The StarSight Project

by S. P. Perone

  This memorable ride had deposited the group at the end of the line on Hyde Street, located between the Cannery and Ghirardelli Square. A brisk two-block walk brought them to the alleyway leading to Scoma’s restaurant, perched at the edge of the Wharf Marina. There, they joined a large crowd waiting to be seated. Contrary to the ultra-casual attire often seen at restaurants on the Wharf, most of the diners were dressed in eveningwear. This observation provided some satisfaction to the Nagles who had recommended that the group “dress up” for the evening. The ladies had all worn long wool skirts and contrasting tight long-sleeved jersey tops, with light wraps, whereas the men had chosen to wear slacks and blazers with ties.

  The tall, handsome, tuxedo-garbed Maitre d’, with his experienced flair and Italian accent, had gained Sarah’s undivided attention. Bill and Anna were absorbed with the scores of black and white signed photographs of visiting celebrities that were hanging on the walls of the lounge where they waited for their table. Busy, efficient and friendly waiters in black tie scurried from kitchen to table. The aromas from the kitchen were garlicky, spicy, and tantalizing.

  The group was seated at a table in one of the small rooms located between the two dining areas. It was cozy and intimate. Tony ordered the Lazy Man’sCioppino (CalabreseStyle), and responded to Sarah’s request by recommending the grilled swordfish (alla Via Reggio). When Bill indicated he was about to order the filet mignon, Tony nearly had a coronary. He strongly urged Bill to try the Pasta Fisherman’s Style, but finally backed off when Bill ordered the Combination Seafood Plate. Tony knew that the french-fried seafood variety was excellent, even by San Francisco standards, and the presentation was something even an Iowa farm boy could understand. Barry ordered thePasta Diplomatica , which was similar to the Lazy Man’sCioppino , except that it included lobster meat, and was served on a bed of pasta; Renata ordered the SeafoodCanneloni , and Sharon ordered theCalamari Dorè . They selected a bottle of red and a bottle of white wine to accompany their meal. Tony selected a 5-year old Machiavelli Chianti; while Barry selected a La Crema California Chardonnay. With their wine, the waiter delivered the warm, fresh sourdough bread and butter, and a variety of appetizers, including steamed clams,calamari Calabrese , and crabcakes.

  During dinner, Tony and Sarah were seated on the side of the table which gave them a grand view of the Golden Gate Bridge, a couple miles away, hovering a couple hundred feet above the bay. Tony was next to the window with Sarah and Anna beside him. Bill sat at the end of the table, opposite the window, between Barry and Anna. Across from Shane were Barry, Renata and Sharon, with Sharon closest to the window, seated directly across from Shane. Barry, Renata and Sharon were all 40-ish. Barry and Renata were both from New York City, he from a Jewish family; she from a Catholic Puerto Rican family. They had met while Barry was completing one of his several degrees at Columbia, and Renata was in law school. Their unlikely pairing had led to a marriage of compromises. Barry agreed to raise the children as Catholic; while Renata agreed to move to San Francisco, where Barry was able to find an academic position. Fortunately, Renata had also gotten a very good offer from a corporate law firm in San Francisco, where she presently worked.

  Barrylooked like a professor: long, kinky, salt and pepper hair, which had the appearance of not having been combed for a week; a matching full beard, cropped short; brown eyes and a dark complexion. About 5 foot nine inches tall, he still towered over his wife, who was a sturdy 5 foot 2 inches. Renata, with fine, pretty, olive facial features, long wavy dark hair, unnaturally lightened to an auburn hue, and dark brown eyes, wore only a little rouge and bright red lipstick, heavy mascara, and prominent eye shadow. She was bejeweled with dangling earrings, a gold necklace, and several diamond-and gem-studded finger rings. Seated next to her, Sharon afforded Shane a contrasting sight. Nearly as tall as Shane in her two-inch heels, with long straight naturally dishwater blonde hair, and handsome Scandinavian features, she wore little or no makeup, and no jewelry but simple gold stud earrings.

  As Shane observed Sharon, carefully slicing thecalamari steak on her plate into tiny bite size pieces, he wondered if he would regret that he had told Sarah about the one-night fling that he had shared with Sharon. It had occurred in Washington, before he had met Sarah, during one of the previous StarSight project meetings. Sharon had just filed for divorce from the husband that had abandoned her and her daughter. After dinner with some of the DOE staff who had attended their presentations that afternoon, Shane, Nagle and Sharon had returned to the Grand Hotel near Georgetown, where they were staying. They had stopped in the lounge off the main lobby, and enjoyed a glass of port. When Nagle and Shane had made noises about turning in, Sharon volunteered that she would remain in the lounge for another drink. Waving Nagle on, Tony decided to stay behind with Sharon. He listened sympathetically as she described the tortured experiences of the past months, and empathized with her conflicted feelings of anger and guilt. It was inevitable that he would accompany her to her room and spend the night.

  The next morning, Sharon had thanked Tony for his company the previous night; but made it clear that it would not happen again. Shane had felt the same way. And they had never again been tempted to reprise their intimacy. Instead, they had become very good friends, knowing they could confide in each other. Shane knew that Sharon was seeing someone seriously now, and she had known about Sarah from the beginning, realizing even before Shane that he had fallen in love with Sarah.

  As Shane’s attention turned once again to the lovely young lady on his left, he wondered what Sarah was thinking. He had never thought that she and Sharon would meet. Sarah had never mentioned the “Sharon” incident, even when she learned she would be working along with Sharon in Livermore. And, so far, they had gotten along very well. Tony knew in his mind that Sarah would accept Sharon as her friend, simply because she was Tony’s friend. And, it would be just that simple. But, he doubted that his male ego would ever allow him to do the same for her. It was a humbling, but honest, thought.

  While the StarSight group was enjoying dinner on Fisherman’s Wharf, Max was very, very busy. Disguised now as a hotel bellman, he was moving from room to room, systematically copying data files on to the high capacity disk cartridges plugged into his laptop computer. It was tedious work, and he knew he had only 3 hours at the most to get it done. Fortunately, the cartridges had been left in unlocked luggage, and he had no trouble retrieving them. He was excited that he would now have the raw data files, with the associated identities and origins of data vectors. Having arrived in San Francisco around ten o’clock that morning, he had had time to check himself into the Fairmont, hook up his laptop, hack into the hotel’s registration computer, and assign rooms for each of the project team that would be arriving later that day. It was important that each person was assigned a room not occupied on the previous night, so that he would have access during the day. With a separate card reader/encoder device attached to his laptop, he was able to assign a magnetic key code for each room and program several small plastic cards to provide him with access to the rooms.

  Max had intended to spend the 4-hour period before the group’s arrival today setting up “bugs” and wiretaps in each of the rooms. However, because he had learned that they would be moving to Livermore on Monday, he decided to “bug” only the Senator’s suite. He knew, from recent e-mail interceptions, that the co-investigators were going to meet with the Senator in his suite after dinner this evening. Unfortunately, he had not been able to gain access to the Tower suite assigned to the Senator and his wife, as they had flown in on Saturday night. Instead, he had made their suite his first stop this evening, when they had all gone out for dinner. Max was unsure that he would learn anything of value this evening, but this was the only evening they would all be at the Fairmont. He could arrange to listen in on all of them only this night.

  Tomorrow, all of them, except the Senator, would be staying in Livermore, at the Residence Inn. And, he would have to set up his bugging devices in
their rooms tomorrow while they were at the Lab. Max had already arranged for his room there, and had hacked into the Residence Inn’s registration computer to make their room assignments. He would have to check it out tomorrow to obtain the correctly coded key cards. Also, tomorrow, he would have to remove the “bug” from the Senator’s suite. Again, he knew, from intercepting the Senator’s e-mails, that both he and his wife would have vacated their suite by nine o’clock in the morning…he for a meeting with some of his supporters in the city, and she for an appointment with the hairdresser.

  Working his way down from the top floors, Max’s last stop would be Sarah’s room on the 23rdfloor. Leaving Shane’s room on the 25thfloor, he looked at his watch and realized it was nearly ten o’clock. The group had been away for a little over three hours. The file copying had gone more slowly than he had planned, and he had had to spend the additional time in the Senator’s suite. He had to make a quick decision. Was the searching of Sarah’s room worth the possible risk of being discovered? And, what was the probability that they would return before he was finished? He was not aware that Sarah was carrying any data or program files, but he didn’t want to risk missing something that might be there. He had found some program files in Bill Campbell’s room. He was already concerned that, because Barry Nagle was not staying there, he wasn’t able to copy his files. He knew they would all be turning their files in to the Livermore Lab computer facility tomorrow.

  Deciding to take the risk, Max took the stairway down to the 23rdfloor and strode deliberately in the direction of Sarah’s room. As he rounded the corner, he saw Shane and Sarah walking towards him from the other end of the same corridor. Apparently they had used the far elevator shaft, and they were headed now for Sarah’s room about halfway down the corridor. Because he could not risk their seeing him up close, Max turned around abruptly, and headed back around the corner to the stairway he had just left. Moving down the stairway, he quickly made his way to his own room on the 21stfloor.

  Entering his room, Max went immediately to the desk where his laptop was set up as the access device, which could collect sound streams from various “bugs”. He had been recording any sounds coming from the “bugs” in the telephone or the parlor area of the suite. No telephone calls had been recorded, but when he tuned in to the Senator’s room, he was greeted by the voices of the Senator and his wife discussing the evening’s dinner with the Mayor. As Max continued to listen, he eventually heard the sounds of the arrival of Shane, Nagle, and Sharon Carson. Prior to their arrival, the Senator had advised his wife to retire so that he could use the parlor area of the suite to meet with the project group.

  Adjusting his earphones for comfort, pulling a cold beer out of the stocked refrigerator in his room, and leaning back in the oversized easy chair, Max prepared himself for a long surveillance session.

  After helping themselves to soft drinks or coffee, the group of four made themselves comfortable in the large parlor area of the suite, each finding an easy chair or spot on the large sofa, surrounding the large glass-topped cocktail table. After exchanging comments regarding their respective dining experiences, the Senator got down to business.

  “First of all, you should know that the security clearances for Bill Campbell, Sarah Stenstrom, and Anna Ling should be forwarded to the Lawrence Livermore Lab security office first thing tomorrow morning. That means they should have badges prepared and full access to all the restricted areas, just like the rest of you. The Lab’s office that manages the White supercomputer has been alerted to your arrival, and they are aware that your project should have top priority. We’ve requested two technicians to be available for you full time. Do you think we’ll need more help than that?”

  Looking at each other, they let Shane answer. “Actually, Senator, we have no idea how much help we’ll need, until we’ve taken a look at the set-up,” Shane replied. “What we will need, at first, is some guidance regarding protocols for working with the operating system, and someone to set up our access codes, passwords, ID’s, load our data files, and so on. Do you know if they have someone to help us?”

  “Yes,” the Senator replied, “James Windemere, the System Administrator. And, they will already have added your ID’s to the access list. The additional details will be handled by him, or by one of his staff first thing tomorrow.”

  “Will we be able to get access to the satellite surveillance data through the White computer?” Sharon asked. “That’s the major piece of missing information we need to really check out Tony’s neural net programs.”

  “Those data have been requested. And, they’ve established a network connection to the hard drives where those data will be maintained. Apparently, even one day’s surveillance generates many gigabytes of compressed data.”

  Nagle chuckled as he listened to the Senator’s technical jargon. “Senator, you’ve really picked up a lot of this technical stuff now, haven’t you?”

  Looking at Nagle, the Senator replied, “You know, it’s essential these days to have a basic knowledge of computer technology…not only for this project, but for practically everything that goes on in my office at the Senate. Fortunately, I have a bright, young staff that’s been able to walk me through all this stuff.”

  Turning back to Shane, the Senator said, “It appears to me that Livermore is going to be 100% cooperative on this project. We have unrestricted access to the system, and we should have all of the required databases on-line quickly. We can get all the technicians we need. The big question is: do you think we can get the job done before the end of November?”

  Shane hesitated before answering; hoping someone else might speak up. When no one did, he proceeded to give the Senator the perspective that had evolved in his mind over the past five days.

  “Senator, from the studies we’ve done so far, it’s clear we’re on the right track. Even if you just look at the work that Barry has already done…predicting social crises based on interpretation of human activity data…we can predict other kinds of human-generated events.” (Shane was careful not to refer explicitly to the goals of the StarSight project, because that was classified, and it could only be discussed in a controlled environment.)

  Continuing, Shane said, “We also know that a neural network is required to process the different kinds of data we’re working with. And, we’ve shown that the neural net programs Bill and Sarah developed actually work with the smaller historical data sets. What wedon’t know is whether we can integrateglobal activity and satellite surveillance into our neural net programs. And, even if we do, we still don’t know if we can interpret the clusters we might observe.”

  Pausing for a few seconds, to let the magnitude of the problems sink in, Shane continued, “The last item is really the toughest. Everything else is just ‘engineering’, as they say. The front end of the problem is really just scaling up the kinds of things that Barry and Sharon have already done with more limited databases. Transposing them over to a neural network approach.

  “The back end of the problem requires the expertise of the scientist to interpret clusters that have no inherent meaning of their own. They’re just clusters of items, and you have to figure out why they’ve clustered. Also, you have to figure out what data you should select to feed into the neural network, so that you get the kind of clustering that’s related to the information you want.”

  Tony paused as he saw the Senator’s eyes glazing over. Deciding to shift into his “professorial” mode, he continued, “Imagine that you wanted to invent a way to predict the weather for tomorrow, based on all the historical data you could examine. Your first problem is deciding which of all the possible data choices you should select. Should you use only historical meteorological data? For how wide a geographical region should you include data? Should you include data that might appear to be irrelevant, but may in fact be correlated…like how much the corn stalks have grown in the past week? Or how thick the ice is at the center of the pond? Or what time of the day the birds start chirpi
ng? And so on.

  “Let’s say you have a computer that’s so fast and has so much storage space, that you can use every silly piece of data that might have a chance of being correlated with weather prediction. You feed all those data into a ‘cluster analysis’ program (like the self-organizing neural nets), and you define each ‘item’ in your data base as a specific historical date which is described by the composite of thousands, perhaps many millions, of individual data points collected on that day. Then, you ask your program to find clusters of ‘days’ which look similar.

  “Now, remember what you’re looking for. You want to predict the weather. So, you can’t use the data for the day that you’re trying to predict. That would be cheating. No, instead, you look for clusters of days that correlateto the day before a given weather event in the region you’re trying to predict.

  “If you’re lucky, you will find clusters of days where your historical records show that the next days for each of the days in the cluster had similar weather events…like a thunderstorm, tornado, snowstorm, clear and dry, hot and humid, etc. That is, you would find a different cluster of days for each different category of weather event.

  “If you obtained such a result, you should be ecstatic, because it would be extremely unlikely,” Shane stated with finality.

  “Hold it, Tony,” the Senator interjected. “Are you saying that this approach won’t work?”