Wargames by David Bischoff

Author:David Bischoff
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action
ISBN: 0440193877
Publisher: Dell Books
Published: 1983-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

David Lightman tried to sit still. He tried to use his fear to keep him in place on the chair in the infirmary behind the locked door. After all, there was nothing more he could do; chances were, if he made one more squeak, those FBI agents would order that MP airman to draw his .38 and put a few permanent bugs in Mr. and Mrs. Lightman’s troublesome program.

He tried to breathe steadily, to put a hold on his frustration. After all, the men here at NORAD, in the Crystal Palace, were the experts. Surely they knew what they were doing. Maybe they even realized that, if necessary, and if Stephen Falken were indeed still alive and at that Oregon address, they could always call in the Prime Programmer.

But then, what if they didn’t...

David sprang up from the chair and began pacing furiously, frustration tying him up in knots.

What if they didn’t call Falken? What if they had too much pride to check into the matter, to realize that somehow Falken’s brilliant machine, programmed to learn, had almost come alive and was determined to play out the insane game that David had begun? The thing was, these authority goons were just like most of the rest: his father, “Kaiser” Kessler, Mr. Ligget, his pastor—incomplete beings who thought they had control of their little sections of reality; stubborn, prideful men who thought they had the rules in their pockets.

Maybe even if he did get to speak to the man, Dr. McKittrick wouldn’t believe him. He had that element to him, the way he had spoken about Dr. Falken, the disrespect. The world was just a bunch of hungry egos, it seemed, scrabbling and biting for power.

Screw ’em! Screw ’em all, thought David Lightman. We’re doomed anyway. Even if we get through this mess, who knows what might happen. The President might go off his rocker and fancy himself the town sheriff in a shootout with black-hat Andropov. “Take that, ya varmint!” And kazoom, there go the Titan IIs and the Poseidons and Lances and Minutemen and kaboom, kaboom, kaboom! A Russian might dump a bottle of vodka on a control panel and shoot off SS-17s and -18s toward Hackensack, New Jersey.

With these clowns it was inevitable. Eventually there would be a thermonuclear war. And the funny thing about it was that David Lightman was now in the safest place of all—he’d survive.

Of course, he realized he’d have to live with the knowledge that he had been the one who started the ball rolling, the one who had gummed up the machinery, the one who had pushed the first domino. And what kind of world would be left? He’d always figured that if there were a nuke war, he’d be one of the first to go, and he didn’t think of it much anyway.

Then he thought of Jennifer Mack. Something went funny inside of him. A pang, an ache. She would be gone, then, and a world without her didn’t seem like much of a world at all

Dammit, he thought.

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