by Gabriel Kron
“I’m hoping they may listen to the whole story of what's happened and see the injustices of having this technology suppressed. For instance, did you know that there were over twenty-five thousand deaths last year from the cold, here in the UK alone? Twenty-five thousand! What is it worldwide? And considering this has been suppressed for the last eighty years, that’s over two million deaths in this country alone that could have been prevented with a small, cheap to build, free to run generator,” Lee was obviously fired up about this, understandably considering what we were all putting on the line.
I agreed to talk to the Lines Foundation. I had nothing to lose after all, and everything to gain.
The Den. Day 53.
Mark had dedicated two of his servers to decoding the Locke cipher. One was trying a brute force method of decryption, generating huge amounts of garbage text, whilst the other analysed this same data for recognisable words. It was crude but effective given time, and only really worked on older pre-computer encryptions.
On his desk was one of his latest gadgets, a modified hand held PDA computer, slightly thicker than the usual, but in its protective case it didn’t look any bulkier than other PDA types. It was loaded with two operating systems, a PDA version of Windows, with sat nav, Phone and Camera applications along with all the other programs, utilities, and games that made up the typical Windows set up. It also had a version of Unix that would allow Mark total control of the hardware contained within and for his UnderNet protocols to be fully enabled.
He stuffed the computer into a leather satchel when his latest replacement smart phone rang. The caller ID was withheld which meant only one thing for this phone, Colin Mundy.
“Morning,” Mark answered the call.
The familiar deep rasp of Colin’s voice greeted him with his coded request. “Good morning. Time for a coffee break?”
“Not today I’m afraid,” Mark said amazed that he was still being given various sanctions to perform and that the monthly payments were still appearing in his bank account.
“Working?” Colin asked.
“Nope, sightseeing with Beth.” Conveniently, the doorbell rang, “Talking of which, got to go. I’ll be back later this afternoon. Can it wait that long?”
“It can wait,” Colin said and hung up.
Mark closed his den door and listened for the locks to engage, grabbed his jacket and the satchel and answered the front door.
“Hiya, all set?” Mark said and kissed Beth Simmons, a twenty-something secretary from one of his city clients.
“Where we going again?” Beth asked as they walked towards the bus stop.
“Westminster Palace.”
“Will we see the Queen?”
“Are you serious? Here take this please,” Mark said handing her a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile phone.
“What?”
“Westminster Palace is where the Houses of Parliament are.”
“What about Prince Charles?”
“You are joking right?”
“Why are we doing this, Mark?” Beth asked.
“Kinda something important.”
“Kinda? Whatever. I didn’t know they did tours anyway.”
Mark didn’t know they did either until he started looking into how to physically penetrate Westminster Palace’s computer network.
Westminster Palace, being the home of the House of Commons, is owned by the people, the commoners, and as such any UK resident can apply via their MP or a Lord for a free tour lasting about an hour and a quarter.
Mark had applied for both a tour and a session in the Parliamentary Archives under the guise of doing research for a Politics degree.
They entered through the St. Stephen’s entrance and followed a series of hallways and stairs to the octagonal Central Lobby.
Having submitted themselves to the standard security checks, which even included removing his belt and shoes on this particular day, they followed the tour guide, dressed in her dark blue blazer and matching skirt along with eight other ‘strangers’ through the lobbies and relevant chambers of one of the world’s most iconic buildings.
It was a fascinating building with a long and complicated history, but today Mark wasn’t interested in mosaic floors, frescoes or brass studs in the floor showing where some King’s throne once stood. He focused not on the tour guide, but on the electrical wall plates and floor boxes that existed everywhere. Mostly mains sockets, probably only used by the cleaners, they were well disguised because of the building’s Grade 1 listing. He was looking for a data point, somewhere to plug in one of his dongles. He actually doubted he would find one in any of the corridors or even the Chambers. He needed either an office or perhaps somewhere in Archives, where they would go next, after lunch.
They ate in one of the numerous restaurants downstairs with the bars and cafés. Some of the places were not for the public or ‘strangers’ as they were called. They appeared to be well frequented by the Ministers, MPs, and Lords. And at such an early hour.
“Where was the last place you worked that had facilities like this laid on for you?” Mark asked Beth as she finished the last of a biscotti dunked in what she called proper-froffy-coffee. “Subsidised by us the tax payers. Can you believe that?”
“I saw a sign for a hair salon and a gym, talk about rich,” Beth said.
They made their way around to the Black Rod's Garden entrance for the Archives. Parliament was a busy bustling place at times with Ministers, Members of Parliament, Lords, aides, special advisers, media, press, armed Police, caterers, and secretaries, milling around between floors, chambers, offices, bars, pubs, restaurants and committee rooms.
The Parliamentary Archives search room was on the fifth floor and Mark insisted on using the stairs as it gave him a better idea of where he might find somewhere with a computer data point. He presented his letter of appointment and produced his driving licence along with Beth’s before being allowed entry in.
The Archives search room wasn’t big. Several wooden desks with modern high backed chairs filled the room together with shelves of leather bound catalogues and document boxes.
There were two computer stations that offered internet access and laptops with WiFi were allowed. Mark hoped he’d be able to find a free Ethernet socket, but not in here.
Once they were seated and the Archive Curator had brought the relevant brown document box on Parliamentary debates 1955 to 1985, Mark grabbed his satchel and kissed Beth on the forehead.
“Right, if they ask, say I went to find a toilet. I’ll be as quick as I can. You okay?”
Beth just nodded.
“Good. If I don’t manage to get back here within thirty minutes then wait outside by the Statue of Churchill. If I’m longer than an hour after that, go home, you’ll have to assume I’ve been caught.”
Before Beth could object and ask what Churchill looked like, Mark slid off through the fire exit door at the back of the search room that led into the maze of the archives crammed with box files, scrolls, bundles and dossiers dating back over five hundred years.
Mark continued through the archives until he reached another fire door. He checked to make sure it wasn’t alarmed and when he decided it was clear, made his way through onto a staircase. He ran up to the next floor and let himself into another corridor. It was empty and lined with large heavy wooden panelled doors.
He listened at the first of them and when it sounded clear, tried the handle. Locked, damn.
He tried the next door along. This time it sounded quiet and was open. He peeked inside to see a small committee room. It took him only a few seconds to locate the Ethernet connection plate next to a gang of mains sockets. Using a small screwdriver he undid the wall plate and quickly hard wired the dongle into the con-blocks. A small red LED flashed to indicate it had already found packet data traffic.
He screwed the plate back on and exited the committee room.
~~~
“Anyone notice?” Mark asked Beth as he sat back down. He
activated his PDA computer and ran up the UnderNet protocol.
“No. Can we go now?” She was obviously getting bored.
“Soon.”
There were six PSN’s he was interested in. There had been uproar from consumers when it was revealed that Intel had started using PSNs, Processor Serial Numbers as a more accurate way of identifying computers online. Introduced into the Pentium III, it was officially not used again. That was officially. Unofficially and for the benefit of Intelligence Agencies (probably at the insistence of the NSA) and Police authorities, a new serial number was assigned not to the CPU but to the on-board maths co-processor. This meant that it was still possible to accurately identify and track individual computers. This time, it was not made public knowledge.
The dongle would now sit there filtering all the traffic on the Ethernet backbone for the PSNs. He would have to return to download the data it collected. Once a PSN was identified, a ‘Search-Bot’ program would be initiated that did a systematic data phishing search of the computer for mundane details held in registration files, setup logs, and documents.
As Mark and Beth left the Archives search room, Mark booked another appointment for the end of the week. He would continue to do this every few days until the Dongle had either done its job or god forbid, was discovered.
The Garrett Club, Garrett Street London. Day 53.
General Rourke finally had some good news. The sample brush that Bateman had found was now in his possession and the various messages for Bateman delivered. Operation Bellring was stumbling with the trail to Bateman having gone stone cold again. So a little of his own diverse strategy to those that were friends of Bateman might convince him to give himself and the notebooks up.
Periphery Intelligence was good and accurate it would seem. It was unfortunate, however, that the source wasn’t closer to Bateman.
If this phase didn’t bring Bateman out, then further “encouragement” would be used on those around him. General Rourke was going to break Bateman. He was going to break him down until he would beg to hand himself in, and then he’d break him some more.
The Garrett Club was probably one of the few pure male bastions left in the country and one of the most expensive Gentlemen’s clubs in London. General Rourke had been a member since the end of the first Gulf war in 1991. It was a regular and safe casual haunt for many an influential gent, and Rourke would often invite friends, colleagues and counter-parts to enjoy the food, drinks and entertainment. Membership was strictly invitation only — it didn’t even appear on the lists of Gentlemen’s Clubs.
Senator Reaves was already sitting in a high backed armchair to one side of the large open fire. Sitting opposite him in a matching chair was the current Minister of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Justin Smith-Taylor.
“Good evening Senator, Minister,” Rourke said as he sat in another of the chairs. He addressed them by their titles, as was the rule in the club.
“General,” they both responded.
“Senator. Thank you for the use of one of your CIA asset teams, they’ve recovered some of what we want and more importantly delivered the messages. I’m sure he will crack or be given up soon. If nothing else he has effectively been stopped,” Rourke said and had the first nip of a1940 Glenlivet Scotch Whisky which the Senator had been given as a gift.
“And if he hasn’t—” Smith-Taylor said as he sniffed the glass of the £13,000 a bottle single malt “—been stopped I mean? What if he manages to disclose how this Lockridge device works, what then?”
Senator Reaves held his own whisky glass up. “If he manages to work out how it works and decides to try and disclose it, then we would have to run with it. We’d have to flood the internet with as much disinformation and smear as possible. We did it with global warming and we almost managed to get the whole scientific community behind it as well. Now most people are truly confused. By getting everyone to believe that global warming was man-made and that we have to pay to clean it up, we accelerate the planet towards the next ice age. With a warm climate food production increases, energy needs for survival are reduced. Greater supply, so less demand. Not much profit there. So we convinced the world that we had to reduce our carbon footprints. Now we have a carbon economy. As we enter the next mini ice age, our energy demands will increase multiple times as will our profits. The cooler climate will mean less food production. Reduced supply and greater demand. There will be huge depopulation during this time, which will relieve the burden on the infrastructure of the new world we are entering. The Jewel in the crown of our futures truly is the Joule.”
Justin Smith-Taylor looked into his glass. He had been one of the many who had completely swallowed the man-made global warming story. It had started as a seed of an idea and grown into a whole industry with its own economy. Countries ploughed tax-payers money into schemes and initiatives to fight global warming. The old adage of you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time was true for global warming, but the strength of support from eminent scientists world-wide created a wave of fear. There were always the global warming sceptics and when their voices started to be listened to, they changed the term to climate change, hoping to divert attention from the lack of real hard evidence for man-kind’s influence on the climate.
For Senator Reaves, General Rourke and Minister Smith-Taylor, sitting in their £1,200 armchairs, the heat from the open log fire was almost uncomfortable on their legs. The coming of the next ice age couldn’t happen fast enough. With the carbon economy well established, countries would be taken to the point of bankruptcy as they struggled to supply the energy being demanded by their societies. The 45Com12 group controlled the industries that supplied and distributed energy. In fact, they tried to have a controlling element in every industry they could, from communications to food production. Anything that they considered essential, they positioned themselves to benefit from.
The Yard. Day 53.
After my parents’ murder, I felt I was waiting for the right emotions to present themselves. Following the initial anger at what had been done to them, I felt numb. I had two choices. One, get angry and let myself go to the grief. Two, get angry and use that anger to focus on completing what I had set out to do. I knew this is what my parents would have wanted.
In truth, I was experiencing both choices and knew this wasn’t going to go away over a few days. After attending Jack’s funeral, I knew that to attend my own parents’ would be walking straight into another trap.
Becs telephoned the care-home who said that they had been trying to contact me since the discovery of my parents’ bodies. It was painful to listen to, but she had to tell the home that I was uncontactable and out of the country with no scheduled return date.
Dignity Funerals were to conduct the cremation and although I couldn’t risk being there, I would at least be able to scatter my parents’ remains across Bracklesham Bay. Becs confirmed that the remains would be collected by someone from the crematorium to be laid to rest elsewhere at another time.
Until then I needed to keep busy and the Lockridge device was the only focus I needed. Revenge for my parents and friends who had been murdered and attacked would be best served cold as a fully functional and understood free energy generator to disclose to the world.
We had the results from the mass spectrometer, the original notebook and Locke’s notebooks. We had all but one of the parts to make a full size working replica of the device I had seen at the Locke antiques barn. We were so close to being able to verify what I had seen and what the notebooks claimed. Yet we were so far away. For decades so-called free energy generators had been declared as working and just needing funding to scale up, only to vanish back into the teeming vast pool of information and disinformation on the internet.
Before the end of the day, Lee had managed to confirm with Wendy that an interview with the Lines Foundation wasn’t only possible, but w
as scheduled for the coming Friday.
“We’ve got two days to put together a presentation that will knock their socks off,” Lee said as he started jotting down a synopsis of how he would present it.
“Better start moving then,” Clive said. “Can I suggest that we let Lee write up the speech as that’s what he’s good at and put together any useful facts like the number of UK deaths caused by the freezing weather. I’ll help Dan get the motors we’ve got converted as best we can.”
We decided to start straight away. Brenda invited Becs back to their hotel room to make use of the bathroom facilities. Lee sat outside with his notebook whilst I started showing Clive what we had to build.
“It would be good if we had some sort of theory of how this is supposed to work,” I called out to Lee from the workshop.
“It would be good if Karin was here. We discussed what the mechanism to this might be, and Karin had some great ideas,” Lee said as he walked up to the blackboard in the workshop and started to draw a large picture of the layered split brush.
“Karin said that the one way that this could produce useful output was if an electron avalanche could be triggered. The radiant nature of the Radium could be causing this in the lead graphite, although it is unlikely to just happen because they’ve been placed together. I think our strongest clue as to what is happening is the crystalline structure of the Radium forming some kind of semi-conductor junction at the interface between the two...” Lee was frantically drawing arrows and lines to indicate where and how excess electrons and therefore electricity might be produced. “...and so when hit with a high voltage spike they are effectively knocked free, allowing them to be siphoned off through the lead in the graphite.”
The explanation sounded feasible or at least simple enough for me to explain.
Thankfully it made it easier to forget the turmoil that existed in our lives, because of this technology, whilst we focused on preparing for the presentation to the Lines Foundation.