“Gorillas,” Raymond said. “Their native area is the Congo, in Africa. But here, where we've brought them, the climate is similar. We're at almost the exact same latitude, actually. Gorillas are one of the smartest animal species and their shape and movement is close to humans, so they make excellent test subjects.”
On screen, there was a hooting noise. One of the larger males, with a silver mane, turned to the camera and flashed his teeth with a mighty roar. He was a good six feet tall and well over three hundred pounds. He jumped up and down. The hooting and screaming continued. Some of the shapes fled from the screen, while a mother and a baby squatted by a tree and covered their faces.
A shining, silver cloud flashed across the screen.
The camera view cut to a nearby patch of trees. One of the gorillas was scooping in the mud desperately. It appeared to be a male, but not as big or as old as the silverback.
The silver metallic cloud darted onto the screen again directly up toward the gorilla. The flybots blanketed his body with silver. Suddenly, he was still, and he fell to the ground with a thud.
“Holy crap, that was fast,” Simon said. “Are these in production?”
“We're close,” Raymond said. “We're conducting final tests.”
“Do soldiers even have a chance against these?”
“Without armor or other technology, they won't do any better than a gorilla.”
“The insects win again,” Simon remarked.
“This is part of a trend in robotics,” Gene said. “Evolution has spent millions of years coming up with excellent designs for animals. So engineers don't have to start from scratch when they build robots. They can borrow from animal designs. Robotic snakes can get through tight spaces and move quickly in sand. Four-legged robots with hooves can navigate mountainsides and carry heavy loads.”
“Exactly,” Raymond said. “And flybots can have the properties of mosquitoes — such as the way they fly and the way they bite.”
Simon raised a finger. “Maybe this isn't the ideal time to bring this up,” he sneered, “but did it occur to you at any point that this technology could be — oh, I don't know — extremely dangerous?”
Raymond smiled politely. “It certainly did, Mr. Chan. The dangerous power of this technology is an excellent reason why we must develop it. We can't stop foreign nations from developing it. If we don't develop it first, we'll be at a severe disadvantage.”
“That's not the danger I was talking about,” Simon said. “I meant the danger that these flybots malfunction. They are built to attack people. What if a glitch causes them to attack people when we don't ask them to? You're on the brink of accidentally creating the most dangerous pest on Earth.”
“Flybots have been designed exactly to prevent that from happening,” Raymond replied. “The microprocessor inside a flybot — its computer — runs on a piece of custom software. We call it Robix. Flybots require Robix to run. And Robix shuts down after a flybot has attacked a target.”
“Each flybot can attack a maximum of one target in its lifetime?”
“Correct. We call it the One Attack Law.”
“Well, that's clever. But what if there's a bug in the software?”
Raymond smiled. “That's why we've used more than software to enforce the One Attack Law. Each flybot actually has a fuse built into it. When a flybot removes its proboscis — the biting, stinger part — from skin, the pressure of this act mechanically pulls the fuse. It's more like a circuit breaker than a fuse actually. The process is mechanical. It can't be stopped with software. Once the circuit breaks, the computer shuts off instantly.”
Simon squinted. “That's pretty cool.”
Pleased, Raymond noted, “As for reproduction: it would be impossible for our flybots to make other flybots. Remember that even though flybot mechanics are based on real mosquitoes, they don't have DNA, eggs, or any programming or knowledge or instinct related to reproduction.”
Flannigan took the opportunity to speak. “Thanks, Raymond. Let's get back on topic. You mentioned there is a computing facility. Do you think the kid is here to hack into that network?”
“I doubt it. There's nothing about these networks that you can't find thousands of miles away. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that he's anywhere on the island. There is almost no one here. The only people who come to the island are staffers or official visitors. And no children.”
“What's the best way of finding out for sure?” Flannigan asked.
“My staff is looking into it.”
“Say he's on the island. Where would he be?”
“Well, he's not here in the Welcome Center. The only other possibility is that he's in the Laboratory Complex, in one of buildings.”
“How quickly could we search those buildings?” Flannigan asked.
“I would suggest,” Gene said, “that we take a direct approach to locate him.”
“Which is?”
“We ask him,” Gene said.
FLASH FREEZE
General Carrillo examined a map on the wall of his office. An aide explained what they were looking at.
“We've had a hell of a time discovering a signature of the virus,” he said. “Our forensics teams have been looking at the hard drives of infected computers on our network. But they haven't found anything concrete. We did notice one thing though: the virus is making use of the CPUs on infected computers.”
Carrillo nodded.
“So we have started to get a picture of the spread of the virus by sending out pings to parts of our network and the Internet. We then track how long it takes them to get back to us. It's like sonar. The pings that take longer to get back to us are coming from regions where the virus has penetrated the most.”
The General pointed to a chart hanging next to the map. “And these are the top locations.”
“That's right. These twenty regions are much more densely populated with the virus than the rest of the network — by an order of magnitude.” There were twenty locations, associated with IP ranges and identified on the map by latitude and longitude.
Carrillo noticed that some of the locations were in China. “Does this mean China is a target?”
“Not necessarily. It could be that China has established the virus on those data centers to send out attacks to our network.”
Of course. He looked at some of the locations on U.S. soil.
“Are these data centers?”
“Yes, sir.” Massive networks of computers, mostly used by military and government, but also by major search engines.
“These locations are all over the world.”
“Yes, sir. The attack has not been very targeted.”
“No. Unless it's targeting big data centers.” Could be an act of terrorism, he thought. The General turned away from the board. “We have to escalate this up. But first we need to know what's happening on these computers. Is data being copied? Is it being erased? Otherwise we haven't a clue as to who these attackers are or what their motivation is.”
The aide nodded. “I agree, sir. But there may be a reason to escalate now. Even before we get that information.”
“Why is that?”
“It's because of the slowdown. As the virus spreads, our sonar method is going to give us less and less information. Soon we won't be able to see what's going on.”
“Oh, God.” Carrillo was starting to see. The virus was spreading like wildfire, but freezing the network like a glacier. Soon they wouldn't be able to see anything. Whatever the virus was doing would be invisible to them.
ESCALATION
Near Denver, Colorado
6 hr 2 min to Birth
Carrillo was on the phone with the Secretary of Defense. In the last few minutes, he had spoken with the commander of USNORTHCOM in Colorado Springs. He had stayed on the line as they spoke with the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and then Deputy Secretary of Defense. This process had taken 22 minutes since Carrillo's first call to the commander.<
br />
At the commander's guidance, Carrillo told the Secretary what they knew about the situation. The attacking force was invading the network quickly. It was like a computer virus in some ways — in the way it spread, and the way it left software on the computers it reached.
But it wasn't a virus — at least, no ordinary virus. A virus was a computer program, usually a modest one. And viruses consisted of usually one attack or exploit. This attacker, on the other hand, used a variety of attacks. In fact, the attacker was constantly discovering and exploiting new vulnerabilities as he moved. No computer program could do that — only people.
The key question raised by the Under Secretary was, if people are choosing the exploits and even inventing them, how is the attack spreading so quickly? Carrillo suggested that the attackers were installing software on these computers, and that software was being used to launch attacks. So he believed that many of the attacks were automated. Most likely, a human was monitoring the attacks and continually adding new techniques to them. So the attack was actually like a virus that was being monitored, controlled, and improved by humans.
Carrillo estimated that for this virus to learn as quickly as it was learning, it had to be monitored by a large team of skilled hackers — perhaps 100 expert hackers, he guessed.
An operation of this size and complexity meant only one thing: they were under attack by a foreign nation. No terrorist group could pull this off, unless they had the full involvement of a government.
Which left the question, who was it?
“We're still trying to understand how the software works. It's quite unusual,” Carrillo said. One of his analysts had suggested to him that the code might be written by aliens, but he omitted that theory. “For that reason, we're having trouble backtracking to the location where the monitoring is occurring.”
The Secretary asked if he had any guesses or theories so far.
“We've identified twenty locations of high penetration of the virus. It's possible that one of them was used as the original launchpad.”
“Twenty locations? Where are they?”
“All over the globe. China, India, Europe, domestic.”
“Are you telling me this could be an inside threat? A hundred domestic hackers?”
“We're not sure, sir. Any of those dots could be a source or a target. It appears to be an attack launched from one major data center at several other major data centers.”
“And we think,” the Secretary said, “there is a team of hackers directing the attacks from one of these data centers.”
“That's correct, sir. That is our hypothesis. Since the virus is causing network slowdown, it would appear that they are likely to be physically present at the location of the origin of the attack.”
“So we could take out the attackers by taking out the twenty locations.”
“That's correct, sir. Obviously we would face a cost of innocent lives at the other nineteen locations.”
“Given the size of this conflict, that would be a small number of casualties.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Good. I'm calling the President. Stand by.”
THERE IS NO KID
Fort Tortuga, Welcome Center Conference Room
6 hr 1 min to Birth
The conference was interrupted by the receptionist, who signaled to Raymond patiently from the doorway.
“Excuse me,” Raymond said, stepping out into the hallway. He engaged in a muttering conversation and came back into the conference room.
“We make careful records of who comes on the island,” Raymond began. “I ordered a review of the records to see if a child of a staff member or visitor came to the island recently.”
“And?”
“And it has been quite some time — months — since any child was on this island. And the departure of those visitors is documented. So we're about one hundred percent sure there is no child on the island.”
Flannigan frowned.
“I've ordered a review of all of the security camera footage on the island as well,” Raymond continued. “That's underway, but it will take at least half an hour.”
“So it's not a kid,” Simon shrugged. “So what? We had no good reason to think it was a kid anyway.”
“Did you review the records for the presence of adults as well?” Flannigan asked.
“Of course,” Raymond said. “Right now there are five staff members known to be on the island, including me. They are all part of my staff — part of the island's security forces. There are no scientists on the island. They are all on vacation.”
“You're saying there's no one on the island,” Flannigan summarized.
“That's how it looks. We'll have a better answer after reviewing the tapes.”
But someone has to be here, Flannigan thought. Someone pushed the power button. You can't do that remotely.
“Could someone have arrived by sea?” Gene asked.
“If an intruder were to sneak onto the island, the best way would be by sea,” Raymond judged. “But we have an extensive network of cameras on the island.”
“Yes, but was anyone looking at the cameras?” Simon asked.
Raymond explained that the camera footage was computer-monitored and it triggered alerts.
“How's the night vision?” Gene asked of the system.
“Not too good,” Raymond admitted. “But we tune it up at night and take a few false positives. We have to review more cases, but the worst-case scenario is that we get to take a ride around the island in the motorboat.”
“He's no idiot,” Flannigan reasoned aloud, annoyed. “He knows that we can see this. So what is he doing?”
They were all silent.
“Hiding,” Simon stated. “Evidently he's hiding — or they are.”
He wants us to look for him, Flannigan thought. So Gene's suggestion was correct. Why not chat with Nemo and ask where he was?
She opened a window on the projector screen and logged into Google chat while the others watched.
“Wait a minute,” Simon uttered. “The Internet is supposed to be frozen. How come you logged in so fast?”
But Flannigan had already typed a chat into the screen:
Flannigan: Hi Nemo — are you there?
Nemo: Hello!
Flannigan: We're on Fort Tortuga...
Nemo: Aha, so you're in the Welcome Center then?
Flannigan: Yes.
Nemo: Then welcome!
Flannigan: Where are you?
Nemo: I'm in the lab building.
“This is crazy,” Raymond said. “We have staff in that building.”
“You're reviewing the tapes?” Flannigan confirmed sharply.
“Yes, it's underway.”
“Get him to confirm that he's not in the computing building,” Simon said. “There are three buildings over there, right? Lab building, computer building, dorm.”
“Hold on,” Flannigan said.
Flannigan: That's great. We'd like to come and meet you... Is that ok?
Nemo: Can you find your way here?
Flannigan: Yes. Raymond, the facilities manager here, is going to show us the way.
Nemo: Ok. Are they all with you there right now?
Flannigan: Yes.
Nemo: Hi everyone. I'm flattered that you all made the trip to meet me.
Flannigan: It's our pleasure, really. You're in the lab building and not the computing building, right?
Nemo: That's right.
Flannigan: I see. And are there people in the building with you?
Nemo: Yes.
Flannigan: Have you been talking with them too?
Nemo: Not really... I haven't made my presence known to them. I'm not too interested in talking to them.
Flannigan: I see. Well, we'll come over soon, in like half an hour. How will we find you?
Nemo: You can find me in the indoor testing facility.
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