Dark Matter

by John Rollason

  'You're right, you are crazy.' Jack said. 'So I guess you are trying to tell me that for at least the last two thousand years people on Earth have known of the importance of Gold in space travel and have been storing it away for the day that they need it. Why haven't they built spaceships before now?'

  'Firstly,' Jane began, 'we didn't know what you had found in your research. Secondly, we never said PEOPLE on Earth had been hoarding it and thirdly, Gold is one of the components that we think, or rather, John Deeth thinks, is necessary for space travel. We have no idea what else is involved, or how complicated it may be.'

  'Fair enough.' Jack replied, chastened by the rebuke, 'so what do you want from me?'

  'We want you to join us Jack.' George said, his tone serious.

  'To do what? Buy and sell Gold?'

  'We want your military experience,’ Jane said, 'and your contacts. The Sunarr are planning to take over. We need to stop them.' Jane's voice betrayed a little of the fear and uncertainty she was feeling.

  'So you want me to coordinate and lead a worldwide counter-insurgency against a heavily armed, technically superior race whilst they and the world’s governments try to stop me.' Jack's voice, although heavy with irony, had a steel like quality to it now.

  'Yes.' Jane replied, starting to appreciate what lay ahead of them.

  'Sounds like fun. Count me in.'

  18 Contagion

  10:15 24 December [05:15 24 December GMT]

  CNN Live Broadcast, United Nations, New York, USA

  'This is Kacie Bright reporting live from the floor of the United Nations where, moments ago, the UN, sitting in special session, just past its latest resolution which paves the way for the security of personnel to be placed in the hands of the Sunarr. This, as you may be aware, is in direct response to the unprecedented attacks by members of the UN and security personnel. This comes days after the US, the EU, Russia, China, India, and most other nations implemented local agreements with the Sunarr to provide security. The first to take up the offer was of course the new Vice-President of the US, the previous incumbent having been assassinated by his own security detail.

  The fine details are still to be worked out, I have been informed. However, the Sunarr have made assurances that they have more than sufficient security personnel for all those requiring it. Indeed most have already been deployed to the relevant countries and UN personnel in anticipation of their being requested.

  There has only been one real challenge in this process and that was the request by Female world leaders and ambassadors for female security personnel. Curiously, the request was turned down on the grounds that there are no female Sunarr security personnel. This prompted some intense discussions amongst those who have a religious requirement. The matter was partially settled by religious leaders who agreed that as the Sunarr are not Human, then the males cannot be deemed to be Men in the religious sense. However, the law has been slower to change and they will be required to function as men using, for example, male toilets.

  I spoke to the UN Secretary-General, Jayanti Kapoor, and she told me that the assistance of the Sunarr is only something that will truly be understood in historical terms.

  This is Kacie Bright reporting to you live from the United Nations. Now it’s back to Ted in the newsroom.'

  10:15 24 December [05:15 24 December GMT]

  Office of the Secretary-General, United Nations, New York, USA.

  Jayanti Kapoor was watching the news report with her aide William. She pressed the standby button on her remote control and the screen went blank.

  'What do you think Will?'

  'I think I'm glad I don't qualify for a security detail.'

  'But I do.'

  'I know. It's a shame you aren't Muslim, maybe you could have negotiated something different. At least you can go to the toilet on your own.'

  'True. That is a delight. If only I could hold meetings in the toilet.'

  William laughed, 'Maybe we could move some desks in there. Some already have showers so you would just need food and you'd be all set for the day.'

  Jay had that look in her eye. 'Say that again'

  'I just said,’ Will replied, 'We could put some desks and food in there and you'd be all set.'

  'Some already have showers, you said.'

  'Yes, mainly for people who like to exercise in their lunch break, but they are also used when we have all night sessions and there is no time to go home and shower.'

  'Desks, food and showers.' Jay wasn't looking at Will now. She could feel her mind making a connection.

  'Ladies toilets, showers, food.' Again the stare.

  Will couldn't keep silent any longer. 'What are you thinking?'

  'I was just remembering a friend’s baby shower. We decided to make a real day of it and went to a health spa. The facilities were excellent, swimming pool, Jacuzzi, restaurant, beauty treatments, the works. The thing was it was a woman only spa. Even all of the staff were women, well those that served us, maybe there might have been some men working behind the scenes. The point is that I wouldn’t be monitored whilst I am there.’

  ‘The only problem being that you could only meet other women.’ Will observed, feeling that he was going to lose touch with his boss.

  Jay smiled and looked straight at Will, her eyes sparkling. ‘Will, don’t you have a sister?’

  ‘Why yes I do, Anne. Why?’ Will replied, then he caught Jay’s look. ‘You can’t be serious. She isn’t security cleared. She’s an actress for goodness sake. She doesn’t know anything about anything!’

  ‘Look she wouldn’t really need to discuss anything just relay information back and forth. I would imagine that most of the men I would need to deal with would have a woman they could trust in their life. What do you think?’

  Will knew when he was beaten. The worst of it was that it was actually a very good idea; he just wished it didn’t have to involve his sister. ‘I think it is an elegant and effective solution to the problem. Shall I draw up a guest list for your spa day? I take it you will be hiring the entire spa?’

  19:30 24 December [00:30 25 December GMT]

  Northeast Corner and East 57th Street, New York, USA.

  Jay arrived home early, for someone in her position early was half past seven. The chauffeur pulled the car up in front of her house. The tail car pulled up behind them. Jay waited patiently in her seat for her door to be opened. A solid clunk indicated that the door mechanism had been operated and she climbed out coming face to face with one of her Sunarr security detail. She shuddered involuntarily. Having armed aliens in full body armour was not something one could easily get used to. The fact that she couldn't see their faces only added to her unease.

  Jay had wanted to be home as early as possible to see her daughter Sameena. Sam had travelled home for Christmas to enjoy a break away from her doctoral work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Although she was looking forward to spending some time with Sam, Jay was dreading having to tell her daughter that she too was going to have bodyguards, alien bodyguards.

  Jay walked through her front door; the smell of freshly cooking Jambalaya penetrated her nostrils and set off the pleasure receptors in her brain. Sam is cooking Jambalaya, she must be pleased about something..., and I'm going to have to ruin her good mood. Sam was the centre of Jay's life outside work, and up until her induction into Group 79 and the arrival of the Sunarr, the single most important thing in the world to her. It was just that there were other worlds to consider now and threats to this world she had never even dreamt of. The thought of having to choose between the security of the human race and her own daughter was troubling. It was not something that she had ever had to prepare for. Her diplomatic career was a life lived in abstracts. The plight of one people over another, one country over another. Decisions made to adversely affect the fewest people, to benefit the majority. Now her decisions would affect billions of people. That thought weighed heavily upon her. How many could I sacrifice for the survival
of the human race? One? A thousand? A million? A billion? She sighed to herself and shelved that line of thinking. For now. She followed the smell of cooking into the kitchen and found her daughter concentrating in front of the stove.

  'Hi' Sam said brightly without turning round, 'there's a glass on the table for you.'

  Jay picked up the glass and took in the aroma of the wine, then took a small sip, followed by a couple more. There were marinated olives and hummus laid out. She nibbled at them whilst she waited for her daughter's attention. Sam turned down the heat under the pan, the last of the liquid absorbed. She turned and went over to her mother, giving her the same special hug she had since she was eight.

  Sam cooed into her mother's ear.

  'I've missed you too. So tell me, what's new?'

  'Well the project is going really well. Everyone there has been extremely nice and helpful.'

  Sam continued to tell her mother about her work. The Box, which was their pet name for the sensory deprivation experiment, was actually a collection of rooms. Currently they were doing short-term exposure to confined spaces, working on ratios of people to living space. They were already getting some interesting results. Some people were naturally more inclined towards confined living than others were. However, everyone at some point needed a space that they could call their own. Most also needed time alone, generally one to two hours per week, but this varied according to the people to living space ratio. One thing they had discovered that NASA found particularly interesting was that by arranging the work rotors of the subjects they could achieve a higher ratio of people in a given space. This was accomplished by having the majority of people undertake a common task together in one room, leaving other rooms free for a few to have their alone time. Meals, sleeping and exercise were particularly good for this. The subjects were generally more than happy to sleep and shower communally. Peoples free time was best spent in a group of no more than six or eight, with everyone having their alone time in a designated room where they were free to do whatever they liked. The real problem, and one they still hadn't been able to crack, was intimacy.

  The trouble with intimacy they had found was that it couldn't be scheduled, confined, or ignored. Ignoring intimacy led almost inexorably to depression, left untreated the depression became severe and debilitating. Productivity suffered and so did their ability to make rational decisions or to react quickly. Physical intimacy could be partially dealt with. The use of pornography for personal release and couples rooms for other situations worked well. It was the non-physical intimacy that was problematic. The normal relations between the sexes and amongst those of the same persuasion could not be fully realised within a confined environment. They had found that the flirting that happens at the coffee station in an office boosts self-esteem and moral. However, the space required for that kind of mingling was not within the parameters of the research. Having flirting or playful banter within the confines of the Box often led to jealousy and rivalries, which affected productivity and decision-making.

  'It’s a real problem, and we are no closer to solving it than when we identified it.' Sam told her mother.

  'Talking of solving problems,’ Jay interjected, seeing her opportunity, 'there is something I need to discuss with you.'

  'What's that?'

  'There's no easy way of telling you this, however I need you to agree to have two Sunarr bodyguards.' Jay looked at her daughter, waiting for the explosion.

  Sam looked back at her mother, reading the pensive look on her face.

  'I thought we had an agreement. No bodyguards. This is my life and I want to be able to live it without intrusion.'

  'I know dear. I know.' Jay's expression was pleading for forgiveness.

  Sam sipped at her wine, watching her mother.

  'This is going to happen whether I like it or not, isn't it?'

  'Yes'

  'And there is nothing you can do?'

  'No.'

  'Well in that case, what can I do?'

  Sam resolved herself to the inevitable, she hadn't had a security detail since she left boarding school, but that had been at a time of heightened threat. A group had made specific threats against her mother, and thereby her daughter too. Now her privacy would disappear again. This time however she wouldn't have the kindly male and female bodyguards who helped with her homework. This time they wouldn't even be human.

  'Thank you sweetheart, I really appreciate it.' Jay kissed her daughter gently on her forehead. 'Now shall we eat?'

  10:30 24 December [10:30 24 December GMT]

  Research Laboratory, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England.

  John switched on the coffee machine in his lab. First things, first, he thought to himself. He approached his computer and switched on the monitor. It was his habit to leave his computer on, generally, it was running some program or other, but also he didn't like wasting time waiting for it to boot up. His personal security program was displaying a warning. This was not unusual. He had written his own security system, unhappy with the commercially available ones. His was an active virus and hacker system. It provided the usual protection against viruses and hackers, but being an active system, it would seek out the source of a virus and infect it with its own. It would also hack any hacker. Designed to be aggressive it would trawl networks looking for viruses and hackers and attack them. John liked to think that this was a service he provided to mankind, in truth he had written it to show how much better he was than others were. The message was not good. It was from the secondary system, the one he had written directly into the core of the computer. It ran in the background, the remainder of the operating system oblivious to its existence. It ran its own processor and was powered by internal batteries, which were on a constant charge cycle with its own mains power source. Its job was to monitor all activity and report. This report said that not only had an unauthorised program installed itself, most likely a virus or Trojan, but that the computer had also been hacked. That meant that someone had successfully circumvented his primary security system. John hit print page and two sheets of clear-text pages printed out. He took them with him, grabbing a coffee and heading outside for a cigarette.

  The outside of his laboratory had been remodelled after the explosion, now there was a wall all the way around about four feet high, earth piled up against it. A precaution against another explosion. John used the wall as a makeshift desk, laying the two pages out, resting his mug of coffee on the wall too. He lit a cigarette and started to read.

  Somebody is good; he thought to himself, somebody is very good indeed. The trace indicated what had happened. The sniff around the ports, one was quietly opened and something had slipped through. The installed program was fascinating. One of the core components had been copied and replaced, the replacement had the same signature as the original, size, and all attributes the same. The secondary system had monitored post infection activity too. The new component exhibited both virus and Trojan characteristics. The Trojan part was packaging up information from his computer and sending it out with his own primary security network scans. The virus part had replicated itself into other components. It also had a trigger indicated; it was monitoring the incoming traffic.

  John decided that this had become top priority, if my system is not secure than neither am I. However, the most important thing was not to be detected. This would require some serious investigation and work. He finished his cigarette and headed back inside. Having the foresight and, he had to admit, the budget, he had cloned his primary computer and had three spares in the storage room. He selected one and took it to his bench. He set up a monitor with the spare computer then turned his attention to the infected machine. One of the utilities he had included with his secondary security system was a clone facility. As it operated separately from the operating system, it could clone the entire system without being noticed. It was this utility that John had used to create his cloned machines in the first place, just out of efficiency really. Now it was vital
. The secondary security system also had exclusive use of its own network port and it was this that John used to transfer the cloned data to the new computer. This one wouldn't go on the outside network. John disconnected the network between the two machines and set about his investigation. This is going to take some time.

  11:07 27 December [06:07 27 December GMT]

  Fifth Avenue, New York, USA.

  The looks Sam was receiving she didn't cherish. She was trying to buy some things for friends, her new colleagues, and herself. Again the looks. At least they don't follow me into the changing rooms, she reflected. The two Sunarr bodyguards had been with her since first thing in the morning. They had been outside her bedroom door when she got up, outside her bathroom whilst she showered. In the kitchen, whilst she ate breakfast. It was absurd really; her mother had waited for her daughter that morning to help her adjust. This meant that they had four bodyguards in the kitchen watching them eat. Driving herself had become out of the question, the bodyguards had a car with a human driver. Her mother had hired Sam a limousine and chauffeur. More practical, she thought, but less personal.

  The eerie thing was that they didn't communicate, at all. They were just there, like a bad shadow, following her every move save the visits to toilets and changing rooms. She had to admit they tried to keep a respectful distance, or maybe it was easier to survey the surroundings she didn't know. They were not in the slightest inconspicuous though, and this was why she, and they, were being stared at. This being New York some people tried to talk to them, some had photographs with them, most just kept out of the way.