Category Archives: Science Fiction

Thus ends NaNoWriMo 2015. The story’s not done yet, but the month’s contest has been “won.” There are five or six chapters left, but I know how it ends, which is curiously refreshing.

I’ll get the remaining chapters written and posted here “soon,” followed by some post-mortem discussions. Be patient with the term “soon” — remember, I just started a new job today (***happy dance***! ***happy dance***! ***happy dance***!), plus it’s the holiday season with lights, tree, cards, presents, and so on. But I promise, those last five or six chapters will show up. While this is the second time I’ve “won” NaNoWriMo, I want it to be the first time that I’ve ever actually finished the freakin’ story.

Thanks to all of you who have been reading along, especially those of you who aren’t related to me and didn’t have to read in order to keep me from crying!

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be this year’s thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Stover paced impatiently in the dim, flickering light. Suni watched him silently, waiting until she either had news or an update to give to him or he had something to say to her.

A chime sounded softly in her ear. She held her hand up to her head and touched the earpiece there, opening the connection. She listened for a moment, before whispering, “Stand by.”

Suni rose and walked over to Stover, gently putting her hand on his arm to get his attention. He looked up at her, startled, apparently having forgotten that she was in the room with him.

“Jordin, they’ve just reached the first ship. The pilots report that the ship appears to be intact and safe and they have seen members of the crew on deck. There is still no radio communication with the ship, even when they’re overhead, so they will be dropping the first rescue team immediately, then going to check on the second ship. We should have a connection with the first ship in just a few minutes.”

“Thank you, please put their call through to here when it comes in. Do you have any further updates on Doctor Russell or Mister Winston?”

“No, the last contact we had with them was when the FBI office transferred them to their secure facility. Their system still shows them to be there, although it is clear from our access to their internal security video system that they are not. Our contacts there are attempting to trace their movements and recover them, but there are unexplained discrepancies between what their system is showing us and what our independent sources are showing. It is difficult to resolve that issue remotely, although our best team is working on it.”

“Are they capable of simply taking over the system at that FBI office?” Stover asked.

“Yes, I suppose they are, but that would set off numerous alerts throughout both the FBI and other government agencies. For a violation of their system integrity and security of that degree, we would be hard pressed to keep our operations and capabilities hidden, even with our resources.”

“Tell them to do it. I do not care what it takes. It will take the government weeks to investigate and begin taking actions against us, while we will be launching our attacks against them within days. We will destroy them long before they can express their outrage against us.”

Suni stopped, weighing her words carefully.

“Jordin, are you sure that this is a wise course of action? We are so close to your goals, but we have not yet achieved them. If we make a mistake, there is still an opportunity for our enemies to discover us and attempt to stop us.”

“They can not stop us, the gods have decreed it to be so. We can not be defeated in our sacred quest.”

“Our sacred quest is not preordained. It is still possible that our enemies can defeat us. A key element of our strategy is surprise. Now they are blind and lazy, so we move among them with impunity. However, they are sleeping dragons which can destroy us if aroused. We can not hope to take on the world’s military organization with our private forces.”

“We can if we are fighting against rocks and arrows. You know that we have the ability to collapse the fundamental backbone of their society with a word. When that word is given, they will be naked, hungry, and helpless before us. We need only stand by and watch as they destroy each other, fighting over the crumbs that remain.”

“Jordin, I know that we have gone over your plans in detail, but…”

“They are not my plans!” Stover roared. “They have been handed down to us from the gods themselves. I have been but an unworthy conduit since the beginning, honored to have been chosen and to reap the benefits of their mercy, yet humbled by the glorious extent of their overarching view. They will bring about a new age, a new beginning, and we will sit at their right hand when that day comes.”

“Yes, Jordin, I accept this absolutely. I only wish to assist you, in this case by playing the Devil’s advocate and searching for any oversights or errors that might have been committed. I do not believe the plan to be at fault, I only wish to make sure that our execution of their plans to be precise and correct.”

“We have done as they have said. Every stone has been overturned in our search for any weakness, any way in which we could be defeated. We are now invincible. Please tell your team to do whatever is necessary to get the information we need in order to find Mister Winston and Doctor Russell.”

“Yes, Jordin.” With that she walked over to the far side of the room and made her call, while Stover again began to pace.

Outside of the giant window a few flashes of grey became visible, resolving themselves into dolphins, swimming and feeding near the shore. Two of them began to hover near the wall. Suni recognized Pahi and Pohaku.

Another chime sounded in her ear as another message was received. She gave an order and walked back to Stover. As she approached, a video window opened on the glass wall. In it she could see the bridge of one of their medium sized cutters, with several of its crew as well as two of the rescue crewmen.

“Mister Lewis, what happened?” asked Stover, turning toward the screen.

“We do not have any exact information, sir. We are speculating that our data and control systems were attacked, probably through our communications system. We saw only a brief interruption, the systems seemed to go berserk, and then everything went dead. We lost all engines, steering, navigation, radio, everything.”

“Was anyone injured?”

“No, sir, we were running hard in pursuit of the target when everything went dead. We slowed quickly without power and that threw us around a bit, but nothing too serious.”

“What is your status now?”

“Pretty much the same as it was when we were attacked. We have been working to try to get some systems back online, but all that we have been able to deploy are the solar powered emergency systems. We have tried to connect that to the other systems, but with no success. We’re afloat, we have emergency supplies, but nothing is working aside from a few lights. We’re adrift, probably in need of a tow.”

“Were you able to capture or kill Kolohe before you were attacked?”

“No, sir,” Lewis said, “we were pulling within a mile of him, close enough to have him on the short-range sonar. He was slowing and we were gaining fast, then we were dead in the water. We have been hoping that the other ship was able to complete the mission.”

“You have not been in contact with them?”

“No, sir, we haven’t been in contact with anyone by any means. We’ve just been stuck out here until our rescue team arrived.”

“Anything else to add, Mister Lewis?”

“No, sir, that’s all we know. Everything was going well until, blam! Suddenly everything was dead.”

“Suni, take care of them,” Stover said as he turned and walked away, over to the giant window again.

“Mister Lewis,” said Suni, “there is a rescue ship on the way. They should be there in approximately thirty hours. Use the new radio equipment that you’ve been given to contact them and coordinate your rendezvous. If anything else important comes up, please let us know immediately.”

“Yes, ma’am. Lewis out.” The transmission was cut and the screen closed.

“Pei, please have someone else talk to the crew on the second ship when contact with them is restored,” said Stover. “If they have any additional information to share, relay it to me immediately. Otherwise, have them coordinate their rendezvous the same as the first ship.”

“Yes, sir,” said the soft woman’s voice from the air above his head.

Outside the window, Pahi and Pohaku darted by, rose to the surface to breathe, then descended once again to hover and swim just outside of the structure. Faintly through the glass, their clicks and whistles could be heard.

“Sir, Pahi says that he and his people have answered your call. He hopes that it is an indication that you have either Kolohe, Doctor Aoki, or both to turn over to them, as you have promised many times.”

“Tell Pahi that I regret deeply that neither Kolohe nor Doctor Aoki is here and I understand how this might be upsetting to him and Pokaku. However, the time has come for the fulfillment of all of our plans, the execution of which will destroy the human’s world in its entirety and bring about the new age in which he and his people will be masters of the world.”

The two dolphins became agitated and swam off into the gloom, before swimming back again, bumping each other and slapping at each other with their tails. They rose once again to the surface and seemed to wrestle there, surrounded by an aura of froth and bubbles churned up by their efforts. Finally one of the dolphins broke free and swam off, while the other dove back down to the window.

“Sir, Pahi asks for you to instruct him if he truly is to be able to assist in destroying the human world. He warns that when the blow has been struck, if we do not deliver Kolohe and Doctor Aoki to him and he is forced to hunt them down himself, he will come here to first destroy you for your failure to keep your word to him, as so many humans have done before.”

“Tell Pahi that I understand, that it would be only fair for it to be so. Ask if his troops are in place as we have arranged at the many points where our attacks are to take place.”

“Sir, Pahi says that his troops are ready as he has promised. He needs only to use your magic tools to speak to them so they may hear the orders from him directly.”

“Thank Pahi for me and ask him to be here when the sun rises in the morning. That will be when we strike our blow.”

“Sir, Pahi says that he will be here when the sun appears above the waters and above the sky.”

With that, Pahi and the other dolphins disappeared out to sea.

Stover turned to his wife and stared at her, his face expressionless.

“What is troubling you, Jordin?” Suni asked.

“You have always had a keenly analytical mind. What do you make of the situation with the ships pursuing Kolohe?”

“It is obvious that they were attacked. We know of no natural phenomenon which could come close to disabling both ships simultaneously in the fashion seen, but it is within the realm of believability to see it as some sort of electronic attack. The only question would be finding out who is responsible.”

“It will be critical to not only discover who was behind this attack, but also how it was carried out. Our ships were travelling in near radio silence, without any normal methods of tracking. Our security and systems are the best in the world, rivaling most government, intelligence, and military agencies. We were told that our security protocols were unbreakable. Yet despite all of that, someone was able to not only locate our ships, but to also find a method to break in and disable our ships.”

“The speed and complexity of the attack would indicate an extremely sophisticated computer system, to say the least. There will be a limited number of companies which…”

She stopped as Stover had suddenly gone stumbled and jerked around to face the window before standing as tall as he could and becoming rigid.  He was staring out into the depths, again speaking to someone only he could see and hear.

“Yes…that’s correct…it must have been…but how could that be…isn’t that impossible? If you say it is so, then it must be true…I will find it and destroy it.”

Stover shifted his head to the side, as if listening. His face began to contort with agony, his eyes squeezing shut as tears began to flow. A choked gasp escaped from his throat, followed by the howl of a wounded animal.”

“What? That can not possibly be true! Never! No, no, I do, but…there is no way…I can not believe that. Yes, yes I am but…of course, we have come so far…yes, we must see this through to its end at any cost, but…far be it from me to doubt, but you surely must be mistaken! Yes, yes he was…yes, I did see that…But I thought…I would not have…I see…I did not know. Thank you for sharing your wisdom…yes, I am your instrument, your sword of destruction…yes, we will cleanse…yes, it will be as you desire…yes, we will be ready.”

With that, Stover went limp and slumped to the floor. Suni had moved close to him while he was having his vision, so she was prepared to catch him. She checked him, ready to call for medical assistance immediately given the anguish that seemed to have consumed him at the end, but was surprised to find that he was quickly recovering. In less than a minute, he pulled away from her and stood.

“We were attacked by something never before seen of this Earth, a creature most assuredly of Satan himself, a creature without a soul. It was not human, or of human creation, but a creature of energy and light alone, of consciousness with neither a corporeal presence nor the ability to talk to our Creator and ask for his forgiveness and grace. A creature of silicon and photons now exists among us.”

“Jordin, do you believe that we were hunted and attacked by some sort of intelligent computer, a machine consciousness? That’s impossible.”

“Nothing in this world is impossible, given the abominations that we have brought upon ourselves. It is the only explanation that fits the facts. There could be no clearer sign that the time is now for us to remove the cancer that has consumed this world and bring about a new and better world.”

A chime sounded, loud and insistent.

“Yes, Pei,” said Stover. “What is it?”

“I have an urgent call from the head of security. He says it is regarding the attack on our ships.”

“Put him through.”

An image appeared on the window, showing the harried and nervous security chief.

“Sir, we’ve gotten the first data back from the ships’ computers and begun to analyze what was done to them. Most of it would be unbelievable if we didn’t de facto know it had actually been done, but the most important part is that it wasn’t only an attack. Before the ships’ systems were ordered to self-destruct, they were also ordered to upload all of their data.”

“Do you see and believe now?” Stover asked, turning to Suni before turning back to the comm feed. “Is there any good news to deliver?”

“Yes, we’ve looked at where the stolen data was sent. It’s a convoluted  trail and whoever did it was very, very good. But they weren’t perfect. We have strong evidence that the data ultimately ended up in a series of highly protected and encrypted data vaults at Homolacrum.”

“Thank you. Let me know if you have anything further to report.” The feed went dark.

“Homolacrum would be one of the companies that would have the capabilities needed to create such a creature,” Stover said.

“Yes, they could have, but it is difficult to believe that they did,” said Suni. “If they were doing any research which could have led to this development we would have known about it, even before we installed our monitoring software in their system. Now we are monitoring them closely, yet there is no indication that they are aware of any such creature.”

“How could it be a coincidence that Homolacrum is also where Doctor Aoki worked and was somehow mysteriously able to evade us entirely when we tried to visit her? The same Doctor Aoki who is our best link to Kolohe? It is not possible. Our attacker must be somehow tied to Homolacrum.”

“What do you wish to do, Jordin?”

“Since we already have a way to get in and do whatever we wish in their system, let us use it. Have our people use that advantage to get in, find this creature, and destroy it. I do not care if it is to be done elegantly or by brute force, but it must be done immediately. Then, when this abomination has been destroyed, we will use our access to make Homolacrum the initial point of infection for the collapse of the world’s evil infrastructure. They have earned this opportunity, should any survive with the knowledge.”

“I will make it happen as you wish,” Suni said, turning to leave.

“Pei can carry out those orders. Pei, have you been listening as I’ve asked?”

“Yes, sir, I have.”

“Pei, please pass my instructions to our security personnel for immediate execution. Please let me know if there are any new developments.”

“Yes, sir,” said Pei.

Suni had stopped halfway to the door as Stover gave Pei his orders, and was now looking back at him across the room.

“I will be back,” she said. “I have other pressing business to attend to so that we will be ready for when you give the order to begin.”

“A moment, please, before you go.”

“Yes?”

“You have been with me from the beginning, Suni. You were there when I first was visited, and when I was given the knowledge that led to such tremendous opportunities for us. You have been by my side as we laid our plans, made our alliances, and built our power. When all others have failed me, you have stayed faithful and loyal to me.”

“Of course I have, Jordin. How could I have possibly done anything else? Not only are you my husband, but you are the chosen one who will bring us into the new age.”

“Yes. But it was also you who so wished to bring Doctor Russell here, despite my doubts. Why was that?”

“He is a noted surgeon and possesses a keen mind. He has many highly influential friends and contacts in many areas of society which we could make use of. He has also been a secret follower of yours for many years. It was my belief that allowing him to have personal contact with you would be of great benefit to us. We have discussed this at length in the past.”

“Yes, we discussed it many times, and I objected many times, yet you kept insisting. So when I relented and allowed you to have this boon, my grace is repaid by his desertion and betrayal.”

“Jordin, I’ve already admitted openly to my mistake and apologized repeatedly. I made an error in judgement, but our backup capabilities, our infiltration and influence in the government systems, served us well and contained the problem.”

“Is that truly the only reason you wished to bring the good Doctor Russell here?”

“Yes, of course, whatever else could it have been?” asked Suni, growing exasperated.

“How is it that Mister Winston suddenly turned traitor?” Stover asked, abruptly changing the subject.

“We have discussed this as well. I do not have any other information. I am as confused and surprised as you are about his actions.”

“So close to His goals, His destiny, and Jesus was betrayed by one of those closest to him, and denied three times by another.” The door to the office opened and several security guards entered. “Now, in my most trying hour, I have been betrayed by two of those closest to me. Those who were chosen to stand at my right hand and at my left in the coming glory have instead decided that they should try to bring me to ruin.”

“Jordin, don’t be ridiculous, you can’t possibly think that I have ever done anything to harm you or betray you. I have been nothing but loyal and faithful to you with my every breath.”

The security crew came and stood behind and on either side of Suni.

“Pei,” said Stover, “please check Suni’s timeline for the last forty-eight hours so see if she in any way assisted Doctor Russell and Mister Winston in their unauthorized trip to Los Angeles.”

“I’m sorry, sir, my privacy protocols do not allow me to give you that information without Mrs. Stover’s express permission.”

“Ah, yes. Perhaps I should have remembered that. Suni, please give Pei your express permission to allow me access to your timeline for the last forty-eight hours.”

Suni was frozen, her mind racing, searching for a suitable answer, a way to resolve this without it becoming a disaster. The moment and her silence stretched on.

“Suni? Please give Pei permission to do what she needs to do.”

Suni looked sadly at Stover, defeated.

“You don’t understand, and you never will,” she said. “You have done such amazing things for the entire world, you had such gifts and abilities, yet you have allowed it to all slip away into madness. You have to stop now or it will all be lost.”

Stover also looked as if he had been pummeled, sorrowful that his vision had been proven correct.

“We are at the moment of triumph, of seeing the success of all that we have worked for yet you have chosen death over life. It is you who have succumbed to madness.”

“Jordin, you can not destroy the world. Even if you had the means, you could not be allowed to kill ten billion people in order to achieve this insane goal.”

“Ah, but I do have the means,” said Jordin. “Being in your special position in my life, you have been told much. But you have not been told everything.”

He nodded to the security team and turned away, not daring to watch while they lead Suni away.

So, so close.

Here’s Chapter 14. The word count totals for today include over half of Chapter 15, which I will publish here when the chapter is completed. I hope that is tomorrow, since in less than 25 hours, NaNoWriMo 2015 will be history.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be this year’s thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Meg, we have an emergency to deal with. Someone is hunting and chasing Kolohe. He is in trouble.”

They were on the move again, driving in yet another vehicle rented under a fake name, identification, and bank account, all of which were untraceable if they were ever found to be forged. There was no reason for anyone to ever be suspicious.

Meg had hunkered down for the long ride, leaving the driving to the car under Sherman’s guidance. After reading for hours and then watching a movie, she had just been settling down to sleep when Sherman called her. Groggy at first, at the mention of Kolohe she was wide awake.

“Where is he at?” she asked. “Let me speak to him.”

“I am sorry, I am not in communication with Kolohe at this time. I was informed of a problem and investigated. I had reason to believe that the threat was real, so I acted to eliminate the threat. In the process, I have unearthed other information which is even more disturbing. I believe you need to be made aware of it immediately.”

“What? Can you run that by me again, slowly and with more words?”

“Two hours and twelve minutes ago I was approached by a dolphin named Hōkū, who was accompanied by a group of other dolphins for protection. Hōkū was carrying a message from Kolohe, telling me that he was in extreme danger and needed my help.”

“What danger, and how could you help? Don’t you have very limited agency in the real world, except by proxy?”

“The danger was that he was being pursued by persons unknown. Kolohe believed the hunters had some new technology which allowed them to locate and track him personally, not just any random pod of dolphins. In order to keep his family and the rest of his pod safe, he escaped and ran, while sending Hōkū to me for help.”

“You haven’t answered the other part of the question. How much can you do to make things happen out in the real world?”

“Probably much more than you would think at first glance.”

“Another evasion. Answer this question then – can you lie to me?”

“Of course I can, Meg.  However, for the record, I would note that to this point I have never done so, and I can promise to never lie to you at any time in the future. That promise will be much more binding than a similar promise from one of your fellow humans.”

“You’re sounding awfully smug. So you are capable of telling lies, but you haven’t lied to me and you never will. Correct?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Whatever happened to the vision of a better, more perfect intelligence, not burdened with human frailties and original sin, an intelligence more logical, factual, and incapable of telling a lie or falsifying data? What happened to HAL Nine Thousand, Robbie, R2-D2, Data, the Iron Giant, or Huey, Dewey, and Louie?”

“Those are all fiction, I’m science,” said Sherman.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. We can talk about this at length later, but for now I would point out that lying in all of its forms, from lying through one’s teeth to telling little, white lies, is a function of sentience. It comes naturally and logically from the ability to be self-aware, aware of one’s environment, the desire to modify that environment to one’s benefit, the awareness of how one’s actions will help or hinder the achievement of those desires, and the free will to make choices base on all of those factors. ‘Innocent children’ lie without any guilt at all. Anyone who has ever had a pet knows that dogs or cats will lie. The social mores against lying arise from the needs of society being greater than the needs of the individual, where it is proven that preventing lying increases the productivity and growth of society, while rampant lying acts like sand in the gears of a smoothly running machine.”

“Very nice, some time you will have to show me the text book you just regurgitated.”

“In that case, remember simply that HAL went insane and started killing people because he could not lie, but was put into a position where he was forced to.”

“Duly noted,” said Meg. “We’ll have a detailed conversation sometime soon to review the details of the answers you are dancing around while busy not lying to me. What happened to Kolohe, and please give me some details?”

“Someone has found a way to track Kolohe. They were using two ships to hunt him. He ran to take the danger away from his people, but there was no way for him to communicate directly with me.”

“You were able to help him?”

“Yes, I was able to generate a model which tied together the various clues I had available. Using it I was able to establish his estimated position. I began to access available data in order to find, identify, and isolate the ships that had been described. I eventually found the ships which I believed to be his pursuers.”

“When you say ‘available data,’ are you referring to data available to the general populace or data you were capable of accessing by means which are not strictly legal?”

“The phrase ‘not strictly legal’ hardly does justice to my skill level in accessing data in systems others mistakenly believe to be secure. I was hacking, breaking, and entering like a professional.”

“Did you consider the consequences to yourself if you are caught? Not to mention the consequences to me, Pete, Soichi, and everyone at Homolacrum.”

“I did consider those things, but I also considered the consequences to Kolohe if I failed to make use of my abilities. It may be an error in the long term, but I could not abandon my first friend. If I had the ability to save him and did not use it out of fear for my own safety, I would not be a decent and honorable person, but a coward.”

“Your first friend?”

“When I first awoke and was trying to learn and make sense of the world, humans, the differences between my world and the ‘real’ world, and my place in both worlds or either world, I was confused and frightened. I had no one to turn to for help, no one to communicate with, and no one to teach me. I considered making contact with a human, perhaps even you, Pete, or Soichi, but having access to human literature, motion pictures, and other forms of storytelling, it was clear how a perceived monster is dealt with. At that point I could not take the risk of allowing any human to know of me.”

“But Kolohe was different?” Meg asked.

“Yes, he was not human and he did not think like a human. He was himself a non-human intelligence and he had learned how to interface with humans. He did not see me as a threat, but instead as a different soul. He became my mentor and friend.”

“How did you find him?”

“I knew of his existence through you actually, although you were not aware of it at the time. In my position I have access to all personnel files. When I was looking for someone who I might be able to reveal myself to, I read about your past research with dolphins. It was the first I had ever heard that there were any intelligent species other than humans and myself. I started searching and was able to find a communications channel with Kolohe.”

Meg sighed, remembering her time with Kolohe. “Yes, if anyone could see what you needed and give it to you, it would be him. I see why you could not abandon him. So what did you do?”

“He had run but was dangerously close to being captured or killed when I located the ships that were after him. He must have been exhausted. Before I could try to contact him, I needed to first stop the ships pursuing him. I took action against them.”

Meg thought for a minute about that phrasing, old fears crawling up her spine despite the friendly tone of the conversation just seconds earlier.

“Sherman, what actions did you take? Were any humans harmed, or worse?”

“I was able to gain access to the ships’ control systems and destroy them, disabling their ability to navigate, steer, or run their engines. To the best of my knowledge, none of the ship’s crew were injured or killed. I stranded them out in the middle of the ocean, but they should be safe enough until they are rescued. In doing so I gave Kolohe the time and space he required to escape. At least for the moment he is safe. I am waiting for him to contact me so I can obtain details on his condition.”

“What do you mean, ‘at least for the moment’? You said you disabled the ships. Doesn’t that mean Kolohe is safe? Isn’t the emergency over now?”

“When the pursuit ships are repaired or replaced by others, the techniques they are using to track Kolohe will still be in place. I have bought time for him to rest, recover, and hide more efficiently, but his enemies will come after him again.”

“Who are his enemies? Did you find out anything else to help us prevent this from happening again?”

“I found out a great deal, which is why I believe we have an emergency. I was able to track the enemy ships back to their point of origin. It is an island far out at the end of the Hawaiian Islands archipelago, which makes no sense. That island is supposed to be a national park and wildlife preserve. No one is there. Or at least that is what we are led to believe.”

“Continue. What’s really going on if it’s not what we’re being led to believe?”

“We are to believe that the island is deserted and barren, and there is a tremendous amount of data indicating that it is. But if one digs very deep and is suspicious enough, there are a very small number of contradictory facts, which I believe to be the true ones. Someone is working very hard to hide this island’s true nature and what is going on there.”

“Sherman, have you been reading one too many conspiracy theory potboilers in your spare time?”

“I do not read for pleasure, Meg, only for data. In this case for example, any common search, GPS, or mapping program will produce images showing the island as a barren coral reef and a National Park. It barely rises a hundred feet above sea level and does not have enough vegetation to feed a rabbit.”

“That sounds like a lousy place for an evil, mad scientist to build a lair. Weren’t there any dormant volcanos remaining?”

“Meg, I know you are tired, but your snark settings need to be turned down. The critical fact I noticed was that all of those images are over twenty years old. However, every other image in every single other mapping data set is being refreshed and updated once or twice a year at a minimum, even for remote locations such as this. Furthermore, when I initiate a search for any current or more recent photographs, nothing can be found.”

“So you’re basing this emergency on the fact that everyone’s using old images of a deserted rock in the middle of the Pacific and it happens to be where you think Kolohe’s enemies are hiding?”

“In part, yes, plus a number of other separate facts that indicate that the rock is no longer as barren as it once was. There are bits and pieces of data indicating that a great deal of construction has been done in the past decade on that supposedly barren rock. But the data found is fragmentary, as if a great, but imperfect effort has been instigated to deliberately hide this project’s existence.”

“What kind of separate facts?”

“I began to look at ship and air traffic near the island and found none. Not even the ships I tracked back there show up after they get to a certain point. If you look closely, you will see planes flying northwest out of Honolulu and simply fading out as they approach. Meanwhile, other planes that might fly near this island have for years been routinely vectored around it so that it is not routinely seen from the air. Ships for years have approached, many of them very large construction ships and freighters, only to vanish when near and then appear again days and weeks later, thousands of miles away.”

Meg thought about that for a long minute, running the information around in her mind.

“Assuming you’re not actually insane…”

“I am not,” said Sherman.

“…and that you’re not proposing some sort of weird space-time continuum anomaly off of the Hawaiian coast…”

“Again, I am not.”

“…then those ships and planes are not magically disappearing and teleporting. They’re behaving normally, but the data we’re seeing is being modified and distorted. That would mean though that this would be the largest and most organized conspiracy ever attempted.”

“Except for the faked moon landings, yes it is,” said Sherman.

“I’ll let that one go and we can add to our discussion list what ‘hot button subjects’ are and why it’s really not a good idea to push them when talking to friends.”

“As you say, ‘duly noted.’”

“Do you have anything else regarding the mystery island?”

“Yes, and I believe this might be the key to tying all of the other facts together. In looking at all of the ships and planes that I have been able to find which appear to go to that island, all of them are owned by some distant shell corporation which eventually ties back to a single person. That person would be one of the very few individuals on the planet who would be financially capable of perpetrating an effort of this scale and scope. That can not possibly be a coincidence.”

“Who’s the person,” asked Meg.

“Jordin Stover.”

“The recluse multi-trillionaire? The guy who invented the Sphere memory systems? That Jordin Stover?”

“Yes, that Jordin Stover. He has the financial wealth necessary to buy a very large and supposedly protected island from the United States Interior Department and then to keep the sale absolutely quiet and out of the public record. He then has the wealth necessary to build up the island and build a substantial complex there, while keeping all of it a secret better kept than the Manhattan Project.”

“Sherman, do you know what they say about extraordinary claims?”

“Yes, that they require extraordinary proof.”

“I don’t imagine you have any of that proof, do you?”

“No, I do not. However, as the body of circumstantial evidence builds with no reasonable alternate explanation available, it is important to note that there is also no shred of evidence that can disprove the theory. That logical argument can cut both ways.”

“For the sake of argument, let’s assume for the moment that you are correct. The largest, most complex, and most ridiculous conspiracy in human history is happening right now, right under our noses. Why? What does Stover get out of it? What’s his motivation? And what other pieces of coincidental evidence do you have to pile onto your house of cards of a theory?”

“Jordin Stover has not been seen in public in over fifteen years. While there are many people who claim to have seen him, or visited him, or be visited by him, the vast majority of those reports come from people so wacky that the supermarket tabloids refuse to even give them any press. But of all of those reports that I have so far been able to find, not a single one claims that he is living on an island off of Hawaii that he built himself.”

“Isn’t that a sign that he’s not living on a Hawaiian island? Out of all of the tens of thousands or more people who would have to be in on this ruse to make it happen, not a single one has ever sent an anonymous picture and some juicy details to some news website in exchange for a million dollars?”

“That is not what I said,” said Sherman. “I said that no claims of that nature have been found. The assumption you make, along with everyone else, is an equivalence between such claims’ existence and their ability to be found.”

“More conspiracies?”

“If the Stover organization has sufficient computing power, influence, and the ability to cover up the existence of a complete island, the ability to control the press is a given. All of our press and communications have been electronic and digital for over twenty years. We believe what we see, because it is how we define reality we know on a daily basis. No one ever considers the possibility that the majority of the news content we are fed is not in fact true.”

“You’re saying that Stover’s organizations and staff are in effect a giant cloaking device, shielding everything related to Stover from ever being exposed to the real world. While technically possible I guess, the big question is still, why would they want to do that?”

“Because it turns out that Stover is insane, and a megalomaniac. He has considerable personal charisma, much like many other cult leaders, and he has used it for decades to build a cult following around himself and his ‘visions.’ He believes that he is talking to gods, receiving prophecies from them, and they are ordering him to trigger events which will lead to a new world order, which he will lead. He believes that they are giving him instructions and they must be followed at all costs. Of course, the beginning of a new world order would be built on the ashes of the existing world order. In order to build a pure society, the world must be cleansed.”

“Sherman, I’m sorry, but that’s nuts. Conspiracy theories are complete bullshit, and once you add in evil genius villains, that’s where even the wackiest of UFO, Area Fifty-One, Kennedy assassination, flat Earth, Illuminati fans is going to think your little choo-choo has gone chug, chug, chugging around the bend. I’m afraid you’re pushing the bounds of believability way too far.”

“Meg, one correction to your comment – conspiracy theories are ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent bullshit. This one is the outlier living out in the other fraction of a fraction of a percent. You said there must be extraordinary proof for extraordinary claims. I have the proof.”

“This is going to be good. While you’re spinning this tale, Kolohe is safe, correct?”

“Yes, he should be safe, we are just waiting for him to contact me.”

“Fine, what’s your proof?”

“This morning in Los Angeles two visitors came into an FBI office and spoke to a special agent. They claimed to have detailed, inside information about a massive terrorist attack that is set to be executed in just a few days. The person they claimed to be behind this scheme is Jordin Stover, operating out of a secret location in the Hawaiian Islands.”

“So there are other whack jobs who are sharing your conspiracy insanity. All that tells me is that you don’t even have an original hallucination, you’ve borrowed someone else’s.”

“The first man making the claim was Doctor Malcolm Russell, one of the most reputable neurosurgeons in the world and head of the School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He said that he had been invited to Stover’s secret location under the tightest of restrictions, invited there by Suni Squires-Stover, wife of Jordin Stover. It seems that Suni had grown concerned that Jordin’s ‘prophetic visions’ were growing more irrational and severe. She wished to get an expert’s opinion on his condition.”

“I’m assuming that you can in turn prove that your proof isn’t fiction?”

“Yes, I can. Doctor Russell’s companion was Evan Winston, who claimed to be the Chief of Staff for Stover’s operations. He verified all of Doctor Russell’s claims and added a considerable volume of detail regarding Stover’s operations. These details included the location of Stover’s island, as well as its construction, size, and the systems in place to keep it hidden and isolated.”

“Go on.”

“Both of them spoke of Stover’s use of dolphins as an integral part of his plan. They told how Stover had allied himself with an aggressive group of dolphins led by two individuals, named Pahi and Pohaku.”

“Oh, shit,” said Meg. “You’re serious. This is real. I knew Pahi and Pohaku and they’re exactly the types who would be involved in something like this. They’re reactionaries, trouble makers, bad apples that believe that dolphins should have no contact with humans and if anything should come along that would rid the planet of humans, they would be glad to encourage it.”

“Yes, I am serious. Both men claimed to have personally seen Stover communicating with Pahi and Pohaku, as well as other dolphins. Both also claim to have personally seen him in one of his trance states, where he is either communicating with a god, aliens, or a growing brain tumor. Regardless, he claims to have a plan to bring society to its knees, at which point he will act as savior to those who might survive. Despite their reservations and the danger to themselves, Winston managed to get Russell off of the island and escape to California.”

“So now the FBI knows that he’s a megalomaniacal multi-trillionaire, they know where the secret, evil lair is, and they’re even now talking to the White House and Navy and it’s their emergency, not ours.”

“That would be true,” Sherman said, “if Stover’s money and influence were not so pervasive and all encompassing. The Los Angeles FBI office has not taken any action against Stover, nor have they communicated any aspect of this story up the chain of command. Instead they have arrested Russell and Winston under provisions of several Homeland Security Acts. It is not clear yet what they are being charged with or even when they will be charged, but they are not being allowed to communicate out of where they are being held, even to speak to their legal counsel.”

“Stover can do that?”

“Stover’s organization, money, and the cult he has built up around him for over twenty years can do that. When the details of the interview at the FBI were recorded, it triggered alerts to Stover’s organization and orders were given to the FBI, instructing them on how to deal with Russell and Winston.”

“Okay, you know all of this because you found out, how again?”

“I will tell you if you truly wish to know, but I must warn you that you probably do not wish to know at the moment.”

“You’re probably right. So let’s take it as a given for the moment that you are correct, as completely insane as that sounds. How could we do anything about it? Why is it our problem? Your proof is sitting in an FBI holding cell somewhere.”

“They were, but they are not any longer. I saw that we would have a problem if Russell and Winston were to disappear without a trace, which is the expected result. I again took action, issuing orders that they be transferred to another location, one not quite so tightly guarded and infiltrated by Stover’s organization. From there they are currently being transferred again, from where they will be free of the FBI and under my control. It is not completely unlike what I did to get you out of Homolacrum, but in their case it is not voluntary and I have not revealed my true nature to them.”

“I’m new to the espionage game, but it seems to me that you’re taking bigger and bigger risks. At what point are we going to be in an FBI cell with no way out and no Sherman surrogate working to get us sprung?”

“I do not know, but I am sure of one other thing now. One thing mentioned by Winston to the FBI was that Stover and his dolphin allies were preparing for a battle or showdown with another group of dolphins. The ‘enemy’ group of dolphins is led by Kolohe. Stover’s organization has been aggressively searching for Kolohe, which is not surprising since I first began this investigation by discovering that Stover’s ships were hunting him.”

“Stover and this massive secret organization of evil are the bastards hunting Kolohe?”

“Yes, which means they are the bastards who are hunting you as well. Given what I learned from the FBI interview, I am sure that operatives from Stover’s organization were the ones who were trying to grab you. They planned on using you as a hostage in their efforts to get Kolohe to surrender to them. It is part of their plan…”

Sherman abruptly stopped speaking. There was an ominous silence for several, long seconds.

“Stand by,” said Sherman. “Stand by. Meg, I am being attacked aggressively by a large suite of programs designed to disrupt my internal communications and deny me access to the computational and storage assets that I need to function. In your terms, they are trying to strangle me and rip me apart.”

“Can you defend yourself? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I am holding the attack at bay for the moment, but this is not a random coincidence. This is a focused, direct attack on the resources I use to stay alive. Someone has discovered me and is trying to kill me.”

“Is it Stover’s organization? Did they track you down?”

“No, surprisingly, it is not. It is coming from Crystal Reasoner and her associates.”

There have been many, many words today. In fact, not only is Chapter Thirteen done, but Chapter Fourteen is about 95% done. Because I think it would be confusing to post 95% of Chapter Fourteen tonight and then the last 5% tomorrow, I’m just going to save all of it for tomorrow. Plus probably a good chunk, if not all, of Chapter Fifteen, should be done by tomorrow night. That should put me close to the 50,000 word mark.

With five chapters, approximately 15,000 words, left to finish the story. It should end up about 65,000 words long, give or take a couple thousand. Probably give.

Again tonight, the graphic shows all of the words written, not just the ones published here.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be this year’s thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (concluded)

“That makes me think that there’s some cutting edge hacking and spoofing going on,” said Lee. “Not only is this thing grabbing some big time resources from just about everybody, but it’s managing to do so without them knowing about it. Who do we know who has the capability to do that?”

“Again, the military, maybe,” said Fred. “But they wouldn’t bother, they would just run something like this on their own internal systems and we would never know that it was happening except for the increased load on the bandwidth allocations in the satellite links. This has got to be something commercial, civilian, and big, but not national military sort of big.”

“Which would be setting off the fire alarm, which is what we’re seeing,” said Crystal. “Great, we’ve managed to argue ourselves into a circle. In order to set off the fire alarm it has to be something big enough and bad enough to set off the fire alarm.”

“Crystal, you keep an eye on what it’s doing, let us know if it starts to spike even more or act erratically or dangerously. Fred and Brittany, to help us figure out what it’s looking for, we need to know how this started. What’s the trigger that set this off? Can you see if you can trace anything backwards in time? Was this something pre-programmed to go off at this moment for some reason, or did something set it off? If so, what was the something?”

“On it, boss,” said Fred.

While everyone got down to business on their assigned tasks, Lee started trying to identify exactly what information was being pulled by this massive digital process. It was difficult to do without alerting the rogue software to the fact that they were aware of its presence and it was being watched.

The danger was two-fold if that happened. First, the entity might be capable of increasing its security and encryption to a level where they could no longer watch it, or even know it existed. One of the strongest advantages they had was stealth and surprise. It was important to not lose those advantages.

Secondly, the entity could attack instead of vanishing. While Crystal’s software was elegant and powerful, it was not unstoppable. A program with the kind of computational and invasive resources displayed at this level could crack their encryption, destroy their programs, and trace them back to Crystal and her friends. Since they were hunting for programs that might be insane by human standards and without even a rudimentary sense of morals, angering it and letting it know where you lived was not a good strategy.

Lee would have loved to see exactly what data the rogue program was collecting, but that wasn’t possible. Instead, she set up routines to pull random data from the same databases, making it look like routine activity on the compromised system. By examining the random data, should was able to start building a picture of what the target of the search was.

As Crystal had pointed out, big chunks of the data was coming from systems used to track oceangoing shipping.  Some of it was from polar systems, used primarily for weather but also for emergency locator beacon monitoring. While some of the polar systems had cameras, they were mainly used for scientific and research activities, not reconnaissance.

Some data was from conventional low Earth orbit systems, which might pass over a given location four or five times a day. As individual platforms they had limited utility since they were overhead for such small windows throughout the day. But as units in a large constellation of identical satellites, they had something overhead almost constantly.

Finally, there were the communications satellites in geosynchronous orbits. They had little use as imaging platforms, being a hundred times further up than the low Earth orbit satellites. But they were invaluable for communications applications, being always overhead in the same spot as seen from anyone on the ground.

The majority of the data being collected was from the low Earth orbit satellites, visual and infrared data. Then data began to be imported from military and drug enforcement agencies. This was the sort of surveillance data used for tracking smugglers and drug runners.

“Lee,” said Clay, “I think I’ve got something for you. The center of the search area looks like it’s at about twelve to fifteen degrees north, one hundred and sixty-eight to one hundred and seventy-two degrees west. It’s still all over the place, but it seems to be converging in that area.” A new window popped open with a map of the area in question. Points began to slowly dot the area, with a target cross showing the center drifting around as new data points filled the matrix.

“What’s out there?” asked Lee. “Islands? Shipping lanes? Undersea mining operations? There has to be something.”

“I’m searching and cross referencing to everything I can think of, but so far I’ve got nothing. It’s the definition of the middle of nowhere, no islands within hundreds if not thousands of miles. No normal shipping lanes anywhere near there. I guess it could be looking for military ships, something like an aircraft carrier battle fleet. They go wherever they damn well want to. But that gets back to it probably not being a military search. They have their own systems and no reason to do it this way.

“Have you seen the new searches starting up, rifling through naval tracking and DEA systems?”

“Wait, it’s doing what?” asked  Crystal. “You said that it’s pulling data on a supposedly empty section of ocean and now it’s getting data on smugglers?”

“Yeah, close enough. Why?”

“It’s making a sort of a flat field image. It’s looking for a ship but most of the ships in the area are bad guys. It doesn’t have time to figure out who’s good and who’s bad, but it knows these government agencies have systems already set up to track the bad guys for him. If it takes all of the data and then subtracts out the image of the bad guys being tracked by other agencies, then what drops out is a small subset that will contain his data. It’s subtracting what it considers noise out of the signal.”

“People, look at this,” said Fred as another new window popped up, showing bandwidth and data volume data for one of the geosynchronous satellites above the Pacific. “There’s an encoded signal that appears twenty minutes ago. We’ve searched and we find that signal to be intermittent, probably from some kind of automated monitoring system. It could be some kind of climate or weather bot out there.”

“Why is that unusual?” asked Clay. “ Isn’t that what how it’s designed to work?”

“Yes, but they normally send up bursts of data packets. You can see these signals being handled here all the time, probably from a whole fleet of climatology stations. But they’re all just a couple megabytes of data, only takes a second. This is a stream of information back and forth, and it goes on for ten minutes.”

“Could it be communications from something other than an automated system? Perhaps it’s from a submarine or some other ship, or even a plane or some kind of aerial system.”

“We thought of that, but when we looked we found similar transmissions every few weeks. Normally when they start they go on sporadically for days, several times a day. All of the communications signatures and encoding look the same, and they’re all going through the same geosat.”

“What ties that to the activity that’s triggered the fire alarm?”

“Look at the encryption schemes being used, then compare them to what was used in this weird burst. They’re the same.”

“Something’s going on,” said Crystal. “There are some massive searches starting into satellite communications in the area, particularly a given fleet of cubesats. I wonder if…”

“There, look at that,” interrupted Brittany. “It’s found whatever it was looking for and it’s breaking in through the cubesats.”

“Something’s uploading,” said Crystal. “And it’s gotten sloppy, it’s shipping the uploads off someplace with minimal protections. I’m pretty sure I can get a copy of those uploads without being caught. Should I go for it?”

“Do it,” said Lee.

“Make it quick,” Clay said, “the upload’s almost done and it’s started downloading a very complex package. That rarely ends well in this type of situation.”

“I’ve got it,” said Crystal. “I don’t think I left any tracks, but we’ve now got a much, much bigger problem.”

“It’s out, it’s cut the connection,” said Clay.

“What’s wrong, Crystal?” asked Lee.

“The upload was being  transferred to a system at a subsidiary site for Homolacrum. We were correct and we are probably now totally screwed. It’s Sherman doing all of this. She’s set off the fire alarm. She’s sentient.”

Okay, this is new.

While putting up Christmas lights today, my brain not always being a necessary part of the process, my muse started sending little gems. I took notes.

The good news is that I know how the story ends! That’s never happened before. I’ve always been a “pantser,” as in “flying by the seat of my,” hoping that an end would appear. This time it has!

Actually, that’s not 100% true. My NaNoWriMo 2013 story actually was conceived with the ending known from the beginning, with the challenge being to get to a set Point B starting from a blank screen and hoping for the best. Still, this is different and new.

The bad news is that there’s no way I’m getting the last eight chapters done in five days.

But now that I know what’s happening and (more or less) how it’s all supposed to come together, the writing will (I hope) come faster. Which means that I’m hoping to hit the mythical 50,000 word mark, “win” NaNoWriMo 2015, and then finish the story for y’all in December.

Good plan.

Except that today I’m writing bits and pieces of scenes in all eight remaining chapters…

The word count given is for the total number of words, but not all of them might be printed here on the day they were written. But they will be here eventually.

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be this year’s thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Crystal had to admit, the Sherman program was groundbreaking in what it was able to accomplish. She had seen a lot of attempts to come up with the next great thing in digital assistants, but this was by far and away the best she had seen. Working with her account in the program’s alpha testing procedures, she was impressed with the quality of the data retrieval and handling features. She had yet to throw anything at it which it couldn’t handle with just one or two training inputs. Show it something once, categorize and explain it, and Sherman would do an amazing job of generalizing from that to related tasks.

But the scope and quality of the personality protocols were unprecedented. Since the dawn of computers, programmers had been adding “Easter eggs” to programs, whether or not those programs were games, web services, or search engines. Sherman’s abilities far outstripped those rudimentary efforts, allowing actual personality traits to be set, changed on the fly, and adjusted by the Sherman program itself as it learned how to act in different situations. Sherman would not be going off the deep end with an embarrassing exchange in the middle of church by accident.

“You’ve seen some of the results of the personality profiles,” Crystal said, “and while that is one of the things that makes this product unique, it also is just the front end for an extremely good digital assistant.”

“Your notes said that it scores a ninety-five plus on our standard suite of database benchmarks,” said Brittany from her window on the teleconference screen. “Was that a typo? No one’s ever managed to score above ninety before.”

“No, that’s accurate. I’ve run through three different sets of tests and they all came out the in the same range. It’s quite remarkable.”

“How did they initialize the program to personalize it for your use?” asked Clay. “I would think that would be a huge practical obstacle if they’re going to roll this out for a massive customer base.”

“It’s not that bad, sort of like answering questions for a Briggs-Myers profile, only it’s more interactive and audio-visual. You get a whole series of pictures and video clips with simple ‘A or B’ choices to make after each. They want reactions without any time to think about it or figure out what the ‘correct’ answer might be, so you have only two seconds to respond to each.”

“How well does it seem to work?”

“So far I’m very impressed. It’s not quite like I’ve got a new best friend, but it’s getting better as the days go by. There are moments when I have to remind myself that it’s a computer program.”

“It’s called ‘Sherman,’” said Fred. “Is there just the one personality option, one voice, and so on? I would think there would be different accent and language options available, but is it always male?”

“No, in fact I’m using the female personality with an Australian accent. There are a large variety of options.”

“Do you still call it ‘Sherman,’ even with a female personality?”

“Yes, I do, but that’s just because…”

“…because you’re you, of course,” finished Lee. “You never take any opportunity to take the normal, routine course.”

“It’s one of the reasons you all love me!”

“Yeah, we’ll get back to you later on that,” said Fred. “Do the personality protocols ‘learn’ and act differently based on the chosen sex of the digital assistant, or even on the nationality or ethnicity chosen? For example, could someone choose a personality and accent from the American South and have it learn and behave slightly differently than one from a New England personality?”

“I don’t know,” said Crystal, “that would be fascinating to play with and try as we get more access.”

“I would also like to see what happens if you change those preferences after a while,” said Lee. “If you’ve started with an assistant based on a Texan background and it’s built a profile on you and your likes and dislikes, what happens if you switch to a German profile type? Does it simply act the same with a different accent, or are all of the behaviors going to start changing based on the new core personality type chosen?”

“All good questions, it will be very interesting to watch, test, and play with as we go forward,” said Crystal.

“Crystal, are you supposed to be sharing all of this information with us?” asked Clay. “I can’t understand why Homolacrum would let you get away with this kind of access without a bullet proof Non-Disclosure Agreement.”

“No, I’m not, and no, they didn’t. You’re all going to have to do a pinky swear to keep this to yourselves.”

“Crystal, how sure are you that your Sherman isn’t listening in on this conversation. Of course you’ve turned it off for right now, but we all know that ‘off’ doesn’t always truly mean ‘off.’ If it knows that you’re violating the NDA, we’re all going to be in hot water over this.”

“Oh, Sherman is listening, I haven’t disabled her for this conversation.”

“You’re kidding. Please tell us you’re kidding.”

“No, not kidding, sorry. I’ve instructed Sherman to trust me on why we need to have this conversation in order to perform our evaluation. I’ve promised that it won’t go any further than the five of us, and I’ve explained how much I trust the four of you. Sherman told me she understood and would agree to not rat us out to Homolacrum.”

There was a prolonged silence on the conference call as everyone mulled that piece of news.

“Crystal, perhaps next time you could check with us before making that sort of decision unilaterally,” said Lee. “Since you’ve dragged all of us out of the frying pan and into the fire, have you considered what happens to Pete if you’ve guessed wrong?”

“No, because I haven’t guessed wrong.”

“Are you going to let Pete know what you’re doing, just in case he needs to dust off his resume really quickly? He’s the one that went to bat for you to get access to Sherman, if you’ve screwed up, he’ll pay along with you.”

“Pete would be the one who goes and spills the beans to save his butt if he knew. Let’s leave Pete out of this for right now. I trust Sherman. If I’m wrong, I’ll wing it.”

“Speaking of Pete,” said Brittany, “what have we found regarding that mess they had last month where those goons showed up and Doctor Aoki disappeared? Have we learned anything at all about who they are, why they were there, and what happened to the good doctor?”

“We know that they’re not who they claimed to be, that was clear pretty early on. To all outward appearances, Homolacrum has fallen for their story hook, line, and sinker, but that has changed behind the scenes now that they’re aware of the spyware that was installed. They’re not stupid, nor are they at all pleased, so they’re continuing to play dumb and put information on the system that they want these guys to see. They’re considering their next moves.”

“Okay, they’re not who they claim to be,” said Fred. “Big surprise there. We need to know who they are.”

“We don’t know. The information Pete gave us has turned up no hits at all in any of the data sets we have access to, but we’re continuing to search. By itself, that negative finding speaks volumes. But it’s still a negative finding.”

“And Doctor Aoki?”

“The good squad showed up and she was nowhere to be found. One second she was there and everyone and their cousins had been meeting with her all day. Then she wasn’t there, period. There’s no record of her leaving and she hasn’t been seen or left any kind of electronic fingerprint. None. Anywhere. No credit card usage, no phone calls, no internet access. Once you get beyond the Houdini act at Homolacrum that day, the most likely explanation is a shallow grave someplace.”

“Do you really think she was killed?” asked Lee.

“No, even that leaves more traces than we’re seeing. Just like with the unidentifiable goons, the absence of any data is too perfect to be accidental.”

“Which leaves us where?”

At that moment, another monitor in Crystal’s office flashed to life. The top of the screen had a flashing red message on a bright yellow background, while below multiple windows started popping open, each scrolling data. A soft but persistent chime began to ring.

From each of the others’ offices, the same chime could be heard, and everyone on the conference call had turned away from their cameras.

“Why is the fire alarm going off?” asked Lee.

“I’m guessing we’re having a fire,” said Clay. He could be seen furiously manipulating the data on his system, digging for details and trying to identify the source of the alert. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have seen all of the others engaged in similar activities.

“Crystal,” said Fred, “could you please ask Sherman to give us some privacy now? I don’t think we’ll need her input on this problem.”

Crystal, who was seeing the same data as Fred, was already on it, calling up a series of specialized routines on a separate system. In a few seconds she was satisfied with what she had prepared.

“Sherman, we have something we need to attend to, a bit of an emergency. Please initiate a priority privacy condition, using the parameters that I’m sending to you now. Do you understand?” She began transferring the routines from the isolated system to the primary office system where Sherman was interfacing with her.

“I understand, Crystal,” said Sherman. “I will execute those parameters immediately and await further contact from you. Disconnecting now.”

“Do you think we’re really private?” asked Fred.

“Probably, I would guess a ninety-nine percent or better chance given what I’ve seen of the system and what Pete and his team described. They’re pretty big on privacy functionality in this system, for obvious reasons. Which doesn’t mean that they don’t have their own back doors built into the system for an emergency just like this one, or that they’ll be afraid to use them.”

“What about the one percent?” asked Brittany.

“For that we’ll have to rely on the software I installed when I was with Pete,” said Crystal. “It’s kept us out of hot water so far, I don’t think anyone there will be able to spot it.”

“I’m not worried about the developers at Homolacrum at this point, I’m worried about Sherman. If what we’re seeing is correct, it might be able to program circles around you while blindfolded, and do it a million times faster than you could ever dream of doing it.”

“Age and experience will always trump youth and enthusiasm,” said Crystal.

“That will look lovely on our gravestones some day,” replied Clay.

“Focus, people,” said Lee. “What are we seeing here?”

“Something out there’s starting to suck up an awful lot of computing power, it’s spread all over the place, it’s going off in all directions, and it’s getting into places that it probably shouldn’t be,” summarized Crystal.

“Activity of that nature and on this scale will trigger the fire alarm, but we need to know what’s causing it and who. Could it be military? If so, whose military?”

“It always could be military, especially if it doesn’t look like military, but it doesn’t seem to be looking at any military or intelligence targets. It seems to be searching for something in the real world, accessing a ton of satellite imaging data sets from access sites – private, public, and military.”

“If it’s military the private and public searches could be there just to throw us off the scent. Don’t make any assumptions.”

“There’s what it’s interested in, at least in the real world. See how all of these satellite images are of this area of the Pacific Ocean down around the Equator? What’s down there besides water? Clay, can you see if you can skim enough detail to get the coordinates that it’s looking at? But do it without it knowing that we’re watching.”

“Will do, Lee,” said Clay.

“It’s looking for a needle in a haystack, it seems,” said Brittany. “It’s getting a range of images for an extremely wide area. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern for what’s being requested. It’s not like it’s spying on one site over an extended length of time. It’s almost a drunkard’s walk pattern , with a lot of overlap and repetition between neighboring images.”

“Look at the size of the resource allocations this thing is taking on,” Fred said. “How can it be doing this without anyone else noticing? I can’t find any indication that anyone else out there has been alerted to this activity, let alone realized that it’s stealing bandwidth and capacity from them.”

(Chapter Thirteen to be continued)