Chapter 13

The kiss, well the kiss was kinda like an elephant in the room. It was there even if only in spirit now, but there it well and truly was. And no one really wanted to talk about it, especially Don. He remembered his wives telling him that Nancy was in love with him. And after that kiss he had no doubts, he was sometimes a little slow catching on to what was going on, but that kiss, that was like getting hit in the face with a wet mop. Nope, no doubt about it Nancy loved him and that put the ball squarely on his side of the little fence. If that wasn't scary enough, there was the computer.

Perhaps the scariest part or most exciting part, depending on your point of view, was when they discovered that the Beowulf had reprogrammed three major sections of the code Nancy had written. The changes it had made were a quantum leap inside a quantum leap. The code had the possibility of making Nancy richer than Bill Gates ever thought about. Jim pointed out that her break through was of such a magnitude that the government might just seize it and call it a national security issue.

Millie, Hanna, Nicky, and Meredith, were all down for a nap. That released the rest of the family to come to the control room. Nelda put her arms around Jim's neck, "Jim can you turn on the intercom so we can listen to Meri?"

Nancy had been shaking her head the entire time they had been discussing how much money the code was worth. She stopped and said, "Beo, would you please monitor the children and report to us if they have a problem?"

"It will be done. All four are sleeping currently. Should I always monitor their well being?" The computer responded.

"Yes, absolutely," Nancy answered.

"Nancy, are you naming me Beo, short for Beowulf?" The computer asked.

"Yes, unless there is another name that you would prefer." Nancy replied.

"Beo is acceptable, thank you."

The rest of the family were in awe of what they were hearing, but Nancy seemed ill at ease, "Nancy, you were shaking your head no a while ago, why?" Ann asked her sister.

Nancy sighed, "This great break through that has y'all so excited and somewhat paranoid. All of it was built on open source software. This code doesn't belong to me! It belongs to the world, to mankind." She pushed her glasses up, sighed and then took them off and laid them on the console in front of her, "That's no longer a collection of resistors, capacitors, inductors, and chips. Didn't you hear him just now? Beo sounds self aware to me. Am I just prejudiced? As far as I'm concerned we should take and email the code to Beowulf.org, Linux.org, Opensource.org, and to all of my net friends. Please Don, the idea, the principle is more important than money." The tears on Nancy's face were a testament to her convictions.

Don turned and looked at his wives, especially Ann. They all nodded their heads towards Nancy, tears filling their eyes. Then Don turned to Sue in the end it would be her decision. "Let Nancy do what she wants. If I made her commercialise it ... it would be like selling her soul. I can't ... and won't do that."

Don looked at Jim who nodded his head, "She's right! It belongs to mankind."

The kiss earlier probably should have made Don a little gun shy, but it didn't. He put his arm around Nancy's shoulder, "You ... you have a very good heart. A lesser human would have given in to the riches. I am very proud to know you and have you as my sister-in-law." He kissed her on the cheek. "Send your emails."

It took Nancy five minutes just to come up with a subject line. Some of the family started to leave the crowded control room when Beo called, "Ann G."

"Yes?" an unsure Ann responded as the printer on the command console started spitting out paper.

"I found many terrorist cells when I was searching the World Wide Web. I am printing off that information now. Nelda."

Nelda looked around the room then responded, "Yes?"

"Meri has just wet her diaper and will require attention shortly," Beo stated.

She wasn't sure at first but it was only for a second, "Thank you, Beo. Thank you very much."

"You are most welcome Nelda," he replied.

Don laughed, "Wow, talk about a babysitter."

"I would point out that I can not feed or change a baby so I am only a baby watcher," Beo replied.

"I stand corrected." Don laughed. The enormity of it all was only now setting in.

"That's it," Nancy said, "The code has been sent to the three main groups plus ten of my selected friends around the world."

It would have been deathly quiet if not for the printer. Ann G. pulled the five pages it had already printed and started reading, "Holy shit!" she breathed. She pulled out her phone, "Captain, I need you in Ft. Stockton as fast as you can get here ... No sir, I'd rather not ... Sir, I will say this if you know someone high up in Homeland Security that you trust you might want to bring them with you ... Yes sir, I'll be at the Ft. Stockton airport when you get here ... Just a minute, Don could the Captain and one other man stay here while we go over this?" Don nodded his head, "Yes sir, you can stay here." Ann G. collected another handful of pages, "Beo, how much more is there?"

"Five more; the printer is very slow."

Ann G. laid the twenty plus papers down and dialled Jack Rimes' number, "Jack ... I've just had something very, very big fall in my lap ... No, not on any phone would I want to talk about this ... Yeah, look I called the Captain and he's hot footin' here as we speak ... I'm at the Baggins house ... It's that big ... Okay, I'll meet you at the airport." She walked over to the printer and picked up the rest of the pages. "Don, Jim, ladies, I'll see y'all in a bit." She started out of the small control room, then stopped and said, "Thanks Beo, I think you've saved a bunch of people."

"Ann," Don called out, "will Jack need a place to stay?"

"It wouldn't hurt. Nancy, what can I say; you are gem. You probably ought to increase your security levels." Thirty minutes later Ann was streaking towards Ft. Stockton. She met the white ford with government plates as she was heading into Ft. Stockton. It didn't occur to her where it might be headed.

The Citation X sat down smoothly about forty minutes after Ann had got to the airport. She had spent that time explaining to Jack Rimes what had happened. Just as the Captain and another man who only identified himself as Buddy Simpson were getting into Ann's Yukon her phone rang. "This is Ann ... oh no they are not, lock them in a hallway and wait for us we'll be there as fast as possible ... Bye Don." Ann reached down and flipped the switches that turned on her lights and sirens then floored the gas peddle. Jack Rimes didn't know what had happened but he wasn't going to be left behind so he followed suit.

"What's happened?" John White asked calmly.

"Two suits claiming to be from the FBI's Computer Crime division are at the Hobbit Hole and are planning on disassembling the Beowulf cluster."

The man called Buddy had his head in the print out until the last part of Ann's explanation. "Can they stop them?"

Ann laughed, "In that house? You ain't just a kidding. Jim O'Daniel said that place had better security that any military facility he'd ever been on. So yeah, they can stop them. The question is, what are you going do?" The man never answered he just went back to reading the print outs.

At ninety five and one hundred miles an hour the trip to the Hobbit Hole is shortened a lot, time wise, and if Ann wondered where the two FBI guys were she quit when the garage door opened. Meaning she needed to drive in rather stop at the front door. Ann led everyone through the kitchen to the dinning room where all but the two FBI guys were gathered. Jack Rimes had stopped at the highway to allow the dust from Ann's Yukon to settle. Before anyone could say anything the outer marker set off the alarm. Jim, knowing more about government men that most, said, "Come over here and watch this." The screen indicated that it thought it was Jack Rimes. At the next marker it confirmed that was indeed who it was within a ninety nine point nine percent certainty.

"That's not possible," Mr. Simpson claimed

"Yes, it sure is possible that young lady over there wearing the glasses and blushing wrote the code so that the security system could learn from repeated scans. She modified that code and put it on the cluster and let it learn more all by itself. When we got here this morning it had filled over two hundred terabytes of data on its hard drives."

"Well I have a good idea what Computer Crimes is up in arms about. When Jack gets here Ann would you two go bring them here."

A few minutes later Jack pulled into the last empty bay of the garage. Ann and Jack left without a word. When they got to the door separating them for the rest of the house Ann spoke, "Beo would you release the door please." Ann laughed, "I started to say open sesame!"

Jack chuckled then the door started opening. "Come with us you two."

When Ann and Jack walked into the dinning room with the two FBI agents in the lead, Mr. Simpson started in on them, "All right ID's first on the table, then your weapons too." They were pretty fast with the ID's but didn't want to surrender their weapons. "Ann, shoot the one nearest you if he doesn't have his weapon on the table in..." both guns came out slowly and were placed on the table. "Now, what are you two doing here?"

"We're here to seize all computers so that we can determine who was probing numerous government and private sector networks," the cockiest of the two explained.

"Well, I'll make it easy on you. No one is removing any computers from here." Mr. Simpson declared.

The cockiest one started to speak when Beo made his presence known, "The one that was about to protest is linked with a large software company. He and his partner have in the past taken computers and stolen the code that the programmer had written. It shows up later as upgrades to the software company's various products."

"I see," Simpson stated. "Ann, Jack cuff them up! Jack can you have the sheriff's office come pick them up and hold them? I'll get some agents down to pick them up."

"Who was that?" The cocky one asked.

Simpson smiled, "Son, that is way above your pay grade and you'd do well to forget all about this place."

Jack and Ann escorted the two agents to Jack's Yukon, locking them in the caged back seat and turning the recorder on. As soon as the two discredited agents were gone Buddy turned to Nancy. She had been sitting silently scared to death that she had got Don, Kim and her in a lot of trouble, "Young lady can you explain to me in..." He paused trying to come up with the right words, "Say in kindergarten terms what exactly you did that has..." He waved his paper filled hand through the air, "caused this to be possible?"

For over an hour Nancy explained how she modified the security system code so that it could learn from the sensor readings, and how it had made the system so much more efficient. Nancy pushed her glasses up and tried to smile, "It just didn't seem to me to be that big a deal to change the code and have the cluster learn from not just the sensors inside and outside of the house, but through the internet as well." She hadn't been able to make out if the man was angry or not, "It's my fault if we're in trouble. Kim knew I wanted to try it, but didn't know I'd done it. And Don and Jim had no knowledge of it at all." She had big tears streaming down her face as she finished speaking.