Chapter 28

Adrian Dacoit was young. Only 24, he was totally inexperienced in dealing with ghosts, and he knew it - how could he be expert in a dead discipline, after all! But he was very good at data analysis, having obtained ridiculously high grades in every test he had ever been given.

And something about the analysis he had just performed struck him as wrong. He was not sure what, but his instincts were rarely wrong with computer systems.

He glanced at his mentor. Did he not see it? 

No. He did not. Running the board as if there were no oddities in the incoming data. Adrian, as an apprentice, was supposed to watch, learn, and ask questions. But the man he was paired with certainly did not invite questions - apart from having to scream them into his ears, as he consistantly turned off his hearing aid to concentrate - he would rarely answer questions anyway.

How am I supposed to learn? By watching a slow old man hunt and peck at a keyboard? What a waste of time and talent. Painful to watch the quavering hands route the analysis to control and shut down the board.

"Were you paying attention?" The old man didn't even glance at him.

"Yes sir." You useless old fart.

"Then why did you not speak about the anomalies 4 seconds into the analysis? They were obvious."

Adrian felt like sinking into the floor.

"You were running the board ,sir." Pathetic excuse. Whimpering voice.

"And you are supposed to learn to run the board." Still no eye contact. The ancient, seamed face as unreadable as a stone.

"I thought you had missed it." Adrian's admission was low - almost inaudible.

His mentor turned to look at him.

"Boy, I have not missed an anomaly in 63 years." A flicker of anger. "Now, why did I not flag it? Answer!"

Adrian was abruptly pushed back into his testing time. The answer burst out of him.

"The anomaly was well beyond safety limits. Flagging should have been automatic for anyone with training. Therefore, you have information you have not yet shared that prevented you from flagging it for control."

A smile in the almost motionless face of his mentor.

"Good. They told me you were competant."

"May I ask what information you have that I do not?" Hesitant. But wanting to know.

"Boy, you need know two things, one you couldn't know and one you have forgotten."

Adrian straightened.

"First thing - this is an old ghost. Nearly 250 of our years old. In his terms, the god knows. Depending on how much of his time has been spent in fast time, he could be anything up to 10,000 years old in his terms. He is much older, much wiser, and most probably much smarter than you are. At least half of what he let us see is a deliberate distortion of what he is. Although he is faster at modifying outputs than any other I can recall."

"OK. So I am always going to be playing catch-up."

"Quite. And you never will. Remember, all your training is for computer systems. What you forget, because it is not yet in your guts, is that this is a person - who happens to live in a computer. Not a program, or an AI, but someone not much different from you. Limited, yes, to protect us from him, but still human."

"But there was something different about this. I have run the simulations many times, and this ghost is different. An extra processing node, it looked like, below the subconcious level."

"Yes. But are you willing to risk your career to bring this to the controller's attention? Far better to remember it and watch for other errors."

"We could go to the council..."

"Of course. Though I, and probably you, will not live long enough to actually get an appointment."

"What can we do then?" Adrian could not deny his mentors assessment.

"Talk to the ghost. Make friends with him. They tend to be hellishly lonely."