Metafire

Ferguson was so certain that Jack could not be the culprit, that he involved Jack, along with Jill and Franklin, in examining Sporkin's "proof." Franklin was convincing when he said, "Sporkin could have fabricated this in ten minutes, John."

Metafire was now doomed, heading toward Mars, with the secret. No one would believe them.

It had seemed so much like a game to Jack at the time. It was just a place on the Internet that he figured out how to crack. He had known Dr. Kelly at Rockefeller because he wanted help decrypting sites on the Net. Dr. Kelly had cracked the Metafire codes and Dr. Kelly gave them to Jack to have fun with. Jack didn't know where the first bombs were located, but he knew he was initiating "backfires." When the first set of bombs went off, he had a horrible sense of guilt, but he wasn't sure it was him. He had to believe it wasn't.

Then he found a second set of "backfires" on the Net. He exploded the second set of bombs because of his sense of terrible guilt. It was so terrible, even he couldn't believe it was him. He wanted to hide his guilt. He had to hide his guilt. He resigned himself to anonymity. He was certain that continuing to explode the "backfires" would do it. But he told no one. The truth was too terrible.