103 Torridian   The Trainer 104
look…,” getting his brain in sync with his eyes, he finally completes his thought, “stunning.”
Finally, Robert’s mind is able to process what he is looking at. Jacquelyn is a mature-looking version of her younger, athletic self. Her chiseled yet feminine features make the stuffy business suit that she wears look fabulous. Her hair is up in a tall twist. Her jewelry and makeup add stunning accents to her features. She looks like a model shooting a portfolio piece for a line of business garments. Her look continues to affect Robert, yet her demeanor continues to be cold.
“How did you know I’d be here?” Robert asks, then pauses as he realizes that it was she who called him. “My cell number?”
Jacquelyn replies with a clinical directness. “You graduated from Carnegie Mellon with honors. After that you worked as a software engineer. Five years later you started your own business as a consultant. That evolved into a lucrative, independent, international training company. You’re married now. Two kids. This weekend Angie told you she was six weeks pregnant. This morning she had a craving, so you left home at 10:43 to find the old Emporium, but instead you found me. Your cell number is listed in the yellow pages.”
Throughout Jacquelyn’s monologue, Robert’s face reads like a book. With every fact, he grows more uneasy, yet intrigued. Jacquelyn’s knowledge of Robert seems Orwellian.
As Jacquelyn speaks, she continues to study his face.
“At G.L.U., I triple majored in Russian, psychology, and European history. Since my skill set had a military fit, I went into rotc my sophomore year. After I graduated, I joined the army as a G2 officer and came up through the ranks after a number of successful rotations.”
At last she breaks her cold, austere, and somewhat-menacing demeanor with her signature contagious smile and the twinkle in her eye that seduced Robert years ago. She takes a moment to let Robert digest what she has told him as he stares somewhat apprehensively at her glowing smile.
“And it could be that I bumped into Andy, Saturday,” she says revealing a smirk. Robert is infinitely relieved by the simple revelation, believing that Andy told Jacquelyn all that she enumerated about him moments ago.
“So how come Mr. Marksman isn’t a member of the nra?”
“Big Brother,” Robert replies, curtly.
“You are paranoid, aren’t you?”
Robert brings his arms in front of his chest and crosses them. “Years ago, I could fire up my computer and tell you what the various dynamic link libraries, drivers, and executables did. I used to delete the garbage and clean out the registry to make it 		run faster.” Robert rocks his head and cracks his neck as he continues, “I could let my computer sit and, if nothing was running, the hard drive light wouldn’t blink. In fact, it would spin down, confirming the computer wasn’t doing anything I didn’t know about.”
“So?” Jacquelyn goes back to sipping from her cup, still steaming.
“So these days there are so many system files, I really can’t tell you what does what, anymore. The hard drive might spin down, but later it spins up again — it’s doing something, but I don’t know what, even when I turn off disk defrag., virus scan, and everything else. It’s as if files are being mined for key information. It’s going on when the system says it’s idle. It’s why I keep all my sensitive data files on good ol’ floppy disks, not the hard drive. Sure, the computer could be just indexing files in order to run faster, but that wouldn’t explain the transmissions.”
Jacquelyn is getting tired of Robert’s rambling paranoia, but she keeps listening so she can warm her hands on the hot cup. “Go on.”
“I own one of those old-fashioned modems, a genuine Hayes, the kind that sits on your desk and has leds that show you when stuff is being transmitted and received. When I used to dial in, the lights only flashed when I was transferring data; but these days they blink every so often for no apparent reason — even when I turn off all the automatic-update stuff. I really think Big Brother’s now become part of my operating system, and when I dial in, the host program is either retrieving an updated library or sending up a brief report about the data that’s been mined.”
Jacquelyn keeps warming her hands and periodically sipping. “Maybe it’s hackers trying to get in.”
“Yeah, that happened to me once, when I used a cable modem. With continuous fast access to my computer, some hacker almost planted a virus. Since then I’ve gone back to dial-up, and now I use a firewall that reports all the odd packets that are coming my way. Thing is, those led lights still flash and the firewall has nothing to log other than system traffic.”
“And that’s why you’re not a member of the NRA?” she asks with disbelief, her voice condescending.
“Indirectly. Yes.” Robert uncrosses his arms and pulls his shirt down, tucking it in better. “These days the information systems of every organization have been integrated to leverage the Net, which means that there’s some physical or wireless network that connects everything together. And, since one company dominates the industry, and since that company keeps antitrust initiatives at bay by giving the government backdoor hooks that no one…”

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