by Tobias Roote
The door to the labs was locked, which was to be expected. The leader tapped his display to wake it and the illuminated screen presented him with a twenty digit code, which he reeled off in two’s to the man nearest the controls. The door-lock clicked as he pushed the twin doors, they parted silently. They were in.
Two men manned the door to the corridor, just in case there should be any patrols. The leader and the other mercenary made their way through the mostly empty lab to the room marked ‘Metallurgy’ where they found their way barred by another locked door. Calling up the display the screen remained blank. There appeared to be no lock code.
Scrutinising the doorway the leader realised it was a manual lock, so probably wouldn’t be alarmed, or subject to an electrical charge. He opened a leg pocket and pulled a small aerosol from it. Then sprayed a viscous liquid into the lock, waited a few seconds while it expanded into foam then trimmed off the excess with a large knife.
Returning to his trouser pockets, he pulled out a small roll of leather, extracted a needle-like item resembling a split-pin from it’s interior. pushing the electronic pinhead detonator into the now hardened foam firmly with the end of his knife, so it was buried within, then stepped away from the door.
Pulling out a thin key fob, he pressed the top button. The detonator seemed to blink within the explosive as it sparked, setting off the tiny charge and bursting the door wide open. The explosion had been no louder than a balloon popping. The leader looked up at the cameras for any response to the sound.
Then, moving swiftly past the still smoking doorway the two entered into the twenty foot long storage area that was ten foot wide with a range of shelving down both sides Only illuminated from sets of glow lamps set into the walls at intervals, which wasn’t great, but adequate.
In the dim light they could read off the different shelves. Sample cores of all manner of metals and alloys left behind as not considered worthy of retrieval, or in error, they had no idea which, nor cared.
They had been instructed to look for a specific sample of metal alloys and were advised not to handle it. Using gloves, they were to place it into a lightweight lead-lined container they carried with them. This made the leader a little cautious as lead to him meant radiation. Gloves meant much the same, so he didn’t want to spend more time in there than could be helped. On his second run through the shelving he found what he was looking for on the third shelf down and halfway in.
The label was marked :-
[FERRIS:Extracted samples].
Bingo!
Carefully pulling the samples, which were heavy for their size, to the edge of the shelf he gestured to his colleague to bring the lead box, and placed the ingots inside. He wanted to minimise the contact time with the metal. There were only eight, but the weight was noticeable combined with the lead. They closed and sealed the carrier, placing it in the rucksack, then moved out closing the door behind, leaving it as tidy as possible to delay detection. Hopefully, if the security people made a habit of coming in here, which he sorely doubted, they would miss the damaged door for long enough to have no idea when or how, it had occurred.
Meeting up with the other two men they were about to leave when an alarm warbled, the sound echoing up and down the corridor in time with a red light flashing at the end of the ramp.
“CRAP!” the lead intruder whispered vehemently. “Let’s go! Guns on stun, no killing today, absolutely - or we don’t get paid.”
As they ran swiftly in single file along the edge of the corridor to the first ramp, they took care to keep the man with the rucksack in the centre out of harms way. Without that there was no way they would get paid, or work again. Their employer was very powerful and extremely unforgiving.
Their personal shields weren’t worth anything in here, the old General in charge had set up shield neutralisers in every corner of the complex. Nobody had ever thought to disable them. Now, they could have done with them as although they were under orders not to shoot, there were no such restrictions on the guards.
His armband flashed. It was a warning. He put his fist up bringing them to a silent halt and they pinned themselves against the wall while he looked ahead to assess the threat.
There was a single guard, cautiously coming down the ramp in a squat position lowering his profile as well as looking into the corridor. The dim lighting helped them remain undiscovered as the wary individual tried to see in the gloom. Their frozen black-clad figures melded into the wall making them seem to disappear. He hesitated, then called into his radio, “Six, clear.”
Taking one last long look around him, the guard moved on down the ramp to level seven. As his shadow slowly disappeared from view the four mercenaries moved as one, completely silent and headed up towards the surface. Their Sled would remain hidden, the cloak active even while unmanned.
As they slipped back under the cloaking device and rode the sled back out into the damp evening air, the sun departed behind the mountains behind them providing them with plenty of shadows to further distract any observation posts that might still be manned. Despite the cloak on the AG, it always paid to have nature on your side.
The mercenary leader pulled out a communication device. It was keyed to a specific frequency that wouldn't be monitored. Even if it was, the encrypted device would shield their location as well as the message.
“Package collected. No casualties, advise exchange location,” he spoke into it.
His armband flashed briefly. Tapping it he saw a set of coordinates had materialised in his incoming messages. He held his finger over the set of numbers and slicked it across the band quickly in the direction of the navigation console on the sled.
The sled’s navigation console flashed green confirming its receipt of the new destination. He felt the craft shudder slightly as the direction and angle of travel changed, putting them on the most direct route to the exchange point and pay day.
Transformation
Thick tendrils of data links spun outward from the basement, more and more each day, as XeraC learned to manage connections and distribute load so that he didn’t overstretch the backbone of the communication hubs he was accessing.
It constantly annoyed him that, despite having his own fibre optical loop integrating into the main street network, he was still finding the system itself was throttling his feed. As he learned to bypass the restrictions, he expanded his reach, until a week later he achieved his first project milestone - integration with all Xerac Industries computer networks. He could now watch a security camera, or a clerk’s typed feed anywhere in the world, in real-time.
XeraC wasted no time and began making small changes to the way things operated world-wide. Then, if anyone kicked up a fuss, he intercepted their communications or queries, had them removed to a new office on a lower pay grade. Word got out very quickly not to query the new Head Office restructuring. XeraC could listen in to phone calls, coffee machine chatter, even linking to the employees laptops, mobile phones and home networks. No part of their lives was hidden from him. Nobody was secure from his interception.
In that first week he found three accountants that were working with fictitious companies, siphoning off large amounts of company money and forging documents to place blame elsewhere. Once he recovered all of the funds from banks and money houses, he closed down their operations. With full documentation presented to them by email, including taped calls, CCTV images and copies of statements, he gave them a choice - work for him as agent spies in other companies or go to prison.
He actually never intended to give the information to the Law Enforcement. He had never shied away from dealing with this type of thing before he went digital, he had all the contacts to retire the miscreants. What he needed more was access into highly secure corporate systems. He would use them to gain access.
One subsidiary company he had suspicions about, turned out to be selling their products in parallel to their overseas customers, undercutting Xerac’s company by 50%. They were running two com
puter auditing systems back to back, entering the information once, but across two different sets of accounts, one for them, and one for Xerac Industries. He sent copies of all the paperwork to Xerac along with a full working copy of the genuine accounts. That ensured Xerac would be off his back for a few days while he sorted out the mess.
He had a list of contractors that he had communicated visually with vidscreen connections, backed up with telephone calls to his twin’s office which he intercepted. There was no difference between his digital version and the physical Xerac. Nobody would question the CEO of such a large organisation.
As a result there had been a constant flow of new equipment, engineers and operational upgrades into the corporate HQ while XeraC took advantage of his increasing knowledge of the available technology and his new ability to manage it. He expected a visit from his counterpart soon. He had spent a lot of money, but then he had saved them an absolute fortune. XeraC had no qualms about doing it. His next phase was going to begin shortly, for that he needed to apprise Xerac of his intentions. He was going to start buying other companies that he learned were in trouble, but hiding it well.
The defence contracts they worked on with Space Island Industries (SI) ensured Xerac had adequate collateral for funding their expansion. With his increasing ability to hack into any mainframe, anywhere, it was only a matter of time before he gained access to SI’s research, then Xerac Industries would effectively run the world.
Now was a moment of reflection. XeraC had left all of his datafeeds on automatic, while he came up to the roof to gain a view of the outside world. He was missing it and whilst he would never again see it with human eyes, nor feel the breeze, or rain on his face - he didn’t hanker for them enough to give up his new-found world.
The view from the top of the building in the middle of Fifth Avenue was amazing, he thought, looking out at the Rockefeller Centre. He had forgotten just how good it actually felt to be outside and enjoying a great view. The wide angled lens of the new camera gave him unrestricted ability to swivel the angle as if he were looking through a normal pair of eyes. He had a zoom lens which he loved. He hadn’t asked the make, just had the contractors place their best digital camera at the highest point of the building and link it with fibre-optic cables through the streets and down to the basement. It was by far the best our of the four they had positioned so far. Manhattan was looking good right now.
A speck in the extreme distance caught the camera’s attention. He used the zoom to enhance his vision. An AGliner was coming into La Guardia. He could see the passengers faces in the windows of the three deck cruiser, its engines in the process of rotating to provide reverse thrust as the AG compensator's dropped the plane towards the landing pod. Suddenly everything went black as the camera’s zoom tried to focus on nothing without realising it was trying to look through the concrete of a building obstructing his view of the air pods. He pulled it back to normal and the light refocused the camera, but he could no longer see the AGliner which had passed behind the skyline.
An alarm went off in his security suite of programs warning him of someone approaching his control room. He shifted perspective just as Xerac arrived in the basement complex, XeraC watched him from another viewpoint as the old man shifted through the outer rooms. He was taking out his access card, fumbling the input into the control panel. Bah! he thought, when did he get so old.
He had better go down and give him his undivided attention, he thought idly, looking at the view he was intending to go back to shortly.
XeraC’s consciousness moved, transitioning from the camera outside to the internal camera in his operations room. Xerac was now sitting in front of him. He looked tired. XeraC upped the sensor levels in the room automatically reading his pulse and breathing rate. He listened to his lungs and heard the blood as it coursed rhythmically through Xerac’s body. He’d had too much coffee again this morning.
“You should cut down on your coffee intake, Xerac, your blood pressure’s up and you have the beginnings of palpitations,” he said by way of acknowledging his biological twin’s arrival. He was also eight minutes late, but XeraC decided not to say anything, recognising the difficulties his twin was having with his failing health and running Xerac Industries.
For his part, Xerac looked at the apparition in front of him. It was looking more animated as the software engineers tweaked the algorithms that created the holograms. It also looked younger, or was he comparing it to the view of himself in the mirror this morning. No matter.
“I see from your work schedules that you have had another camera fitted. How many did you intend to fit?” Xerac asked the computer version of himself.
“I feel trapped in here, Xerac, I just need to feel less enclosed by stupid steel boxes and pimply-faced software engineers,” his AI version responded.
“Well, I have some good news for you on that score that will cheer you up. The Pheson Alacite you traced to the old fortress has been retrieved and analysed. They say it is a very pure product and will not need refining. Therefore, R&D is reverse engineering the memory wafers from the alien brain. They expect to have the new ones manufactured by the end of the month. Apparently, there is enough for sixteen wafers, which they calculate will provide you with sufficient storage to handle your complete brain map as well as some expansion,” Xerac told him.
Xerac was, in fact, very pleased with the R&D section’s progress and was ambivalent towards his other ‘twin’. He wanted him to get free of the heavy duty computers that were running hot twenty-four hours a day to keep his brain functioning.
He’d quietly noted that his ‘other’s’ brain activity had increased by over 46% since he was switched on. Certain he knew what the other him was thinking, he decided that he would have to be careful. He didn’t get where he was today without being totally ruthless. He also realised that from the moment of separation, they had become two different people sharing the same intimate secrets and knowledge of everything that had ever occurred in their mutual lives. He could well believe his other half would plot against him. It’s what he would do in its place.
XeraC was indeed thinking that he would like to supersede his biological half, but recognised the timing was too soon and there was much to be done. Presently the two of them working the same side of the street would put XeraC in a better position to take over the business empire ‘they’ had built.
This didn’t stop him working towards the day that Xerac could be replaced. After all, he, XeraC, was as much its owner as his biological twin. Looking long-term, he knew he was the better party to carry the organisation forward. Already his personal plans for Xerac Industries were well advanced and his intentions, like his biological counterpart were not honourable.
Xerac knew full well this would happen and now it had, he knew his time as CEO was limited. Still, it was in his nature to fight tooth and nail for everything. XeraC would have to be careful, but knew that his twin wouldn’t harm the project he’d built from the ground up despite his determination to win every battle.
Restless
Osbourne couldn’t understand what was going on. Every time he tried to access a certain area of his mainframe he found that his alarms went off. When he looked at the logs, he could see there was something trying to access his core data files where he kept his most important research. The sentinel programs he had built using Jenari code ensured that no riders could hitch a lift on the back of his access links, but this one was not only persistent, it was getting closer to breaching his personal security every time he tried to link to the core. It was as if it was learning.
He sat back for a moment. This was no simple hack program, he decided. This had to be an artificial intelligence, but one much more complex than he had ever come across before. He built these AI’s so he knew how they operated. This one was different - he could feel it in his bones. He decided to check a few other access areas to see if there was anything in them for him to worry about.
What he found concerned him g
reatly and left him extremely worried.
Whatever had gained access to the SC systems had come in through a back-door very few people knew about. It had then set about making a few doors of its own. It had large sections of the R&D department’s work access. Osbourne checked the logs to see if anything had been off-loaded in, or out. A sigh of relief - nothing yet. He knew that, had they tried, it would have generated immediate reports, but seeing it for himself visually reassured him that the data was as yet, still secure.
Something about it all reminded him of the days of the Fortress. Ferris and the SC had regularly hacked each others systems, but behind it all was always a human, never an AI. This had the hallmarks of both, which meant that a new threat was working its way into the SC’s systems.
Osbourne pulled over his spare terminal, which had a strange looking keyboard, to his workspace and made sure it was not hitched-up to the network. He needed to work securely for a few hours. He thought he might be able to slow the intruder down enough to enable some concentrated tracking to be put in place.
He started by typing code into the isolated computer. This was not code you would recognise, this was ancient Jenari and was very complex depending on a range of compiled routines already sitting in the mainframes guarding their data. He had learned the code from Pod, the alien AI left behind when Zirkos and Ship flew off to hunt the Nubl. They had worked together trying to create the initial defences for Earth. The programming code was useful because it was extremely small when compiled and had the ability to hide in plain sight, showing up invisible on computers where it was installed.
It was this code they had used in the nanites which left the technology very secure because none of the Earth AI’s or programming companies could reverse engineer them. Lang, Osbourne’s science partner, Pod and Osbourne were the only ones who knew how the code was programmed in, and Osbourne was the only one with access to this terminal. It was purpose built and utilised the Jenari language as an interpreter for many of the Space Island Industries (SI) products.