The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

became sporadic after that, and he finally said good night. Robin wondered exactly what they had done and what it all meant, but decided not to worry about it—if he needed to do anything else, Eli would let him know.
    He closed and locked the closet and quietly made his way up the darkening stairway. As he passed the bathroom door he smelled cigarette smoke and stopped. Mrs. Faraday warned the boys not to smoke, but lots of them did anyway, and he knew they sometimes went into the bathroom to sneak a few puffs.
    He backed up a couple of steps. The door was nearly closed, and no light showed under it. Suspicious, he pushed gently on the door. It swung easily for a few inches, then squeaked loudly. He touched the edge of the door to stop it and bent at the waist, peering past it. He sniffed again. Nothing. One of the boys must have been smoking in here while he was in his closet. He signed with relief. A close call, but no harm done. Satisfied, he padded softly down the hall to his and Tom's room.
    As Robin's door closed, a puff of smoke issued from the now-open bathroom. One stockinged foot appeared, then the other as their owner edged around the squeaky door and stepped out into the dim hallway.
    The bully Mike stood there for a minute, alternately looking down the hall after Robin and down the stairs at the broom closet door. “I wonder,” he whispered to himself, “what the little son of a bitch has got in there.” He carefully ground out the butt on a small stone he carried just for that purpose, put them both into his shirt pocket, and quietly returned to his room.

Twelve
    The beep of the operator’s console made Frank look up from his trashy paperback novel. He took his feet off the console desk and squinted at the terminal. “Hey, Bobby,” he called to his partner. “I think we’re actually getting a message over here.”
    Bobby put down the new issue of Rolling Stone and looked at the terminal on his own desk. “Not on my side of the world,” he said. He rose and headed across the wide, clean floor toward Frank’s desk. As the only night operators in the NADCOM Computer Center’s tape library, they had very little to do after the batch backups were run, and seldom received messages on the tube at this hour. “What’s it say?”
    “See for yourself.”
    * FROM: NADCOM MASTER CONSOLE OPERATOR
    * TO: NADCOM TAPE LIBRARY OPERATOR
    * GUYS, WE NEED ACCESS TO PAST RECORDS FOR PROJECT MOLLY DAY. PLEASE MOUNT ALL, REPEAT ALL, ARCHIVE TAPES FOR THAT PROJECT ASAP.
    “Wonder why the hotshots upstairs need all that stuff?”
    “Don’t know,” Frank muttered, “don’t care. You want to go look for ’em?”
    “Sure. There’s only a few. Be right back.” Bobby headed for the tape racks against the far wall while Frank responded to the message.
    # MSG TO CONSOP: STAND BY, WE’LL PUT THEM ON.
    * OK, BUT HUSTLE, WE NEED THE DATA RIGHT AWAY.
    “C’mon, Bobby, they’re in a lather.” Bobby returned with five tape reels stacked in his arms. Each had a white stick-on label with “Molly Day/MDA” written on it. Frank rose and took the top three from him. Along the near wall was a bank of tape drives, onto which they began to thread the tapes.
    “So what’s the rush?” Bobby wanted to know as he finished his two drives.
    “Don’t know, don’t care.”
    “They probably screwed around with primary storage and lost the current version,” Bobby said. “That’d be a hoot! Or maybe they just wanna see if we’re awake. You think maybe that’s it?”
    “Don’t know, don’t care,” Frank repeated tiredly. He mounted the last tape and sat at the console.
    # MSG TO CONSOP: OK, THEY’RE ON. FIVE TOTAL.
    * ARE YOU SURE THAT’S ALL OF THEM? THE RIGHT ONES?
    # MSG TO CONSOP: FIVE TOTAL, PROJECT MOLLY DAY/MDA. THAT’S ALL OF THEM, ALREADY.
    * OK THANKS. STAND BY.
    All five drives came to life simultaneously. Bobby continued to ramble about the possible reason for the request. Frank, as usual, tuned him out. He tried to get back into his novel, but something kept drawing his eyes back to the tape drives. The tapes were in motion constantly, which he expected, but something about the pattern of the mode lights on the front panels was disquieting. Finally, he got up and went to examine them.
    As he approached the bank of drives, he realized what was bothering him—on all five machines, the red “Write Enable” light was flashing. He stood for a moment, wondering why. If they were just uploading