by Rick Chesler
Several screens were visible over the map, some playing whale videos, others showing different pages of the Wired Kingdom web site. One screen showed nothing but an enlarged counter depicting in real time the number of Internet users currently hitting the site. The number was in the millions, the digits on the right side of the counter a blur as they turned over. A large overhead monitor descended from above, displaying the whale’s live feed. To the viewers, Anastasia looked like a mysterious, pale face floating in blackness in front of a computer screen.
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” she began, “I’m your host, Dr. Anastasia Reed, marine biologist. Welcome to Wired Kingdom. I know there are many questions about what our wired whale broadcast on the Internet earlier this morning. We can only say at this time that what you saw on the web is what the whale-cam transmitted. Nothing was modified or enhanced by us in any way.
“Our wired whale is an early example of using computer engineering to answer questions about marine biology. As humans’ ability to monitor the seas is extended via telepresence, we will continue to see things that would otherwise remain unknown. It’s a big ocean out there, with a lot going on. Some of these things will involve people, and some may even be unpleasant. But this increased awareness of our planet’s most ubiquitous environment will ultimately benefit us all.”
A screen behind her changed to show a map of the whale’s last known position.
“Thank you for the many e-mails and phone calls letting us know that the whale-cam’s GPS unit is not working properly. Our team of technical experts is working hard to fix this problem. Until it is resolved, the whale’s exact location remains unknown, although we can continue to view the animal and its surroundings.”
Anastasia then launched into the main part of the show, in which she presented in detail the highlights of the whale’s movements and behavior of the last week. She discussed its feeding activities, solitary lifestyle and diving abilities while referring to video clips throughout. When it was time to announce the winner of the week’s contest, an overhead screen changed from a view of the whale’s feed to the logo of a national telecommunications company.
“This week we asked you to look for examples of human presence in the ocean. There were many interesting entries, but after much thought, we managed to single one out. The person whose name I announce after the break will talk with us via video-phone about their winning screen capture and will become the latest Wired Kingdom millionaire. Be right back.”
The lights dimmed and videos played to entertain the studio audience as Anastasia left the stage. Although her script called for her to act as though she knew the contest winner in advance, the winning entry was chosen by a panel of producers and not known to her until it was time to give it away.
“Great job, Anastasia,” Anthony said just off stage. “Going well.” He handed her a folder. She nodded absentmindedly as she examined the folder’s contents—the winning contest image and identity of the winner.
Her features contorted into a mask of disbelief as she saw the photo: the leg of a woman firmly in the grasp of two blue sharks; an alabaster hand pressed against the snout of one of the attackers, hopelessly outclassed by the predator’s instinctive power; a river of green issuing from her ruined leg.
“You’re kidding, right Anthony?” She tore her gaze from the image long enough to look him in the eye. He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“No possible way!”
“Look, Anastasia, this is the winning entry. It was voted on by the panel.”
“Why wasn’t I—I can’t believe you’d pull a stunt like this. When I agreed to do this show, it was under the condition that it be oriented towards education and awareness, not shock-value crap.”
“Anastasia, maybe if you were around a little more often, instead of always showing up at the last—”
“Oh, please.” She turned away in disgust, then whirled back around. “What’s wrong with the oil tanker? Why couldn’t that be the winner?”
“You can’t be serious. A shot of an old, rusty oil tanker doesn’t stand a chance against this. If we announced it as the winner, we’d lose what little credibility we have. ‘Reality TV,’ remember?”
“This is a family show, Anthony. How can we get away with showing something like this on prime time?” She gawked at the explicit image with open disgust.
“You’ll deliver a ‘graphic content’ warning—just follow the teleprompter.”
She shook her head. “Unbelievable.”
“Try to relax, please. We’re not going to play any of the actual video. Just show the still shot for five seconds and refer to the web site where they can download it along with the rest of the winners.”
A cameraman started his countdown.
Anastasia shook her head and stalked away. For one terrifying moment, Silveras thought she was going to walk off the set, but she stepped around a tangle of cables on the floor and made her way back to the stage. Fumbling in his pocket for a bottle he knew was there, he swallowed a fistful of extra-strength Tylenol, dry.
Back under the harsh stage lights, Anastasia made a conscious effort to avoid revealing her distaste as she read the lines from the teleprompter.
“And now it’s time to announce our contest winner for this week—the newest Wired Kingdom millionaire. But first I must warn you: the winning image you are about to see is extremely graphic and may not be suitable for all viewers. Parents, if you’re watching tonight with young children, you may want to supervise them closely.” It was an obvious ploy by the network to stimulate interest. “Here is the image submitted by our contest winner.” Anastasia displayed the photo for the studio audience, who responded with a collective gasp.
After allowing them a moment to absorb the impact of the picture, she announced, “Our winner is Jerod Wilderson, of Lincoln, Nebraska.” The audience applauded as a voluptuous blonde model, walking to the beat of the music playing over the loudspeakers, brought out a giant cardboard check in the amount of one million dollars and placed it on a stand. Although the show was educational in nature, even Anastasia hadn’t been able to convince her father to completely strip it of the fluff which had made his earlier shows so successful. “Jerod is a nineteen-year-old college student, and he’s been previously notified of his winning entry. He’s waiting to chat with us now via videophone.”
The screen with the corporate logo came to life and a pimply-faced teen with bad teeth greeted the audience. Anastasia went through a routine interview with the winner, thanked him for his entry, and then told the audience it was time to announce the theme of the new week’s contest.
“Next week at this time, we’re going to award another one million dollars to the most striking screen-captured image that depicts another cetacean—that is, another whale, dolphin or porpoise.”
She waited for the clapping to subside before continuing.
“This—”
Shouting erupted from the studio audience. Two young men in scruffy dress near the back row unfurled a banner reading FREE THE WORLDWIDE WHALE, holding it high. Others who had been occupying the back rows, posing as mild-mannered fans, suddenly became demonstrators, parading other signs like, WHALES ARE MEANT TO BE WIRELESS, WHALE 1.0: NATURE’S VERSION RULES, and DR. ANASTASIA GREED.
Stage lights prevented Anastasia from seeing anything beyond the first row of seats. She continued with her concluding remarks, although the audience’s attention was now focused in the opposite direction.
A squadron of headset-wearing security officers flanked the protestors, who stood their ground, becoming more vociferous. One man wielded a placard’s wooden stake like a weapon from his perch on the backs of two seats in parallel rows. As two of the staff approached him from either side, the protestor leapt away, apparently intending to land astride two other seats several rows down; but he lost his footing and went down straddling a seatback, his face slamming into a chair arm. The sound of teeth rattling across the concrete floor wa
s drowned out by screams from the audience. Moments later security guards from adjacent studios poured into the back rows and the protest was quelled.
Four bouncers carried one demonstrator from the building in a prone position, followed by a cameraman with a shoulder-cam. The protestor screamed “Ocean Liberation Front!” and spit on the camera’s lens as he was taken outside, where chanting had already begun: “OLF! OLF! OLF!”
Someone killed the stage lights, and Anastasia was surprised to see the seats nearly empty and people scrambling for the exits. She was also surprised to see a woman in a dark suit standing calmly in front of her, a smallish gym bag slung over one shoulder, presenting a badge.
“You here about the protestors?” Anastasia asked, stepping down from the stage.
“Protestors? You mean they're not your fan club?” Tara started with a smile. “Special Agent Tara Shores, FBI. I'm only interested in them if they had something to do with the web video your show broadcast this morning. I’m here because I understand you’re the foremost expert on this wired whale.”
“You could do worse. What is it you want?”
“The FBI needs to recover the hard drive from the whale’s telemetry unit as soon as possible.”
Anastasia laughed softly. “Join the club.”
“I intend to get that hard drive, Dr. Reed.”
“I believe you do.” Anastasia paused, frowning as the audience members were ushered from the building under heavy security. Angry shouts still punctuated the roar of the evacuating crowd. “Have you thought about how you’re going to get it?”
“I have.” Anastasia appeared surprised to hear an answer in the affirmative.
“Do tell. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re having a little GPS problem with the tag, and we’d kind of like to get it back, too.”
“We’re going use a helicopter to run search patterns from the whale’s last known GPS coordinates.”
“You’ll be wasting your time.”
“By we I meant you and I. And we’ll use a grid in whichever direction your expert opinion deems to be the most likely.”
Anastasia considered this. “I suppose there’s not much else you can do besides that,” she said. “And I would like to go. I can have a copter reserved for the morning out of Long Beach.”
“No need. I’ve already got one waiting, closer than that. We can be at the whale’s last known coordinates with daylight to spare.”
Anastasia threw up her hands. “Free helicopter ride to look for my whale on a Friday night? It’s a date.”
CHAPTER 6
Tara sensed Anastasia’s surprise deepening as she led the marine biologist into the studio’s main office building.
“There’s one thing you may not have thought about,” Anastasia said as they approached the elevators in the central lobby.
Tara pressed a button and turned to face her. “What’s that?”
“If we do find the whale, what then? You gonna jump out of the helicopter, swim over to a ninety-seven-foot sea mammal and hope it cooperates while you rip the cam from its body?”
Tara shuddered at the thought. “As enjoyable as that sounds, bear with me while I assess my options. How is the tag attached to the whale?”
“It’s embedded in the blubber layer at the base of the dorsal fin. The attachment protocol involved a crossbow for propulsion to implant a deployment dart fitted with the tag. The dart breaks away once the tag is embedded in the blubber layer, leaving the antenna, sensors and camera lens outside. The tag has a medical grade titanium housing with four holes drilled in it, covering a broad-spectrum antibiotic gel so that it’s bio-inert and won’t cause infections. The whole thing is smaller than a soda can, cylindrical, but tapered at both ends to reduce drag.”
“How is it designed to be retrieved?”
“Unless I calculated incorrectly, and the blubber layer thickens too much during the summer feeding season, we should be able to trigger the release mechanism by passing a magnet over the saltwater switch. The unit can then be extracted by hand—in theory, anyway. I’ve had problems with the pop-up tags that were designed to automatically drop off the animal after a certain amount of time. Hopefully I didn’t overcompensate. But this one is a real breakthrough, both in terms of long-term retention and the increased sampling schedule. I didn’t want it coming off, especially knowing what the thing cost.”
“So you need to physically touch it with a magnet?”
“Yes. If a strong magnet passes over the tag, it triggers a rapid mechanical process that retracts a flared collar at the base of the unit. Then it can be pulled out by hand from the blubber layer.”
“Okay. If we see the whale, I’ll radio its GPS coordinates and current heading to our Underwater Evidence Search Team, and then pick up the search with them at first light.”
They entered the elevator. The truth was that although the FBI did have a specialized underwater unit, it was headquartered in New York. It handled elite underwater tasks such as helping NASA to recover space shuttle debris after an accident, and there was no way Tara could appropriate its resources on such short notice. She’d had to pay back enough favors as it was to requisition the helicopter. However, Tara saw no reason to downplay the resources available to her while in the field on a case.
“I didn’t know the FBI had an underwater search team,” Anastasia said as they began their ascent.
“It’s pretty low profile, but they’ve got technical divers and Remotely Operated Vehicles.”
“Still, you’d have to find the whale again after waiting for first light, and the boat trip back out.”
They exited the elevator on the top floor and Tara held out her gym bag. “Besides relaying information to the underwater team, I’m hoping that if the opportunity presents itself I might be able to make their work a bit easier.” She unzipped the duffel.
“What special agent worth her salt doesn’t carry a bag of tricks?” Anastasia said, watching as Tara removed something from the bag. “But whatever’s in there, I doubt it can help.”
Tara was irritated with Anastasia’s constant reminders of the slim odds of recovering the whale’s device anytime soon. She removed a two-foot-long contraption that looked like a weapon, but instead of something lethal on the business end of it there was a large-diameter suction cup. A small boxy object with an antenna was attached to the cup. Tara held the device up for Anastasia’s inspection.
“I see you brought your own tracking dart. What is that thing, ten years old?”
Tara shrugged. “Wouldn’t surprise me. FBI keeps all kinds of stuff around for decades. But it doesn’t have to shoot video or do Twitter updates, it just needs to mark the whale’s position. The techies assure me it’ll do that.”
Anastasia chuckled. “It works for a few hours before it pops off the host and floats around until you pick it up again—and even that’s only if you know how to use it.” She shook her head in a silent laugh of incomprehension before continuing. “I definitely give you an ‘A’ for effort. But seriously, you need to decide what exactly it is you want to do.”
“Got any better ideas? I don’t know how to use it, but you do, right?”
Anastasia grew serious. “I’m only trying to help. Let me explain. Those guns are meant to be used from boats to deploy tags at close range.”
“So?”
“So, you said we have a helicopter waiting, not a boat.” Tara nodded and started walking down the hall toward a door marked ROOF while she put the tagger back in the bag.
She opened the door to gusts of warm air. A dark blue Schweizer 300C piston engine helicopter sat at the ready on a marked helipad, door open. The two women stood in the doorway where they could still hear over the engine.
“With the resources Wired Kingdom has, I’m surprised you haven’t already used a helicopter and boats together to slap a basic GPS locator on your whale,” Tara called back.
“Not that simple.” Anastasia raised her voice as they approached the helo.
“For one thing, I haven’t filed for a permit on a new tracker yet. Federal regs are strict. I’m not allowed to go shooting the thing with whatever I want, whenever I want. When we go out on a tagging cruise, our permit contract specifies the exact number of times we’re allowed to approach the whale, how many shots we’re allowed to take, with precisely what equipment, the number of personnel on board—everything down to the smallest detail. Any amount of variance with the filed plan triggers a mandatory incident report.”
“Ah, government bureaucracy. So what’s the other thing?”
“The other thing is that Wired Kingdom’s tag has only been malfunctioning for a few hours. It could be due to some temporary atmospheric disturbance—solar winds or something—that could resolve itself any minute. Trevor’s looking into it. Anyway, I’m not going to launch a full-scale recovery operation only to have the tag start working on its own the minute we set off. In this business you learn to deal with unpredictability. Of course, had I known there would be a murder investigation involving the tag, I would have acted sooner.”
Tara warned Anastasia to duck under the rotors as they jogged forward. Entering the cockpit, they sat three across with the pilot, who sported a dark crew cut behind a headset and mirrored sunglasses. “Name’s Rob Tanner, FBI pilot,” he said, nodding to Anastasia.
Tara occupied the middle seat, as she wanted her whale expert to have an unobstructed view. “This is his first solo flight, so bear with him!” Rob laughed while Anastasia's eyes widened in alarm.
“She says that every time,” Rob said, flipping some switches on the control panel. “I've been flying for over twenty years.” Anastasia eyed Tara with doubtful curiosity.