The Wired Man

24

Entry Re: Rebecca Hollandsworth

"I understand, Mr. Chancellor."

Rebecca knew she was running out of time, but she didn't need some egotistical blowhard telling her that.

"Good, because if it doesn't stop soon we'll have every corporation nationwide on our asses by morning."

There was a pause in his voice, and Rebecca could tell he was spooked. This wasn't a code five anymore, this wasn't a code anything. Failure didn't mean war, or loss of life, it meant the end.

"Find him."

"Understood."

She knew he had hung up before she acknowledged, but it was habit. She broke link and stormed back into the nearby control room.

The normally calm space swirled with chaos. Every competent mind in the city was inside, and they all had the same dazed look of a confused rat.

Gary jogged to Rebecca from across the room, and she nodded towards the door.

"Status," she said once the door closed and the sound of the shrieking machines inside lowered.

"We still can't stop it."

"Progress?"

"At least 20% of the user base is infected, and it's growing rapidly. The rogue message boards have caught on and are now facilitating the spread."

"Prepare for a full system-wide shut down."

"If you shut down the system it will-"

"We can worry about the loss of short-term data later. Right now, we need to contain the spread."

"You don't understand. I can't-"

"The interim chancellor has given me full authority to do whatever it takes. so prepare the system for a complete shutdown. That's a direct order."

Gary fell onto the wall behind him. "We can't."

"What do you mean we can't?"

"As a precautionary step we did a trial run on a cluster on our test environment. We brought it down without a hitch, but when we brought it back up, the box was clean."

"What about a rollback?"

"With what backups?"

"There has to be something you can do." She dug the end of her stiff fingers into her scalp.

"I can try and increase the latency to try and stem the spread but that will only slow things down. It won't stop it."

"Do it."

The screeching of angry machines enveloped them as the door swung open.

"Sir, we've pinpointed his location," a man from inside said.

Gary turned to go back inside. Rebecca grabbed his arm.

"You'd better be telling the truth about this, because if I find out that you could have stopped this I will make sure what life you have left will be spent wishing you had never been born."

Gary tilted his head to the side and smiled. "Don't try and blame this on me, Rebecca. You brought this on yourself. You knew the risks of outing Robert like you did."

"If I were you, I'd concentrate on fixing this problem."

"I'll do what I can, but if it's him, I'd start packing."