Driving Force by Dick Francis

Author:Dick Francis [Francis, Dick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense, Thriller, Mystery, cookie429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780141956282
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1992-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

CHAPTER 8

The computer man, perhaps twenty, with long light brown hair through which he ran his fingers in artistic affectation every few seconds, had given up trying to resuscitate our hardware by the time I got back to the office.

'What virus?' I asked, coming to a halt by Isobel's desk and feeling overly beleaguered. We had flu, we had aliens, we had bodies, we had vandals, we had concussion. A virus in the computer could take the camel to its knees.

'All our records,' Isobel mourned.

'And our accounts,' chimed Rose.

'It's prudent to make back-ups,' the computer man told them mock-sorrowfully, his young face more honestly full of scorn. 'Always make back-ups, ladies.'

'Which virus?' I asked again.

He shrugged, including me in his stupidity rating. 'Maybe Michelangelo… Michelangelo activates on March 6th and there's still a lot of it about.'

'Enlarge,' I said.

'Surely you know?'

'If I knew, I've forgotten.'

He spelled it out as to an illiterate. 'March 6th is Michelangelo's birthday. If you have the virus lying doggo in your computer and you switch on your computer on March 6th, the virus activates.'

'Mm. Well, March 6th was last Sunday. No one switched on this computer on Sunday.'

Isobel's large eyes opened wider. 'That's right.'

'Michelangelo is a boot-section virus,' the expert said, and to our blank-looking expressions long-sufferingly explained. 'Just switching the machine on does the trick. Simply switching it on, waiting a minute or two, and switching off. Switching on is called booting-up. All the records on the hard disk are wiped out at once with Michelangelo and you get the message saying 'Fatal disk error'. That's what's happened to your machine. The records are gone. There's no putting them back.'

Isobel stared at me, conscience-stricken, appalled and distressed. 'You did tell us to make back-up floppy disks, I know you did. You kept on telling us. I'm ever so sorry. I'm so sorry.'

'You should have insisted,' Rose told me. 'I mean you should have made us.'

'You don't even seem worried,' Isobel said.

To the computer man I said, 'Would the virus activate on backup floppy disks?'

'Pretty likely.'

'But we've got hardly any,' Isobel wailed.

We did, as it happened, have comprehensive back-up disks containing everything the two secretaries had entered up to and including the previous Thursday. I knew they'd found the daily back-up procedure a bit of a bore. I'd seen them leave it for days, sometimes. I'd reminded both of them over and over to make copies and was aware they thought I nagged them unnecessarily. The computer seemed everlastingly reliable. In the end I'd taken to making daily back-ups myself on the terminal in my sitting-room, storing the disks in my safe. If you want a thing done properly, as my mother had been accustomed to say, do it yourself.

At that exact moment, though the copies existed, they couldn't be reached owing to the axed state of the safe's combinations.

I could have reassured them all about our records and normally would have done. Suspicion stopped me. Suspicion about I didn't know what. But

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.