[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (11 page)

So while this installation was the first, it would certainly not be the last, as each Agent would eventually strive to set up their relays in such a way as to provide more access points across the globe through which to sift through our data. For now, though, they made do, sticking strictly to a predefined limit on the speed they downloaded data from the connection, and focusing the first steps of their behemoth task on that data most easily accessed from within the US.

Of course, while 90% of world’s information was accessible through the internet, all the most critical information was, by design, part of that 10% that was not allowed to play on the world’s information superhighway.

Where the orbiting AI’s considerable abilities fell short, the Agents’ part began.

As the closed-door security committee meeting progressed, Laurie tried hard not to fall asleep. The halls of power were, unfortunately, often filled with morons, and for some reason the morons typically seemed to control the agenda. I suppose the business world is much the same, she thought, though it was not much consolation. Meetings were, almost by definition, the product of the indecisive mind, and so they were usually run, and often populated, by indecisive people.

As they finished up another agenda item, she was wondering what was next, when General Pickler nudged her subtly with his elbow. Oh, I guess it’s us, she thought.

Admiral Hamilton had indeed just started presenting on the deep-sea probe project, and she knew she may be needed to interject at any point. She sat up and sorted her folders on her lap, she had several items with her which she could reference if there was a fight, and based on how things had gone over the last two days from a political perspective, a fight was entirely possible.

“After approving the second stage of the project in essence, Mr. Secretary,” the admiral explained, “we began reviewing each crash site in order to select the one most likely to provide a successful result.

“We eliminated the crash sites in Russian and Chinese waters immediately as politically untenable, and the one off our own Alaskan shore unfortunately fell in the Aleutian trench, whose particularly treacherous currents and weather patterns would add several extra layers of complexity to an already complex task. While the experimental scanner may be able to find the object, it would prove very hard to retrieve it from this location.”

“Yes, yes, I know about the problems there, Admiral, what about the others?” pressed the secretary of defense and chair of the meeting.

“Well, Mr. Secretary, that left the Eastern Mediterranean, Outer Hebrides, English Channel, and the two in the Indian Ocean. Of those the Eastern Mediterranean was the most practical, but we felt sending a naval vessel into the waters off Israel and Lebanon was less than wise, even a disguised one, so the next best options were the ones that impacted near the coasts of India and Sri Lanka, sir.”

“Ah,” said the secretary, sitting back, “so this is why I have been hearing about requests to enter India’s sovereign waters with a minesweeper. Requests that, I understand, have been denied.”

“Yes, sir, on the grounds that they intend to mount a retrieval project of their own, though we know from our own sources that they do not have the technology we possess to find the object, nor does it appear that they have dedicated the resources necessary to build such a device.”

“So what do you propose, Admiral?”

Laurie was surprised that neither the admiral nor the secretary of defense had turned to her for further arguments as to why this needed to move forward; instead, the admiral opened another folder from the stack in front of him.

“Well, Mr. Secretary, as you know we had anticipated that we may have some trouble in this area, so we had formed an alternate plan, a plan that drove our selection of the Marine Research Institute as our vendor for developing the probe.”

Laurie was intrigued; she had not been part of that conversation.

“As you know from the brief I sent you when the president originally approved the project, we have an asset at the Institute. I have since briefed said asset, and he is ready to execute the search covertly, using a civilian research vessel we have access to in the Indian Ocean.”

Asset? Slowly it dawned on Laurie, and in retrospect it seemed painfully obvious.

“And you feel this is the best course of action, Admiral?”

“Yes, sir.” confirmed Admiral Hamilton with a nod.

“And you, General Pickler,” continued the secretary, “I assume you are in agreement with your navy counterpart?”

“Yes, sir.” said the general gravely.

“Very well then, I will assume, Dr. West, that you have no objections either,” she nodded, pretending she had known about the plan all along, “then let’s move forwards.” concluded the secretary, taking a breath and gathering his thoughts for a moment before going on.

“Gentlemen, though they will hopefully never know it, we are essentially talking about invading India, so I would like any civilian knowledge of this operation kept to a minimum. Your asset is to be the only civilian onboard, is that clear?”

“If I may, Mr. Secretary?” piped Laurie from her seat, “There is one civilian I would recommend sending on the mission, sir: the probe’s designer, a Mr. Danielson.”

The secretary frowned. “What is this man’s clearance?” he asked the room in general.

Aides and assistants went to work, like automatons, looking up the information, but both Laurie and General Pickler already knew the answer, and the reaction it would get.

“Level 5, sir.” said General Pickler, somewhat meekly.

“Out of the question.” snapped the secretary, pausing a moment, then continuing, “If we must have an expert onboard, then surely Dr. West can assist this…” he looked at the memo in front of him “…Captain Hawkson.”

She looked at him aghast for a moment then remembered herself. It would have to suffice. A level 5 would never be allowed on a mission like this, and Captain Hawkson, though he was apparently not quite what he had seemed, was still a very capable scientist, no matter what his ongoing ties to the navy actually were. She would just have to learn the system as well. And buy a lot of Dramamine.

* * *

It had been two weeks since Lana Wilson had set up her subspace tweeter relay in the closet of her proxy home. During that time it had acted as a conduit for over ten exabytes of data: ten billion gigabytes. The AIs were using a complex virtual routing system to throw off the local cable company’s data monitoring systems and hide the amount of their bandwidth that was being taken up by a single location. It could not, unfortunately, reduce the effect this was having on the surrounding area’s cable signals and the slight but rising number of complaints the company was inevitably going to receive, but it would make it nearly impossible for the company to trace the source of the problem, if the small, local provider was even proactive enough to seek it out at all.

As the information poured into the four supercomputers’ memory banks it was sorted and dated in a complex relational database. Without politics or complaint, the four satellites dotted around the globe divided up the data and began wading through it.

For now, they had the time, capacity and patience to analyze all the data they could get, so they had yet to refine a set of criteria that would limit the search. At this stage they did not leave any stone unturned. Starting with e-mails, they began reading every message sent by every user of all of the major e-mail providers. Literally trillions of messages were sorted, read, and categorized, key pieces of information they contained tracked, logged and cross-referenced in a separate section of the database.

Addresses, bank statements, names, dates, meeting times; everything. When you have onboard memory equivalent to nearly half the combined capacity of every computer on earth, you can afford to start by storing everything you find, and worry about cleaning out the raw material once you have already gleaned any useful information from it.

Pictures were analyzed using complex facial recognition software, the computer determining with surprising accuracy the people in each photo by cross-referencing the e-mails of the sender and receiver over time, categorizing and noting relationships, lovers, family members, office flings, potential pregnancies, potential divorces. As the advanced artificial minds began to gain more understanding of their subjects and their cultures, they became capable of identifying compromising photos and situations, which were flagged for potential use later.

More private material and blackmail fodder was gathered in the two weeks after the connection was placed than by every secret service in human history combined. Admittedly, people worth blackmailing were far less likely to have bank details or naked pictures of their mistresses on their gmail account, but few people were completely infallible when it came to their electronic communications.

A subset of the limited data capacity available was dedicated to the much harder to access private files of the major military and government bodies that could be tapped into from this connection. Due to the aggressive encryption used by the armed forces, it took even these computational giants some time to crack each e-mail, so focusing too much of their still small available bandwidth on downloading them alone would have been an inefficient use of their time.

However, it was while sifting through some of the e-mails from one Admiral Hamilton that one of the supercomputers’ subroutines came across a set of instructions to a former navy captain.

“Proceed immediately to Kodikkarai, India, airline and train vouchers en route under separate cover. Take command of Research Vessel
King’s Transom
, load and test device, Dr. West to supervise device’s dispatch and setup on
King’s Transom
. DO NOT declare device’s purpose, DO NOT declare mission’s purpose, DO NOT declare US government involvement or awareness, mission will be denied under all circumstances, proceed to sea at earliest possible date with assigned team awaiting orders in Indian Ocean, locate target item or remains thereof, if successful notify this office of location, retire to international waters and await further orders.”

The software had already discovered details of the earlier requests to India for access to their sovereign waters, but had not flagged them as access was not granted by the Indian government, and India had no machine capable of finding the objects in their deep sea graves. However, as this new information was analyzed and cross-referenced with the location of Kodikkarai, the subroutine automatically made the first entry in a hitherto unused section of the huge database: Potential Mission Threats.

The computer Mind overseeing all the processes and subroutines noticed the new entry with a part of its brain it had permanently dedicated to monitoring that section, no matter how empty it had been to date. Immediately the mind began to investigate. Soon the bandwidth limits for government data would be temporarily abandoned, and the combined abilities of four vast AI minds would start to seek out all relevant information and decide how to react.

The overriding goals of the supercomputers were the retrieval of the information they had been sent to gather and keeping themselves and the Agents they supported undetected until they were ready to use that data.

As an unfortunate vintner in France had unwittingly discovered, secrecy was a primary mission parameter.

“Now, I can’t stress how important it is that you do not mention that you are from the Institute.” James had reiterated to Neal and Madeline as the chartered turboprop had made its way to the small landing strip outside Kodikkarai.

“We get it, James, honestly, we get it.” Madeline replied earnestly, “I am here as your bit of fun.”

“Like a mistress…a concubine if you will.” Neal put in with a sardonic smile. Madeline and James’ relationship was not the secret they thought it had been.

James tried to reestablish control over the conversation, “OK, guys, I know I am being paranoid here, but…”

“How about we say,” Madeline interrupted with feigned seriousness, “that I am one of the airline hostesses, and you just managed to bag me on the flight over?”

Neal and Madeline laughed, “You certainly dress like one…and that hair.” said Neal, and she threw her empty plastic water bottle across the aisle at him.

Dr. West, sitting with Neal on the other side of the aisle from the two lovebirds, laughed. Then, in a more serious tone said, “Really you two, we’ve been over this before, but it is important that you understand how serious this is. You are not officially here. James and I are under strict orders not to bring any other civilians on board. The crew of the boat, though they will seem motley, will be all navy.”

“So what are we
doing
here, then?” asked Neal, “Other than apparently joining the mile-high club with James, here?”

Ever the lady, Laurie moved smoothly past Neal’s last comment and addressed his first question, “We still may need you to help configure the probe once we get it out of the back of this plane.”

Through methods unbeknownst to the group, the large and cumbersome probe, and its larger wooden packing crate, had miraculously escaped inspection on the trip over. This was probably due to the pleasant, inconspicuous men who had somehow been waiting for them at each stop along the way, dispatched by the CIA to help ‘expedite’ their onward journey.

“Once we have the probe set up, with your subtle assistance, of course,” continued Laurie, “you will have to stay on shore. We have to do the rest ourselves. It’s one thing to get you on board while we’re still in port as ‘guests,’ but the Admiralty will no doubt get a detailed manifest of who is onboard when we sail, and it would not do to have you on it.”

“Now,” said James, “what I have managed to bring along is a set of closed loop Military A-B radios. You two will have one with you on the shore, we will have the other on board the
King’s Transom
. These things are precisely configured to each other; each has a matching quantum encryption algorithm that changes every tenth of a second in ways that only the twin machine can duplicate.”