Antivirus (The Horde Series Book 1) (9 page)

“You do now, simply because we don’t believe you to be a part of the breach anymore.”

“What breach?”

She sighed and stretched her legs, a movement that did not escape Bolson’s glance. “The truth is,” she said, “I was assigned to your lab because we had gotten word that someone in the lab, possibly you, was talking to outside sources, looking for a buyer.”

“A buyer?” Bolson exclaimed, incredulous. “For the Horde project? You mean the NSA thought I was a traitor?”

She nodded. “You were at the top of the list from day one and, up until recently, you were still at the top of the list.”

“So you decided to derail my career, without knowing the truth?” he snapped angrily.

“No, Tom,” she replied honestly. “The intentions were not malicious. After the Horde disappeared, we had over a hundred techs working out of our offices, trying to track this thing down and figure out what went wrong. You were under constant surveillance and the conclusion eventually reached was that you were not a part of it. So the idea was to get Hawthorne involved and turn up the heat on you, hoping that whoever was working in the shadows would think they were clear to act, since you were going to be the fall-guy.”

“And have they?” he asked, still upset.

She shook her head. “Not to date.”

“So why are you telling me this now?” he continued. “Why end the charade?”

“It’s never been a charade,” she said quietly. “I believe you’re innocent and it was under my recommendation that the NSA agreed to bring you into the loop and let you know what was happening.”

“But why?”

“Because we are out of ideas,” she sighed. “I’ve been involved in this project for a long time, Tom. I know what you know. But I have to wonder what there is that you and I don’t know, and I need your help figuring that out.”

“Like what?” he said, his hands out in disbelief. “I’ve put this thing together from the ground up, Dani.”

“True. But of the half a dozen other people involved in the project, who knows enough about the project to speed up its learning algorithm? I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Horde has reached a level of sentience, but two years ahead of schedule? Do you know what the odds are of that happening without outside interference? Someone sabotaged the timeline, Tom. We need to find out who.”

“No one else working on this project has any clue as to what the true scope of the Horde is,” he countered. “No one. In the lab, only three people have any idea what we are actually working on: you, me, and General Hawthorne. Of those few other people involved in this, everyone else only has bits and pieces of the whole, with no clue what the final goal is.”

“We know that. But someone has figured it out. Someone has been working in the shadows and we’re completely stumped on who it is. There is simply no other explanation. Someone kicked up the learning curve on this thing in order to get it out of the lab.”

“That’s just not possible, Dani,” he said. “This whole project has been carefully scripted and controlled. Everything we have done has been recorded, monitored, and tested. Everything we…” Bolson suddenly stopped and his complexion went bone-white. “Oh, my God!” he said softly, an icy chill running down his spine. Suddenly, he knew. He had the answers that both of them were looking for.

“What is it?” Martz answered, suddenly tense.

“We have to get back to the lab!” he exclaimed and jumped to his feet.

“Why? What is it?”

“I know who it is!”

“Then tell me,” she said, her voice suddenly excited. “We can end this right now.”

“No,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her to her feet. “I can’t tell you. I have to show you. We have to show Hawthorne, too. Come on!”

A half hour later, Major Thomas Bolson was bringing up the data graphs on the monitor as Danielle Martz and General Hawthorne looked on. “As you know, half of this project has been monitoring the processing power of the Horde. There really is no way to measure sentience, so to speak, so we would monitor data and ask ourselves the question – is this simply increased computing power or literal thought?”

“Go on,” Hawthorne said, staring at the screen, but seeing nothing that he didn’t already know.

“Look,” Bolson said, pointing to a simple graph that was on the screen. It was a typical X/Y graph with several light blue graphing lines running along the X axis. “This graph measures the processing power of the Horde about two years ago.” For the most part, the measurements showed slow, but steady, increases. He pointed to a major spike that matched up in several of the data streams. “Right here,” he explained, “we had introduced an algorithmic equation that we had hoped would speed up the process.”

“It spiked,” Martz agreed. “It appears that it worked.”

“For a moment,” Bolson answered. “But if you continue to follow the data, you will see that it immediately falls off to levels even lower than what they were prior to the spike. We deemed it a failure.”

“It flamed out,” Hawthorne put in, remembering the optimism they had experienced when the procedure was attempted. “This is old news, major. I thought you were going to show me how this thing got lose.”

“I am,” Bolson answered, fully confident in his findings. “In terms of a graph, a computer program works in a two-dimensional X/Y area. When it’s working hard, the line spikes. When it’s not, the line stays constant.”

“So?”

“So, when we introduced the algorithm, we got the spike, but it was short-lived. It did, however, have an unexpected result.”

“And what’s that?” Hawthorne asked.

Bolson tapped out several commands and the picture was transformed into a three-dimensional graph, then spun for a top view and froze. The light blue lines on the two-dimensional graph now looked almost like a funnel. “What you are seeing here,” he explained, pointing to the low point of the picture where the line was most compressed, “is the point that the algorithm was introduced.”

Martz caught on immediately. “You’re saying that the computing power of the Horde went 3D?”

“Exactly,” Bolson answered with growing dread. “Instead of showing a continuous upward spike in processing ability along the Y axis, the program spread it out along the Z axis.”

Hawthorne shook his head. “What are you saying, major?”

“I’m saying,” he said, “that it worked.”

“It worked?” Hawthorne was skeptical.

Martz nodded, realizing what the major was pointing to. “It did,” she answered softly. “The Horde achieved sentience two years ago, general. Not two weeks ago.”

“Are you two out of your minds?” Hawthorne snapped, looking at first one and then the other. “How the hell did this thing go live on us two years ago and we not know it?”

“Because the Horde hid it. It actively hid what it was doing from us,” Bolson answered quietly, typing out a couple more commands. The graph then became a running measurement following a timeline. The funnel grew larger and the computer compensated, pushing the image of the graph downward to allow for the upward growth. Eventually, it could compensate no further and the screen was filled with a solid light blue color. “Two years ago, the Horde had the processing ability of maybe a thousand human minds at about the point we introduced the algorithm. It has grown almost exponentially along the Z axis ever since.”

“And where would that put it now?”

Bolson looked at the number at the bottom of the screen, a number that was adding digits faster than he could count and was already off the screen. “It’s incalculable,” he finally answered, then turned to look at Martz. “It was the Horde all along, Dani,” he said, not bothering to hide their familiarity with each other. “It’s been thinking for a long time. The anomaly the NSA thought was someone on the inside trying to contact a buyer...”

“...was actually the Horde testing the boundaries of its world,” she finished.

“So, you’re telling me this thing has been sentient for two years?” Hawthorne said, still unable to comprehend the possibility. If what they were telling him was true, the entire world was in a whole lot of trouble.

“Yes, sir,” Bolson replied. “And it’s had two years to plan its escape.”

Chapter 11

Mountain Pacific Quality Health, Helena, Montana:
Jon Sherrard walked up to the front desk, absently scratching the angry red welts that had risen up on his face just two nights past. He still had no idea what they were, nor did he know how to treat them. Anything he could pull out of the medicine cabinet had been tried and discarded as ineffective, and the welts remained, red and itchy.

“Can I help you?” the pretty receptionist behind the counter asked with a smile. She was young, probably still in college and working part time at the doctor’s office to help supplement her schooling.

Sherrard pressed a hand to the welts as he replied, “I’m here to see Doctor Douglas. I’ve got a two o’clock appointment.”

The young woman quickly scanned her appointment book, then again looked up with a smile. “You’re right on time, Mister Sherrard,” she answered. “If you’ll have a seat, I’ll have the nurse come get you when he’s ready.”

He nodded and took a seat as requested. He had only to sit for a few minutes before the door into the examination/treatment area opened up and another woman, with the same friendly smile as the receptionist, stepped out and motioned to him. “This way, if you please, Mister Sherrard,” she said kindly.

Jon stood up and followed her silently and, after going through the standard routine of having his height, weight, and blood pressure checked, he was ushered into a treatment room where he was asked once more to wait.

Doctor Douglas arrived a few minutes later. He was an older man, well into his fifties, and stood barely five and a half feet if he was wearing the right shoes. He was somewhat rotund for a general practitioner, but he was kindly and knowledgeable—two traits that kept patients returning to him any time they found themselves needing medical attention.

“Good afternoon, Jon,” he said warmly, reaching out and shaking Sherrard’s hand. “I heard you gave everyone quite a scare last week.”

Jon just shrugged. “I don’t know about everybody else,” he replied ruefully, “but it wasn’t much of a vacation for me.”

“I was just reviewing your patient records,” he went on. “They have it diagnosed as a coma?”

“Of some sort,” Jon agreed. “Had a mishap at work and it put me under for a little while.”

“But doing fine now, I take it?”

“For the most part,” he answered and then pointed to the welts on his forehead. “Just dealing with some kind of zit attack now, I guess.”

Doctor Douglas chuckled and motioned for Jon to have a seat on the examination table. “Nurse said you thought it was a rash?”

“Yeah,” he replied with a nod, resisting the urge to scratch the skin off his forehead. “Itches like hell.”

“Have you tried using anything on it?”

“Everything we have in the medicine cabinet at home. Nothing worked.”

“Any bug bites or contact with anything you normally don’t come in contact with?” the doctor asked as he leaned in for a closer look. He took note that the welts were red and seemed to throb ever so slightly.

“No,” Jon answered, shaking his head. “Nothing that I can recall.”

“And they just popped up a couple days ago?”

This time, Jon nodded his head in the affirmative. “Pretty much a day after I got home from the hospital,” he answered. “I woke up in the morning and there were a couple of them on my cheek. Now, there’s a few more, and my forehead isn’t the only place they are showing up.”

“Where else?” the physician asked, sitting back with a thoughtful look on his face.

Jon pointed to his shoulders. “Front and back of both shoulders, down my back and on both hips,” he answered.

The physician motioned for Jon to remove his shirt and Sherrard quickly pulled it off, tilting both shoulders toward Douglas and then turning around so the man could see the line of welts running straight down his spine.

“That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” Douglas muttered, turning his patient back around and looking closely at one of the welts on Jon’s face. He thought he could faintly see a tiny hole in the middle of the bump. When he looked at another one, he saw the same thing. “Jon, have you been out of the country lately?”

“No, why?” Jon answered, figuring that having his consciousness running around in cyberspace didn’t count.

“I’m not sure, but I’m wondering if we’re dealing with some kind of a parasite here,” was the reply. He stood up and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you what I want to do, Jon. I’d like to get a couple X-rays. Maybe see if we can see something beneath the surface here.”

“Whatever you say, doc,” Jon nodded.

Doc Douglas opened the door and then looked at his patient. “I’ll have Jeanine come down here and take you to X-ray. We’ll try and get this looked at pretty quickly.” A moment later, he left.

Jon was grateful that the doctor’s office wasn’t busy, and less than thirty minutes later, he found himself sitting back on the examination table, looking at an X-ray of his shoulder as Doctor Douglas pointed to a pair of thin, wavy white lines buried beneath the flesh. “What is that?” he asked worriedly.

Doc Douglas shook his head. “I can’t be certain, but my guess is that you’re looking at a parasitic worm of some kind.”

“A worm?” Jon wrinkled his face in disgust.

“It sure looks like it,” he replied, pointing to where one end of the worm was located just beneath the surface of the skin, while the other end looked like it was part of his collar bone. “I don’t know what kind we’re talking about, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s something along those lines.”

“What do I do about it then?”

“Well, I’d like to get a local biopsy here and pull one of these things out to see what exactly we are dealing with. Unfortunately, it looks the worm has attached itself to the bone and there’s no telling what that would do,” he answered. “So, I’m going to make an appointment with the hospital for you tomorrow morning. I’d like you to go in and have them surgically removed, so we can see what it is.”

“So I get to have it cut out?”

“They can do it under a local, Jon,” he nodded. “You’ll be in and out in a couple hours.”

“Anything I can do in the meantime? Any drugs or antibiotics I can take?”

“I’m not certain if any standard treatment is going to work, but I’ll get a couple of scripts written for you just in case,” he answered. “I wish I could tell you more, Jon, but I honestly don’t know what this is. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Sherrard shivered. “Man, this is just weirding me out,” he sighed.

The doctor patted him on the arm. “That’s understandable,” he replied. “Hang tight and we’ll get something for you, as well as a cream to hopefully help with the itching.”

A moment later, he was gone and Jon was left to wait, pondering what was happening to him. Absently, he pressed a finger to one of the welts, and with a startled cry, jerked his hand away in pain. Looking at his finger, he could see a single drop of blood forming as if from a pinprick. He felt a wave of nausea wash over him as he realized that whatever was inside him had just bitten him.