Excerpts from Reality Inspector 4

Copyright © 1982 John Caris

John thought again of Mr. Acorn, the standard government executive who was finally seeking out a novel and strange approach to ZAC's problem. ZAC was housed in the Mint on Hermann Street, and it was linked to the computers at the other Federal Reserve banks throughout the country. And ZAC had a reality crisis; it was acting strange and unpredictable.

John visualized the chronology that Mr. Acorn had given him. Beginning last year, ZAC had printed out large increases in M-l every three or four weeks. And the Federal Reserve then had raised the interest rate. Fine. Predictable. But the M-l increases were not real! An error had occurred in the computer. The Federal Reserve's computer specialists had tracked down an alien--yes, that was Mr. Acorn's word--program that had caused the error. Again fine. After the alien program had been expunged, the computer had functioned properly--for three or four weeks. Then the alien program had reappeared. But how? That was the concern. The Federal Reserve's security team was unable to discover how the alien program had been inserted, either originally or thereafter. So Mr. Acorn had told him.