Free Mind Trace by Holly McCaghren Page A

creating new ones."
    Alice did her best to watch what Dr. Eichmann was doing,
but she could hardly move under the restraints. He moved swiftly around her,
hooking up several probes at different points on her head, along her arms, and
on her chest.  She could barely make out the monitor on the edge of her vision,
now showing multicolored graphs of activity. Once he was satisfied with his
work, the doctor excused himself, saying he would be in the next room if he was
needed.
    Eric motioned to the guards on either side of the door,
telling them to wait on the outside. Then, slowly and deliberately, he pulled a
chair up next to Alice and settled down where she could clearly see his face.
    Breathe. Just breathe. I just have to play it cool,
answer his questions as best as I can, without giving him any reason to suspect
anything else. I have to relax.
    Alice cleared her throat, and tried to sound calm. "I
think all of this has been a big misunderstanding. I'm sure we can talk this
out, and come to some sort of agreement."
    She grew bolder as she spoke; listening to the sound of her
own voice made her feel less helpless.
    "I'm even willing to overlook this obvious display of
barbaric behavior."
    This is ridiculous. I'm strapped down to a chair in some
secret underground lair. Who am I kidding? I have no ability to bargain with
this man.
    Eric was silent, allowing her to speak. His blue eyes were
impassive, revealing nothing.
    Alice went on. "I'm not sure what you think happened
here. A couple days ago, I received an email from whom I assumed to be
EngineerCorp, asking for a field test against SteelSafe 2.0.  So, I decided to
take up the challenge.
    "I happened to find a way past the security, only to discover
that it was your live servers, which somehow initiated a full server dump. The
sudden surge of data across my Ethernet cables proved to be too much for my
system, and burned them up before any data was downloaded.
    "I became concerned about the situation, and thought
it was a good idea to leave town for a few days to let the whole thing blow
over... and give everyone time to figure out what actually happened, before
anyone did anything rash. 
    "When I saw you in town, asking about where I lived, I
panicked, which I think was a reasonable response, given the circumstances. So,
yes, I am sorry that I hacked into your server, but I only did so because I was
deliberately misled. Fortunately, I didn't compromise any of your data; you can
find the burnt wires at my house if you don't believe me.  Search my computers,
my hard drives; you won't find anything!"
     She caught her breath and looked up at Eric, straining to
see his reaction.
    What's he thinking? Does he believe me? I know I talk
too fast... Did he even understand what I was saying?
    He sat very still for a moment, and then spoke. "We
did find the cables you spoke of. And that is one nasty-looking burn on your
hand, if I might add. It must have hurt a great deal. We were able to verify
that you were in contact with them at the time of the incident."
    She winced slightly as he examined her hand. He laid it
gently back on the armrest and looked at her, deeply sighing.
    "Alice, I might be more inclined to believe you if we
hadn't found these…"
    Eric held up the security system transmitter that she had
made, along with the drawings.
    She mentally cursed.
    The drawings! How did I forget about those? Apparently
having a computer in your head does not make one immune to distraction and
exhaustion .
    "We were able to determine that this device has
components directly derived from our security system. My engineers have not yet
had a chance to examine it fully, but they will. There is no way you could have
created this without at least partially downloading information from our
servers."
    "And these drawings…" he flipped through the
small stack of papers. "Parts of these designs are based on theoretical
sciences that have not yet been completely explored. I do not even have