19



The Subterranean Labyrinth

*


Cinnamon's Two Doors



"There's a computer in that house, isn't there, Mr. Okada? I don't know who's using
it, though," said Ushikawa.
It was nine o'clock at night, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, with the phone to
my ear.
"There is," I said, and left it at that.
Ushikawa made a sniffling sound. "I know that much from my usual snooping," he
said. "Of course, I'm not saying anything one way or another about the fact that you've
got a computer there. Nowadays, anybody doing any kind of brainwork has to have a
computer. There's nothing weird about it.
"To make a long story short, though, the idea kind of hit me that it might be good if I
could contact you through the computer. So I looked into it, but damn, it's a hell of a lot
more complicated than I imagined. Just calling up on an ordinary phone line wouldn't
make the connection. Plus, you need a special password for access. No password, and the
door doesn't budge. That did it for me."
I kept silent.
"Now, don't get me wrong, Mr. Okada. I'm not trying to crawl inside your computer
and fool around in there. I don't have anything like that in mind. With all the security
you've got in place, I could n't pull data out even if I wanted to. No, that was never an
issue. All I have in mind is trying to set up a conversation between you and Ms. Kumiko.
I promised you I'd do that, remember, that I'd do what I could to help you and her talk to
each other dir ectly. It's been a long time since she left your house, and it's a bad idea to
leave things hanging like this. The way it stands now, your life is probably just going to
get weirder and weirder. It's always best for people to talk to each other face-to - face, to
open themselves up. Otherwise, misunderstandings are bound to arise, and misunder -
standings make people unhappy.... Anyhow, that's how I tried to appeal to Ms. Kumiko. I
did everything I could.
"But I just couldn't get her to agree. She insisted she wouldn't talk to you directly-
not even on the phone (since a face- to- face meeting was out of the question). Not even on
the phone! I was ready to give up. I tried every trick in the book, but her mind was made
up. Like a rock."
Ushikawa paused for me to react, but I said nothing.
"Still, I couldn't just take her at her word and back off. Dr. Wataya would really give
it to me if I started acting like that. The other person can be a rock or a wall, but I'll find
that one tiny point of compromise. That's our job: finding that point of compromise. If
they won't sell you the refrigerator, make them sell you some ice. So I racked my brains
trying to find some way to pull this off. Let me tell you, that's what makes us human-
coming up with a million different ideas. So all of a sudden, a good one popped up in my
foggy brain, like a star showing through a break in the clouds. 'That's it!' I told myself.
'Why not have a conversation on computer screens?' You know: put words on the screen
with a keyboard. You can do that, can't you, Mr. Okada?"
I had used a computer when I worked in the law firm, researching precedents, looking

up personal data for clients, and communicating with E- mail. Kumiko had also used
computers at work. The health food magazine she edited had computer files on recipes
and nutritional analyses.
"It wouldn't work on just any old computer," continued Ushikawa, "but with our
machine and yours, you ought to be able to communicate at a pretty fast pace. Ms.
Kumiko says she's willing to talk with you that way. It was as much as I could get her to
bend. Trading messages real time, it would almost be like talking to each other. That's
the one last point of compromise I could come up with. Squeezing wisdom out of a
monkey. What do you say? You may not be too crazy about the idea, but I literally put
my brains on the rack for that one. Let me tell you, it's tiring work thinking that hard with
brains you don't even have!"
I silently shifted the receiver to my left hand. "Hello? Mr. Okada? Are you listening?"
"I'm listening," I said.
"All right, then: the one thing I need from you is the password to access your
computer. Then I can set up a conversation between you and Ms. Kumiko. What do you
say?"
"I'd say there are some practical problems standing in t he way."
"Oh? And what might those be?"
"Well, first of all, how can I be sure the other person is Kumiko? When you're talking
on the computer screen, you can't see other people's faces or hear their voices. Someone
else could be sitting at the keyboard, pretending to be Kumiko."
"I see what you mean," said Ushikawa, seemingly impressed. "I never thought of
that. But I'm sure there must be some way around it. Not to flatter you, but it's good to
view things with skepticism, to have your doubts. 'I doubt, therefore I am.' All right,
then: how about this? You start out by asking a question that only Ms. Kumiko would
know the answer to. If the other person can come up with the answer, it must be Kumiko.
I mean, you lived together as man and wife for several years; there must be a few things
that only the two of you would know."
What Ushikawa was saying made sense. "That wo uld probably work," I said, "but I
don't know the password. I've never touched that machine."



Nutmeg had told me that Cinnamon had customized every inch of the computer's
system. He had compiled his own complex database and pro tected it from outside access
with a secret code and other ingenious devices. Fingers on the keyboard, Cinnamon was
absolute ruler over this three-dimensional subterranean labyrinth. He knew every one of
its in tertwined passages and could leap from one to another with the stroke of a key. For
an uninformed invader (which is to say, anyone but Cinnamon) to grope his way through
the labyrinth, past the alarms and traps, to where important data lay, would have taken
months, according to Nutmeg. Not that the computer installed in the Residence was
especially big: it was the same class of machine as the one in the Akasaka office. Both
were hard- wired to the mainframe they had at home, though. There Cin namon no doubt
stored their client data and did their complex double bookkeeping, but I imagined that he
kept something more in there than the secrets connected with the work that he and
Nutmeg had done over the years.

What led me to believe this, was the depth of the commitment to his machine that
Cinnamon displayed on occasion when he was in our special Residence. He normally
stayed shut up in the small office he had there, but every now and then he would leave
the door ajar, and I was able to observe him at work- not without a certain guilty sense of
invading someone's privacy. He and his computer seemed to be moving together in an
almost erotic union. After a burst of strokes on the keyboard, he would gaze at the screen,
his mouth twisted in apparent dissatisfaction or curled with the suggestion of a smile.
Sometimes he seemed deep in thought as he touched one key, then another, then another;
and some times he ran his fingers over the keys with all the energy of a pianist playing a
Liszt etude. As he engaged in silent conversation with his machine, he seemed to be
peering through the screen of his monitor into another world, with which he shared a
special intimacy. I couldn't help but feel that reality resided for him not so much in the
earthly world but in his subterranean labyrinth. Perhaps in that world Cinnamon had a
clear, ringing voice, with which he spoke eloquently and laughed and cried aloud.



"Can't I access your computer from the one here?" I asked Ushikawa. "Then you
wouldn't need a password."
"No, that wouldn't work. Your transmissions might reach here, but transmissions
from here wouldn't reach there. The problem is the pass word-the open sesame. Without
that, there's nothing we can do. The door won't open for the wolf, no matter how hard he
tries to disguise his voice. He can knock and say, 'Hi, it's me, your friend Rabbit,' but if
he hasn't got the password, he gets turned away at the door. We're talking about an iron
maiden here."
Ushikawa struck a match at his end and lit a cigarette. I pictured his snaggled yellow
teeth and drooping mouth.
"It's a three-character alp hanumeric password. You have ten seconds to input it after
the prompt shows. Get it wrong three times, and access is denied, plus the alarm goes off.
Not that there are any sirens that ring or anything, but the wolf leaves his footprints, so
you know he wa s there. Clever, huh? If you calculate all possible permutations and
combinations of twenty- six letters and ten numbers, it's practically infinite. You just have
to know the password, or there's nothing you can do."
I thought this over for a time without replying.
"Any good ideas, Mr. Okada?"
After the client was driven away in the back seat of the Mercedes the following
afternoon, I walked into Cinnamon's small office, sat down in front of his computer, and
flipped the switch. The cool blue light of the monitor came on with a simple message:
Enter password within ten seconds.
I input the three- letter word that I had prepared:
zoo
The computer beeped once and displayed an error message:
Incorrect password.
Enter password within ten seconds.
The ten seconds started counting down on the screen. I changed to upper case and
input the same letters:

ZOO
Again I was refused access:
Incorrect password.
Enter correct password within ten seconds.
If incorrect password is input once more, access will
automatically be denied.
Again the ten seconds began counting down on the screen. This time I made only the
Z uppercase. It was my last chance.
Zoo
Instead of an error message, a menu screen opened, with the instruction:
Choose one of the following programs.
I released a long, slow breath, then began scrolling through the long list of programs
until I came to communications software. Highlighting this, I pressed the mouse button.
Choose one of the following programs.
I chose "Chat Mode" and clicked the mouse.
Enter password within ten seconds.
This was an important junction for Cinnamon to lock out access to his computer. And
if the junction was important, the password itself ought to be important. I typed in:
SUB
The screen read:
Incorrect password.
Input correct password within ten seconds.
The countdown began: 10,9,8. . .
I tried the combination of upper- and lowercase letters that had worked the first time:
Sub
A prompt flashed on the screen:
Input telephone number.
I folded my arms and let my eyes take in this new message. Not bad. I had succeeded
in opening two doors in Cinnamon's labyrinth. No, not bad at all. "Zoo" and "Sub"
would do it. I clicked on "Exit" and returned to the main menu, then chose "Shutdown,"
which brought up the following options:
Record procedures in Operations File? Y/N (Y)
As instructed by Ushikawa, I chose "No" to avoid leaving a record of the procedures I
had just executed.
The screen quietly died. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. After checking to be
certain that I had left the keyboard and mouse exactly as I had found them, I moved away
from the now cold monitor.