Spyware

Susan gave them each a calculating glance and smoothly switched tactics. The microphone came up to her lips and the cameras flipped on. Ray and Sarah blinked in the sudden glare of the portable floods. The man with the boom-mike had gotten his jacket on now and managed to thrust the instrument over everyone’s heads.

“Your son? Tell me more,” said the woman, waving the guy with the mike in a bit closer. The camera swung to zero in on Sarah. She could feel the heat from the bright lights on her cheeks. Out on the street she heard the squeal of brakes. Past the news crew, she could see another team unloading quickly onto her lawn. The second group came running. It was then that she realized that they really could smell blood.

“No, we haven’t -” began Ray.

Sarah stopped him with her hand. “Yes, we do want to talk to you. Wait here one moment.”

Sarah closed the door most of the way, but left it ajar. Through the crack came a gush of shifting white light. She thought crazily for a moment of an X-files episode and of brilliantly lit alien silhouettes. It did indeed feel as if her house were being invaded.

Running to the hall, she pulled a large 8x10 photograph from the wall. The picture was hung on a nail, which pulled until she ripped it loose. It came away from the sheetrock with a tearing sound. A piece of the baskets-and-flowers wallpaper sagged down. She barely noticed. The picture was of Justin, wearing a sweater and smiling for his school portrait just six months ago. When she got back the hall she discovered that a newsman had poked his head into the house and was talking very quickly to her husband.

Her first instinct was to bash him with the picture, but she restrained herself. She told herself that she needed these creatures. She pulled the door open wide over Ray’s protests and held the picture of her son up closely to the cameras. Outside, a third and fourth truck had disgorged more media people onto their property. The reporters backed away from her, the front rank hunkering down so as not to interfere with the camera angles. Closer still, crouched light and microphone men moved in circles at her feet with an odd humping gait. The image of a flock of vultures feasting on a fallen carcass came unbidden to her mind.

She kept her hands as steady as she could as she explained Justin’s disappearance. She made it sound as if the boy had been dragged from the house screaming all the while making a desperate 911 call for help as he had been taught in school. And for all she knew, that was exactly what had happened.

The cameras ate it up. She summoned up tears, wanting to keep the cameras on her. It wasn’t difficult. All the while she talked, she tried to keep Justin’s picture close to her face to give him maximum exposure. There was no knowing how many fleeting seconds their story would get on the evening news. She wanted every second she could get.

More crews kept rolling in from Sacramento, which was only a twenty-five minute drive to the East. Clearly, someone on the local police force had broken the story to the press. Sarah told herself that if it meant she would get Justin back faster, then she thanked them all. Some of the crews knew about Justin, others about the virus, but once they realized that both stories came from the same household, a feeling of real excitement swept over the flock. Sarah heard several times from many lips: “This will go national-”The thought both pleased and sickened her. She hated the idea of plastering her family across the nation, of losing their privacy to an army of newshounds armed with telephoto lenses and parabolic mikes. How long might it go on?

Ray was more reluctant to talk about the virus. He described the virus and the investigation, but without much enthusiasm. He had long ago divined Sarah’s plan, she could tell. She could tell too, that he didn’t want them to give him much airtime. He tried as best he could to keep turning the discussion back to their missing son, but the reporters were relentless.

Sarah felt as if she were learning of her husband’s doings on live TV. She watched as if from a distance, not really able to take it all in. It seemed impossible that there could be another threat to her family on this dark day. Her mind refused to fully grasp the possibility that her husband was suspected of criminal behavior.

Finally, Ray struck upon the perfect tact to shut down the cameras. He got technical about it. “Most likely, the virus operates by spoofing the servers with each packet. Masquerading as legitimate, the virus passes either as e-mail or using a FTP-that’s file transfer protocol, by the way, then causes the new host to run an executable that will repeat the process. I’m not sure how it’s by-passing the firewalls, however, but I’m sure we’ll understand it better after further investigation.”