by Jason Bourn
Calaes saw a pattern that he didn’t like. All three were dissenters at the all-hands meeting. Calaes had given all three of their names to Randy. And now they were missing. He quickly thought of the last of the four team members’ names he had given Randy: Lorenzo Romano.
Calaes quickly sent a high priority message to Lorenzo. Calaes waited the requisite twenty seconds and sent an override message. If Lorenzo could respond, he would. But he didn’t.
Next Calaes requested the position of each of the four. Each of their positions should have been instantly provided, but they were not. Instead the system just said “Error. Person or persons not found.”
This was crazy. The whole job of the Locator was to be able to find people. What was going on here? He tried requesting the position of each of the four separately, and each time he received a response of “Error. Person or persons not found.”
Calaes finally decided to request general status on each of the four separately. Finally, he started to get somewhere. The first person he tried was Mikhail Ivanov. When he requested general status on him, the response was “Error. Person or persons not found.” He tried the other three and received the same response. It was obvious now that the Locator used the same general response. It was saying the name(s) couldn't be found in the database, not that they could not be located geographically. What an irritating software interface. Calaes wondered if anyone else had ever had this issue. “Focus," he said to himself. He had to stop thinking about off-topic issues. He needed to figure out what was going on.
On a hunch, he also asked for general status on Roscoe Prim, the team-lead whose name Calaes had also given to Randy. Sure enough a response came back, “Error. Person or persons not found.” Thinking about the ramifications, he asked for the general status on Suzanne Becker. The response came back that she was an administrative team-lead – as well as additional status information.
So, Suzanne was still in the system, but none of the others that had spoken up at the meetings were. All of the people whose names he had given to Randy had disappeared. This was downright spooky. He had forwarded five names to Randy and now he was down four team members and one team-lead. And this had all happened just overnight. Maybe he didn’t know the Rebels as well as he had thought. Could he trust them? Should he trust them? Calaes now wasn’t sure.
Calaes was no longer sleepy. In fact, he was on super-alert, if such a state really existed. He tried to think of what to do next. The simple answer was that he didn’t have enough information. The obvious next step was to obtain information. The only logical thing to do was to ask Randy what was going on. He quickly sent a message to Randy asking for a meeting as soon as possible.
Calaes received a message right away saying that now was good. Calaes sat down next to the vid screen and waited for Randy to appear.
After only a few seconds, Randy’s image appeared, looking even more frail than his meeting yesterday. Calaes was concerned for him, but quickly shook that feeling off. Calaes started out, “Randy, what is going on? Five of my people have disappeared and I’m sure you’re behind it. Talk to me – I need answers now!”
Calaes had attempted to throw Randy off by being extremely blunt. Calaes figured that if he could throw Randy off his stride, he might get some information that he otherwise might not have.
Randy, unfortunately, just sat there and smiled. “Yes, your assessment is quite correct. We couldn’t risk having these people spill the beans as it were. We can’t afford to have the government become suspicious. We relocated them to one of our facilities where they will not be able to cause any problems. They will be very well taken care of, I assure you. By the way, I’m very happy that you figured out what happened – I have been waiting for your call.”
Somewhat taken aback by Randy’s casual response, Calaes tried to figure out which tact to use. Obviously, his bullying tact hadn’t worked.
Randy went on, “The real issue now is those ‘silent’ objectors – those who don’t say anything, but who harbor doubts and might act upon them. Can you determine who they might be? Any information would be helpful.”
Calaes sat there thinking. Did he want to help Randy? Was he what he said he was? The problem was that Randy did have a point. The silent objectors were the real problem. But Calaes didn’t want to start a witch hunt either – those invariably led to punishment for the innocent. On the other hand, to tip off the government would bring an end to everything that they were striving for. After a moment, Calaes made a decision.
“OK,” Calaes said. “I will help you identify any blatant threat, but you need to tell me before you go ninja on me and start relocating people.”
Randy smiled and said “Scouts honor. We just need your help identifying any risks before the threat can become realized. Thank you.”
With that, Randy signed off and disappeared.
Calaes sat there for a long while deciding what to do next. When he got up, he had made his decision. He was going to see if he could turn the tables a bit. He was going to try to get the upper hand on Randy and his organization – or at least he was going to try.
CHAPTER 26
Calaes sent a message to Anya, asking to meet with her.
They met, talking quietly amongst themselves, then ditched their electronics and walked outside.
“OK, what’s up?” Anya said. “This is really hush-hush. I’ve never seen you like this. No electronics and meeting outside away from everything – what is up that needs such privacy?”
Calaes responded, “Before we start, are you sure that we can’t be heard? I’m concerned.”
“As sure as I can be,” Anya replied. “I did a scan for any electronics before we walked outside, so unless they have tech that is much better than ours, we should be safe. By the way, who are ‘they’?”
“Therein lies the problem.,” Calaes said. “This may sound paranoid, but I think that everyone besides maybe the team-leads are potential problems.”
When Anya gave him a funny look, Calaes said, “Let me explain.”
Calaes went on to describe the missing candidates and the circumstances surrounding their disappearance as well as his latest meeting with Randy.
“Wow,” said Anya. “I can now see why you wanted this meeting to be so secure. So, what did you have in mind?”
“I know you’re pretty good at your job,” Calaes said, “but how good are you? In other words, do you think that you might be able to infiltrate the rebels’ data systems and find out what is really going on with their activities? I want to know exactly what they are doing to facilitate the building of the settlement. Also, I want to know where that missing material has gone to – I have a hunch that this information will help us understand what is really going on here.” Calaes paused, then continued, “Do you think you can do it without getting caught?”
Now it was Anya’s time to pause to think things over. “Well, I know I’m good – actually I’m damn good. But I have to admit that I was shaken by not knowing that the rebels had infiltrated our network to shield us from government oversight. Once I knew that they had done it, it was a simple matter to figure out how. I just wasn’t looking for it before. Their approach was good – like I said it fooled me – but their tech is not “that” good, and I think I might have an idea on how to use their tech against them. I won’t be able to leave any snooper code around – they would catch that for sure. But I think I might be able to peek into their network and find out some things that they didn’t intend for us to see. How does that sound? Worst case is that we get caught and they get mad – what are they going to do, fire us?” Anya broke out into a smile that was instantly contagious – Calaes started smiling too.
“Yes,” he said, “I think we should try. When do you think you can set it up? Leave me a message when you’re ready and I’ll join you. Please ensure to the best of your abilities that we won’t be caught.”
Anya replied, “You got it, boss. I think that I should be able to get everything ready b
y this afternoon. I have a lot of prep work to do, so I’ll see you then.”
With that, the two of them returned to the main building on the training campus. Calaes at last had some hope that he would get some information that could clear up the confusion of whom to trust.
Calaes spent the rest of the morning and afternoon dealing with a wide variety of administration tasks. This was both good and bad. The good news was that it kept him from constantly thinking about how successful Anya was setting up her probes. The bad news was that he felt the mundane tasks were mind-numbing – he wanted more excitement, more interesting pursuits. In fact, he thought to himself, since the all-hands meeting he hadn’t had much time to dwell on his relationship with Hope. He really didn’t even know if it qualified as a relationship, but he felt good when he thought of her.
A message came through from Anya, saying she wanted to talk to him as soon as possible. Calaes gratefully broke away from his admin duties and walked to Anya’s lab.
When Calaes arrived, he found the door was secured. Good, Anya was keeping things secure on the physical front. Hopefully she could do so on the electronic front as well. Calaes sent a message to Anya asking for admittance. The door almost immediately buzzed open and Calaes walked in.
“Security first,” Calaes said. “Just double checking that you have all the security checks in place.”
“Checked and double checked. We’re clean. I even swept you as you entered the lab.,” responded Anya.
“OK, let’s do this,” Calaes said. He couldn’t wait for a glimpse of any information they could find on the rebels.
“Well, I could talk to you for hours on the technical details, but I suspect you’re not that interested in them.,” Anya started. “The bottom line is that we’re ready to make the incursion. Do I have the authorization to proceed?”
“Yep, it’s a go,” said Calaes.
With that Anya started the intrusion effort. “If everything works the way I hope it does, we should be able to use their AI against them. In other words, their AI has access to lots of information that it needs in order to do its job. This is typically rather mundane information, but maybe we can glean some gold nuggets from it. That’s my hope anyway. The trick is to access their AI without it registering that it communicated with us. I chose to access Randy’s persa since that AI would have the most information, at least I hope. The nice thing about accessing a persa is that its whole function is to interface to the outside world and not bother the real person, unless it is critical. We’re going to use this fact against them by getting as much information as we can, and just tweaking our approach so it doesn’t register as having communicated with us so it won’t log it. I decided to trigger an old maintenance mode back door that I know about where I can essentially query the AI’s database without leaving any traces – at least that is the hope. Well, what do you think?”
The general plan made sense to Calaes, but as predicted he had become lost in all the details. This was why Anya was paid the big bucks – not! At any rate, this was their chance and he didn’t know if they were going to have a better one any time soon. “Go for it,” Calaes replied.
Anya worked away for several minutes. All Calaes heard were a few grunts and some “Yes, that’s it.” Calaes thought that was a good sign, but he couldn’t come close to following what Anya was doing.
Finally Anya said, “Ok, that’s it. We’re in. What did you want to ask? What specifically did you want to look at?”
Calaes had been thinking of that exact question, but he didn’t have the exact answer. He knew that he would have to play it a bit by ear. “Ask where the missing material is.”
Anya replied, “I guess I forgot to tell you. Our interface to the AI is via maintenance mode, so we don’t have access to the conceptual reckoning part of the AI. If we were to go to that part of the AI, all sorts of alarms would be raised. So, you need to ask specific questions in full context or it won’t be able to answer.”
“Great,” thought Calaes, “I have to talk like a child to an AI. This is ridiculous.” Out loud he said, “Ask the AI if it knows where the interior panels are.”
Anya chuckled and said, “Sorry, still too conceptual. You need to be really basic for this to work. Let’s see, I think I still have the interior panel part number from our last foray. Yes, here it is, DB183229057. Let’s see, how about a query something like, ‘SELECT * “ALL_DATABASES” DB183229057.’ ”
“OK, good,” she said. “Yes, we received three hits. Here they are:
“One, ‘DB183229057 used in DB183584397.’ This means that the interior panel is used in the – hold on a second while I look up this new part number off line – yes, it is used in the Mars Settlement top level assembly. That makes sense.
“Two, ‘Quantity 10000 of DB183229057 received and placed into storage to be used in DB183584397’ – that date stamp was more than two and a half years ago.
“Three, ‘Quantity 90000 of DB183229057 received and placed into storage in Zone A’ – that date stamp was almost three years ago.
“That is all there is.”
Since Calaes didn’t say anything, Anya continued, “The first hit says that the interior panels are used in the top-level assembly for the settlement. This is to be expected – no problems with this.
“The second hit says that there are a somewhat reasonable number of panels in local storage, awaiting installation. That is good. If we can get the installation work moving up there, at least the materials are available there to be installed.
“The third hit is an absolute mystery. It looks like that last entry corresponds to the quantity that is ninety times more than necessary. They are all going to an unknown location. I just tried running a database query for ‘Zone A’ and received no other hits. So, the trail ends there. There are no more entries for the interior panel part number and when I do a query for ‘Zone A’, it just says invalid format. What do you make of that?”
Calaes thought about it. The good news was that the needed panels were on hand. The bad news was that there were a huge number of unaccounted-for panels. That didn’t really make sense to him. “Where are the missing panels?”
Anya said, “I have no idea. I’d like to get out of the system as soon as possible. Any more questions?”
Calaes said, “Do the same lookup for the fusion reactors. You should have the part number from the last time.”
Anya did the query and interpreted the results. “Same pattern boss. Two quantity total put into storage to be used at the top level, one is already installed and one is spare. But there are three that are again in storage in ‘Zone A.’ Anything else? I’d really like to get out now.”
“OK,” Calaes said. “I’m not sure what else to ask at this point anyway. Get out now. By the way, you did a great job.”
“Thanks,” Anya said. “I don’t think we were detected, but there is no way to tell for sure. If we get the big bad wolf coming down to eat us up, then I’d guess we were detected. Otherwise, I think we should assume we made it out scot-free.”
Calaes walked out of the lab, hearing the door securely close behind him with a click. What did it mean that the necessary parts were on hand, but a majority of the parts were stored in this mysterious “Zone A”? Did this really help provide any additional information?
Thinking about it, Calaes realized that it did. First, the parts were really being used in the system – if only a small number of the total. That was good information to know. Second, the majority of the parts were stored somewhere. He didn’t know where, but he now knew that they were not being used in the system. Therefore, they were not part of the settlement. But what did that mean? Presumably they were being used somewhere. Recalling Antony’s earlier comment, he thought that maybe there was another, possibly underground, Mars facility. How would they be able to explore that possibility, and how important was it that they find out?
All he had to do now was plan their next step – and Calaes had no idea what that
next step should be. But he did know where he should be able to find the answers: “Mars!”
CHAPTER 27
Calaes was hoping that this meeting was going to be the most productive ever. Randy had offered to have a meeting to explain more on the plan to get the Mars settlement infrastructure moving forward so it could support humans – and Calaes jumped at the opportunity. This was the first step to allow their central strategy (and, he couldn’t help but think, his personal strategy) to be accomplished. The central strategy was clearly to get to Mars, but Calaes’ personal strategy was to get to spend more time with Hope. He kept reminding himself not to get too distracted with his personal interests in this meeting.
Calaes was at the vid screen early, awaiting the arrival of Randy and Hope. He was thinking about Hope – specifically that he hadn’t seen her in several weeks. There had been a lot of work to be done in replacing the missing team-lead and the four missing team members. Just when things were finally getting under control, Randy had offered to have the meeting – which of course Calaes had immediately agreed to.
Just then, both Randy’s and Hope’s images appeared. “Good morning,” they both said to him.
“Welcome,” he replied. “It’s been kind of crazy here both with getting replacements for the missing team members and soothing everybody’s nerves. You don’t know what kind of an uproar that caused.”
Randy smiled kindly and said, “I really am sorry about that. It really couldn’t be helped. I’m glad that you managed to quell the hoards that would have had my head if they knew it was my doing.”
Calaes thought that Randy looked even older and more frail than the last time he had seen him. Calaes was starting to get quite concerned about Randy’s health, but he didn’t want to say anything and start the meeting off on a sour note.
Hope looked at Calaes and said, “Dad really hasn’t been feeling too well lately. You know, he really isn’t that bad a guy. You’ll realize that when you get to know him better.” She waited a second before continuing, “I’m not that bad either, which you’ll find out when you get to know me better.” Then she smiled and Calaes couldn’t help but look at her and smile back.