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.”“Excuse me,” said Poole, finally losing patience.“Will someone kindly tell me – what and where is this famous Vault you're talking about?”36.Chamber of HorrorsHistory is full of nightmares, some natural, some manmade.By the end of the twenty-first century, most of the natural ones – smallpox, the Black Death, AIDS, the hideous viruses lurking in the African jungle – had been eliminated, or at least brought under control, by the advance of medicine.However, it was never wise to underestimate the ingenuity of Mother Nature, and no one doubted that the future would still have unpleasant biological surprises in store for Mankind.It seemed a sensible precaution, therefore, to keep a few specimens of all these horrors for scientific study – carefully guarded, of course, so that there was no possibility of them escaping and again wreaking havoc on the human race.But how could one be absolutely sure that there was no danger of this happening?There had been – understandably – quite an outcry in the late twentieth century when it was proposed to keep the last known smallpox viruses at Disease Control centers in the United States and Russia.However unlikely it might be, there was a finite possibility that they might be released by such accidents as earthquakes, equipment failures – or even deliberate sabotage by terrorist groups.A solution that satisfied everyone (except a few “Preserve the lunar wilderness!” extremists) was to ship them to the Moon, and to keep them in a laboratory at the end of a kilometer-long shaft drilled into the isolated mountain Pico, one of the most prominent features of the Mare Imbrium.And here, over the years, they were joined by some of the most outstanding examples of misplaced human ingenuity – indeed, insanity.There were gases and mists that, even in microscopic doses, caused slow or instant death.Some had been created by religious cultists who, though mentally deranged, had managed to acquire considerable scientific knowledge.Many of them believed that the end of the world was at hand (when, of course, only their followers would be saved).In case God was absent-minded enough not to perform as scheduled, they wanted to make sure that they could rectify His unfortunate oversight.The first assaults of these lethal cultists were made on such vulnerable targets as crowded subways, World Fairs, sports stadiums, pop concerts.tens of thousands were killed, and many more injured before the madness was brought under control in the early twenty-first century.As often happens, some good came out of evil, because it forced the world's law-enforcement agencies to co-operate as never before; even rogue states which had promoted political terrorism were unable to tolerate this random and wholly unpredictable variety.The chemical and biological agents used in these attacks – as well as in earlier forms of warfare – joined the deadly collection in Pico.Their antidotes, when they existed, were also stored with them.It was hoped that none of this material would ever concern humanity again – but it was still available, under heavy guard, if it was needed in some desperate emergency.The third category of items stored in the Pico vault, although they could be classified as plagues, had never killed or injured anyone – directly.They had not even existed before the late twentieth century, but in a few decades they had done billions of dollars' worth of damage, and often wrecked lives as effectively as any bodily illness could have done.They were the diseases which attacked Mankind's newest and most versatile servant, the computer.Taking names from the medical dictionaries – viruses, prions, tapeworms – they were programs that often mimicked, with uncanny accuracy, the behavior of their organic relatives.Some were harmless – little more than playful jokes, contrived to surprise or amuse Computer operators by unexpected messages and images on their visual displays.Others were far more malicious – deliberately designed agents of catastrophe.In most cases their purpose was entirely mercenary; they were the weapons that sophisticated criminals used to blackmail the banks and commercial organizations that now depended utterly upon the efficient operation of their computer systems.On being warned that their data banks would be erased automatically at a certain time, unless they transferred a few megadollars to some anonymous offshore number, most victims decided not to risk possibly irreparable disaster.They paid up quietly, often – to avoid public or even private embarrassment – without notifying the police.This understandable desire for privacy made it easy for the network highwaymen to conduct their electronic holdups: even when they were caught, they were treated gently by legal systems which did not know how to handle such novel crimes – and, after all, they had not really hurt anyone, had they? Indeed, after they had served their brief sentences, many of the perpetrators were quietly hired by their victims, on the old principle that poachers make the best game-keepers.These computer criminals were driven purely by greed, and certainly did not wish to destroy the organizations they preyed upon: no sensible parasite kills its host.But there were other, and much more dangerous, enemies of society at work.Usually, they were maladjusted individuals – typically adolescent males – working entirely alone, and of course in complete secrecy.Their aim was to create programs which would simply create havoc and confusion, when they had been spread over the planet by the world-wide cable and radio networks, or on physical carriers such as diskettes and CD ROMS.Then they would enjoy the resulting chaos, basking in the sense of power it gave their pitiful psyches.Sometimes, these perverted geniuses were discovered and adopted by national intelligence agencies for their own secretive purposes – usually, to break into the data banks of their rivals [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]