Switch Failure
(Meta Note: This is a story that is due in large part to a silly song by Harry Chapin. But also because I was in the mood for drama when I started it. If you don't know about Agent K, he's introduced in this story.)
Switch Failure
Agent K found train rides the most boring part of his duties. But in this case, he had to avoid attention in getting from the storage facility on a small island in the north Atlantic, and had to get across the ocean. Since a military plane would require a long list of authorizations from the destination, he was dressed up as a GDF sergeant (private was beneath him) and forced to take the train.
Technology surprised him, but never impressed him. Every time he was roused from his semi-permanent comatose state, things had improved, but only slightly. He had been told that human technology, toward the end of their existence, had leapt and bounded over itself. Yet, he never saw that, 10 to 20 years at a time. As a result, when he was told to get on a train for his journey -- across the ocean floor, at half the speed of sound -- he was surprised, but not impressed.
The ride was magnetically smooth. The windows on the train closed when they went underground, because there was nothing to see. The train operators had taken great pains to keep the ridership form getting bored for their 10 hours, with everything from movies to food and room to play cards and read. But all of these relied on relaxation, something that Agent K was seemingly incapable of.
Instead, the Bobcat did what he always did on a mission, to pass the time: investigated his environment. There was a wireless computer network on the train, and so, he told him palmtop to start looking around. He quickly found the distance from him of every single wireless device on the entire train, and watched three or four, selected at random.
Well, it wasn't quite at random. He selected two, because they were manufactured by a company he recognized. He was told about geopolitics every time he woke up, but this company had been singled out for discussion. The mission was to determine the extent of their involvement in a terrorist group, who had apparently been blowing things up.
So, he began his mission by investigating the company, indirectly: how good was their handywork? Could he, an unauthorized network user, make the device crash?
Computers seemed to change the most between his missions, but no matter how they changed, they all stayed the same. Every computer had software, written first by fallible humans, then by fallible engineers of their own kind. Its faults and failures only seemed magnified by a great social experiment the government was trying: reconstructing a giant computer network that once connected every single human on the planet.
As he loaded up his new malware kit, and looked for things available for his two targets, he did not understand the two exploits he selected. It seemed that a change in computer architecture had taken place. But he did understand the payload, which he had been trained on for 100 years: it would copy the network traffic.
When he executed them, and they worked, K barely managed to resist smiling. What he saw was a form of e-mail, only formerly available to the government. It seemed that these devices could store quite a bit of information -- even compared to the mainframes 40 years ago. The server that it accessed was "keeping in sync" with over 1,000 messages in archive.
Just browsing them, he saw something that caught his attention: the name of the company who ran the train. It was spelled in the much more native language, rather than the esoteric one used by the owner. Unfortunately, this was not cause to get it translated, by any stretch of the legal imagination... but it kept coming up over and over.
It bothered Agent K...but there were hundreds of things that bothered him that he could do nothing about. His self-discipline -- or perhaps his sense of self-preservation, given the legal consequences -- quashed that idea within half a second. He would not be reading those messages.
As his final act, Agent K decided to identify the owner. So, he told the device to kill its network connection. He stood up from his seat, ostensibly to stretch, and looked around for faces of frustration. One quickly appeared on a hyena who also stood up, wearing what looked like exotic garb designed to reflect some sort of Keinhal valley heritage.
Agent K walked toward the head of the train, toward the dining car, as the hyena followed him. He got suspicious as a reflex, but took no action. Having someone follow him for too long usually meant a disaster was right around the corner -- but then, if disasters would befall anyone with unusual frequency, it would surely be a secret agent of the GDF on a mission. He was awake for a reason, after all.
He stopped, and let the hyena go by, heading further forward. He ordered water to drink -- the only thing he knew would be constant across time -- and tried to forget about it. But he couldn't. Something about him showed determination; an emotion so different than boredom Agent K couldn't get it out of his mind. So, knowing that he was risking something, he went another car forward after no more than three sips of water.
The sleeping car. The door shut on the opposite end. Knowing that was all there was to the train, Agent K hustled forward, and put his ear up to it. He heard voices, trying to be quiet -- and succeeding, because he couldn't understand what they were saying.
And then, a shot echoed throughout the steel frame of the train.
Combat reflexes at the ready, K jumped through the unlocked door -- and saw the hyena holding a gun to the head of an already bleeding bear.
"Back! I'll shoot him!"
K decided that the terrorist could, in fact, shoot the hostage before he could leap the 15 feet across the control room. So, instead, he thumbed his palmtop buttons, which he still had in his hand, and turned on the hidden radio.
"K," snapped the voice on the other end, "what are--"
"Where'd you get the gun?" asked the bobcat calmly.
"What's it matter to you! I have this train now!"
But K did not scare, period. "So what?" he said calmly, as he shut the door, "it's on a track."
"I see," said the voice in K's ear radio, "consider your authorization to use force granted."
"You stay back!" repeated the hyena, as he reached for the console and pressed some buttons. "If you won't listen to me, they will!"
"What's the emergency?" asked a female voice from the console quite suddenly.
"Your train now belongs to the NLF!" shouted the hyena with a grin.
"What?" demanded the voice sharply.
"Ugh," groaned the pilot right on cue.
"I am sitting in the pilot's seat. And if you don't get someone from the Global Council on right now, and hear our demands, you will have 150 dead passengers at the bottom of the ocean!"
The train sped up a little more, with a couple more button pushes. K suspected he would kill the passengers by derailing the train -- unless he could slow it down.
"I also have a GDF officer as a hostage!" he added.
K called calmly, "I am not a hosta--"
"Shut up!" yelled the hyena, pointing the gun at him.
"Or what? You'll shoot me?"
The calmness with which he responded seemed to throw the terrorist off, but only for a second. "Yes," he stated with a vicious grin, "and would I ever love to."
"Well, I'm not going to let you have this train, so you should probably go ahead and shoot me."
He cocked the hammer.
"Well? What are you waiting for."
The hyena grimaced, but didn't pull the trigger.
"Shooting is what terrorists do, right? Okay," encouraged Agent K, "shoot me on the count of three. Ready? One! Two Three!"
The hyena shot on three -- and K crouched on two. Using his superior reflexes, he then pounced.
Moments later, the gun was on the opposite end of the cabin, the heavy ursine hostage was atop the hyena, and K was on top of him. Because the bear was heavy, K jumped up first, and picked up the gun.
"Now, you don't own this train," stated K with a mischievous grin.
"Yes, we do," stated a voice behind him. Another hyena walked in, with another pistol.
K was a little surprised at the barrel pointing at his nose, but then remembered it was two devices he spotted, not one.
"I see," was all he said, just as calm as ever.
"What are your demands?" asked the female voice from the console.
"All we want," stated the first hyena, as he got up and kept his bleeding hostage in a choke hold, "what You call Shimara City to come back to the Keinhal Valley."
The wording seemed a little odd, thought K; not his first language?
"Is that all?"
"Not quite," said the second loudly, closing the door and then walking K over to the edge of the console with his gun. "We would also demand the abandonment and destruction of certain military assets by the GDF -- such as those special weapons they keep insisting they don't have."
This one, thought K, knew the language.
"And apparently," interjected K with a look at the bear, "they want the hostage they have already shot to bleed to death. How about patching him up?"
"Shut up!" snapped the first.
"Well, I'm going to get something to patch him up," stated K.
"You're not going anywhere!" snarled the second.
"What am I going to do? Call the authorities?" retorted K.
"You're staying here!" snarled the hyena in his ear, with fairly bad breath.
"If you say so," sighed K, as he reached into his back pocket of his jeans -- which was false.
He just watched the bear, who was the ticking clock in this equation. K's continued existence was governed by the rule that no fatalities were to be had in the field. This bear was the thing nearest to failure; because if the train derailed, he'd already be dead.
As the debate between the first hyena and the female voice continued -- quite pointless, in K's view, because he didn't negotiate with anyone. And so, he was doing what he thought best to handle the situation: reaching through his false pocket, and sliding a small needle out of his pocket kit.
"You sure you don't want to let me go back there?" K asked again, as he drew it out.
"No," snapped his assailant.
"Okay, I warned you," K sighed, as he made his move. In one swift motion, he punched the hyena in the gut with one hand, and stabbed him with the auto-injecting needle.
The hyena managed to stand back up, though weakly, and shoved K against the wall.
"Time to die!" he roared, putting the pistol once again, up to K's head.
"Give me the gun," K demanded from his pinned position.
"Ha!" snapped the hyena.
"Give me the gun," K repeated.
"No," replied the hyena -- whose voice and grip slowly weakened.
"Give me the gun," K repeated.
No answer, as the eyes of his assailant got bleary.
A moment later, K caught the mostly limp body, and took the gun out of its hand. He then pointed both of the pistols at the other hyena.
"Hey!" he shouted, making the would-be terrorist flinch, and turn in surprise. "You sure you still own this train?" he asked.
The terrorist had a look of sheer terror on his face, and then suddenly began pushing buttons on the console again. "Yes!" he yelled as the train sped up a little more.
"Fine, then," K sighed, putting the guns in his pockets, and then reaching down to the sleeping hyena's shirt. He tore off the sleeve and started making a bandage out of it.
"No!" suddenly yelled the hyena, "stop defiling him!"
"Your hostage will die, meaning I can just shoot you," K calmly stated, as he lifted the other arm of the lifeless corpse and tore the other sleeve off.
"No!!" he screamed, and suddenly rushed at K.
Thanks to his reflexes, K put up his fist at the right moment, and winded the hyena, who dropped to his knees. K then calmly bashed his head into the wall, after which he slumped down, conscious but no longer able to fight.
"Please don't desecrate him," he begged, holding his head.
"The holy be damned if it gets in the way of living," K snapped, as he packed the wound with the fabric of both sleeves.
"But he knew he would die," murmured the hyena, as he slumped down.
"Any wise man does, but not when. Not today. That was your idea," retorted K with an eye roll as he walked calmly over and picked up the gun. "And it seems like it didn't work. This train will continue along, in spite of your plans to derail it at the bottom of the ocean."
K got on the loudspeaker with the tap of a touch panel and announced, "ladies and gentlemen. A rather difficult situation in the cabin has been resolved. Return to your business. You should arrive at your destination about 5 minutes late." Because K knew if he said on time, no one would give him any credit.
"You're wrong," stated the hyena as he slowly returned to his feet. "You're still going to die. Look at the console."
K looked at it. Before he could find anything wrong, his ear filled him in: "K, it's on independent mode."
Feigning discovering it, he tapped a couple of non-buttons, and mumbled, "hmm, independent mode..."
"What it means," the voice snapped, "is that the station doesn't have control anymore, they can't slow the train when it approaches the end of the tunnel."
As the words finished coming out of his earpiece, he said two words he probably shouldn't have: "It's locked."
As expected, he looked at the hyena, and he got at least half a smile on his face. "Your move," he retorted.
***
K's next move was something that no one else was authorized to do. It was also something no one else, in this enlightened age of military restraint, they would consider doing.
"No," whispered the hyena, eyes wide with terror, as K stepped toward him with a pistol in his left had, and his razor knife in his right.
"Pathetic," he snarled, "getting scared already. You really are not cut out for this terrorism stuff, are you, you wimp?"
With his body position alone, looking over what seemed to he be his next meal, fork and knife in hand, he managed to make the hyena back up.
"I don't know the code, I swear!"
"Don't do it, K!" snapped his radio.
"I don't care if you do or not," he purred with a toothy smile, talking to the hyena but directed at his radio, "that's not what I want to know."
The terrorist backed into the wall, and when he hit it, started shaking as the knife drew ever closer to his neck.
"I want to know," stated K, "how loud you can yell."
With a lightning fast motion, K then made a quarter-inch cut appear on his jaw.
"Aaah! Please!" he shouted.
"Please?" snarled K with a grin, "why certainly."
So, he slashed the other cheek, and then put it two quick cuts on his neck. Even though they were all skin deep, they were in sensitive skin, and got the terrorist to scream louder and start crying.
"K!" shouted his radio, "this is pointless! Senseless!" But it was ignored.
"There must be an override switch," he said calmly, again to his radio while staring into the hyena's crying eyes. "And if there isn't then the computer has to be reprogrammed. But this train. Will. Stop."
He put the knife up to the terrorists' neck, as the hyena's arms and legs spread to let his body sink as deep into the corner as possible.
"Working on it K!" demanded the radio, "now stop it!"
But K didn't stop. He added cuts to his ears, and the fleshy part of his cheek. More shouts of pain, and tears.
"You seem very eager to die," he mused. "Have you ever really thought about what it feels like? Dying? Because I could demonstrate."
"No!" he begged, "please!"
"So you don't want to die, then?"
"No!" he insisted.
"Well then, it was pretty foolish of you to put this train on autopilot, wasn't it?"
"I didn't!" whined the terrorist, "he did!"
And it was then that K realized what his radio was trying to tell him: the bear was a collaborator. He was the one who set the console lockout password, before he was "attacked."
"There must be an override switch," K repeated calmly, putting the knife back in its holder under his clothes. He watched the terrorist, and aside from enjoying his terror, did nothing. K concluded his change on heart must have been genuine.
Right as he took the panel off, the radio calmly stated, "I have Dr. General on, project team lead at Sonomi Construction. He designed the control systems of this train."
"General, haha, what kind of name is that?" asked K glibly.
A higher voice began, "It's not really --"
But the familiar voice of K's supervisor interrupted. "Tell him," he snapped, "it's faster than not."
"It's a family name. There was a general in the family, and I don't know why, but they changed it. It used to be Tikahan."
K snorted, "I think General is better. Now, I'm looking at a bunch of crap in here. What should I look for?"
"Probably the easiest thing to do would be to reset the data bus," he stated calmly. "That will make the train recalibrate itself, and if it's moving, that would apply the emergency brakes."
"Would it reset the password?"
"No, that's designed to be tamperproof."
"So you are proposing," repeated K caustically, "to get us stuck down here and suffocate, rather than us getting to the surface and derailing. No thanks."
"We can send people down there, K. There's nothing to worry about," pointed out his supervisor.
"Yes there is, Langley. I'll be bored to death. I think I like this way of dying better, besides."
"Listen here, --"
"You can't argue with him," sighed Langley.
"Even with lives at stake?"
"Especially then."
"What kind of monster are you!?" Dr. General demanded into K's earpiece.
"I'm afraid that's classified," retorted K with a gruff chuckle. "What I want is to slow the train down by, I don't know, say a third. How would I do that? Can I fool a sensor or something?"
The Doctor answered, but it was stomped on by the terrorist talking in his other ear.
"Who are you talking to?" he asked nervously.
"Uh, just a moment, it seems someone has noticed my ear radio."
But as he drew out the needle, his supervisor demanded, "Don't, K! That's not classified anymore!"
He slowly put it back, much to the relief of the terrorist. "It's not?"
"Right. He just doesn't need to know who is on the other end. Anyone can buy those now."
"It's an ear radio," he explained to the terrorist, "and the rest is classified. Now then, sensors? Sorry, I missed that."
"What I said was," repeated the Doctor, sounding quite nervous now, "was that they are located under the train. But, you can get to the control chip, and confuse it. It is on the upper right corner of the second board."
"And do it fast, K, you've got about 60 seconds before the incline."
Fear, however, was not a motivator for Agent K. He was just as calm as ever in taking out the first board -- being ever so careful not to tear any of the ribbon cables the thickness of paper. He could see the chip on the corner, right away, and so pulled out his computer and probe.
"So how do you recalibrate it?" he asked as he looked at the square wave passing down the track nearest to a ribbon cable junction.
"Recalibrate?"
"This chip supports in circuit recalibration, doesn't it? I see this open pin here --"
"Not that one!" shouted Dr. General suddenly.
K stopped. "No?" he asked calmly.
"That's a test pin. Don't touch that," gasped Dr. General.
K could hear him catching his breath. He was even worse than the would-be terrorist about nerves.
"Just send a 10 volt signal on pin 3, which is two to the left of the test pin."
Unfortunately, K had only one tap for electrical alteration, so he knew he had to come up with something. Because he only had about 15 seconds, he followed his instincts. He instructed the palmtop to create a square wave a third slower, and then touched the track.
He was quite relieved when the train started slowing down, braking gently as if the pilot were changing speeds for the uphill climb. Not 2 seconds later, there was a rough clank, making the entire train shake as the magnetic rails of the inclined bumped into the guide magnets of the engine. As the sensation propagated down the cars, he heard more exclamations.
Thinking about their nerves, he got on the intercom and calmly stated. "We apologize for the inconvenience. You will be arriving at your destinations 5 minutes late. Thank you for your consideration." He didn't know what else to say, so turned it off.
However, he soon felt the train accelerate, as the effects of his putting down the palmtop took effect. He quickly dropped to his knees at the panel, and put it back, slowing it back down again. He had a plan, but he would need another pair of hands.
"Hey kid," he demanded to the terrorist, "if you really don't want to die, then help me out here."
The hyena thought for a moment, looking up at him half in fear, half in regret.
"If you don't want to die, prove it," he insisted.
He slowly walked over and knelt down beside him.
"Take those wire cutters out of my pocket, and cut..."
It took him a moment to pick one. "That orange wire, coming in that bundle marked Power."
"No!" yelled his earpiece, "not that one! The brown one!"
"Actually," stated K calmly, "how about this brown one here."
He reached over and clipped it, and then suddenly, started crying.
"Don't get tears in the circuit board!" snapped K, as he gave the hyena a shove away, "that'll really screw us up."
"Don't you have any compassion!?" yelled the Doctor, "by Shakallah, he's upset!"
"Compassion gets in the way of my work, 'General'," he answered sarcastically, "which in this case is saving the lives of everyone on this train. If you don't think that is a worthy goal, then tell Langley to have me quit working on it, and comfort him."
"That's enough K," calmly directed Langley, "he sees your point."
"Good," growled the bobcat as he took the wire down, and touched it to the pin of the chip. After a couple seconds of juice, and one spark as he pulled the wire away, he removed his palmtop -- and the speed held.
"There," sighed K, satisfied. "Now all I have to do is apply the emergency brakes when we get to the first station. I'm assuming you'll have soldiers there."
"Actually, K, do it now."
"I already told you, I'm not --"
"Listen K," calmly said Langley over him, "there is a switch failure about 20 miles from the tunnel exit. It's jammed. If you want to avoid hitting it, apply the brakes now."
"Why does nothing ever go right?" sighed K, as he reached back to the first board, and pressed the small red button.
The lights went out, and then back on, but the train didn't slow down. After he put the boards back into their slots, he stood up, and found the console explained why. It read:
Rail Controller PASS Velocity Sensors WARN: miscalibrated? Emergency Brakes FAIL: no power Motive Power PASS Electrical Systems PASS Emergency Lights PASS Console Lockout is in effect.
"Um, General," he asked coldly, "what did the brown wire connect to?"
"Just half of the electrical outlets in the cabins," he answered.
"Then why do the emergency brakes have no power?"
There was a moment of silence.
"I'm waiting," K demanded.
"K," calmly asked Langley, "which wire did you cut?"
"The brown one, like I was told to."
"Which brown one?"
"What do you mean which? There's only one on this panel!"
"Which panel is that?"
"The first one."
"Oh no," whispered Dr. General.
"I think he presumed you were still on the second panel," stated Langley.
"Well that one wouldn't reach, it was too short!"
K then heard crying, followed by Langley demanding to "get him out of here".
And then silence fell, as the train continued hurtling toward the dead switch at one fifth the speed of sound.
K found himself unafraid, merely impatient. He couldn't think of anything to do, and so he waited on Langley. "What now?" he snarled.
"I've got a repair crew on that switch right now," Langley stated.
"I hope they have updated their wills, recently," murmured K, trying to find a solution from inside the train car.
But those words, without context, suddenly brought the hyena to his feet.
"I should kill you," he snarled, "because we're going to die anyway, and I helped you! I helped someone who would desecrate a hero! Do you have any idea what that means!?"
"It means you don't want to die," answered K calmly, putting his hands out in front, preparing to use his combat reflexes again.
"It means after I die, I will not see my parents and friends ever again!" he shouted.
"You're right," stated K calmly -- because it was true either way.
"And for that, you deserve to DIE!" he screamed, and lunged at him.
K just watched him rush towards him, and in mid air, punched him in the nose with one hand, winded him with the other, and kneed him in the groin.
This time, when he landed on the floor, K grabbed a needle, and stuck it into his shoulder.
"This," K said coldly, "is what death feels like. Farewell."
The hyena mumbled something incomprehensible, eyes looking soft and distant, and then slumped on the floor.
"Now, Langley, I'm finally alone," calmly stated K. "Any word about that crew?"
"They patched it up a minute ago. You're about to pass it..."
K got ready to jump -- out of a train car he could not escape.
"...And you just did."
"Well," he said calmly, "they did a good job. When should I start slowing it down?"
"How are you going to do that?"
"With the chip, of course."
"Okay, I'll make sure there is a clear path for you. And you might want to tell everyone they'll be more than 5 minutes late."
Not if I can help it, thought K.
***
When he was escorted off the train by the GDF, along with all three of the terrorists, he was surprised to be taken to a hospital, for his usual morphine.
"What about the mission, Langley?" he asked, once they were alone in his private room.
"It's cancelled," the tall jaguar explained, "This incident has persuaded Kleintech to start working with the authorities."
"Good. And did all three survive?"
"Barely. You patched the bear just in time."
When the nurse came in, K put on his best "it really hurts face," and after the brief actual pain of the IV needle, she left him dripping.
"Was that really necessary?" asked Langley.
"My addiction is classified," pointed out K with a smirk, "just doing my job. And now, I would suggest you go and do yours, whatever that was before you were assigned to help me."
Langley walked out, as K drifted into his drug-induced sleep -- the only time he could be calm.
The End.