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| - I knew I probably looked like a zombie and my head was a quagmire of confusion and dull persistent dysphoria. I had not slept that night. I had been trying to keep my mind focused on the task of figuring out the strange events of the past week and the mysterious behavior of everyone associated with the new VirileMail project. I strode to my desk and placed my VCR on it. Fred quizzically raised an eyebrow and said, “I don’t think America’s Funniest Videos is going to be interested in your roach video.” I chuckled. “I’m not going to make a tape of insects.” I pulled some blank video tapes out of my jacket pockets and set them on the VCR. I told Fred about how difficult it had been to get them in the building past security. “The security guard thought I was planning on recording company secrets.” Fred guffawed and put on his jacket in preparation for going home. “Ya, right, a bunch of computer nerds at work and security thinks we’ll steal secrets on video tape.” I could not complain about building security; they were trying to protect the company as best they could. “I had to pretend that I’ll be making a training tape for new network administrators.” Fred said, “Hey, that’s not a bad idea. Why pretend? Do it. That will give you something to do today.” He could see by my reaction to his suggestion that I had no intention of making a training video. “What are you going to do with the VCR?” I replied, “Hook it up to the webcam.” He shook his head in disbelief. Fred knew that the only “intruder” the webcam had seen in the server room was the custodian. “If you’re not interested in the roaches, then you must have a thing for the custodian.” I made up a story about the webcam using up too much disk space. “I’m going to start archiving the video images to tape. I figure this will be a good record to keep for insurance purposes.” Fred was dubious. “Pictures are not worth what they once were. It’s too easy to alter them.” For a while we discussed ways to time stamp and authenticate surveillance images, then he headed for the door. Before he exited, I asked Fred, “Have you noticed anything unusual the past week?” Fred laughed. “Ya. You have a problem sleeping and I’m the one working the night shift. I’ve got blankets hung over my bedroom window so I can sleep during the day. What’s your excuse for not sleeping?“ I shrugged and accessed the webcam video archive. “I guess I’m just excited about this new project.” While Fred watched, I reviewed the video sequence from the server room for the past 24 hours. For the first time, there was absolutely nothing to see, not even a scavenging roach. I pressed Fred, “But I’m serious, Fred. Have you noticed anything unusual about me? Have I been doing strange things? Saying odd things?” Fred leaned back against his desk and replied, “You’ve sure been obsessing over this webcam in the server room.” I asked, “But is that really an irrational response to the unexplained server disconnection we had? And the hole in the wall of the server room? And what about the other hole blasted through the building?” Fred shrugged, “But the webcam has not shown you anything, has it?” Fred was right about that. I suggested, “What about all the bugs in there?” Fred shook his head. “Man, there are bugs everywhere.” “But that is a clean room. The air vents have special filter that a bug can’t get through. The door has a water-proof rubber gasket seal. And there is no food or water in there, nothing to attract a bug.” He offered a lame joke, “Hey, you know computers attract ‘bugs’.” He grinned at his own joke, but I was in no mood for glib dismissals of strange events. Was Fred also affected? Like everyone on the project was he unable to care about the oddness of what was going on? He seemed to grow serious and offered a perfectly logical reason for the bugs being in the server room, “It must have been that hole in the wall. The bugs could have gotten into the server room through that hole, right?’ I nodded. “Sure. But what made the hole? And what made the other holes in the building?” Fred had no explanation for the holes; he didn’t even mention the lame micrometeorite excuse. We talked about the new project and the incredible resource demand it was exerting on our server array. Fred said, “I left you another message in the log. I did some checking. Somebody set up a script that has been pumping key data from our system admin account into one of the subroutines in that new email software package.” He turned one of the monitors on his desk towards me and pointed, “The process is called ‘Knaanic.php’ and it has had access to our system diagnostics since Wednesday.” I was impressed by Fred’s sleuthing. “Ya, I set that pipe in place.” Fred chuckled. “Man, you should have warned me. When I found that last night I freaked. Before I traced it to you, I thought we had been hacked. I called Geisler at 2:30 and woke him up.” I was surprised. “You went right over Erin’s head to Geisler?” Fred explained, “Well, I don’t have Erin’s home phone number. You know how protective she is of her home life. Anyhow, Geisler was cool. He actually thanked me for being on top of things, but he assured me that he had approved the whole thing. We talked for 15 minutes about how to upgrade the server array. Oh, and one other thing.” I could tell that Fred thought he had a juicy tidbit of information. I asked, “What?” “When we were talking, I commented that if we wanted the best, we should get new servers with dual core CPUs, but it would be expensive. Geisler said money was not an issue and that he had found some new private investors who were backing this new project. He said this could be the start of a whole new software development division in the company.” Fred seemed dubious. “Man, I’d always heard that Geisler was opposed to outside investors and didn’t believe in spending money.” He asked me, “Do you believe that? Since he was in such a good mood, I mentioned the idea of increased pay for experienced network administrators. He said he thought the idea made sense and that he’s pass word to Erin to make it happen.” I let Fred know that Erin had also suggested that there might be a new division forming in the company. I mentioned what Erin had said about making use of outside experts, and for a while Fred and I discussed the idea of hiring a consultant to help make sure we got top of the line equipment for the server array upgrade. He really liked the idea agreed to bring the suggestion to Erin on Monday before he went home. “I better catch her on Monday. Most weeks she only comes to the office Monday and Friday.” With that, he headed for home. __TOC__
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