Boogeymen - Mel Gilden [44]
“Another clue, Mr. La Forge?” Picard said.
La Forge thought for a moment before he admitted that it probably was. “But at this point I don’t even have a good guess as to what it tells us.”
Picard had confidence that La Forge would find the solution, with or without the help of Wesley and Data. But they couldn’t brood about it now. Picard went on with the air of a man changing the subject. “This sounds similar to the problem we and the Yamato had with the program broadcast by the Iconian probe. Can we just turn off the ship and restart, using protected master programs?”
Mention of the Yamato made everybody thoughtful. The Yamato had been the Enterprise’s sister ship. It was her destruction that had given La Forge the clue he needed to save the Enterprise.
La Forge looked uncomfortable. He lifted his open hand and tilted it from side to side. “I don’t think so, sir. This time the core itself seems to be blocked.”
Wesley said, “Not just protected?”
“Sure. The main core is protected by shields, triple redundant circuits, debugging programs, and some things so secret that Starfleet tells you about them only if you have a need to know. But now, it’s been entirely cut off. The satellite computers that are normally coordinated by the core are now running the ship themselves. I don’t know how—but as I said before, it’s a big universe.”
Riker said, “You think we’ve run into something the Starfleet engineers didn’t think of?”
La Forge shrugged. “Looks that way, sir.”
The room was silent again. Wesley began to squirm, and at last words were squeezed out of him. He said, “The Boogeymen caused all this trouble?” He looked even more uncomfortable than La Forge.
“Not all by themselves, Wes. The diagnostics didn’t find the Boogeyman program. But even if it somehow got through undetected, the machete program would have cleaned it out by now.”
Wesley nodded. He seemed relieved.
Dr. Crusher said, “Then the Boogeyman program must be working along with some other program.”
La Forge said, “You were talking about viruses before, Doctor. That’s what we have.”
Picard remembered that the Iconian program had been a computer virus, too. Only by shutting down every Enterprise system and then reloading every program had they saved the ship. “Continue, Mr. La Forge.”
La Forge stood up and called into operation a screen at the end of the conference lounge.
“It works,” Wesley said with some surprise.
“Yeah,” said La Forge. “So far. Computer, exhibit ‘Virus.’ “
“Working,” said the computer. It sounded like a Boogeyman. Picard saw Wesley shudder.
The screen rolled a few times, and when the picture steadied, it was a schematic of Enterprise’s computer system. La Forge said, “This is basically a smaller, simplified version of the flow chart in the main computer center. If everything were working properly, this chart would update itself automatically as the situation changed. But what you’re looking at is not connected to the computer. It is a picture of the situation as it was twenty minutes ago.” He pointed out specific areas. “Normal information flow is in gold. Satellites of the computer brain afflicted by the virus are in red.”
“Almost half,” Riker said.
“Forty-seven percent,” La Forge said.
“Twenty minutes ago,” Picard said. Forty-seven percent. Fifty-two. Seventy-three. When would the ship become unlivable? How long before navigation and life support went down? He said, “How long do we have till we can no longer function, even at the most basic level?”
“Impossible to say, sir. The virus is spreading by fits and starts, as a clean satellite calls on information in a contaminated part. Could be hours or days. Certainly no more than a week, and that’s only if we are very lucky.”
“We’ll shut down all nonessential systems,” said Riker.
“Yes,” said Picard, “and then only essential systems will become infected.” There had to be a loose thread, a way out. “Number One, alert all passengers and crew to use the greatest discretion when accessing the computer. Use it as if it were a natural resource that was