The StarSight Project

by S. P. Perone

  Dragging her cleansed and relaxed body from the tub, she toweled herself off, drained and rinsed the tub, and put out all of the candles. Suddenly feeling very, very tired, she left everything on the floor, switched off the light, grabbed her nightgown from the wall hook, and headed out through the kitchen. After grabbing two pillows from the closet, and opening up the sofa into a bed, she climbed under the covers and almost instantly was sound asleep.

  Chapter 5

  Tony’s Dilemma

  After hanging up the phone, Tony sat there in his office for a moment, marveling at how the Senator had manipulated him into agreeing to pull out all the stops in the StarSight program development. No wonder Moorhouse was such a powerful figure in Washington.

  He sat back in his chair and stared up at the office window. It was about nine thirty and dark outside. He knew he had a lot of work to get ready for the big meeting out in California next week. The Senator had left it up to him to pull things together with each of the co-investigators, Nagle and Carson. Not only would he have to explain the urgent security threat that faced the country, but also he would have to convince them that their effort, and perhapsonly their effort, might have a chance to prevent a national catastrophe. He wondered if Barry and Sharon would buy in to this like he had apparently just done.

  He knew he would have to speak with them on the scrambler phone, but he didn’t want to wait until tomorrow morning to try and reach them. It was unlikely they were both at their offices at this late hour. He didn’t even know if they were in town. All three of them had very busy travel schedules, attending technical conferences or presenting invited lectures. Thinking back, Shane was sure he had been out of town nearly two days out of every week this past year.

  Without another moment’s hesitation, Shane rotated his chair, reached for the mouse of his computer station, and clicked open his e-mail window. Quickly, he composed a message to be sent out to both Sharon and Barry:

  Sharon and Barry:

  Had a call from the Senator tonight. For very good reason, there’s been a change in the timetable of the S. Project. He would like for us to recommend two key people in each of our respective research groups that could join us in classified development work. These people should be familiar already with the basic principles, so they could come up to speed very quickly. The Senator indicated security clearances could be obtained in a few days…(that’s right, he said “a few days”!)…so that these individuals could join us for the California meeting next week. All relevant personal data for security clearances can be faxed directly to the Senator’s office. You have the fax number. And you should have the appropriate forms. If not, request them from our DOE project director.

  The Senator also wants us to bring all unclassified raw data files relevant to this project, so we could transfer to the Livermore computer. Any classified computer files required for the S. project should be transported by courier, as usual.

  Please call me on the scrambler phone after you get this message. I will be available in my office tomorrow (Weds.) morning, anytime after 8 am.

  Tony

  Tony looked the message over carefully, making sure there was nothing classified. As usual, he had avoided using the StarSight term. The “StarSight project” was not in itself a classified term, but it was sensitive. If the e-mail message were intercepted, or exposed to someone other than the intended recipient, a knowledgeable person might be able to connect that term to the CIA, and, thus, would know that these universities were doing work of interest to that organization. There was nothing illegal about that, but neither Tony, the other co-investigators, nor the Feds wanted to chance the kind of negative publicity that might result.

  Deciding it was OK, Tony sent the message out to Sharon and Barry. They would probably pick up the messages at their home computer stations…if they were in town.

  His next tasks were to decide on which two from his research group he would invite to join the StarSight project, and then to prepare the classified and unclassified data files and neural network programs for transport to Livermore. The latter task would consume most of his time between now and Sunday. But the former task needed to be taken care of right away, tonight if possible.

  Immediately it struck him how difficult that task had now become. Clearly, the two key persons to bring into the project were Bill Campbell and Sarah. Bill would probably jump at the chance. But what about Sarah? Could she, and should she, put aside her personal conflict with Tony, for the sake of this project? He couldn’t even tell her (or Bill either for that matter) what was so urgent about this project until after the security clearances were obtained. It could be a very delicate negotiation, he thought wryly.

  With a large sigh, he tilted back once again in his chair and contemplated the darkness outside his office window. With little difficulty he was able to re-play in his mind the entire scene that had transpired a few hours earlier in his office. He had never seen Sarah so angry, or so hurt. Even when they had discussed breaking up…or more accurately, when he had brought it up…she had not appeared angry or hurt. She had been surprised, but had stoically accepted Shane’s logic. He had concluded that she had agreed with him. And, in fact, he thought that he had been the only one to have any regrets that they had broken up. And, if he were honest with himself, he had regretted it terribly. He missed her very much; and probably would have tried to get back together, if he hadn’t been convinced that their decision had been mutually agreeable.

  Now, he wasn’t so sure. The angry session with Sarah earlier had revealed some very tender feelings affecting both of them. He didn’t know where that left him, or her, but it was troubling him.

  After Sarah had left, earlier that evening, Shane had been so troubled, in fact, that he was unable to place the phone call requested by the Senator. Instead, he had called his best friend at the university, Harry Churchill. Harry was a professor of History and Political Science, and Tony loved him. They never talked science, but could spend hours discussing Sunday’s Bear’s game, the best Italian or Japanese restaurants they had visited, or the latest variety of red wine they had sampled. Sometimes the talk turned to local or national politics. And occasionally, they talked about historical issues, as the study of history, particularly World War II, had been a passion of Tony’s since his undergraduate days

  Tony also loved Harry’s wife, Luci, and enjoyed spending time with their two kids, Gary and Heather, who were 10 and 12, respectively. His babysitting skills had been called upon occasionally when they were younger. In fact, there were times when Luci had suggested their fourth bedroom should be set up permanently for Tony. Fortunately for all of them, Tony’s house was right next door, and the Churchill’s didn’t ever have to put up with him overnight, even after the second or third bottle of wine had been consumed. Theirs was a neighborhood of older two-story wooden frame homes located in the “faculty row” section of town, nestled practically in the shadow of the 62,000-seat football stadium.

  A tall six foot four inch African-American, Harry had met Luci Minh while they were both undergraduates at Penn State University, although both had been from Philadelphia. Luci had been among the many thousands of Vietnamese refugees immigrating to the United States in the 70’s. Separated from her anti-Communist South Vietnamese parents, who had been sent to a “re-education camp” after re-unification of the country under the Communists in 1976, the twelve-year old girl had escaped with her aunt and uncle and two cousins. They had made their way eventually to Philadelphia where some distant relatives resided. After years of hard work, they had opened a restaurant, which had become quite successful. Luci had never seen her parents again, but had recently received letters from them that had reached her through the efforts of the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. Luci had written back, with some help from her aunt and uncle, and some correspondence had transpired over the past year. She was ecstatic about the possibility of a reunion in the near future.

  While Luci’s aunt and uncle had been able to pay for
her to attend college, Harry had needed the benefit of an athletic scholarship. He was a starting guard on Penn State’s basketball team for three years, being selected as academic all-American in his senior year. Because a shot at the pros was not in the cards for him, Harry opted to attend graduate school at Wisconsin, getting his Ph.D. in History, while his young bride supported them as an elementary school teacher.

  After Harry accepted a faculty position at Daniels, a few years before Tony, they had had children right away. Unfortunately, the salaries for History faculty were not nearly comparable to the science and engineering faculty, so Luci returned to work and was currently teaching 5thgrade at Oak Grove Elementary School. At five feet 4 inches, barely topping 100 pounds, she exuded a quiet strength that was palpable. That Harry was hopelessly in love with her was immediately clear to anyone who met him.

  Harry and Luci had “adopted” Tony when he had bought the house next door to them seven years ago. This adoption became more poignant when Tony had tragically lost his parents. They had seen him through that sad time, and also through two promotion struggles, and some disastrous romances. Meanwhile, Tony had been there to care for the kids (and Harry) when Luci had suffered a miscarriage five years ago; and he had provided advice and moral support in Harry’s quest for promotion to Full Professor. It was this past history of mutual support, respect, and intimate friendship that prompted Tony to contact Harry earlier this evening. He had phoned him at home, and Harry said he would be able to get away in about an hour, and would stop by Tony’s office. Tony hadn’t given him any details on the phone of his dilemma, but Harry knew from the familiar troubled tone of Tony’s voice, that he needed to talk about something important, and personal.

  While waiting for Harry to show up, Tony decided to exercise the latest version of the self-organizing neural network program which Sarah and Bill had developed. It was more efficient, and faster, than anything commercially available. They claimed it was capable of examining thousand-fold larger databases than previously possible. Although they didn’t know it, this development would be crucial to the eventual success of the StarSight project. This type of program would be needed if it were ever possible to recognize clusters of terrorist-related intrigue from the enormous files of global activity and sensor data collected.

  Tony popped a two-gigabyte disk cartridge of unclassified data into his office computer. These two thousand million bytes of data were compressed down from thousands of gigabytes of historical data files, covering a recent six-month period. Provided by a variety of federal agencies, which tracked statistical records of all types of global human activity (from birth & death records to detailed financial transactions), the data had been compressed by various mathematical transforms. The end result was that the two-gigabyte file processed by the neural network was unintelligible to a human observer. The neural network did not care. It would find the inherent clusters of activities represented by the data.

  The crux of the problem, though, was interpretation of the clusters found by the neural network. Understanding what each identified cluster represented depended on the interpretation by a cluster analysis expert. This was the expertise that Barry Nagle and Sharon Carson brought to the StarSight project. Tony’s research, however, had focused on developing the computational tools that could manage the huge databases required. The test he was running this evening would tell him if this latest version of the neural net software would work

  Starting the program, Tony estimated it would require about half an hour before presenting its results. During that time, Tony decided he should be summarizing his observations in his classified research notebook. To do that he had to call in a security guard. Because one of the three special guards was always on normal duty at the university, or on call, Tony was able to get one up to his office within 10 minutes.

  Together, Tony and the guard opened the vault in his office, and made the required log entries. Then, Tony extracted the research notebook, clearly marked by bold red and white diagonal stripes on front and back covers. After assuring himself that the office was secure, the guard retired to the waiting area outside Tony’s office, picked up a magazine, and made himself comfortable while Tony made his latest entries in the notebook.

  This activity continued for about an hour, during which Tony observed the number and nature of clusters observed by the neural network. The significance of the clusters observed would be understood only by someone who knew the inherent properties of the historical “control” data set. Tony, of course, had that knowledge. And he was entering his observations and comments in the classified notebook.

  What Tony was asking the neural network program to do was to recognize, in this historical database, the activity clusters, whichpreceded various documented terrorist events by approximately 48 hours. It was up to the operator, Tony, to modify the network properties so that it filtered out all activity clusters related to other types of events. This could be accomplished only by a trial-and-error approach, involving the selection of which input data to weight more heavily, and by varying the complexity of the network. It was a very tricky procedure, and Tony was not as expert at it as Sharon Carson or Barry Nagle. None of them was as good as Sarah, but she wasn’t cleared to do the StarSight work.

  But, they couldn’t do anything without the program tools, and it was his job to be sure they would work. For this test, Sharon and Barry had prepared the historical six-month data set, which was small enough to be analyzed on a desktop computer. The more extensive databases they would analyze to find activity clusters preceding global terrorist activities would be many thousands of times larger, and would require a computer like Livermore’s ASCI White supercomputer for execution. Nevertheless, it would be the neural network software developed by Tony’s group that would do the analysis.

  As Tony was busy documenting the results of the third trial run of the neural net, he heard a knock at his office door. The security guard turned the doorknob, and poked his head into the office. “You’ve got a visitor out here, Dr. Shane,” he said. “Can you see him?”

  Shane stood up and looked past the guard to see the black smiling face of his dear friend about two paces behind the guard, waiting patiently for the security negotiations to transpire. “Sure. I invited him up here,” Tony said. Then, Leaning to one side, he shot a greeting to his friend, “Hi Harry, thanks for coming over.”

  Turning back to the guard, he said, “I’ll put the research notebook back in the vault, and close it, while Harry and I visit in my office. Can you hang around for a while outside?”

  “No problem,” the guard replied. “I’m on duty until midnight anyway. Rather hang out here than anywhere else.”

  “Great,” Tony said. “Then, we won’t have to lock up the vault. I’ll just keep it closed while Harry visits. OK?”

  A visit from Harry in Tony’s office was not unusual, and his visits had sometimes occurred when a security guard was present. This guard had been through the procedure before, so he simply nodded his agreement to Tony’s request. It was much easier than filling out the rigorous chain-of-custody documentation required whenever documents were removed from or returned to a sealed vault. And with that, Tony closed and picked up the classified notebook, walked to the far wall of the office where the vault was located, opened the door, and placed the notebook inside. As he closed the vault door, he turned and looked back over his shoulder and asked the guard to let Harry in.

  “What’s up, Tony?” Harry had asked as he sauntered into Tony’s office. Tony had moved back over to the office door, and greeted Harry by grasping and holding his hand between both of his.

  “Harry. Thanks for coming over. Sorry to tear you away from Luci tonight. Have a seat, and get comfortable. Would you like a cup of coffee? Or a Coke?”

  Harry had refused any refreshments, and Tony had closed the office door, giving them some privacy. Returning to his chair, and sitting down opposite his friend, Tony started to describe his dilemma.

 
“Harry, you know that Sarah and I broke up last month, right?” he started.

  “Yeah, I know. You been moping around like a hound dog ever since. Could anyone have missed it?” Harry responded. “You sure screwed up that one, Buddy.”

  “All right. All right. I know I was a jerk. But I really thought I was doing the right thing, you know? And, I’m sure Sarah felt the same way,” Tony said. “And, anyway, that’s not the issue. I’ve got another problem now.”

  “Wait. Don’t tell me. You’re dating some lady professor at another school and she wants to get married and hired here at Daniels. Right?” Harry inquired, with more than a little sarcasm in his voice.

  “Come on, Harry. You and Luci have already chewed my ass good about this whole thing. You know darn well how I feel about husband and wife faculty deals. They stink,” Tony responded heatedly. “And anyway, we’ve been all over that,” he continued, “There’s some new wrinkles to this whole thing now that I really need to talk to you about. So, can you lay off the sarcasm? OK?”

  “OK,” Harry replied, with a contrite edge to his voice. “I’m sorry. I’ll just shut up and listen.”

  “Thanks, Harry. Believe me, you’ll have plenty of opportunity and ammunition to rag on me after you hear what’s happened,” Tony began on a conciliatory note. “What’s happened is that Sarah came up here earlier this evening and we had a bad scene. She’s seeing another guy, and I got upset…not because she’s dating, but because ofwho she’s dating. Of all people, she had to get together with that asshole, Janus Clarkson. You know who I’m talking about?”

  “Sure, I know him,” Harry responded. “I’ve served on a couple of university committees with him. And, yeah, he is an asshole…but, so what? You couldn’t pick Sarah’s friends for her, whether you were together or not.”