Virtual Perfection: Technology has drawn everyone into Virtual Reality, but what will happen to humanity if no one can get out? (Veiled Destiny Book 1)

by Jason Bourn

  “Well,” Hope finally said, “should we continue?”

  Somewhat shaken, Calaes nodded. “Sure, where were we?”

  “We were talking about having a critical mass of people here on Mars. The answer is that between your candidates and our group, we have more than enough to make up a critical mass of people.

  “The next question is do you think that we can really establish a society independent and isolated from Earth?”

  He said, “That is a really good question. I would have to say that it is better being on Mars, since we are that much further away from Earth. But I see a fundamental problem going forward in that for right now at least, we are fully dependent upon Earth to provide all the resources to become self-sustaining. Also, they are so powerful with respect to us – we stand no chance if they decide to impose their will on us. Until these two facts change, this strategy is suspect.”

  “Very good,” said Hope. “You have identified a major flaw in your strategy. Now, how do you propose to change the strategy to make it better?”

  Calaes felt the stirrings of panic starting to well up from deep in his stomach. He saw the issue with his old strategy with crystal clarity, but he didn’t know how to improve it. He tried looking at it from many angles, but he couldn’t see any other way to improve it. How could they make their Mars society totally independent from Earth? He didn’t see any way.

  Hope looked at him, waiting. Finally, he said, “I don’t see how it can be done. It sounds like a fatal flaw in the strategy. We are better off than we were, but it would take years if not decades to become truly independent from Earth, and that is if we can get their full cooperation to give us needed supplies to enable us to become self-sufficient.”

  She sighed and said, “I have to leave now, but why don’t you think this over and see if you can come up with something better.”

  With that she got up, smiled at him sympathetically and left.

  Calaes just stood there, trying to resolve a problem that appeared to have no solution. His assumption that his meeting with Hope was going to make his day better had proven to be totally false. In fact, he didn’t know if he could feel much worse. And he didn’t know any way to make it any better.

  CHAPTER 35

  As he walked back to his office, Calaes realized two things.

  First, he hadn’t been able to really talk with Hope about the two of them and their relationship. Every time he had been distracted by important events. It was like the whole world, and now Mars, had a personal vendetta and was out to get him.

  Second, he really needed to resolve the significant hole in his strategy. Not only was it crucial to the future of mankind, but on a far more personal level it seemed that, until he solved this problem, he would never get a chance to really talk with Hope – it always seemed to get in the way.

  Since he didn’t even know where to start, he decided he needed some help. He thought maybe if he pulled in the same three team-leads as he had before when he had faced some difficult problems, they would obtain similar positive results. He set up a meeting with Anya from IT, Nancy from logistics and Antony from engineering. Due to the large workload everyone had right after the Mars landing, he was not able to set up a meeting for several days. He knew that he couldn’t speed this up, but he also knew that waiting for this meeting would feel like an eternity.

  When the meeting time finally came, Calaes felt like he was ready to go stir crazy. He still hadn’t figured any way to repair the gaping hole in what had been his strategy. This meant that he hadn’t been able to sleep well or eat well. This really wasn’t good for him, he knew. So, although it was in everyone’s best interest to solve this problem, it was more so in his own best interest as well – as if he needed any additional motivation.

  As Anya, Nancy and Antony sat down, Calaes outlined to them the two latest security issues: the intercepted messages at the training campus and the second attempt to destroy the shuttles.

  He asked Anya to try to get more information on the intercepted messages, since this was a security-related IT issue – right down Anya’s alley.

  Next, he asked both Anya and Antony to look into the cause of the six hundred meter elevation error that had almost caused the shuttles to crash.

  Not wanting to have Nancy feel left out, he asked if there was anything else from anyone – but he looked right at Nancy.

  Nancy surprised him by rapidly volunteering, “It has really been bugging me that we don’t know where all the extra material has gone to. I was expecting to have found it here at the settlement, but we have looked and can’t find it anywhere. Realistically, there is so much extra that it should be readily apparent were it here. But it is not. The question is, ‘Where is it?’ ”

  Calaes had not thought about the extra material for a long time. He really hadn’t felt it was that important – probably someone skimming off the top to make a profit or something. But Nancy had a point – they really should look into it. “Good idea Nancy,” he said. “Please work with Anya and Antony to determine what you can find out about it. Please try to have something within twenty-four hours. I know you are all busy, but this is really important. Thanks.”

  “There is one more thing,” Calaes continued. “Now that we are here on Mars, I wanted to know if there are any ways to speed up our ability to become self-sufficient from Earth. Right now, we are almost totally dependent upon them and we will be for years. With the two issues we discussed today I think it is important that we try to speed up our ability to be independent. What I’d like to know is, do you have any ideas on how we can achieve this?”

  Calaes looked around, hoping to see a spark in someone’s eyes. Unfortunately, after waiting for a couple of minutes while everyone thought about it, he saw the same look of almost defeat wash over each face in turn. Trying to keep a positive attitude he said, “Why don’t each of you think about it and we can discuss options at the meeting tomorrow.”

  There were no other inputs. Everyone had their assignments – now it was just a matter of getting to them and also try to solve a potentially unsolvable problem. They filed out talking among themselves, leaving Calaes wondering what they would find.

  The next day they met again. Calaes hoped that they had made progress. “Well, what have you got for me?”

  Anya spoke up first. “As for the intercepted messages, I couldn’t decrypt them – nor did I expect to be able to with the high level of encryption they used. However, I was able to confirm that there are a fairly large number of pro-government candidates – by my estimate at least fifty, if not more. There is no way I can identify who they are, but I was able to see that they had some kind of message board and there were more than fifty unique sources. This was just one of several message boards – I couldn’t tell if the sources were the same or different in each message board. So again, I can confidently say fifty minimum, with the possibility of many more. Also, I can confirm that these were not just messages within our system at the training campus. Some of the sources were from the outside – so I think we can safely say that they were able to communicate with the government.”

  Antony spoke up next. “Not such good news on the shuttle elevation error. We see the database was changed, but we have no additional information about it. It was done during a routine database update. All the other updates are fully documented, but the elevation change just appeared with no justification. It was kind of sneaky how it was done. If it were just a change, it would have been caught in any number of ways – we always have checks for changes. What they did was to delete the entry, then re-enter it. Deletions are commonly done when you have something obsolete. This was a case where it was an essential parameter, but since it was deleted and added back in there was nothing correlating the two activities and it was very hard to check that the net result was actually a change. We have put in place a set of more complex checks to ensure this type of event doesn’t happen again in the future. I’m afraid that is all the information we have on th
is.”

  Calaes responded, “Antony, please put a hold on the shuttles and give them a thorough examination. Make sure there are no other hidden issues that we didn’t see.”

  Antony agreed, then finally Nancy spoke. “The news is somewhat mystifying on the oversupplied cargo. We were able to perform full configuration control for all the excess from creation, through transport to the shuttles, and finally to Mars. The oddest thing is that whenever this occurs, it occurs for the entire shuttle’s cargo – never only a portion of it. There is no solid evidence it was ever received here on Mars. They have all the check boxes filled as if it came to the settlement, but when you look deeper you can’t account for any of the excess cargo at all. It’s not that it came here and was moved, it almost appears that it didn’t come to the settlement at all. Is there another facility on Mars that it may have come to?”

  Calaes didn’t know what to think. The only open issue he knew about was the mysterious location of the rebels. They were supposed to come to Mars, but they hadn’t been on either of the two manned shuttles, except Hope and Randy. Calaes still didn’t know how they were going to get here.

  Shaking his head, Calaes said, “Nancy, there is no other infrastructure here on Mars – at least none documented. It has always been a major emphasis to have a single spot to concentrate all effort since the cost would be so high to have redundant installations. Do you have any telemetry to support the Mars flights?”

  Nancy responded, “I scoured all the earth- and lunar-based telemetry and found an interesting tidbit of information. Every time a shuttle with the missing excess cargo was to land on Mars, the settlement was always facing away from Earth. One or two times I could buy, but every single time is more than a coincidence. As a crosscheck, those shuttles that did not have the excess cargo landed about half the time within view of Earth – this is what was expected if there were no attempts to hide these shuttle landings.”

  Calaes thought about this. Without telemetry, there was no way to verify what the shuttles’ actual destination really was. “Is there any other telemetry available outside of Earth’s and Luna’s resources?”

  Nobody said anything for a while when Antony finally pitched in, “It is a long shot, but there are plenty of mining ships that are out harvesting asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. There might be some that are close enough to Mars that might also have telemetry data of Mars. These ships are more for brute force slashing with powerful lasers or blasting the ore, they scoop it up, fashion a heat shield and send it to Earth with a gentle push. It takes years for the ore to get to Earth, but that way the ships can stay out there and collect ore for years and years. They don’t have great resolution on any of their sensors, but it is possible that they may have something. Also, there are thousands of mining ships out there, so we’ll have to look at a lot of databases. Also, the more we look the greater the chances that we might trigger some response from Earth – since we can’t get to the databases directly. We have to go through Earth for everything.”

  Calaes thought about it and said, “Nancy and Antony, please look into that. Anya, please see what protections we might put in place to shield us from government scrutiny. Maybe we can do some kind of obfuscation like pulling the data as part of updating all our records for all ships ever leaving Earth, so our real intent can’t be discerned.

  “Now the million-dollar question. Has anyone thought up any way to speed up our independence from Earth?”

  Everyone looked at each other shaking their heads negatively. Finally, Antony said, “We discussed it among ourselves and while we can find minor things that we can do to help, there is no way to really obtain our independence for several decades, and that is only will full Earth support. There is no way out of this.”

  Calaes was afraid of that. “Ok, keep trying for a breakthrough – for now, that’s it. Let’s get together tomorrow at the same time to see what else we have. Thank you all.”

  Everyone left quickly – the implications of what they had found, and not found, obviously weighing on everyone’s minds.

  The following day, their meeting started simply enough. Calaes said, “So, what is the latest on the mining ship telemetry? Also, any additional information on the intercepted messages or the elevation error?”

  The three team-leads looked at each other, deciding who would talk first. Finally Anya spoke up, “No new information on the intercepted messages or the elevation error, sorry. I’ll let Antony speak to the telemetry data.”

  Antony nodded and said, “The good news is that we were able to get multiple images of shuttles as they approached the far side of Mars, with respect to Earth. The bad news is that they are very low resolution – they just weren’t built to go looking for anything deep into space. Any one image is just not good enough to determine anything. However, when you put them all together, from multiple different ships, you get an interesting perspective. Here,” he displayed fifteen different views of shuttles approaching Mars, “are all the views we have of shuttle approaches. There is only one common factor in each of them.” He electronically superimposed each of the pictures into one aggregated picture and electronically removed the noise. What remained was a picture of Mars, with the moon Phobos in the same position in each of the photos. “This shows that as each shuttle approaches Mars, Phobos is in the exact same position relative to the shuttle. When Phobos goes by, the shuttle is gone. So, somehow they are using Phobos to shield where the shuttle has landed. Cross checking that position directly below Phobos on Mars with Earth telemetry data shows there isn’t anything there. I’m not sure how, but Phobos is hiding where the shuttles are going.”

  Calaes’ persa alerted Calaes of an urgent message from Hope, asking to meet her in the observation deck immediately. Calaes responded back that he would be there shortly. “Now what?” he asked himself.

  He thanked the three and asked if they had anything else to discuss. They all shook their heads, murmuring “No.” He asked that he be informed if any other information was obtained. He left to go to the observation deck. His thoughts were all jumbled with everything that was going on. What did this all mean? And what did Hope need to talk to him so urgently for? He hoped that this meeting would shed some light. Little did he know how true that was.

  PART 7 – NEW STRATEGY

  CHAPTER 36

  Hayden had been stumped.

  He couldn’t find evidence of any hidden guardian angel organization, and it had really frustrated him. The more he thought about it, the more a group like this it made sense – but he just couldn’t find any hard evidence of them.

  All that changed when his persa detected the mining ship database requests for images of shuttles as they approached the far side of Mars. This had been the red flag that he was looking for. And the imagery that those requests generated was extremely enlightening.

  He was sure that the renegades were already located somewhere on Mars. It was time to send all of his assets to overwhelm this small group of renegades and end this charade for good.

  – – –

  When Calaes entered the observation deck, Hope was already there. She immediately said, “I think we have a problem.”

  Calaes inclined his head and asked, “What do you mean?”

  She rapidly replied, “We have picked up messages from within the settlement that are extremely suspicious for several reasons. First, they are using special encryption that hides the message content, but this shows that they have something to hide. Second, these messages were all sent using a large distribution list, consisting of more than fifty people. With a group this large, we strongly believe it is the pro-government rebellion. It is very bad news that they are now messaging out in the open. We think that they are about to do something and we need to be on high alert. By the way, my father would have liked to come, but he is not doing well – his leg is really bothering him and he is really weak.”

  Calaes felt sorry for her father, but didn’t have time to dwel
l on that. He didn’t like what these messages meant. It confirmed the findings of his team-leads, but the situation as a whole was not good. What should they do? Should they wait? Or should they do something proactive? Actually, without knowing who they were, could they even do something proactive?

  While he was thinking about this, Calaes looked out the observation deck and spotted Phobos. It was in the perfect position for him to see the huge Stickney crater. He wondered how such a large crater could be made on such a small moon without totally destroying the moon. As he was staring at it, he saw a bright flash in the middle of the crater. It was much too far to make out anything, well over eight thousand km away with Phobos appearing as only a third the size the moon would appear on Earth. But the crater was a dark spot on the already dark surface and anything bright really stood out.

  He was not aware of any attempt to land people or equipment on Phobos. Idly he wondered if this might have something to do with the missing cargo. He decided to ask Hope.

  “Hope,” he asked, “did you see that flash just now in Stickney crater? I wasn’t aware of any landings on that moon. Do you know anything about it?” Before she had any time to answer, he added, “And there is something else that we found out when we were doing our checking into the missing cargo. Specifically, we found that whenever the shuttles carrying the missing cargo disappeared, Phobos was always at the exact same place on the shuttles’ trajectory. I’m thinking that Phobos is somehow involved in all this.”

  Hope was silent for a long while. Then she nodded, as if making some kind of decision. She said, “Let’s go to my office and we can talk privately.”

  As they walked silently to her office, Calaes wondered what it was that she was going to say, and specifically what it was that he had said that had triggered it.

  As they entered her office, she performed a scan to ensure they had complete security. When she was satisfied, she said, “A while ago we discussed the need to keep the government from interfering with the building and running of the settlement. We have managed to get a rudimentary functionality of the settlement, although it appears the government did all it could to try to stop us. As I’m sure you’ve come to realize, with the government’s overwhelming advantages it will be next to impossible to keep them from interfering with the running of the settlement. They are so powerful and so close and they control all the vital parts we need as well as all the weapons on Earth and in the entire solar system – they have all the leverage. Even though they can’t send humans to do their dirty work due to VR, they still have access to all the drones and remote-controlled weapons and equipment that they could ever want.”