by Taiyo Fujii
Daryl sunk into his chair. “I guess our only option is to search for the base stations after all,” he said.
A similar supposition had been offered once before, but now that they’d heard the tangible idea of the survival instinct from Jamshed’s lips, it was settled.
“Doctor, can you tell me the communication formula one more time?” Akari cut in. “The ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ from the satellite—how would you order the transmissions?”
Jamshed smiled and picked up a pen and one of the yellow sheets of paper. He was now able to understand because Akari had stopped filling her sentences with jargon. Running the pen over the paper, he jotted down the parameters.
“The information going up is the space tether’s ID and TLEs, or its ID and the time to activate Lorentz force. Information coming down is its ID, its coordinates obtained from GPS, and vectors of the terminal apparatuses, in that order. If there is information from this observational devices, it would probably be tagged on afterwards.”
“So you can use GPS in space too?” asked Akari, nodding her head and typing on her keyboard.
“In low orbits, yes,” said Daryl drawing a picture of a GPS satellite on the diagram and connecting it to the space tether.
“What about the radio waves used for the transmission?”
“At my experiments, I am used AM waves. That was only kind of radio I could get my hands on. Since it only went up fifty kilometers, I was able to ignore reflection from ionosphere.” Jamshed told them about his experiments with balloons. He had used them to drop his prototype loaded with an AM transmitter that sent its coordinates and vectors as a beeping sound from the stratosphere and verified the occurrence of the Lorentz force. He then recorded this with a tape recorder and transcribed it to paper by hand. “Of course, AM attenuates and reflects in ionosphere, so I am proposed VHF wave on my paper. Was tough work. Counting my fingers in time to beep, beep. And I used 8 bits including check digit, so I had to use both hands. Might have been more efficient if had used 5 bits though.”
Jamshed showed them the back of his hands and extended the pinky of his left hand and the thumb, index finger, and ring finger of his right hand, smiling.
“Forty-three,” said Akari, reading aloud the number of bits his fingers indicated.
“You can read it too?!” said Jamshed, clapping his hands together with a laugh.
“You are very passionate about this,” said Kazumi, looking as excited as the others.
“Is disappointing for me that I could not bring this space tether to fruition with my own hands. I would love to meet North Korean engineer who realized it for me. I wonder what he did about this problem I could not solve. I am incredibly interested to know.”
Something about what Jamshed said gave Bruce pause again. What was going on in orbit right then was no test run, and—
“I’ve put together the code to search for the base stations,” said Akari, interrupting Bruce’s thoughts. “We can make our query with both SQL and Hadoop. Can I have you search all global communications?”
Bruce turned to look at Chris. Chris looked back and gave him the thumbs-up as Akari’s message arrived. It was a go.
“Sure,” said Bruce. “You’re really fast.”
First he checked to make sure that Akari’s email was formatted as a letter of request and forwarded it to headquarters. Within a few hours, the search query created by Akari, a mere civilian hacker, would run through the full CIA database that steadily accumulated nearly all global communications. This included the communications of Africa, Southeast Asia, most countries in the EU, the nations of the Pacific Rim, America, and so on, but it excluded the regular members of the UN Security Council who were exempt from surveillance by international agreement. While Bruce was doing this, Kazumi and Daryl were never short on questions, and the discussion shifted to how the space tethers were made.
“I am guessing you can use substrate of smartphone as this central processing unit for miniature space tether. But on this case you must be knowing better than me. Do most current smartphones have motion sensors attached?”
“Of course,” said Daryl. “Some are equipped with atomic clock chips and compasses.”
“That is incredible! I am simply astounded on the progress of technology. Not just GPS, but compass, motion vector sensor, and atomic clock … You are not going to tell me that some have radios even?”
“They most certainly do.”
“If that is true, you could make space tether with just smartphone and electron gun. All you have to do is decide the material for the tether. Several years ago, I heard that Japanese audio manufacturer had succeeded in fabricating graphene rolls—”
“He looks so happy,” Chris whispered in Bruce’s ear.
“He sure does. I bet he had no one to talk to.”
Jamshed had gone on theorizing all alone in a backwater, persisting with his research while cut off from information and without even getting proper attention from his academic advisor. Now he had the opportunity to talk with people like Akari and Daryl, who would gladly teach him about the technology of the future. Of course he was happy.
Bruce’s smartphone began to vibrate in his pocket. Under the table, unseen by the cameras in the room, he unlocked his screen and read the notification. He had to confirm whether it was something he could tell Jamshed, and maybe also Akari and Kazumi. Fortunately, the notification was related to the space tethers. Finding a gap in the lively discussion, Bruce cut in.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I have some news. Kazumi’s guess was correct. Japan’s IGS are down. The Wyvern return vehicle has also been hit. Apparently, a severe pressure leak was discovered. What the hell is this?”
The Project Wyvern blog had reported a “slight problem” with its return vehicle, but several hours ago, it had entered into an unplanned rotation. Gathering the intermittent transmissions, terrestrial bases had verified that the pressure inside the craft had reached zero moments earlier. NASA had just been informed.
“The space tethers,” muttered Akari.
Bruce chewed his lip. He had been warning NASA through the CIA, but the view that space tethers were the problem had not yet gained wide acceptance. Despite the fact that the team had known what was happening, they had been unable to do anything about it.
“The entire IGS fleet?” asked Daryl.
“Four groups, eight units, all down.”
“I’m going to check NORAD’s observational data. Dr. Jahanshah, please excuse me for a moment.” Daryl called up his NORAD device on his table display and entered IGS, bringing up a chart with rows of numbers. “The orbits of the IGS fleet have not changed at all since yesterday. However, the waves they reflect have gone random. This tells me the satellites are spinning. Communication with them has been cut off because their antennas are no longer pointing toward the base stations.”
Daryl checked up on the Wyvern return vehicle in the same way and confirmed that it was also spinning. However, he explained, NORAD’s observational data could not tell them whether or not holes had opened up in any of the objects.
“What’s the matter?” said Jamshed with a quizzical look.
After receiving permission from Chris, Daryl explained the situation to Jamshed.
“I see. The space tethers nudged them,” said Jamshed, when he learned that no debris was being dispersed and that Daryl had guessed that the satellites were spinning based on the reflected waves.
“Rotation velocity of space tethers can be controlled at will,” he explained. “Once certain velocity is reached, tether cable will never get tangled up. Terminal apparatuses can be configured freely to any velocity, from that of punch, or, depending on the material, to ten times that of the rifle bullet, ten kilometers per second. They have struck this IGS lightly and smashed Wyvern spacecraft at high velocity. What fascinating idea this engineer has come up with. Amazing that he
could drive satellites into shutdown with such simple method.”
“It is a disappointment,” said Kazumi. “Space tethers could do so much more than that.”
“Maybe so. But even a space tether without any unnecessary equipment can work simply by being in orbit.”
Bruce felt like Jamshed and Kazumi were having two conversations that didn’t quite match up. Though he suspected that part of this was because neither of them were native English speakers, he also sensed that there was something more fundamental about their differences. But before he could get any further than this, Chris looked up at the clock and clapped her hands.
“I’m sorry, but can we wind this up for today? Thank you, Dr. Jahanshah. It’s only the third day for you, Kazumi, since you first encountered the space tethers, so I bet your head is just bursting with information. Let’s go off to sleep and be ready for our meeting tomorrow.”
“Kazumi, you are not tether-propulsion-system specialist?” asked Jamshed, with a look of surprise.
“Unfortunately, no. I’m not.” Scratching his head, Kazumi explained that he was an amateur and that his only connection to space was through Meteor News. “Even though I’ve had three whole days since we rushed off from Japan, we’ve been busy with all kinds of things, and I haven’t had a chance to properly read your paper. I’m very sorry.”
“An amateur … incredible. You are actually telling me that you have come to these level of understanding on only three days?”
“Two days,” said Daryl. “Keep in mind that Kazumi was on the move and caught up in all sorts of trouble. I’ve been on this for only one day, and my head is jam-packed. The time I’ve spent on this has been truly stimulating. Thank you for joining us today, Doctor.”
“You too … Well, I better not let myself fall behind. I will take a look at data you have all gathered. Let us meet again in five hours,” said Jamshed, and with that the conference was over.
“Bedtime, kids,” Chris called out, and Kazumi and Akari made their way to their bedrooms, Daryl to the bathroom.
“You think the professor’s all right?” said Bruce, facing Chris.
“Take care with him,” said Chris with a frown. “We’ll be in trouble if he gets discouraged.”
Bruce nodded. Jamshed had spent years developing this technology. This was his first time meeting engineers who could wield it as smoothly as if it were their own arms and legs. At the moment, he had to be merely surprised, but if the situation continued, he would probably begin to feel that he himself was outdated. They couldn’t let that happen. If he could learn to use contemporary tools with the same natural ease as the others, he would likely be able to produce even better results and overcome his disadvantaged position due to being born in a have-not country.
“I think the professor will realize this too if he keeps up his contact with Kazumi and Akari. So I’m going to hold these meetings regular—oh, what’s wrong, Daryl?”
Daryl had been in the bathroom for a while and had just come out. “Permission to speak, ma’am?”
“Go ahead.”
“I noticed a moment ago when I looked at my NORAD device that SAFIR 3 has started to move.”
“What? How come you didn’t tell us before?”
“Because this involves Seed Pod, which we have yet to explain to Kazumi and Akari. If SAFIR 3 continues to accelerate at this rate, it’ll enter a one-kilometer-radius range this evening. When is Seed Pod going to be run? Operations command set it for 1700 hours if I remember correctly.”
Chris looked at the doors of the bedrooms Akari and Kazumi were in. “It’s been bumped up to 1300.”
“So … They’re actually going to do it. Have the Smarks been informed?”
“Orders have been sent to the orbital hotel to accelerate randomly. When Seed Pod is implemented, we’ll also have them shut down the power because it could be affected by the ASM-140’s Blackout.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?” said Daryl, putting his hands on the table in apparent indignation. “You must know it’s pointless. They’re just trying to distract us from the space tethers.”
“We’ve reported it,” said Bruce, looking up at Daryl. “But you must understand that this operation isn’t something that’ll get called off just like that. No one has taken responsibility for knocking out the IGS and Wyvern return vehicle. They’ll be treated as accidents. Not a single organization anywhere currently sees the space tethers as a threat.”
Daryl’s hand clenched into a fist on the table.
“I’m frustrated about this too,” said Bruce. “I expect Seed Pod to be a total waste. But try putting yourself in the Smarks’ shoes. From their perspective, the Wyvern return vehicle has been put out of commission by an accident with no clear cause. They have no choice but to go to the ISS, and all the while they’re being haunted by some mysterious spacecraft. Given the situation, do you have any idea how stressful it would be if they were told that organizations on Earth were doing nothing at all about it?”
Daryl hung his head.
“Our main tasks right now are to find the base stations that are communicating with the space tethers and uncover the spies using the honeypots we’ve placed all over the city. We’ll take care of sending in a thorough report on the space tethers.”
“Daryl,” said Chris. “Leave it up to Bruce today, and please get some sleep. We’re going to be even busier at daybreak. A mountain of information about the tether communications will arrive from the CIA. The snow’s going to get heavier too, so we’ll be working here the whole time.”
“Yes, ma’am. You two please get some rest too. We need you in good shape for tomorrow.” Daryl headed for the bathroom again.
Chris put her hand on her shoulder and rotated her neck. Taking a cue from Chris, Bruce sunk into his seat and thought back on what they’d promised Daryl. For him and Chris, the real work began now.
“I’m sure I don’t need to say this,” Chris said, “but please hurry up with the report. If we don’t satisfy their desire for recognition, the team’s energy will drop.”
Bruce rolled his shoulders and opened the report he’d started writing. He completely agreed with Chris. No matter how much motivation united the team now, it would quickly fade if their efforts weren’t recognized. In fact, the higher the motivation, the greater the risk of despair.
“I wanted to ask your opinion about the mastermind, but it’s this guy, right?” Bruce opened Ageha Shiraishi’s file. Serving as profile pics were images from his JAXA days and one extracted from his videoconference with Jose Juarez. Perhaps because Shiraishi wore the same glasses in the extracted picture, he didn’t seem to have changed much. The file contained information about how he had quit JAXA, given up being Japanese, gone over to China, and fallen off the map five years ago, as well as documents created by several CIA departments. In the introduction to his psychological analysis, it said “Pretend genius odd-job man.” Harsh as always, thought Bruce.
“Ah. So I see the profiling is complete,” said Chris.
“Yeah. There’s hardly any information from recent years, but there’s a fascinating analysis of his connection to North Korea.”
The section that Bruce indicated pointed out that the activity of North Korea’s Cyber Front had shifted to high-level operations ever since Shiraishi had disappeared from China. Until then, they had never succeeded at anything more than large-scale denial-of-service attacks, but around 2015 they had assembled a large number of enslaved computers code-named “Sleeping Gun” and had since succeeded in hacking into remote data centers and social media networks. The fact that they exploited security holes discovered by Shiraishi when he was in Japan had apparently caught the attention of the CIA analyst. These activities could then be seen as precursors to the advertisement deception and translation-engine contamination subterfuges in the current case.
“They really did their h
omework,” said Chris.
“Well, that’s their job. Oh yeah, we also got something about his connection to the space tether.”
Bruce opened the report from the psychological profiler. It hypothesized that the trigger for Shiraishi’s leaving Japan had been “the collapse of JAXA’s inductive-tether program, in which he had an emotional investment.” When Shiraishi went to North Korea and saw Jamshed’s paper, he must have decided to take another stab at realizing the failed dream from his Japan days.
The analysis went on to discuss his connection with North Korean astronautics as well. A few years after Shiraishi disappeared, there had been a spike in projects inserting satellites into low orbits, though most of the satellites had apparently fallen into the atmosphere. Now Bruce could see why. They had been diligently launching space tethers. There was no need to use the third stage of a rocket to insert them into a precise orbit because they could transfer between orbits using their own energy. All the North Koreans had to do was pack the high-payload second stage with them and then scatter them randomly into space. The tethers could hide out in orbit for years, until their day arrived.
Akari Numata and Shiraishi’s relationship had been that of uncle and niece, and did not seem to have developed beyond that of computer-engineering teacher and protégé, just as Akari had claimed. This came as a relief to both Chris and Bruce.
“How should we tell this to Akari?” asked Bruce. “She seems to want to believe that he was forced into it by North Korea.”
“… Hmm. Let’s let her believe that for now. We can discuss how to broach it again later.”
“Understood. Wha—another email … Oh, man.”
“What’s the matter?”
“The base station search result has come back from headquarters. Along with lots of wonderful complaints.”
Bruce showed his laptop screen to Chris, pointing to digits reading two hundred thousand to six hundred thousand. “This is the number of PCs sending and receiving signals that meet Akari’s specifications.”