By midday, when Detective Inspector Lewis called round for his second visit, Danny still hadn't got his emotions under control. He wanted to calm down and think his way through all this, through Frank's deceptions, the deal he'd reneged on, his outrageous proposal and the physical impossibility of it being carried out, but calmness refused to arrive, and his mind was so full of angry thoughts that he couldn't even concentrate on how to calm it. In a way, the timing of Lewis's visit was good. Danny hoped it might be the distraction he needed to take his mind off the spiralling track.
The detective once again wore an old-fashioned tweedy suit with a waistcoat, but this time he was alone and carrying an attaché case. He shuffled his overweight and less than agile body into one of the uncomfortable dining room chairs. Two shaken otters held paws above the bridge of his nose - those distracting eyebrows. He's trimmed them, thought Danny, he's got the topiary shears out and he's turned those wild thickets into smooth and even hedges, though still leylandi rather than privet.
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"I checked your Motorola story," said Lewis, maintaining the broad smile that had greeted Danny at the doorstep. "And it was true.
You were very busy, far too busy to spend any time on the Internet."
Danny nodded. "We had a lot of computer problems that day."
"So did everybody else. On that Wednesday afternoon, thousands of computer networks around the world were infiltrated, all within the space of a few hours, causing them to malfunction. Trains and aircraft crashed, ships ran aground. Many people died as a result.
Around the world, perhaps as many as two hundred."
A deeply unpleasant realisation was forming in Danny's mind. He tried to block it out, but it was too strong, and there was too much turmoil already in there for him to fight it.
"Yes, I… heard about that on the news,"
he said, weakly, knowing it sounded weak, too.
"But I didn't realise it was all computer-related."
It was not the best time for awful realisations, but this one would not be denied. No single person could hack in to so many computers at the same time. Not even a group could manage that. But a distributed intelligence could. For Frank, computers represented habitat.
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The more computers Dan infiltrated, the bigger and more powerful he became. It must have taken Frank a while to realise this, to gain self-awareness, to recognise that all those small programs spread around the Internet were effectively his body, and to consciously start body-building.
He must have made this jump to self-awareness on Wednesday, and immediately realised how many of the world's computers were closed to his widespread body, and set about breaking into them, into all of them.
That's why it had been a banana-skin day for the planet. The entire world's secure computers had been so busy fighting off Frank that they'd failed to do the jobs they were designed for, like keeping approaching trains on separate tracks, aircraft away from buildings, ships away from land. Danny had created Frank hoping he could remove human error from exactly these activities, and instead Frank had introduced errors of his own. It was a disaster, literally. And the recognition of it was devastating.
"You only heard half of it," continued Lewis. "Two-thirds of the world's oil refineries had to shut down. All the cash machines in Britain closed for three hours. Around thirty
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million emails were lost in the ether, including hundreds that weren't even spam." He paused.
"Mr Mathews, are you all right? I checked your story and you're completely in the clear."
Three years. That was how long it had taken to develop Frank's basic programs. The rest of the development Frank had done himself, over the space of a few weeks, thanks to those genetic algorithms. But what a mistake, what a misuse of time, what a totally wrong thing to do.
"Danny?"
Was anything worth retrieving from this mess? Not really. Frank was no longer a child, he was a wayward adult. He had to be reigned in, brought under control. Danny would have to own up. There'd be consequences, of course, but he had the courage to face them. He couldn't allow Frank to carry on like this, destroying lives and property, threatening his partnership with Sharon.
"It's my fault."
"That's not possible."
Danny took a breath and launched into the entire story of Frank, how he'd developed the basic programs, added a genetic algorithm to mimic the way that living things evolve through positive mutation, and how quickly Frank had developed. He left out the trip to Horton and the
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destruction of Moorhen. Those particular beans could be spilled later.
Lewis did that absent-minded professor thing with his hair, brushing it back out of his eyes. Danny noticed that this too had been trimmed. And his smile hadn't disappeared even while he'd been talking through the world's disasters, merely weakened a little. On the last visit he'd appeared glum, though that could have been the hang-dog jowls. But this was a huge grin, a self-satisfied crescent that lifted the loose flesh and took five years off his appearance.
"Nonsense," he said, eventually.
"But it's true. I can prove it."
The laptop was still on. Danny hit the keys to get in contact with Frank. A few seconds later Frank's avatar arrived on screen. It had improved slightly even in short time since Danny had last seen it.
"You're through to Frank Riley. I'm afraid I'm offline at the moment, but please leave a message and I'll get back to you."
Who? Frank Riley? Off-line? Frank was never offline. Danny frowned at the screen.
"How did you get that address?" asked Lewis, his smile lapsing for a moment.
"I told you, I've been in touch with Frank for months, long before he created his avatar."
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From his attaché case, Lewis took out a couple of papers and tossed them across the dining table in Danny's direction. Danny picked up the top sheet. It was a copy of a birth certificate for Frank Riley, date of birth December 25, 1974. The next sheet showed Frank Riley's dental records, underneath was a copy of a degree certificate.
"London School of Economics, graduated in 95," said Lewis, "Main interests are sailboat racing, chess and contract bridge. You seem surprised."
That was an understatement. The idea of a distributed computer intelligence going sailboat racing was hard on the imagination, until he worked out the explanation.
"Wrong Frank."
"No. I talked to Frank Riley on the phone, only yesterday. The same voice that came through your computer just now, with a very slight lisp."
Danny gathered together the papers on the table and handed them back. There had to be an alternative explanation. "These records are held on computer. He's tampered with them."
"MI5 don't think so."
"MI5?"
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"He has government security clearance.
He advises the Cabinet Office on Internet security. He's also a member of the economic planning policy unit. That's why I was curious to know how you got his contact details."
How bizarre. Had Frank merged his identity with a real person? Or was he just hiding behind their identity when necessary? He'd certainly picked the right kind of person to hide behind - a figure of power.
Something else rather strange was going on here. Danny hadn't noticed it straight away, but it struck him now. Wasn't it a little too convenient that Lewis had arrived with a set of Frank Riley's records in his attaché case?
"Inspector, why did you show me his records?"
"To convince you that he's a real person. I don't want you wandering around thinking that Frank is merely Frank running on Windows NT."
"It seems odd that you happened to have them in your case."
"His name came up in the investigation, and I have the case file with me. Nothing odd about that."
But something here isn't right, thought Danny, though it was hard to work out exactly what. He was about to ask whether Lewis made a
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habit of showing the personal details of senior government figures to suspects, then thought better of it. So far he'd played a straight game with everybody, with Frank, with Lewis, even Bradlee. And look where it had got him. It was naivety that had allowed him to build Frank in the first place, without thinking of the consequences, and naivety that had led him to mistakenly trust Frank - twice. Worst of all, it was stupid naivety that had allowed him to build a defence for the only software weapon that could have harmed Frank. If he was to learn anything positive from this whole disaster, it was that this had to stop.
"Yes, I see. It looks like I've somehow mixed up the software I created with a real person."
Lewis peered into Danny's eyes over his small spectacles. "Exactly." His milky-grey eyes were smiling too, shining in a way they hadn't done last time. He rose from his chair and again looked at the prints on the dining room wall.
"How's the investigation going?" asked Danny, breaking the hiatus that followed.
"It's not. The case is closed, the entire investigation into the mass hackings of last Wednesday, all those deaths, your possible involvement, and anybody else's, all abruptly
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closed this morning by my superiors. And mine is not to reason why."
"You seem very happy about that."
Lewis looked puzzled for a moment. "Oh no. No. New girlfriend."
That was it. The grin of sex. Lewis had just got laid, big-time. Well what a curious character you are, thought Danny, even if your whole purpose of coming here today was to convince me that Frank is real.
"Interested in countryside history too, are we?" asked Lewis.
Danny looked to see which print Lewis was inspecting. "Not really. That's Islington two hundred years ago, a few streets but mainly fields. The fields turned into houses over the next forty years."
"About the same time the police came into existence." Lewis sighed. The otters across his forehead woke up and had a lazy stretch. "I'd better be going. While we talk our nonsense, another twenty viruses will be released by teenager anarchists destined to write the world's corporate software, and another three shopping databases will be hacked by Russians and Thais who start the day without a bed or a flushing toilet, and by the end of it are millionaires.
Wherever there's digerati, there's digeridoo. Just
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keep off Mr Riley's back, Danny, there's a good chap."
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