“Good heavens, no. We do not hire them as employees.”
Not quite an answer to my question, but I let it slide.
Archie continued. “More interesting than the mystics are the numbers of priests and psychologists who send us recruits.”
How could he possibly expect me to believe in the existence of this vast and secret network? “This sounds too big,” I said.
“Soul Identity has millions of active members, most of whom keep very quiet about their involvement.”
Now why would they keep their membership a secret? I scratched my head. “If it really is so big, somebody’s gotta be talking about it.”
He looked at me. “We tell our members that only harm comes from sharing with outsiders.”
Good point. Whose children would understand Dad leaving his fortune to himself? And who would invite scrutiny into an inheritance they received based on something in their eyes?
A white door set flush in the back of the room slid open, and a young man dressed in a dark green uniform wheeled in a small service cart. “Your soul line collection, sir.” He held out a clipboard, which Archie signed. “I’ll leave you alone,” the young man said. “Take your card from the wall when ready to go, and I’ll come back and return your collection to the vaults.”
We watched him shut the door on his way out.
“I have not rummaged through my soul line collection for a good while,” Archie said. He leaned over the cart, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply, holding it in for a few seconds before exhaling.
“Checking for mold?” I asked.
“To be completely candid, maybe I am hoping for a little extra connection with my previous selves.”
I nodded. “There seems to be a bit more spirituality involved than you like to admit, isn’t there?”
Archie looked away for a moment. “When you dig through the layers and reach the core of our innermost desires,” he said, “we all want to connect with the supernatural. We all want what we do to matter. Being connected in a soul line, knowing that you are the current link in the chain between the past and the future, makes you part of something so significant that it feels sacred and even holy.”
I was feeling uncomfortable. The idea of people believing in actual bridges between themselves and those living centuries before and after them intrigued me. And the ways that Archie and Bob expressed their faith in these bridges both fascinated and moved me. But at the same time, I was intruding on their private and deep-set convictions, encouraging them to share with me while not sharing my own thoughts.
“Archie, I want to tell you something before we go any further.”
He looked at me for a minute. “You are about to tell me that you do not believe in all this silly stuff,” he said.
Right on. “I was going to try to say it nicely, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
He nodded. “Your skepticism is exactly what I am counting on. A believer will never be able to find and root out the treachery in our organization.”
Now I was curious. “And how were you so sure that I wouldn’t believe?”
His eyes twinkled. “When you sent me the eye images of the bluefish, I knew I was dealing with the real thing—a true skeptic. Welcome aboard, Scott.”
“Wait—you knew it was a bluefish?”
“Of course,” he said. “We have been looking at eyes for almost twenty-six hundred years. Our researchers have conducted many studies to determine if we can spot identities in other species.”
“And can you?”
“No, we cannot. Only humans have soul identities.”
“If you can’t spot the identity, how did you know it was a bluefish?”
“Besides humans, all animals within each species share a single identity,” he said. “You sent us an identity with four small triangles, arranged at one, three, seven, and nine o’clock—a
Chesapeake Bay
bluefish.”
That did match with what I saw with my own program.
I pointed at the cart. “What do you have in there? Let’s give my non-belief a real run for its money.”
He chuckled and lifted out a flat wooden box. “My soul line proof papers.” He opened it up and carefully pulled out four large sheets of paper sealed inside clear and rigid plastic covers. He handed me the first sheet. “This one has my eyes and my identity.”
I looked at the sheet. It was about fifteen inches square. I saw two colored photographs of Archie’s irises, each six inches in diameter. There were pencil lines radiating from each photo like the points on a compass.
“This was done with a black and white photographic reader,” Archie said. “Our seeker then hand colored the images. It took thirty minutes to read each of my eyes. This was a step up from the previous approach, which took an hour to draw each iris.”
I held the drawing up in front of Archie. “They do look like your eyes.” The vibrant blues, yellows, and grays matched perfectly. I laid the sheet onto the table and pointed at the bottom circle. “What’s this?”
“My soul identity. After the images of the eyes are accurate and complete, the seeker records the differences in the shapes and colors between the two images and puts them in the circle underneath.”
I examined the identity, which seemed to be calculated on only a portion of the eye. “You only use the middle band of the iris?”
He nodded. “Depending on the light, the pupil can obscure the inner third, and the eyelids sometimes hide the outer third. The middle band gives enough unique data for the calculation.”
“And these fifty or so circles, diamonds, swirls, and triangles are what made you an overseer?”
“They are. Let me show you the other sheets, and it will make sense.” Archie slid the next sheet in front of me.
I looked at the iris images on top. “This person had dark brown eyes, and it’s a painting, though pretty faded. Who is it?”
“Liu Shing. The previous overseer in my soul line. He lived in
China
twenty-one hundred years ago.” He pointed at the right hand image. “It is not the color that counts, but the difference. Watch.” He reached under the table and flipped a switch, causing the tabletop to light up. “If I line up the bottom circles on our light table, you will see what I mean.”
He lined up the plastic sheets, and I saw that the identity images matched up perfectly.
Then I got it. The chances of two people sharing fifty or more same-shape and identical-location marks were astronomically slim. These guys were really onto something here.
I looked up and nodded. “Now I’m impressed.”
He laid the next sheet on top of the other two. “I am not done. This was the first overseer under Darius, the girl from
Scythia
whose picture I showed you.”
Her soul identity matched the other two.
“And this,” he put the last sheet on top, “is the original Egyptian painting, person unknown.”
I looked at the composite image made by overlaying the four bottom circles. There was no question; the images and their locations on the four sheets of paper matched perfectly.
Archie stared at me. “You’re not convinced, are you?”
“Not yet.”
He nodded. “Let us go back to my office.” He put the sheets back in the box and the box back in the cart. Then he pulled the smart card from the wall. We waited until the delivery person came and rolled away the cart.
Back in his office, Archie settled into his leather chair. “You were not convinced,” he said.
I had been thinking about this as we walked back. “The technology is fine,” I said, “but I have questions on the process. Let’s start with the match. I don’t know if the seekers did the reading blindly, or if they had a target identity and they were forcing a match.”
“Our seekers learn to construct a rough identity in their minds,” he said. “They may check this against our catalog of long lost matches—these have the biggest rewards—and if they think they have a hit, they perform a full reading.”
I nodded. “How do you protect against fraud?”
“Our rules force every match to be validated by our match committee.”
That was a good start. Now to test its limits. “What’s stopping a reader from building a fake set of eyes that matches a well known identity?” I asked.
He smiled. “The match committee validation compares the eyes of the person with the iris images. No fake eyes are allowed.”
I nodded. “How big is this match committee?”
“Three members. All three must be in agreement for the match to count.”
I thought about this. “If I wanted to get a false match done, I’d have to make sure the seeker and all three members of the match committee were in on it. Four people would need to work together to fake a match.”
“That’s correct.” He smiled. “We have a good system.”
Not so fast, partner. I pointed at him. “But think about this—it only takes a single person to invalidate a match.”
Archie seemed disturbed by that suggestion. “Do you think that has been happening?”
I shrugged. “We have lots of areas to explore before we start making conclusions. For instance, how do you know for sure that the eye images actually belong to the person you ascribe them to?”
“Because the match committee validates the images against the real eyes.”
“But how do you know that the person is who he says he is?”
He paused, then shook his head. “I guess we really don’t know for sure.”
I had lots of work to do here.
“Archie,” I said, “at first blush, it seems you have a system that works when all the players are honest and trustworthy. Like the way the Internet worked in the early days.”
He frowned. “What does the Internet have to do with Soul Identity?”
“As it connected more people and organizations, the value of its data increased, and the trustworthiness of that data decreased. The result? Lots of security problems. Lots of theft. Lots of anonymous bad people wreaking havoc on an innocent system.”
“Then they should shut the Internet down.”
“That’s one solution, I guess,” I said. “It’s pretty drastic, though. That same Internet enables great advances, saves money, and enriches lives. What happens is that the Internet evolves over time. It keeps up with its changing environment.”
Archie shook his head. “We do not evolve. We use the same overseer rules that Darius established in
Babylon
. Other than updates in the way we perform readings, little has changed in the way we provide oversight.”
Hadn’t these guys heard the expression “evolve or die?”
“I definitely have my work cut out for me,” I said.
“You do. Remember your real goal is to find and stop the bad people before they break us. Security improvements are good, but they are not the priority.”
I thought about the best place for me to start. “You brought me in to audit your security policies around your new Internet launch,” I said. “Why don’t I start by examining the new system? Chances are the bad guys are all over it.”
“Good idea,” He picked up his yellow telephone. “Brian, please ask Val to come to my office.” He hung up the phone. “Val runs the new system development. She is visiting us this week to make sure we have the right equipment in place. She can tell you all about it and answer any questions you may have.”
“Great,” I said. “It’s five o’clock now. How late do you guys work?”
“Val works until the wee hours of the morning.”
They were paying me around the clock, so who was I to complain?
I needed to know how much he wanted me to share with his staff. “Archie, how open can I be about what I’m doing here?”
He clasped his hands together. “I have informed my staff that you are here to audit the Internet programs. I also told them that you will be looking for potential security breaches.”
“Should I be open about your fears of the organization being attacked?”
He frowned. “If they bring it up, by all means please discuss it. But they probably all think I am a paranoid, out-of-touch old man.”
I could see how they’d get that impression.
“Is there anybody I should avoid in my questionings?” I asked.
He thought for a minute, then shook his head.
Brian knocked on the door and cracked it open. “Val said she’s too busy to come up here,” he said. “Should I escort Mr. Waverly to the dungeon?”
“Yes, thank you, Brian.” Archie looked at me. “Let us meet tomorrow morning at nine.”
“The dungeon sounds ominous,”
I said as Brian and I headed for the elevator. “You’re not going to torture me, are you?”
“No, Mr. Waverly, we only torture on Fridays.” Brian flashed a thin smile. “It’s a windowless computer lab in the basement of a musty old building. What else would you call it?”
We reached the elevator and he pushed the button. “You don’t need me to go down there with you,” he said. “Tell the attendant to take you to the basement. The dungeon’s on your left.” He turned and walked up the hall.
The elevator door opened. James sat on his stool, and I smiled as I got in. “Does your train make a stop in the basement?” I asked.
“Of course it does,” he said. “All aboard!” James threw a switch and the elevator dropped.
Where the third floor was marble and chandeliers, the basement was vinyl and fluorescents. My sneakers squeaked on the floor as I walked down the hall. I smiled at a video camera in the corner, then rang the doorbell at the end of the hallway.
A kid with greasy long hair, large glasses, more than a few pimples, and a dirty light green lab jacket poked his head out from behind the metal door. “You need something?” he asked.
“I’m here to see Val.”
He pulled the door open. “Come on in.”
I followed him down a hallway. He paused in front of a small office. “Some dude’s here to see you, Val,” he said.
“Thanks, Forty,” she said without looking up.
Forty left, and I stepped into the office. “Your guys go by numbers here in the dungeon?” I asked.
“He once won the Nintendo championship in a record forty seconds.” Val had a slight Eastern European accent, and she spoke as she typed on her laptop. “The name stuck, I guess.” She looked up and smiled at me for the very first time.
I don’t remember much about what Val and I discussed that first hour. Later she reminded me that she gave me an overview of the system and showed me its architecture and implementation plan. She said that I even asked some questions. But all I saw were her locks of auburn hair and her big blue eyes that grabbed my gaze and held it until I felt dizzy. All I heard was her soft accent and her magical laugh. And all I thought was how lucky I was to spend a few minutes in her presence.
Usually I’m fine talking with pretty girls. But usually these girls aren’t geeks like me. Just thinking about the possibility of having meaningful conversations with somebody so attractive turned my mind to mush.
I stood up, right in the middle of her explanation of some item on her Gantt chart. I had to clear my head and start focusing, because for the last few minutes I had daydreamed about how nice it would be to spend a summer weekend with Val on the bay. I had no clue what she was talking about, and I desperately wanted to impress her. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I need to take a quick break.”
“Come back soon,” she said as she swiveled her chair around to face her laptop.
Damn, the lady was all business. I found the bathroom, and I brushed my hair with my fingers and made sure my teeth were clean. I exhaled into my cupped palms and sniffed it to check my breath. I even made some faces in the mirror: eyebrows up in a questioning look, bedroom eyes while smiling. Why did I feel like a high school student out to impress the new girl?
I stopped in the pantry. Forty was sitting with some other guys at a table. He smirked and walked over. “Is this your first meeting with our goddess manager?”
I nodded.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll survive the experience. The first time Val visited the dungeon, I fell off that chair. Spilled my Coke all over my lab coat.” He nodded at my black shirt and jeans. “We don’t get many contractors in the dungeon—what are you here for?”
“Mr. Morgan wants me to audit the security controls on your new system. Val’s been explaining it to me, but honestly, I’m having a hard time paying attention.”
He nodded. “Here’s my trick. Look at the papers, the wall, the white board, the clock. Anywhere but into those big blue eyes. Once you fall in there, you can’t climb out. Think Medusa, man. You’ll turn to stone if she catches your eye.”
“Good advice.” I walked into the hallway.
“Remember, avoid the eyes or it’s game over,” he called.
I stood at the door of Val’s office and peeked inside.
She looked up. “Ready to continue?”
“Um, Val, would you mind if we rewind fifteen minutes or so?”
She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
I took a deep breath. “I’ve never met anybody like you,” I said. “And I can’t concentrate on what you’re showing me. You’re so gorgeous, and yet you’re speaking geek language.” I slumped against the door. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
Val walked over and stood in front of me. She was just about my height. She wore a serious, almost shocked, look on her face. I winced and closed my eyes and waited for the slap.
Then I felt her hand softly caress my cheek, and before I could react, it was gone.
I opened my eyes, and Val smiled at me. “You’re so sweet,” she said.
I stuck out my hand. “We need some proper introductions. Scott Waverly, software security guy.”
She shook my hand. “Valentina Nikolskaya, software girl.”
We shook for a while, smiling at each other. Then I reluctantly pulled my hand free. “Back to your design. But I have a few questions first.”
“What about?”
“When I went to the depositary with Archie—”
Val raised her eyebrows. “You two are on a first name basis?”
I nodded. “Anyway, he showed me his soul line collection—”
She leaned forward. “You saw his collection? What does he have in there?”
I shrugged. “He only showed me his soul line proof sheets. Then we left.”
She sat back.
I continued. “To get to his collection, Archie had to put on these goggles. I’m guessing that they authenticated him.”
“Not him—just his soul identity.”
I thought about that. “I’m trying to understand why you build your systems around soul identities instead of around people.”
“Because that’s how everything is tied together. Mr. Morgan, for example, shares his soul identity with three previous overseers.”
“So he claims.”
She rested her chin in her palms. Her fingers played with some free strands of her hair. “And now I know you’re not a believer,” she said.
Yikes. Anybody else, and I would have laughed and said, “Of course not.” But how could I say that to this beautiful angel sitting in front of me?
I laughed and said, “Of course not.” Hopefully the angel was a big girl.
“This has got to be tough for you.” She frowned. “You must wonder how anybody can be crazy enough to believe their soul can be identified.”
“And that it gets recycled in the future. I’m sorry, Val. I don’t believe.”
She shrugged. “You’ll get there. We all do, sooner or later.” Then she smiled, and I felt a flush spread across my shoulder blades. “Maybe I can help.”
“Wow.” All sorts of ways she could help flashed through my mind.
“But first I can explain why we use the soul identity to tie our applications together,” she said. “Let’s say Mr. Morgan wants to collect all the lessons he’s learned, bundle them up into a big book, and pass them on to his next self. He checks his book into the depositary, and it goes into his soul line collection.”
I nodded.
“After he dies, we find the next person matching his identity. This new person won’t know anything about Mr. Morgan until he opens the collection.”
“And finds the big book of lessons,” I said. “Only then will he know about his soul’s past lives.”
“You’ve got it—we identify people by their soul identities so we can thread the lifetimes together.” She smiled. “Make sense?”
I nodded again. “Have you ever had two people simultaneously share a soul identity?”
“Never. It’s not possible.”
I scrunched up my face. “’Not possible’ sounds more like a faith statement than a scientific fact.”
She chewed on that for a minute. “I suppose it does. But so far all the empirical evidence we’ve collected throughout the ages supports my faith.”
It sounded a lot more plausible when she said it.
“Okay, let’s talk money,” I said. “I’m assuming that you keep track of each time something’s checked in and out of the depositary.”
She nodded. “We preserve the items and invest the money. And at the end of each year, we tally up the value of each account and keep one percent as our fee.”
I decided Val could help me nail down the financial side. “Let’s say I deposit one thousand dollars—what happens next?”
“First of all, your recruiter gets a one percent commission on your deposit.”
“There goes ten bucks. What’s next?”
“We invest the remaining nine hundred ninety. Let’s say we have a good year and raise the account’s value to one thousand twenty dollars by the end of the year.”
“Soul Identity takes their fee of ten dollars and twenty cents, right?”
She nodded.
“Do that for a few hundred years, and my future carrier will be rich,” I said.
She smiled. “That’s the idea.”
“Can I get my account balance from the depositary?”
Val nodded. “All members get an account transaction report each year, personally delivered to them.”
That explained Bob’s job. “Now let’s say it’s two hundred years later,” I said. “I’m long gone, and some soul seeker finds my identity hanging out inside of somebody else. Does the soul seeker get a commission?”
“They get one percent of the account value.”
“That could be quite a lot of money.”
“I’ve seen commissions in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I’ve heard that they’ve gone into the millions.”
Talk about a temptation for the overseers and whoever works in that depositary. With funds like this floating around, and the chances of getting caught so low because most of the clients were dead, how could they possibly expect to prevent fraud?
I shook my head. “This could easily turn into quite a racket, Val.”
She sighed. “It can only become a racket if the systems don’t work. My job is to make sure they’re perfect.”
“And my job is to make sure they’re secure. That makes us partners.”
She flashed me a huge smile, and I felt a tingle rush through my body.
“If you keep smiling like that, you’re going to have to keep on repeating yourself,” I said.
She cranked up her smile’s volume, then glanced at her watch. “It’s seven thirty—you want to get some dinner?”
Yes yes yes! “I’d love to,” I said. “Do you want to ride in my limousine?” I don’t know why I thought that would impress her.
Val shook her head. “I have wheels, so you can come with me. Where are you staying?”
“The guesthouse.”
“Okay. I need a few minutes to wrap up. What if we meet out front of the building in a half hour?”
I walked backward out the door, keeping my eyes on her as long as I could. I backed right into Forty, knocking him over.
“Dude, watch where you’re going!” He scrambled back to his feet. “Hey, Scott.” He peeked into the office and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Did you avoid the eyes?”
I shook my head, smiling.
“And you’re still alive?”
I shrugged, smiling even wider.
“Head over heels, huh?”
I nodded.
“Poor bastard. Let me know when you need rescuing. I have some experience in these matters.”
I shook my head. “Not in a million years.”