mentioned that he considered himself “Kenji’s rival.” Which embarrassed and flustered Kenji immensely, of course. Especially considering that he was still so uneasy about his father’s threat, the first couple of weeks or so, that he seemed to have neither the time nor the inclination to decide if he himself was “Akio’s rival,” or just Julie’s very good friend.
Although as time went on, and no threat seemed to be materializing, he became a little more relaxed each day. Soon, Jin suspected, he might lift his head and actually think about it. Not that he needed to. The six of them from last year remained very close friends, and that in itself would be good enough. Chika’s engagement hadn’t changed that, for example. So it really wasn’t necessary for Julie and Kenji to be anything but the friends they’d always been.
As to the threat from mister Tanaka, the group began to wonder if he’d merely been trying to freak out his son (and maybe Miaki and Toshi too, from a distance), just for spite.
They met in one of the VR rooms one evening, to talk about it. They used a room in a remote wing of the school, one of the rooms intended mainly as a spare if there were a lot of students in the system at the same time, or used by students in the higher levels when working on special joint projects. They’d also had to take a roundabout way to get there, to shake off any fellow students who might get too curious about what the six of them were doing together. Things weren’t quite as bad as last year, but some first-year students still hadn’t “got” that they shouldn’t follow this group around, famous though they might be.
“Sometimes,” Julie grumbled, “it feels as bad as when we were trying to hide from spies last year.”
“It’s not quite that bad,” Jin smiled. Though she herself had been having to avoid a first-year girl named Sachi, rather a lot lately. Sachi seemed to think that by making friends with Jin, she could somehow get closer to Miaki, who appeared to be her real goal.
“It doesn’t matter,” Toshi said briskly. “We shook them all off anyway, and I think you’ve put your security barrier at the door, Julie?”
“Oh, you bet I did,” she nodded fervently.
They put on their equipment and found themselves sitting in the gazebo, which Miaki had restored for them without even being asked, before the end of the first day of school. This year he’d also added bird song, and he’d divided the walkway leading up to the gazebo, to put in a small fountain in the centre.
Now he seated himself cross-legged on one of the gazebo benches as the others took their seats on other benches. “Let’s have a quick report from all the different investigations,” he suggested, “and then we can decide if we need to keep going with this. How about starting outside and working our way in? Julie?”
“Right,” she said. She pulled up several holoscreens, one for each of them, containing the summary of her efforts thus far. “I haven’t gotten right into the prison yet,” she told them. “I thought I might not need to, if I could find any kind of hidden trail leading out. I’ve worked at eliminating all the legitimate in-out paths, to see if there are any unauthorized ones left over. I’m not quite done that operation. If I do see unauthorized paths, those would be the first I’d investigate.”
“Isn’t it a bit dangerous to assume you don’t need to look at authorized paths too?” Toshi wondered.
“Yes. Which is why I haven’t done that.” Even in the VR world, Julie’s avatar was capable of looking smug. “I’m going to code a program searching for anything that might piggy-back on one of those. And of course, any path running straight between the prison and ISCE will set off alarm bells and set red flags waving. But I’m willing to bet that that sort of path either won’t exist at all, or won’t be the source of anything nasty. It would be just too obvious, and too easily caught, and any coder worth his salt will know that. So I’ve got another program almost ready that will start to follow any path that leads through a suspicious number of extra linkages. If someone in the prison thinks they can reroute often enough that we won’t notice an eventual connection between the school and the prison – well, they’re going to be surprised.”
“So,” Miaki mused, “we still can’t say for sure that there won’t be anything harmful coming in from outside.”
“No we can’t. So I don’t recommend stopping this part, at least, until I’ve gone over everything completely.”
“Right,” he nodded. “So even if we drop other parts of the investigation, we continue that. What about you, Kenji? How do things look with ISCE’s own security?”
“They’re good,” he responded immediately. “I still have more to do, like Julie. But so far, I’d be tempted to say the school is air-tight, except...”
“Except,” Toshi snorted, “the minute you assume something like that is the minute it gets you.”
“That’s right,” Kenji nodded. “I’ve done the same sort of thing Julie’s been doing: checking for legitimate entrances and exits, looking for hacks, all that stuff.”
“And in case the rest of you weren’t aware,” Miaki added, “I’ve been helping a bit with that. I realized a few days ago that there are an awful lot of entrances and exits, when you’ve got students in and out with messages to family, online research, game-playing, and that sort of thing. So I started tackling the daily in-outs while Kenji kept looking over the larger security framework. So far, I haven’t found anything undesirable coming in through any of those paths.”
Toshi raised an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me you’re reading people’s mail and peeking at their attachments.”
Miaki smiled. “No. Just checking for types. Not reading or peeking.”
Jin mused, “We still can’t eliminate something that was already here on-site, to begin with. Have you looked for anything like that?”
“I’ve set up a spider to hunt for anything pre-term,” he nodded.
“But I wonder...,” she continued thoughtfully.
“What?” he asked. He knew better than to ignore even a casual thought or concern she might have.
“There could also be something that existed pre-term, but it looks innocuous...and yet if a trigger came in from outside...”
“A trigger that would look innocuous too, all by itself?” Miaki’s dark blue eyes became distant as his concentration turned inward. “You’re right...that would be an extra complication. It could slip right by us.” His eyes focused again, sharply, on Kenji’s face. “Should we write something to try to find that sort of trigger, do you think?”
“I think we should,” Kenji nodded soberly.
“Oh, come on, you two!” Toshi burst out irritably. “Don’t you think we might be going a little too far with this?”
Miaki regarded him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that we can’t be expected to scour every photon of ISCE’s system. Do you really want us to know their system even better than their original designers? Doesn’t there have to be a limit at some point?”
“Well...we do need to make sure we’re absolutely safe.”
“There’s safe,” Toshi snapped, “and then there’s paranoid.”
A small silence. Julie blinked in alarm, looking from one to the other. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever actually heard either of the cousins speak to the other in that tone of voice before. Certainly she’d never heard Toshi, who’d spent so much of last year trying to take care of Miaki.
Miaki licked his lips and ventured gingerly, “Do you...really think we’re being paranoid here?”
Toshi shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Maybe not, but...I just don’t know what the limit is supposed to be, here. When do we stop?”
Chika stirred. “I’m not sure we can stop entirely, Toshi. That’s the problem. Unless we know for sure that Mr. Tanaka can’t exert any influence against Miaki or you, we may always have to be on the watch in one way or another.”
“So we’ll be scouring every system we ever encounter from now on, for the rest of our lives? Talk about a stupid way to live,” Toshi retorted.
“How about this,” Miaki suggested carefully. “We go over everything as thoroughly as we can, once. And if everything seems clean, we set up guards to warn us if anything seems to change. And then we relax a little. Just enjoy our school year, and trust that everything’s okay. How does that sound?”
The avatars in this simulation were extremely realistic. The others could sense how carefully Miaki was treading, trying not to upset his cousin in this new, irritable mood. And now Toshi grimaced a little sheepishly, and nodded with an awkward shrug.
“All right. Sorry. I just...well, it’s a bit tiring, that’s all. I guess I’m not adjusted to the school schedule yet, and it’s hard to add in all this extra work. But you’re right. We do need to do a complete sweep, at least once. Sorry.”
Jin frowned at him, biting her lip in contemplation. He didn’t usually have a problem, adding in extra projects; in fact, he relished them. She was surprised that it seemed to be a problem for him right now. Thinking of him in real life, his avatar aside, it occurred to her that he did look a little tired whenever she saw him in the hall or at the table in the dining hall...
Chika suggested, “Why don’t we make a report on how the simulations look, Toshi? And then Jin can tell us if she’s found anything about the teachers this year, and we can finish up and call it an early night.”
He smiled a little ruefully. “Yeah, I guess. That sounds good. Sorry I’m being such a bear.”
“Well, like you said, it’s a new term and you’re tired. So. Let’s hear what you’ve found, and I’ll follow up.”
“There’s not much to report, actually,” he said. “All the simulations I’ve gone through seem really clean. And still no sign that any of them might trickle into real life.”
“The ones I’ve looked at are pretty much the same,” Chika nodded. “But I think I’ve found another couple that were coded improperly, like the one you ran into a few days ago. They’re all sims that were written for second or third year students. Does that sound familiar?”
“That might have been where I found that one,” Toshi shrugged. “I still don’t remember it, really.”
Jin frowned again. He didn’t usually forget things like that, and neither did Kenji. She wondered if the shock had jolted them both enough to give them a memory gap. She’d ask Miaki about it in private later.
“Well,” Chika went on, “I’m going to have a peek at the coding and see if I can unpack it a little. That is...I’ll write a program that will unpack it for me. I don’t think I’ll touch it till I know what’s in there, since I don’t want to be shocked.”
“So, what’s left, apart from that?” Miaki asked. “Just the fourth-level sims?”
“That’s about it, yes.”
“And I can make my own report pretty short,” Jin interjected. “I’ve gone pretty deep with most of the teachers here, and at the moment they’re all clean too. I’m going to check the two that left after last year – aside from Yoshida and Suziki, who we already know. Just in case someone might have left something here before they moved on.”
“Good, then,” Miaki nodded. “So...if I’m right, the consensus is that we keep going till we finish our first pass, and if nothing’s obviously wrong, we don’t bother with it any more, but just set guards.”
The others agreed, and in a few moments, they were back in the VR room, pulling off and undoing their equipment.
“I’m telling you,” Julie said to no one in particular, tossing her goggles on the desk and running her hands through her streaked hair, “even when I get into terraforming I think I’m going to design a line of more fashionable VR-wear. This stuff is ug-ly.” She regarded they greenish grey goggles with distaste.
“Purple goggles,” Kenji murmured. “That would be cool.” Julie smiled warmly at him, and he blushed.
“Well,” Toshi said. “I’m outa here. I’ll see you all later.” And he left without another word.
Chika stretched and remarked, “I’ve got some homework to do before I can call it a night. You guys have a good evening.” She followed Toshi out the door, with Julie and Kenji not far behind her, laughing at something Julie had said.
Jin had caught the flash of disquiet in Miaki’s eyes as he’d watched his cousin leave so abruptly. But he masked it as he turned to her with a mild smile. She stepped to his side and said quietly, “You’re worried about him? Aren’t you?”
“Of course not. He’s just tired.” Miaki’s eyes slid off her face and he shrugged with obvious unease.
“And he can’t remember which simulation he was in when the shock hit him, and he feels like this security project is ‘extra work.’ Is that because he’s tired too? Does that sound like Toshi to you?”
“Yes!” Then, realizing how vehemently he had spoken, Miaki repeated softly, “Yes. It does. It has to. Because...”
“Because...?” Jin prompted.
“Because if it’s not just something normal like that, then...then it’s something worse.” Finally he turned directly toward her, and she saw the worry on his face. “I can’t think of any reason he’d be feeling like he does, except the reason he’s giving us. I don’t see any other explanation.”
“Except that shock he got, the first day,” she added soberly.
“Yes, but...it’s not like the simulations last year, that someone could get into and do actual harm in the real world. There’s no sign of that so far. So...it must just be that the shock made him a bit tired. I just can’t see any sign that it’s more than a coincidence.”
“I hope you’re right, Miaki. I agree – I don’t know how the shock could have done anything but shake him up a bit and make him tired. But just in case...well, I’m glad Chika’s going to take apart that odd code.”
He averted his face and hugged his arms across his chest. “So am I,” he whispered.
Chapter 5
