Rating: PG

Summary: Not what your average couple does on a Friday night. By the way, Kernighan and Ritchie are very real, and they were affiliated with AT&T/Bell Labs for aeons. They wrote the UNIX operating system, a mainstay of our heroes.

Spoilers: Nope.
 

February 8, 2001

Been a weird couple weeks, that's for sure.

And I still haven't finished my article. I mean, nobody's pressuring me...too much.

Problem is, there is just so much stuff. And there's my job, and school, and homework, and therapy, and Kelly.

Especially Kelly.

She still has bad days, for sure. But she seems like she's getting a lot calmer.

But she still misses her mom.

Not much I can do there.

I'm so tired. I'm the only one out here right now...me and Kelly. This sounds great, but everybody else seems to have a life tonight. My dad and Jo went to a play, Langly and Ally are off seeing Joan, and Byers and Juliet...well, I can guess what they're up to.

Christ, even Miranda has a date!

Kelly's got a bio midterm on Monday, and she's grinding away for it at Langly's workstation.

"I don't feel like working anymore." I'm yawning my ass off.

"Me neither, but there's a lot of material here, and I've got to get this right." Kelly's paranoid about this exam, the class is hard, and she wants to ace it.

"Okay if we go in and watch a movie or something? I really can't think anymore."

"Half an hour."

Aargh. The girl has persistence, I'll give her that.

Half an hour. I need to get into one of the old databases at Fort Detrick. Fort Detrick is a pain to hack, but if I can get this stuff, I can put this article in print and put it to bed. Which would be good. Then I could spend the weekend studying for midterms, write my paper, code my program, and maybe even get some sleep.

Sleep would be different these days.

It took my dad, Langly, the prof and me a long time to put the hack together for doing some of the databases. You want to go in clean, work quick, and get the hell out like you were never there.

The database I want is a microbio database.

Dr. Scully's lab thinks they've identified a structure, and they're working on isolating it, but they don't have anything to compare it to, at least not much. Dr. Scully thinks it's a strain of the flu virus, but she's read through just about everything out there on flu viruses that have been identified. She's not getting out much these days, but she's keeping up on what her lab rats are doing from her bed, apparently.

I can do this hack, download what I want, and make myself scarce, and by then, Kelly ought to be ready to call it a night.

It's funny. Kelly's been in this office a couple times. She still has no idea what we're up to. She did ask why we have so many locks on the door, but I simply said that we've got a lot of expensive stuff here-which we do. But I haven't told her what I do in my second job-well, not the details, anyway.

I feel funny not telling her, but my dad insists. For her safety as well as ours.

I don't think he's real comfortable with my doing it even, but he knows I'm good at this stuff. Besides, I've been able to teach the old dogs some new tricks.

And sometimes I even get a modicum of respect for it. (Casey word. She ought to be proud of me).

Actually, my dad wasn't even happy that Byers kind of passed this assignment off on me. We had a major argument over that one. I'm not sure if it's because he's worried about me or he just thinks I'm incompetent.

Probably both. At least Langly and Byers stuck up for me.

I think Dad still has mixed feelings about my being in the family business. I mean, he expects me to work and all, and do it right, but when I started going deeper into stuff, like him and the guys do, he started getting real nervous.

Hey, like I don't know it's important not to fuck it up. You seriously think I want to get caught any more than they do?

And most of what we do isn't illegal...well, most of it. Some of it's completely not kosher, but the reason we do it, we find out who we're doing it to, well, they're doing worse stuff.

And that's our job. To let people know what the bad stuff is.

So much gets buried in the press. It's like the newspaper owners, they all are like, okay, let's tell the public this and this and this but they can't handle this and we need to bury this...it really sucks.

I've talked about this with Casey-not in terms of what I do after school, but in general terms, and she tells me this is important, keep at it.

Hey, we got her to subscribe.

Sometimes the prof's being so anal gets on my nerves, but for this, you got to be grateful that he's so damn careful. Nobody hacks military stuff better than the prof; that's kind of where he's the guru here. So when I get to the firewalls, I'm glad he gives so many fucking details for getting around them.

Course, I have to remember all this...you don't seriously think we write this stuff down, do you?

I'm in. Yes! All this stuff is on an old UNIX mainframe type thing, and yeah, I know UNIX, but it's such a chore...I know my dad's still more comfortable with this stuff. He never really gets used to the world of Windows, which he thinks is a conspiracy itself (well, it is), and being a former inmate of Bell Labs/AT&T, he loves UNIX. Hey, my dad knows Kernighan
and Ritchie...worked with them for a while.

Time to start the download. This shouldn't take long...

SHIT! Ten minutes have gone by, and stuff's still pouring in...what the hell is all this stuff?

It takes another eight minutes to get it all. And shit, there's almost two gigs of stuff there.

"Kel, this is gonna take a while," I tell her.

"Oh, you started on your article?" she asks, not looking up from her textbook.

"Well, not exactly...I just got a bunch more material than I was expecting..." and it's probably all encrypted, and I got to figure out what algorithms to use...

This was a stupid idea. I could be in watching a movie and cuddling with Kelly on the sofa at Chateau Langly-and the sofa's one hell of a lot more comfortable than this.

Be nice if they'd get me a comfy chair like they have for themselves, but it's like, I got to prove myself worthy or something.

Well, they don't know it yet, but I'm about to prove that I'm a god and they should worship me.

And if I get it done tonight, then I don't have to deal with it tomorrow, and maybe I can have a weekend where I can just be a normal college student and worry about getting my homework done and what I'm gonna do with my girlfriend on Saturday night.

God. Normal life. When has it ever?

Not in my world.

I save the files on disk-and I see I'm running out of space. Shit! These guys have 18 gigs each, why the hell do I only have 8.4?

Because I'm the scut puppy.

Maybe if I do this right, I won't be the scut puppy anymore.

Right. I'm still the baby around here. And I always will be. And probably always get treated like it. At least by my dad.

Wish he'd stop acting like I was still six.

He's so fucking grumpy lately. I mean, I know his ulcer's acting up-I can tell because everything he cooks, it's like so bland. That is, when I'm home to eat it, which isn't very often these days, because I got so much to do.

Like a six-year-old would have that much...responsibility?

Don't think so.

I ask Kelly what she wants to do-if she wants to bag it here, or does she want to keep going? She says the more she gets done tonight, the less she has to do tomorrow, and maybe we could do something, like she's always wanted to try rollerblading and she's got the same size feet as Ally, and Ally said she could borrow her blades and the weather's supposed to be good.

"Ever done it before?" I ask her.

"Nope. But I want to."

"I'll show you." I'm not the best, but I can skate okay, and I've got blades. I got to find them first, but I have them.

"So let's keep going out here, and we can always check in a movie anytime. It's not like the video collection's getting any smaller." This is true. Ally and Langly have more fucking videos than my dad.

Of course, Dad has more 'art films' than they do. I don't think Langly has any. Never noticed them, anyway, and I raid his collection a lot.

Used to raid it. God, last time I watched a video, I was home sick.

God, who wrote these encryption schemes? They ought to be shot. Not because they're so difficult, but because they're so fucking easy to tear apart.

They think they're so secure. Ha ha.

Lots and lots of data in these files, and lab notes. Lots of scientists' names-I don't pay all that much attention till I stumble on one, and then I sit up and take notice.

Langly, Ian C.

What did Langly say his dad's name was?

Ian.

No. Can't be.

Then again, how many people would have that name, that spelling? And Langly grew up near Fort Detrick.

Wonder what kind of stuff Daddy Dearest did-if it's him, of course. Be nice if I could find a photo of the dude, but nothing like that in these files.

Dr. Langly, senior microbiologist, head of the Playground Project.

Playground Project?

Hmm. What the hell. Everybody gives their projects in the military funky names.

Wonder if Langly looks like him.

So let's see what you did in the war, Daddy.
 

Well, so far I found out that Dr. Langly was born in Glasgow, Scotland, came to the US at the age of five, grew up in  Pittsburgh, got his undergrad at Carnegie Mellon and his doctorate at University of Pennsylvania. A bright boy. Just like his son.

But Dr. Langly had a few problems along the way...in grad school, he was accused of falsifying some of his data. He was finally cleared, but he had a hard time getting grants and shit. And Kelly says, you're a researcher and you don't get grants, you die.

And then there was that little incident with releasing some bacteria into the faculty offices at U Penn.

Dr. Langly was a very, very bad boy.

Well, Langly, at least you come by it honestly.

So Dr. Langly, nobody wants to touch him. He's like a pariah (another Casey word) in the science community. No university wants to get near him.

So it's WWII and he ends up in the military. While he's stationed in England, he meets a girl named Charlotte Matthews.

Langly's mom's name is Charlotte.

Oh God.

And he falls in love with Charlotte, and they get married and move back to the US after his tour is up. He's kind of wondering what the hell he's gonna do, and then...

The military taps him again. But this time, they're gonna give him a plummy job...at Fort Detrick, doing disease research. He's probably so psyched-he's gonna get to use his education after all, and he can provide for his family, which right at this point consists of a baby girl named Joan Elizabeth...

Joan. His big sister.

Born in April. Joan's birthday's in April.

And Dr. Langly's a bright boy and he does good. He's not a lab assistant for too long.

They have a second kid, a boy named Scott.

Langly's dead brother is Scott.

I'm getting so creeped out here.

He's a star developer of weird viruses and bacteria, things the military can use if they want to subdue their enemies. And he likes his job, at least his lab notes sound like that.

And things move along real nice for the Langlys. They get a house in Chelton, which is a little town outside Fort Detrick, and they've got the two kiddies. Charlotte's a teacher, and when Scott goes to first grade, she's back in the saddle, teaches special ed at one of the local schools.

This is when it starts to fall apart.

Charlotte's specialty is severely retarded kids. She's real good with them apparently, does a lot to get them at least functioning somewhat.

And then, something happens in her school...most of the kids come down with something that at first glance looks like the flu, but at least half the school dies from it.

Charlotte's real bummed about this...but not half as bummed as she is when she overhears a phone conversation between Ian and his superiors.

She finds out that he tested one of his viruses on her kids.

Her husband, a man she loves and trusts, has been using her kids as guinea pigs.

She probably doesn't want to believe it at first. But she starts watching him. Closely.

She knows it's true.

This is the fifties, and she knows she really can't divorce him...plus that's how she got her citizenship.

She starts drinking big time, and pretty soon, she's doing tranqs of all kinds.

Prescribed by the docs on the military payroll, of course.

She wants out of this marriage, bad. It's a bad deal for her.

And it's about to get worse.

It's 1962. Joan's 15 and Scott's 11. Charlotte's falling apart, and Dr. Langly himself is hitting the bottle real hard.

Charlotte then discovers that there's been experiments done on her kids...like some kind of time bombs. She can't prove it...he's been a lot more careful this time, but she suspects it.

She decides that no matter what, she's leaving this dude. She thinks he's the devil himself, and that his superiors are even worse.

He tells her he's got no choice if he's gonna keep his job.

She tells him basically to fuck the job and get out.

But it's not the kind of job you just go in and quit.

He tries. Not gonna happen.

She doesn't understand this...she says he either gets out, or she takes the kiddies back to England, and...she goes public with what he did.

He can't have this happen. He might as well just shoot himself now.

On October 4, 1962, she says she's leaving him, she's going public, and he can't do anything about it.

He does do something about it, though.

Apparently, he decides that he's gonna have his way with her...she's not leaving, no matter what.

On July 12, 1963, their third child is born. A boy. Ringo Patrick Langly, 7 pounds, 13 ounces, 21 inches long.

How many kids have that name?

And the birthday is Langly's. Month, day, year.

Charlotte flips out. She's got this postpartum depression so bad she's catatonic. She never forms attachment to her new baby.

But for Dr. Langly, it's different. He writes that this little boy is his last shot at redemption.

Little Ringo's a bright boy, all right. He's a talker, and he gets into all kinds of trouble, and Dad and Joan think he's just adorable. He skips two grades in school, because he's so smart, but Joan and Dad are on a first-name basis with the principal he's in trouble so much.

Jump ahead and little precocious Ringo is ten now. And the bosses want to pick his brain.

Dad says no way.

Feeling a little remorse there, Dr. Langly?

So he decides to work the human angle. He takes the little guy to work after he wins a math tournament, tries to get people to see that this is his little boy, for God's sake, and not some kind of guinea pig.

This only makes the bosses salivate more.

Dr. Langly gets into it on the phone one night about it with his superiors.

Charlotte by now is totally mental. She's had it.

One way or another, she's gonna get this devil out of her life. She's got a gun for protection.

She's never had to use it on a burglar or anybody.

But when her husband settles down to continue getting drunk, she turns it on him.

And after about six shots, she finally gets him in the heart.

Ringo's with his sister when this happens. He doesn't know, and he's not going to know.

A few years later, Charlotte dies miserably of ovarian cancer. The family's utterly disintegrated by then.

Ringo's told that Dad committed suicide.

When Charlotte dies, the boys in the military decide that it's no longer worth the expense to keep the family under 24/7 surveillance. The kids don't know anything, no point in wasting the taxpayer's money.

End of Russian novel.

Dr. Langly kept good notes, though, and he developed a lot of stuff. Lots of weird viruses, bacterial mutations. And he's got notes on all of it.

And some of it looks like...the data we got from Dr. Scully.

Shit, shit, shit.

I'm shaking when I put this stuff down. I don't know how long I've been at it, but I find Kelly with her hands on my shoulders, calling me.

"Michael? Are you all right? You look like you just saw a ghost."

Kelly, you don't know how many ghosts I've seen.

"Just some...real weird stuff, that's all."

"You lie." And she's right. I am.

I look at her for a long time. Her eyes are so tender and she looks way worried.

"I'm...this stuff is sort of weird," I tell her again.

She puts her arms around me. "Michael, you're shaking."

That I am.

I bury my face against her breasts. It's dark and quiet and safe here. She just holds me real close, and I can feel myself calm a little as she rubs my back. She kisses the top of my head, real gently.

Right now, I'd just like to lose myself in her...any way I can. No matter how deep I could go inside her, it wouldn't be far enough, though.

"Michael? Tell me what's wrong." It's quiet, but it's also like a direct order. And God knows living with Dad, I'm getting used to that.

She waits, and I don't speak for a long time.

Where the hell do I begin?

"Kel...I don't wanna be out here anymore."

"Fine, we'll go in my room."

"What time's it?" I look down at my watch. 2:07 a.m. Shit. No wonder I'm so tired.

But now I can't sleep.

She takes my hand and we lock up, set the alarms, and I follow her without a word.
 

"I found out some stuff. About Langly." I'm sitting on her bed, and she's next to me, got her arm around me. I just lean into her. It's about the only comfort I'm getting right now.

"What kind of stuff?" She looks alarmed.

"Well...not so much about him. More like about his mom and dad."

"What kind of stuff?" She repeats the question.

"Well...okay. None of us around here, in case you haven't noticed, are exactly Brady Bunch spawn. I mean, happy childhoods, normal lives, things like that."

"Well, at least according to TV, mine hasn't exactly been normal, either. And sure wasn't happy."

"Okay, so you get the drift. But it gets worse."

"How worse?"

"Lots worse." God, how do I tell her this...she's going to put 2 and 2 together, and...

Time to come clean about what I do in my copious free time.
 

My dad's gonna kill me for this, but I don't care. I got to talk to somebody. Maybe Kelly can help me with this.

So I tell her...that not everything we do is totally kosher. And I tell her why.

She looks real confused. "I don't get it. Why would our own government be doing this stuff? It doesn't make sense. And why would they have medical professionals in on it? We're supposed to heal, not hurt." She looks me dead on in the eyes. "And you've seen these things."

"Yeah. We all have. Me and the guys."

She shakes her head. "That seems so...pointless."

"It's not."

"So what's the point, then?"

She's not just gonna believe me.

Maybe that's good.

"I dunno. Control the masses, then you have the power? Seems to be the reason."

"Who wants the power?"

"We're trying to find that out...there's like shadows within shadows that work in our own government, we don't know who they are, but we know they're there, and what they're trying to do..." I'm not even gonna go there. "Trying to develop a superhuman, I think. Get rid of the rabble? All the undesirables, which I think they consider most of us to be?"

She's real silent. She rubs my shoulders while she's thinking, and it's wonderful.

She can do that all night if she likes.

Not that there's much night left. It's after 4.

"You believe me, don't you?" I ask her, I'm almost pleading.

She looks at me with those beautiful clear blue eyes. I can drown in those eyes.

"I believe you found what you did...but this is a lot to swallow in one night," she says gently. "I have to think about things."

"Tell you what. I'll show you some things. But not now."

"I'm tired, and you need some sleep, Michael."

"Yeah, I oughta get going."

But instead she pushes me very softly down on her bed, and lies down next to me, pulls up one of the fuzzy blankets that are all over this house, and snuggles up to me. Her arms are around me, and she kisses me very gently.

"Poor Michael. Get some sleep now."

And I do.

END OF PART 66