Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (7 page)

“I guess the electrochemical sensitivity of the neural analyzer or my programming is not good enough. There must be far more subtle signals coming from a Shaitan body, which this piece of equipment must be missing.” Violet said disheartened.

Ramesh suspected something else altogether. He was now thinking like a computer engineer. “But didn’t you say that the neural analyzer is sensitive enough to detect a few hundred molecules of organic material, any biology cannot be more precise or subtler than that?”

“Yes I did Ramesh, but this is clearly not working, so I must be wrong.” Violet replied still in a despondent mood.

“There is one obvious thing we might be missing here.” Ramesh said thoughtfully.

“Pray let us know what it is?” asked Violet.

“Security. More precisely computer and network security. What is the first thing you do when you switch on you DNA analyzer? You enter your password of course. Try any of our specialized equipment in our human camp, and they are all protected by passwords to thwart unauthorized personnel from using it. So why should it be any different for the Shaitans? We don’t password protect our food though, but you get the idea.” Ramesh said smiling.

“So you are saying that Sheba entered her password, which was not part of the pattern she had given us? So why does the pattern look exactly the same?” Violet challenged Ramesh.

“The concept of Password is a human idiosyncrasy, it is a product of our history, psychology and social behavior. There is nothing sacrosanct about having to use passwords to establish identity. In fact it is a very error prone, inefficient and insecure method to establish the presence of a person. As long as anyone knows the password, the actual person authorized need not be present.

Biometrics on the other hand is fast, efficient and secure mechanism to establish the presence of the authorized person. You take something unique about the body of the person like finger print, eye or face scan. The person can never forget that or forget it at home. You can be certain that the person authorized is physically present with a biometric authentication.” Ramesh said professorially. The subject was obviously close to his heart.

“Yes that might work. It is unlikely to be a fingerprint, or limb print in this case though. One can touch the machine slime anywhere and from any part of the body that has body slime. In fact the body does not need to be in touch, only the slime. So it still has to be an electrochemical signal, and we did not see any difference in signal if you recollect.” Violet said.

“You know that the Shaitans keep mentioning about ‘signing by taste’ and ‘signing by smell’ during their conversation. For example when confronted about the signal pattern given by her not working, Sheba said and I quote ‘That is the exact pattern, I can sign it by my taste’. At that time I thought it was just a Shaitan expression which meant something like ‘it is true, I swear on myself’.

What if they culturally use their slime and their odor to establish identity? On Earth territorial animals like Lions and dogs excrete urine, feces, and rub their bodies on trees to leave a trail of their identity. The Shaitans could be doing the same.” Mischa spoke up. She had been quietly hearing the exchange till now.

“Yes I agree to the theory, but the proof is the signal. That signal is exactly the same in both cases.” Violet said.

“Wait a minute!” Ramesh said excited. “A few days ago when we were preparing for this precision recording, one of the first things that you asked me to program was a filter. The signals coming out of the Shaitans like all biological beings is analog. You asked me to filter out what looked like white random noise, which was riding on the signal.

What if that if that was not random noise, but a long period repeating pattern, which might be unique to an individual? If that is the case, it would be the perfect chemical signature… wait a minute! The original signature is still recorded. I am only filtering the output. Let me analyze the random noise component to check if there is any pattern.” Ramesh was already pushing his way in front of Violet’s terminal. He was excited and forgot his manners. Violet didn’t mind, she looked at Mischa and both women smiled.

Once Ramesh knew what he was looking for, it did not take him long to find the pattern. The pattern was very long and could never have been seen visually. It had to be run through mathematical analysis for it to be found, but it was there. Ramesh quickly removed the filter to be able to replay the raw recording. He looked at Violet, who gave him a nod. He picked up the neural analyzer and touched it to the slime of the food processor. Sheba jumped visibly when the shallow pool started filling up again with another helping of Shaitan food!

“Congratulations Ramesh. You did it. I guess I was too clever for myself. I wasted your time making you write that filter, and wasted a few days of us trying to get this working, when a simple recording would have done.” Violet said in an apologetic tone.

“On the contrary, it is a lucky break thanks to you Violet. We have unwittingly cracked the Shaitan security system. At least, one that works on their food processor. Suppose Sheba out here knows the command to open up the nuclear power plant for inspection. She shares the command pattern with us, but she is not authorized to do it. Mimi however is authorized to do it but will not share the command with us.

We would have never been able to crack it with a simple recording. Now with this knowledge and the filter, we can simply record Mimi’s signature from any communication she makes, filter it out and transpose it on the command from Sheba, and viola we have our job done!” Ramesh said with excitement.

“That reminds me. Do dead Shaitans transmit electrochemical signatures?” Ramesh asked Violet.

“I have recorded electrochemical signals from dead Shaitans, although I am not sure whether they were degraded or just junk signals once they are dead. The signals must surely keep deteriorating anyway soon after they die. Why do you ask?” Violet asked.

“There might be systems which neither of the two live Shaitans have authorized access to. If that is the case then we might be screwed. If we can salvage chemical signatures from as many dead Shaitans as possible, maybe we might have a better chance.” Ramesh said.

Over the period of next few days they found out that the chemical signatures of Shaitans do deteriorate in a warm environment. All the dead Shaitans brought into the habitat for study had no electrochemical activity. The Shaitan who had died outside and frozen in the cold of Titan however, when thawed to Shaitan room temperature of 15°C by the application of a thermal blanket, would resume electrochemical activity for a few hours before it stopped.

Since there were no rank markings on the suits of Shaitans, they did not know which were higher ranking Shaitans. They spent the next one week collecting the chemical signatures of as many Shaitans as they could get hold of outside the Shaitan habitat. The people in the Human base were also instructed to collect the signatures in a similar way, although most of those were likely to be lower ranking warriors meant for dying.

Once Sheba had given them enough instructions for operating innocuous equipment like air filters, temperature controls etc. The humans were able to discern patterns in the switch-on, switch-off instructions. They were then able to operate some of the equipment that even Sheba would not or could not give commands for. The humans for example were able to shut off row by row of the Shaitan growing tanks, which even Sheba would not share instructions for. They left one row of 8 tanks on. Scientists may want more live Shaitans for future experiments.

The biggest breakthrough came however when Ramesh was able to crack full level access to the Shaitan computers. Ramesh had gotten basic maintenance level access from Sheba by tricking her about some maintenance issue. It was clear however after some time, that Sheba did not have either access or the commands to get deeper into the computer system.

It was the first time that they had had to torture Mimi to get to know commands for higher level access to the computer along with her chemical signature. However even she didn’t have full access to the computer memory and to certain critical equipment like the nuclear reactor. Mimi knew the commands, but didn’t have the authorization. The authorization signature came from one of the dead Shaitans lying outside the habitat.

Ramesh had gathered the leadership team in the hall that housed the nuclear reactor for a demonstration. He had his terminal placed near the central block that housed the hemispheric nuclear reactor.

“Wait a minute. Did we get it wrong? Is this actually the computer room? I thought you were going to give us a demo and insight into the Shaitan computer system.” Jorge said in a circumspect manner.

Ramesh reverted back to college speak with his college friend. “Dude, if we primitive humans can network our computer and work from anywhere we want, do you think that the Shaitans would be so primitive that you would have to stand in front of the quantum cores to hack into it? The entire habitat is networked. We could be standing anywhere in the habitat and doing this. I just chose this place because it is a cool place, and also because of what I am going to demonstrate to you. The computer core room is slimy and yucky anyway.”

Everybody stood in a semicircle around Ramesh as he started his discourse. “First if you notice I have attached a neural analyzer to the slime out there, which is connected to my terminal. That slime ladies and gentlemen is the Shaitan equivalent of a terminal, touch interface, keyboard, mouse, fingerprint scanner and any other computer peripheral you can think of.”

“What is a mouse? I am assuming you don’t mean the kind that manages to get into my kitchen. I think I have seen a keyboard though. Isn’t it the one you have in your study attached to your terminal?” asked Mischa.

Ramesh rolled his eyes. “Don’t bother. It is a term we computer engineers use together – keyboard and mouse. It is a historical term. No one actually uses a mouse now, but it used to be used in the early days of the computers to point and click on objects on the screen. As far as a keyboard is concerned, it is a programmer’s best friend. It is what we use when we code.”

“So why don’t you just say what you want to program, or touch it on the terminals. Why do you need that plastic thing to hack into?” asked Mischa genuinely curious.

“The answer to that question would have been obvious Mischa if you were writing ten thousand lines of G++ or the older C++ code which use syntax that makes no sense in plain English. Any way we digress, let’s get back to the Shaitan computer.

As I was saying that slime is the interface the Shaitans use to see data and give commands to the computer. When I say ‘see’, the Shaitans don’t really see data, since they are almost blind. Rather they taste the data from the electrochemical signals. They issue commands the same way.

As you can imagine, my knowledge of the system is severely limited at this time, and some of my concepts about their computer architecture might be outright wrong. There are a lot of guesses going around. The good news though is that there are some fundamental aspects of mathematics and computation that are universal. So they are the same for us and the Shaitans, and those fundamental aspects are helping me slowly peel through this puzzle.

I have been dying to tear into the beauty of a quantum computer that they have out here. I believe it is possible to understand its workings completely in a fairly short period of time – by that I mean a few years, but we may not be able to replicate such a computer until we learn their manufacturing process, which has to be radically different from ours.

So I have concentrated initially not on the computer itself, but on the control system that the computer operates. This control system runs everything inside this habitat. I want to give a demo and also pass on the learnings of whatever I know till now about the control system to others here.

That will give the rest of you access to systems like the nuclear reactor, and equally important their fabrication units. I think it is very critical to understand their manufacturing process if we are to replicate anything out here.

Once you all are comfortable with the control systems here, it will enable all of you to work simultaneously in your respective fields thus increasing our productivity and hopefully we will be able to reverse engineer a lot of these technological marvels. It will also free me up to dive into the core of the quantum computer.

So let me start with the most dramatic part of my presentation.” Ramesh said theatrically while having a big smile on his face. As he issued the command on his terminal, he kept his eyes on the leadership team. He wanted to see the reaction on their faces. The gasps and shocks written on their faces was worth all the nights he had spent toiling over the control systems.

The hemisphere of the nuclear reactor split open at an invisible seam, and the two halves slowly started rotating open, moving into the square block, that was the base of the hemisphere. The external metal was just a cover. As each half of the cover sunk into the base, it exposed a sphere that was half sunk into the square block.

The sphere was held up inside the base with multiple struts jutting out of the hemispherical depression of the base, which held up the sphere. The sphere was magnificent and weird at the same time. The surface of the sphere reminded people of the surface of a human brain with multiple folds. The moment one tried to concentrate on any one fold though, it would seem to dissolve and become smaller folds. When you concentrated on one of the smaller folds, it would similarly dissolve to form smaller folds, until you got a headache.

The entire surface seemed to shimmer, as if it was constantly changing, and yet when one concentrated, there was no movement visible on the surface. There were faint cracks of light visible from between the folds, and yet when one concentrated on those cracks of light, they seem to move away just like the folds.

Each of them in the room except Ramesh was staring with his or her mouth gaping wide open. Some of them might have even been drooling. Ramesh gave out a loud laughter. He had been recording this for posterity. He was sure to have lots of fun showing it back to Jorge and Mischa. He laughed out loud.