Conscious

by Vic Grout

  Bob was unfamiliar with the city so had no idea where he was going and was a little unnerved by the officious nature of his reception. To make conversation, after a minute or so, he turned to the woman and enquired – rhetorically, he thought – “So we’re going to the Jean Monnet Building I presume?” The woman said nothing but Carl spoke, with a slight turn of his head, over his shoulder.

  “No, not Jean Monnet. We’re going … somewhere else.”

  Although there was no clear change in tone, there was something in the way he heard somewhere else that made Bob reluctant to enquire further. So he stayed silent and watched the unfamiliar streets and the occasional manifestations of RFS blur past outside.

  After about ten minutes, the car turned off the main carriageway and slowed before an imposing set of security gates, which opened quickly as they approached. They parked immediately inside in what appeared to be a closed courtyard. As lost as he was, Bob knew this wasn’t Jean Monnet.

  They all climbed out of the car. Carl remained behind as the woman strode to an arched entrance in the courtyard corner.

  “Follow me please, Mr. Weatherill.” They entered a short corridor with a single door at the far end. The woman opened the door for Bob, ushered him through and closed the door behind him, remaining outside herself. He never saw her or ‘Carl’ again.

  Bob found himself in a small, roughly circular room with a desk on the side away from him, also curved to fit within the wall. On the other side sat two men and two women of a similar age to him – give or take ten years (determining ages was not one of his strengths). They were all smartly dressed but no seniority was apparent. However, the woman on the far left spoke by way of introduction.

  “Mr. Weatherill,” she began abruptly. “Welcome to Luxembourg. My name is Claudia Oudeyer and I work for the European Commission.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” Bob said, hurriedly – and somewhat untruthfully, given his reception. He made a small movement towards the panel to shake hands but realised that the attempt was not reciprocated so stopped quickly and sat instead on the chair on his side of the desk, within its arc.

  “So, Mr. Weatherill; now that we have broken the ice, so to speak, I shall update that information. That is not my name and I do not – to all intents and purposes – work for the Commission.” A slight chill passed between Bob’s shoulders. ‘Claudia’ continued, “On that basis, and using the same model, I will not waste the time of any of us by introducing my colleagues. I’m sure you understand?”

  “Er, well, I suppose I understand that bit.”

  “Good, then we can proceed.”

  The second woman spoke.

  “Mr. Weatherill,” The light behind her flickered off, then back on, as she spoke. She glanced at it with an air of confirmation. “We have a problem. We may have two problems. We may have a problem that looks like two problems. My colleague here,” gesturing to one of the men, “will explain. Then we will find out what you know. Then we will discuss what is to be done.”

  Bob was so entirely speechless now that even the thought of trying did not occur to him. The woman continued.

  “But first, my other colleague will provide us with some setting for what we are about to discuss.” The second man leant forwards and began, in a low, slow monotone.

  “Mr. Weatherill, do you know where you are?”

  “No.”

  “That is good. It is not our intention to be unnecessarily uncivil but there is some information that it is good to share and there is some that it is not. Who we are and where we currently are is not particularly significant. Suffice to say that we act in the general interests of Europe – as I am sure do you. This is all good.”

  Bob sat transfixed, hoping very much this was indeed ‘good’. The man continued.

  “Mr. Weatherill, we believe that, across the world, our electronic systems have come under sustained attack. We do not yet have an explanation. We need expertise that we may not have within our unit. We believe you may have that expertise. We have asked you to come here rather than discuss this remotely for the precise reason that we do not know what we are dealing with or how great is the threat.

  “Mr. Weatherill, you are considered an expert in your field. We wish to consult with you. This will be to the benefit of us all, we think. The problem is already known, to an extent, and will become more so soon. Therefore, we do not wish to bind you to secrecy; nor do we wish for you to feel threatened. You are free to discuss these issues with those who you think may be able to help and it is not necessary for you to withhold detail. We ask only that you give us your assurance that you share our interests and purpose. Can I take that as agreed?”

  “Well, as far as I understand what we’re talking about and who you are, then, I suppose … yes.”

  “Good.” The man remained abrupt to the last. “My colleague will now conduct the technical part of the discussion.” He nodded to the first man, who began, in a much lighter tone than the other three.

  “Mr. Weatherill; may I call you Bob? I believe that is your more familiar name?” Bob nodded.

  “Bob, I will start with the obvious; then we will get into the detail. I assume you will be familiar with Random Failure Syndrome?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what is causing it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any hypotheses as to what may be causing it?”

  “No, although I’m guessing it must be some form of cyber-attack. But, beyond that, no. It’s weird. In fact, some colleagues and I tend to refer to it as weird stuff: it’s a term that seems to be popular in the UK.”

  “Good; this places us in the same position with regard to RFS – your weird stuff. We believe that the first symptoms can be traced back to the first or second week of this month but we are unable to be precise. We know that it attacks all physical electronic systems, not merely those concerning communication, and we find this difficult to explain – as I imagine you do. We know that the problem is getting worse. We do not know what the cause is or what to do about it. Naturally, we are concerned.”

  The held each other’s gaze for a few moments before the man continued.

  “Bob, what else do you know?”

  Bob was completely thrown by the sudden change in line. He nervously muttered, “Nothing. Well, no nothing. Not on this, anyway; nothing.”

  The man smiled. “Bob, where have you just been?”

  “Well, I’ve just come from Germany: Darmstadt, if that’s what you mean?”

  “Yes, that is what I mean. And what did you do in Darmstadt?”

  “I was working on a network problem.” He was beginning to consider how much client confidentiality he would need to protect and whether it would cut much ice with his current audience.

  “And did you solve the problem, Bob?”

  “Er, no.” That surely was as much as he was going to be able to say.

  Another long pause.

  “Well,” the man continued, “what you saw in Darmstadt, Bob, we are referring to as Potentially Disruptive Noise, or PDN if you like acronyms. But do you have your own name for that too?”

  Bob looked stunned for a few seconds, then smiled ruefully as he slowly understood the depth of the set-up.

  “Well, I suppose I was calling it a dirty network.” He considered for a moment as connections forced their way into his mind. “So, did you find out that I’d been to Darmstadt or did you really send me to Darmstadt?”

  “The latter, really. It seemed like an appropriate place to ‘direct you’, shall we say? And, as a partially federally-funded institute, we retain some influence there.” Another pause.

  “To be fair, Bob,” he continued. “HGMS was one of the first places PDN was found. Only that level of precision and that accuracy of measurement detects it easily. Until very recently – only the past week or so – we have not been aware of its presence on more conventional networks. But we are now. They agreed with us that you should visit them. Bo
b, we are aware that you possess both diagnostic tools and skills that may shed light on the problem?”

  Bob thought carefully. “Well you know I didn’t solve the problem, I guess? Hattie, er sorry, my holistic analysis tool, took a huge amount of data from the network, which I’m still trying to analyse offline. That may yet give some clearer clues as to the effects of the problem; I can’t say if that’ll get me anywhere nearer to understanding the cause.”

  “It goes without saying, Bob,” the man struck in, “that we would be extremely interested in any such findings – or any other, for that matter.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Bob agreed, slowly – further connections making inroads into his head. “But, so, are you suggesting that this PDN is on other networks, now? Other LANs? WANs? Analogue and digital? Across the Internet?”

  Another pause. “It’s on all wired networks, Bob.”

  And then the penny really did drop. Bob spoke slowly and deliberately, barely believing what he was saying.

  “Even on non-data networks? Even power networks?”

  “Even on non-data networks, Bob. It obviously takes a variety of forms on various networks: power networks are very different from data networks. But, in some form or other, it is on all physically-connected electronic systems. All the networks are dirty.”

  They looked at each other for a full minute. By the time he eventually spoke, the words that fell out of Bob’s mouth seemed obvious to the point of imbecility.

  “So, are you saying that the dirty networks are causing the weird stuff?”

  The man drew a slow breath. “We are certainly saying that RFS and PDN are linked. We cannot assume with certainty which is cause and effect but we think we can discount them being unconnected phenomena. Both the timings and nature of their appearance suggest interdependence. Most of us would support your assertion that the network noise is affecting network behaviour: PDN is leading to RFS or, as you put it, the ‘dirty networks are causing the weird stuff’.

  “So, you see, Bob, I may condense my thoughts thus. We have a universal network problem (PDN), which appears to be having serious consequences (RFS), which in turn are getting worse with no sign of stopping or slowing down. You are one of Europe’s top men in complex network analysis and you possess diagnostic tools and capabilities, which we lack. We need your help.”

  ‘Claudia’ interposed briefly at this point. “There can be no payment for this cooperation – other than your expenses; we trust you will consider it a service to society.” The man glanced sideways, appearing slightly annoyed by the interruption and its lack of immediate relevance, and continued.

  “So, it may not be unreasonable of me now, Bob, to ask the question again. What else do you know?”

  “About PDN?”

  “Yes, about your dirty networks.”

  Bob reflected. “I’m not sure. Yes, I suppose it’s possible. I did manage to observe a collision between a noise spike and a sync frame on the HGMS network, which then needed retransmission. That would have had an effect on the timings at that level of accuracy if the network had been live. But, it’s hard to see how that would affect most networks … or systems,” he added as an afterthought.

  “So, your measurements suggest the noise to be entirely random?” The man’s eyes narrowed slowly.

  “Yes, well, no, not exactly.”

  The man leaned back in his chair again and said, with a slight sigh:

  “We need to be open with each other here, Bob. I suspect you may be working close to the limits of your technology? We are certainly at the limits of ours.” Yet another pause. “However, we do not observe the noise to be completely random. Our technical specialists say they can detect some limited form of structure. Would you agree?”

  “Well, it’s not as simple as that,” Bob said defensively. “Most of it is random: just spikes and stuff. But very occasionally you see something that could be a few bits of binary code. Very, very occasionally there’s some longer ‘data’ – if it is data. And once, I thought I saw something that looked like it might be the start of a network frame; but it was incomplete. In fact, if I read it right, it shouldn’t have been on that network at all – certainly not on that part because the kit should have cleaned it off before the bit where we measured it. I’ll need to have another look at that, I guess,” he said softly.

  The man’s eyes widened at the mention of frame. “That would be very useful to us all, I expect,” he smiled.

  The first man spoke again. “Mr. Weatherill, I think now may be a good time for us to introduce you to some more colleagues and for you to see what we have been doing here.” The two men stood; the two women remained seated. The men led Bob towards, and through, a door on the right side of the room. The women he never saw again in his life.

  *

  Over the next seven hours or so, Bob was shown three or four more rooms and met around a dozen more people. Beyond that level of recall, he could subsequently have no more described any human aspect of his day’s work than he could have delivered it in Latin. He shook hands (these people did that), answered and asked questions, moved from one room to another, sat down, stood up, ate a sandwich and drank some coffee. If people were a blur, however, the outcomes were in sharp focus. It was clear that these guys were technically more on his level and they had equipment that, although differently conceived and constructed to Hattie, delivered network analysis results to an almost similar level of accuracy.

  It was immediately clear that the anomalies Bob had observed in Darmstadt were to found everywhere. There were network traces, logs and scans available from across Europe and beyond. Generally, they appeared to take the same form, once the difference in speeds, transmission media, and suchlike were taken into account. There were also records from electrical power networks, both domestic and supply, and various other control systems that used a huge variety of different carrier technologies.

  And the patterns (possibly the lack of patterns) was effectively the same. Mostly the noise was random and meaningless but rare occurrences appeared to have more shape. It was not quite so clear, from the readings these people had, that the longer pieces of noise might represent data fragments (the signal forms had not been so accurately captured) but, knowing what he had seen earlier, Bob was reasonably convinced they did. The non-communication systems (mainly the national power grids) showed less variety in their interference but the presence of the random noise (it still seemed utterly random there) was clear for all to see.

  “How much data do you have here?” Bob asked.

  A woman who appeared to be charge of the team he was currently talking to, or possibly the room he was in, or possibly both, answered.

  “We have the equivalent of approximately thirty-thousand hours of observation here, from across the world; although about ninety percent is from Europe. Approximately seventy percent of the material is from data networks, the rest from cabled phone networks, control and power supply networks.”

  “You captured all this here?” Bob asked doubtfully.

  “No, from our facility in Brussels.”

  “Is it possible to just look at the very longest periods of noise from all the data networks?”

  “Of course.”

  One of her team stepped across to the nearest workstation and brought up a file showing a graphical waveform image of twenty-five of the longest traces, then zoomed in on the top three in a rectangular window. Bob’s intake of breath was so sharp the air almost whistled between his teeth.

  There was absolutely no doubt. These were frames – or, at least, partial frames. Most were incomplete but the structure was clear. The individual bits were arranged as bytes and these bytes made up network frames. He could see protocol flags, addresses, and padded fields. They were sometimes imperfect in their make-up but the overall pattern being attempted was distinct enough. He pointed this out to his companions to some considerable astonishment but not disbelief. Once Bob, aided by his years in the business and his expe
rience from Hattie’s clearer images earlier, pointed the structures out, they could see – and they concurred. Some of the noise was forming bits of data; some of the bits were combined into bytes and some of the bytes were forming (not always entirely successfully) frames. All were in agreement. Then discussions began in earnest.

  Firstly, could this be random? Some simple statistical calculations showed that it could not. Although there was a huge amount of noise to be observed, the ‘Shakespearean monkeys’ model of spikes randomly forming the occasional bit, then sequence of bits, then bytes and frames was not credible, at least not in its purest form. True, there was the occasional flaw in the make-up of what should have been a certain structure but, as few and far between as the larger sequences were, there were still too many for random chance. Among the general noise there were fragments of structure and this structure had to mean something.

  Secondly, could the noise be causing the network (and other) malfunctions? (Was PDN definitely causing RFS?) There was quick agreement that it could be – at least theoretically. A hastily formed working hypothesis was reached … If occasionally the noise resembled data bits and, if even more occasionally the bits made bytes and frames, then eventually – following some currently completely unknown logic – a very rare frame might have sufficient meaning to be understood by the link device that received it. Then, even more rarely, a combination of properly constructed frames and receptive network device states could (very theoretically) be meaningful to a higher layer network protocol, which in turn might then affect the behaviour of a network device or end system. The chance would be billions and billions to one but that would be enough in principle. True enough, no-one had yet observed such a frameset but it seemed highly likely that they would exist, considering just how much noise there was across all systems in operation. Individual manifestations of RFS were possibly precisely that – the eventual, and ultimately probable appearance of just such an individually unlikely event. It was not ‘Shakespearean monkeys’ as such; rather the logical extension of a process they could observe – even predict – but could not understand.