Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,144
profound sadness seemed to come over him.
“I can’t accept this.”
“What? But I saw the report on CNN. You won.”
Zellerbach shook his head. “I didn’t do it. Jon did.”
The Spaniard redirected his gaze to Smith. The wariness was apparent in his expression, but he was also clearly intrigued. “Do I know you? What name do you go by online? How did you access the system from the outside?”
“To take your questions in order: You don’t know me. I go by the name Jon. And I didn’t have to access the system from outside. I just called a friend and he told the NSA to load those screensavers.”
It didn’t take de Galdiano long to come to the most obvious conclusion: Zellerbach had sold him out. This was a sting and he was right at the center of it.
He tried to rise from his seat, but Randi grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back down. “Relax. We’re not here to expose you or arrest you. We’re here to ask for your help.”
“It’s true,” Zellerbach said, leaning conspiratorially across the table and scratching a little more at his beard. “They really are my friends. You can trust them.”
De Galdiano’s eyes flicked nervously back and forth—at them, at the square, at the sparsely populated tables. “What do you want?”
Smith nodded subtly toward Zellerbach. It would be better to let him talk.
“It’s a problem with the Merge, Javier.”
“What kind of problem?”
“You know all those weird upgrade paths?”
Smith watched him carefully, looking for any hint that would indicate he was in on Dresner’s plan. Nothing.
“Yes.”
“They’re not upgrade paths at all. They’re a hidden subsystem.”
“A hidden…” His voice faded for a moment. “To what purpose?”
“Killing people. I figured out how to trigger it and it stopped a man’s heart.”
“Impossible.”
The waitress approached and Randi spoke casually to her in Spanish. “Coffee for everyone. That’s all.”
“I wanted those chocolate churros,” Zellerbach whined as she walked away.
“Focus, Marty.”
De Galdiano tried to get up again and this time it was Smith who shoved him back into his seat.
“This is bullshit,” the trapped Spaniard said in a harsh whisper. “I don’t know who you people are but you look like you work for the American government. Two more paranoid spies who think everyone spends their days trying to think up ways to hurt you. Christian Dresner has given more to this world than anyone alive: His antibiotics are on their way to wiping out resistance worldwide, he’s massively advanced childhood education and nutrition, he’s all but cured deafness. And now he’s handed us the most transformational technology since the printing press. Is it possible that you’re just angry because you can’t control it? Or maybe you don’t like what LayerCake has to say about you and people like you.”
“What Marty’s telling you is true,” Smith said.
“Oh, right. And I’m supposed to just take the word of two government agents and a crazy man?” He glanced apologetically at Zellerbach. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Even if it was technologically feasible,” de Galdiano continued. “Why would Christian want to kill his own customers? He created this technology to help the people using it—to make us see things the way they are and not how our minds filter them. Beyond being psychotic, it would be counter to everything he’s trying to accomplish.”
“I have to admit that your system’s ability to make subjective judgments about people is impressive,” Smith said, deciding to adjust his approach.
“They aren’t subjective,” de Galdiano protested. “Not in the same sense as yours and mine. That’s the point—to introduce reason and logic into…” His voice faded for a moment when he realized where Smith was leading him. “You think he’s going to kill the people the system judges negatively.”
“We spoke with him,” Zellerbach said. “He admitted it. I heard.”
“Maybe it wasn’t him.” De Galdiano indicated toward Randi and Smith. “Maybe they were tricking you.”
“They’re smart, Javier. But they’re not that smart—particularly where technology is concerned. I’m telling you that Dresner purposely built a system that can kill its user. I’m guaranteeing you that. All you have to do is find the right combination of signals. I know because it took me almost two weeks to hit on it.”
The Spaniard didn’t answer immediately, his supercharged mind collating and assessing what he’d heard.
“It was you,” he said finally. “You were the one pulling processing power from all over the world. You crashed Amazon.”
“Twice,” Zellerbach admitted. “With that many possibilities, I needed a lot of processing power.”
Some of the skepticism drained from De Galdiano’s expression and was replaced with