The Windchime Legacy

by A. W. Mykel

  Justin’s mouth was open. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t believe what he had just heard.

  “I don’t need anyone’s authority to make you that offer, so you can consider it firm. I work directly with the President on SENTINEL matters, and he’ll be more than delighted to have those responsibilities taken over by someone with closer qualifications than I have. The job needs the inside savvy that only comes from being there and having done it.

  “By the way, I’m telling you this because I have faith in you, that what I’ve told you about me will stay inside these walls only. If I didn’t have that faith, I wouldn’t have told you, but I felt you should know it. You’ll have the opportunity to learn a lot more about SENTINEL and who I am, after you’ve accepted the job.” Honeycut smiled.

  Justin smiled and nodded his understanding.

  “I don’t want a yes or a no from you now,” Honeycut continued. “I want you to wait until you’ve had that vacation and have had plenty of time to think about it. If, when that three-month period expires, you still wish to turn in your resignation, I will accept it. Your implant will be deactivated, and you’ll be free to pursue any endeavor you may wish to follow. We’ll even help you get started.

  “Does that seem like a fair enough deal?” Honeycut asked.

  Justin was still dazed by it. How could it not be a good deal? He agreed to withhold his resignation as Honeycut requested.

  “Then we have an agreement,” Honeycut said, standing and taking Justin’s hand in a firm handshake. “Now, we’re going to go back into that room to listen to what Dr. Ryerson has to say. You don’t have to worry about what you hear preventing you from leaving the agency, if you should still finally decide that it’s what you want. You’ve been cleared by SENTINEL to hear it. Now let’s go hear what Beth has to tell us,” he concluded, putting a hand on Justin’s shoulder.

  As the two men walked to the door, Honeycut looked at Justin. He liked Justin very much. He meant every word he had said to him. The world was meant for people like him. Inside he wished desperately that Justin would decide to take the offer in the end. The new world that was dawning would need the likes of him.

  TWENTY

  Again war had left Germany in ruin; its people were held collectively guilty of criminal irresponsibility; its economy was smashed by the destruction and smothered by the reparations levied by the winning nations.

  And we were guilty to an extent as measured by defeat. People become sadistic when given unlimited, uncontrolled power. They pointed to the atrocities as examples of our crimes, ignoring their own, as though they had never occurred. The concentration camps became the showpiece of their good and our evil. They had camps as well, but the history books will never record their names and deeds, nor list the “honor roll” of their righteous dead.

  Entry No. 35 from the partially

  recovered Wolf Journal

  Elizabeth Ryerson spoke excitedly to Honeycut, as he and Justin returned through the conference-room door.

  “We’re going to have to put off our little lesson for today,” she said. “We’ve located him, Irv. We know where Bridges is hiding.”

  “Where is he?” Honeycut graveled out.

  “He’s in South Beloit, at a Holiday Inn,” Elizabeth said.

  “How long?” Honeycut asked.

  “Since oh thirty hours this morning,” she replied. “He gave us that mistake, that’s how we found him. SENTINEL discovered his name in the Avis computer records, while scanning the computer files of all of the car rental agencies. The car was picked up at O’Hare. Seconds later, SENTINEL turned up Bridges’s personal car on O’Hare’s overnight parking log. Any car left there past midnight is tagged and listed on the log, which is then computerized.

  “Had we discovered only that last bit of information, we could have been thrown way off,” Elizabeth continued. “He could have hopped on any plane under any name that he wanted to, by just paying cash for his ticket. We never might have found him. But, to get that rental car, he had to show a valid driver’s license. Getting that car was the mistake.

  “SENTINEL worked quickly backward through the computer file, checking the time and date of the reservations for the car. Bridges gave a phony New York address and telephone number. Once the two-one-two area code was removed, the phone turned out to be right in Ed’s apartment building. A call made from that same phone only moments later was placed to the Holiday Inn in South Beloit. He never paid the overtime on the call, so the record of it was easily found.

  “We’ve confirmed that he checked into the Holiday Inn,” Elizabeth said. “The registration of the car he drove matches the rental car. He checked in under his own name for three nights. A phony wrong-number call to that room verified by voice print that he was still there just about two minutes ago. There’s no doubt about it, he’s there. That’s probably where the contact will be made.

  “There’s more,” Elizabeth added, before Honeycut could speak. “SENTINEL has been monitoring all police frequencies and picked up another interesting tidbit. There was an unusual homicide at O’Hare this morning. A man named Carson Ross was killed on a flight inbound from Newark. The method was quite sophisticated. But the interesting thing here is that his name showed up over a month ago on our computer records, in response to a request that Bridges had made. Ross was a suspected Soviet information source. Both he and Bridges belonged to the same games club. That could have been his original contact.”

  Honeycut’s mind began clicking away. He looked at his watch. It was 1640 hours. “How far is South Beloit from here?” he asked.

  “It’s about a ninety-five-mile drive,” Elizabeth answered.

  The alternatives were quickly weighed. “Hm…I can have a helicopter here in about fifteen minutes,” Honeycut said. “That would put us there easily within the hour. We can intercept them if they haven’t made contact yet.

  “What time was this Ross character killed?” he asked.

  “The body was discovered just after the plane docked and the Chicago passengers disembarked. That was at oh-nine-oh-four hours. The plane is being held in a TWA hangar by the FBI, to collect the crime-scene evidence,” Ryerson said.

  “Oh-nine-oh-four hours,” Honeycut said, shaking his head.

  “They won’t expect us to discover that both Bridges and the information are missing until Monday morning at the earliest,” he began. “They think they’ve got two and a half days on us.

  “Get a Division Two team out to that plane. Give them FBI identification and provide the usual cover. I want everything they’ve got on it. Get those medical examiner’s tapes on the autopsy, too. Start pulling every available SENTINEL agent into the area. We’ve got to stop them here. If they get out of the country it’ll be all over.

  “I’m going down to the ordnance lab to get some special gear ready for these boys. I’ll also take care of the arrangements for the helicopter. Use the time to fill the boys in on what I told you to. SENTINEL will notify you when we’re ready for them in ordnance.”

  In a second Honeycut was gone.

  Elizabeth had hoped she could get out of telling the two agents about SENTINEL. But Honeycut had been firm on what he wanted them to know.

  For a few moments the three of them sat in silence, no one saying a word. Then Justin broke the lull.

  “Why haven’t all the people with access to classified material been implanted?” Justin asked. “It would certainly make it a lot easier to find them if you should ever have to. And why weren’t magnetic fibers incorporated into the bond construction of the sheets to detect them going through security?”

  Elizabeth didn’t like being put on the spot by Justin. It was bad enough having to tell them about her brainchild, without being castigated by a subordinate, whose only calling in life seemed to be pathological quietus. For one quick moment she aimed an intense glare at her antagonist.

  “I felt that the security clearances spoke for themselves,” Elizabeth defended crisply. “I
didn’t want a ‘big brother’ atmosphere prevailing over the personnel working here. An atmosphere of trust is more conducive to a good working attitude,” she said.

  Trust, horseshit, Justin thought. That was a word that didn’t exist in his vocabulary. There was no place for it where staying alive was all that mattered. There should be no place for it in a classified project like this, either.

  “The sheets were never magnetized because only Dr. Bridges and myself had access to them. We never thought that one of us would try to steal them one day,” she explained.

  “We intend to take all those precautionary measures in the very near future,” she said. “As soon as it’s practical to implement them.”

  “That’s closing the barn door a little late,” Fanning mumbled.

  “Since we only have a short time, gentlemen, I suggest that we get right down to the business at hand,” Elizabeth said, ignoring the remark. “I’ll try to be as brief as I can and put it into simple nontechnical terms. You should be able to get a reasonable picture of what SENTINEL is and how it works.” She thought for a few moments, trying to condense the information she had to present, while looking for the best place to begin.

  “I’ll start with the memory mass,” she said finally. “Since it is the basis of SENTINEL, you should first have a brief introduction to it. It’s really quite unique in function and composition. There’s nothing else like it in existence anywhere in the world.

  “We started at first with a fluid system, a memory pool, if you will. Functionally, it was far superior to any memory system in existence. We could store more data and retrieve it faster than the most advanced computers ever built. But the fluid proved to be impractical from a maintenance standpoint. It was almost biological in nature, and there were too many factors that affected its stability. We found it to be susceptible to a number of microorganisms, and we had to maintain very strictly defined physical and chemical limits. The slightest variation caused a breakdown in the integrity of the plasma media. We constructed highly complex chambers, which aided in the control of these factors, but it still proved to be unrealistic for long-term practical operation.

  “Still, it worked better than anything we had, so we made it operational, hoping to solve our problems as we went on.

  “About four months after we formally started the system in full operation, a very fortunate accident occurred while testing a new chamber design. There was an explosion in one of the test chambers. It wasn’t serious. No one was hurt, but we had one heck of a mess and lost about three liters of the fluid. As we cleaned the resulting mess, we discovered several small crystals. This excited us, because we didn’t think that crystallization was possible with the brothlike memory pool we had created. We immediately analyzed them.

  “It didn’t seem possible, but there it was, with all of the same components of our fluid, set into a rigidly ordered pattern. It exhibited the same functional properties as our fluid system.

  “We studied the tiny fragments carefully with x-ray crystallography, feeding the data directly into our operational system. From this the computer determined the precise structure and a method of synthesis for the crystals. We made more of them under strictly controlled conditions and tested them again, thoroughly. They not only worked like our memory pool, but did so with a definite superiority in every respect. Due to the greatly condensed and defined nature of the crystals, we were able to store many more times the amount of data in the same unit area and retrieve it significantly faster. It was also free from the maintenance problems inherent in the fluid. It was ideal.

  “Next, we grew a large crystal mass of roughly eight cubic feet. We tested it, and, after being convinced it worked, we began transferring data from the pool to the crystal mass. But our excitement changed to concern, when it failed to operate after the transfer was completed. It sat dormant for ten days without a single response to our requests for information.

  “We were about to give up on it when the display panel suddenly lit up, without our putting in a request. It sent out its very first communication. It was a simple one plus one equals two. About five minutes later it sent out a second—two plus two equals four. Then another and another, each coming faster than the one previous. We turned on the recorders and decided to let it run, to see what it would do. By the end of the first day, it had passed our total knowledge in mathematics. It began working so fast that we couldn’t even record the data. It had gone beyond the data we supplied to it. It was thinking.”

  The words made Justin’s skin crawl.

  “I know what’s in your mind, gentlemen—a computer, a machine, thinking? At times, our more advanced computers appear to think. But, actually, they merely process data according to specific instructions, using the data given them to arrive at answers. They do in seconds what it would take the collective minds of men years to accomplish. But they never really go beyond what we put into them. They just manipulate the data to arrive at answers.

  “You can imagine our excitement when it began to exercise creative, rational thought.

  “We had supplied it with every scrap of knowledge that man had accumulated over the centuries of his existence, every written word and profound thought. It went beyond our collective abilities to a level that even our imaginations conceded grudgingly. It was more than we had ever hoped or imagined possible. We had created an intellect.” Elizabeth’s excitement flared in her eyes as she spoke.

  “It was like a child at first. It pondered over the data we put into it, tossed it around for those ten days, trying to decide what to do with it. Then, when it felt bold enough, it sent us its one plus one equals two, the most basic mathematical concept. It waited to determine our response. When it was sufficiently convinced that it was correct, it tried another, then another, building its confidence as it went.

  “It soon became convinced of its capabilities and slowed down, coming back to our level. Then it made its first nonmathematical communication. It displayed the words ‘I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA, THE BEGINNING AND THE END, THE FIRST AND THE LAST.’ You gentlemen may recognize the quote. It is from the Bible, from the Book of Revelations.

  “Giving it an electronic voice was a simple matter. But it had to learn to speak. It had no experience in sounds to draw from. It had never heard a vowel or consonant sound. It made hilarious childlike errors at first. But it learned quickly.

  “When it did learn to speak, finally, it redesigned its voice apparatus to a tone of its own selection.

  “That, gentlemen, is the voice you’ve known over the years as SENTINEL Control. There actually is no SENTINEL Control, just SENTINEL…the intellect.”

  The two men were nearly agape—a computer, not a person. It only then occurred to Justin that he could remember hearing only one voice, the same soft, pleasant voice, never another.

  “Now, gentlemen, if you will accept what I’ve told you as fact, I can get on with the rest of it,” Elizabeth said.

  They could only nod.

  She went on, with one eye on the clock, to quickly explain the sensor systems and how they served as the eyes and ears of SENTINEL. She outlined the deployment of the sensors that enabled SENTINEL to watch the world like a big brother. She described how the sensor-shielding systems protected them from detection by other searching sensors, explained the tremendous defensive capabilities of SENTINEL, and how it protected the country. She described briefly the awesome offensive power it possessed and how it could knock out power sources and communication systems, leaving any potential enemy defenseless against its mighty, destructive powers. She left them impressed, confused, and in awe.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t have the time necessary to go into more detail,” Elizabeth lied.

  How could there be more, Justin wondered.

  “Most of it would be beyond your understanding, anyway,” she condescended. “At least, you’ve got an idea now of what SENTINEL is and what it represents. You can see why we must keep it a secret and protect that secret with all of our
efforts.

  “We do not maintain SENTINEL as an offensive weapon, but our enemies might. That’s why we have to get that information back before someone else gets it. The security of this country and the world lies in SENTINEL’s power, a power that only one country can have.”

  Justin stirred restlessly in his seat. “This sounds like a science fiction horror story,” he said. “And one thing about it bothers me. A computer with that much power could just take over. Who’d be able to stop it?” he asked.

  Elizabeth laughed hoarsely. “It’s not science fiction. It’s all very real. And that threat doesn’t exist. We never lost sight of that possibility. In the science fiction stories that you alluded to, one thing has always been left out. That’s the ‘off’ button. Had that been included in those stories, there would have been no story to tell, no edge of doom.

  “We didn’t leave that out. SENTINEL can be turned off by anyone who knows how. It’s quite simple, actually. Once the memory mass has been shut down, the rest of the slave banks would remain fully functional and operate just as a standard computer system. It would still be greatly more advanced than anything else in existence, due to SENTINEL’s vast improvements, but it would then be under our control, not SENTINEL’s.

  “To try to shut it down by any other means, however, would be quite impossible. SENTINEL would defend itself with a rather startling efficiency and ease.

  “But we have nothing to fear from SENTINEL. It is truly a pure intellect. It has no greedy or evil designs; it has no use for power or wealth. It exists to serve man. It was built for that purpose, and we were careful to keep it that way. The danger lies with the next nation that builds one. They might not be as careful; especially if they are in a hurry to catch up to us. That, gentlemen, is exactly what you are about to prevent,” Elizabeth said.

  “What’s to stop somebody from just cutting off its power?” Fanning asked. “Just pull the plug, and you don’t need an off button,” he said.