Exponential

by JM Addison

  *

  There was some discussion of what type of food everyone was interested in, but Mike seemed to be the only one that cared about eating, so they stopped at one of the popular chain restaurant franchises and got a table with no waiting. After they ordered, Mike began in a low voice, “It seems like it should be a piece of cake. The guy’s place is fairly open in the back with good exposure to the field. The van can probably stay concealed among the trees alongside the path we parked on. Once we get everything set up, we can watch and listen to what’s going on inside.”

  “So we watch the guy. Then what?” Mara asked.

  “Once we feel we are getting good surveillance, I’ll give him a call from my mobile phone. Actually, I was thinking, if you didn’t mind, perhaps you could call him. If this guy really does have anything to do with what’s happening to you, that should really stir things up.”

  Mara considered this for a moment. She certainly didn’t want to expose herself any more than she had to, but if this individual really was somehow connected or responsible for the drama of the past couple of days, wouldn’t it be great to be on the other end of the hook watching him being the one squirming like a worm. It did seem like a reasonable idea. “That sounds good. Did you have anything specific in mind that I might say?” Then she added mockingly, “Oh hello, you bastard, this is Mara Chandler, you know, the one you’ve been trying to kill? Guess what? It’s my turn now! You better watch your stinking back!”

  Mike smiled and replied, “Well I was thinking of something perhaps a little more subtle. Maybe you could indicate that you know him and that you know what he’s up to and you are going to take him and his friends down.”

  “Friends?”

  “We must assume that he is almost certainly not acting alone. By giving the indication we know who they are, he would hopefully be nervous enough to contact some of them. Hopefully he won’t bolt, because we won’t ever keep up with him with the van. We want to be there watching and listening and hopefully see something incriminating.”

  “What if we do discover something? We’re not the police, and this is not a court ordered exercise, what would we be able to do about anything? ”

  “I’ve got some friends in the government that would be very interested in someone, especially someone trusted like Viiradium, that is involved in pirating private data off the net and using it to their profit. And, since even network traffic among government agencies is at risk, they will have even more motivation”

  “So you are just going to turn over the recording or whatever the evidence is to the government? I know you want to get these guys off your back, but what about me? I can’t even go to the cops. They still think I had something to do with the murder of my mother!”

  “Everything will be recorded on one of these.” He pulled a small, square flat object about an inch square from his pocket. “It’s an everyday electronic media card, the ones they use in digital cameras to save photos and videos. I can make a backup copy in a few moments and send it off to my government contacts. Believe me, they are going to want to talk to you if we get any material that supports your story.”

  Mara didn’t appreciate his hint that there was a possibility that what she had revealed to them was simply a “story”. Something deamed up. Not entirely fact, but she respected the effort he was willing to put forth to at least check it out. It was a pretty unlikely story, so she should not be surprised there would be skepticism.

  During the meal, not many words were exchanged. Mara was pretty wound up and found that eating was not the way to settle her stomach. Mike seemed to have no problem clearing his plate. Annette looked like the kind of person who lived off a small but continual supply of junk food. She ate most of her greasy burger and fries.

  After thanking Mike for picking up the tab, they headed back to the van and drove back to the target’s neighborhood. They came from the opposite direction this time and were able to approach the turnoff to the dirt track without passing the house.

  Mike switched the lights to only the “parking” light and slowly bumped along the path alongside the stand of trees. It was much longer than Mara imagined and reminded her a little of the reckless car chase she had experienced just a few days ago when she landed in a crumpled heap among the pile of rocks in the field behind her mother’s farm.

  Finally they came to stop and the three of them climbed out and went around to the rear doors of the van. Mike turned off the outside lights and killed the engine. He and Annette opened the cases and extracted the antennae and apparently the cabling needed to tie them to the equipment in the van.

  “You know how to set up the transceiver and the processing computers Annette, why don’t you start plugging things in and set up the system while me and Mara place these antennas.”

  “No problem…” She went to work pulling some gear out of another plastic case and began connecting power from the van and cables to the equipment.

  The antennae that had to be placed within site of the house were thankfully small and each stood on a miniature tripod with a relatively thin hookup wire that would stretch back to the van. They were flat and square with rounded corners that stood up perpendicular to the ground. There seemed to be a slight concavity on the broad side of the square – similar to a very small dish antenna.

  “Come along with me, Mara, and we’ll set these up,” said Mike. They walked a little ahead of the van and just beyond the end of the stand of trees, the ground curved away enough that they could get a full view of the back of the house. Mara was a little startled by just how close they actually were. They could see that someone was obviously home. Although the curtains did not allow a view of the inside, it seemed from the varying light playing upon the drapery that perhaps a television was on.

  ‘Setting up’ the antennae was simply a matter of setting them on the ground about 15 feet apart with the concave dish facing the house. It began to rain an annoying mist and together they walked back to the van where Annette was fiddling with some cables and waiting for the equipment to boot up.

  Mike began to explain what they were doing. “What we have here is simply a transmitter / receiver unit and a bunch of computers to make sense out of what we’re receiving. We essentially ‘spray’ the house with a constant stream of precisely timed digital radio signals. These radio signals are up in the microwave range, that’s why the antennas are so small.

  “The trick is to listen at precisely the exact moment to the reflected radio signal off of the target area to get a picture of what’s going on. The secret behind this is the Pico Timer. To the Pico Timer, all this stuff happens in relatively slow motion. Because we are using microwaves, the picture we get would normally be low resolution. Very low since the wavelength of the microwaves is much longer than the wavelength of light.

  “But because of the very accurate read of the timing of the microwave reflections, we are getting almost photographic quality resolution. Since we are not using real light, there is no way to interpret actual colors, so we have to live with interpolated shades of grey. We need the computers to do the work of interpreting that radio reflection and making some sense out of it. Both antennas are used to transmit and receive. We have to have a complementary pair to make a complete image of the target area.”

  “We’re linked up, We just need to get real time.” Annette announced.

  Mike continued to explain, “Unfortunately, the precise timing requires synchronizing everything to the exact same time. We don’t carry an atomic clock out in the field with us, so we just use the time generated by our GPS receiver. GPS satellites have to have onboard atomic clocks for the positioning systems to work, so we start with that time, feed it in and the equipment is accurate enough to run once it’s synchronized.”

  Mara noticed that one of the computers looked like a generic laptop machine that used a common operating system environment she was familiar with. Mike made a few mouse clicks and was running some sort of program to do the synchroni
zation and automated equipment setup.

  Annette said, “I’m not sure if I’ve got these cables terminated in the right ports Mike, could you have a look?”

  While Mike and Annette were completing the setup, Mara felt out of place. She needed something to do because if she spent any time dwelling on what they were actually doing, she could feel the anxiety rise. She took a moment to glance around in the darkness but couldn’t see too much. A little beyond the spot where she knew the antennae were, she thought she could make out some buildings. Perhaps a disused shed or garage. No doubt artifacts typical of the adjacent farm.

  Mike said, “We’re on the net right now with that laptop, but you can check your email and such if you want to keep busy while we finish the set-up.”

  “O.K.”

  “Yeah, feel free to play around…”

  She poked around with the mouse and was able to find the internet site that she was using to host her e-mail for the time being. She was curious if any of the other companies she made inquiries of ever did respond. She waited while the login screen made its way to the laptop and finally entered her password to view her inbox. She had a couple of messages, one from someone soliciting loans. It seemed amazing how fast she could receive junk e-mail when she only had this e-mail address for a couple of days now. The second message practically made her faint.

  Mike completed the setup and was ready to begin processing images. He came back around to the two computers and noticed Mara’s expression of shock.

  “Everything OK?” he began.

  “It’s… it’s my brother…” was all she could say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Apparently he’s alive. He’s sent a message!”

  “Really? How do you know it is really from your brother? Anyone can send a message and say it’s anyone they want. People send ‘spam’ messages all the time.”

  “Because he’s asked me to meet him at a place that only he and I would know. It’s a place called ‘Fiddler’s Rock’. We used to go their when we were kids. It’s nothing really, just a big rock that always had a pool of ground water in front of it. We would go there and pretend the water was really a wishing well and make a wish. The big rock was shaped so as to make you think of an old fiddler, so we nicknamed it ‘fiddler’s rock’.”

  “When does he want to meet you there?”

  “He says he will be there at seven for the next three evenings.”

  “Any explanation? Is he ok? Where has he been all this time?

  “Nope. Just that it is vital that we see each other in person.”

  It was Mike’s turn to get frustrated. What does this mean? Was this all some sort of game? How reliable was the tale of misery that Mara spun? Should they still go through with this little spying operation? Someone was still apparently stealing information from Sequitus and he believed that Mara was genuinely afraid for her life, so there had to be some substance to her story.

  “Are we still going to go ahead with our plan?” Mike asked.

  “We’re here! Whether my brother’s OK or not, someone’s still trying to kill me. A lot of what we’re doing is based on information supplied indirectly by him, anything we can find out before I go to see him can only help. Let’s go ahead and see what happens…”

  “OK, let’s go…” Mike started a couple of more application programs on the computers and a window appeared that contained fuzzy movement. Like ghosts on TV, but only the ghosts. The shapes were nothing she could make out. She was a little dissappointed by the results so far. It reminded her of some of the sonograms she had seen of people’s fetuses. Shadowy and difficult to interpret just what to make of it.

  “This is only the raw data.” Mike explained. Most of the work is done by this first machine. We’ll use this other machine to clean this up. By adjusting the timing ‘window’ we can get a view of a ‘slice’ of the house at any depth. We need to find out where there are humans and zero in on that.”

  He began poking around on the laptop machine and another window appeared and what seemed to be the shape of a vacant room appeared. You could make out everything, but it seemed somehow… ‘artificial’.

  “The computer does a considerable amount of interpolation to fill in some of the details. As I mentioned, we can’t do colors and with the radio wavelength being in the millimeter range, the computers do a lot to sort out the mess of reflected signals to get images with features smaller than a millimeter. People absorb these radio frequencies more so than other material, so the computer determines where the people are by the absence of a reflected radio signal.

  “Annette, let’s try index .1334 microseconds,” he ordered. She adjusted some controls on the transceiver unit and Mike did some more poking around at the laptop. Finally, a clear image of another room with a person seated at a table or desk could be seen. It was a shadowy figure where features could not really be seen, like a person in dark shadows. Mike made some more adjustments and a faint, poor quality sound of the TV in the house could be heard on the laptop.

  “We can get sound that’s reflected off flat surfaces, especially metal desks or refrigerators and such. The vibration of the surface caused by the sonic source distort the radio reflection slightly. That distortion can be decoded to reproduce the sounds in the room,” Mike explained.

  He turned to Annette. “Let’s tweak the backfill a touch to see if we can improve the artificial brightness.” Annette’s fingers made a few furious stabs at the keyboard. Another couple of clicks on the mouse and suddenly, the image of the person became surprisingly clear.

  He inserted the memory media card into the side of the laptop and said, “Showtime!”

  Mara stared at the image. She allowed the shape and features of the face of this man to burn into her memories. If he had anything to do with the torture she was enduring, she was never going to forget him. Annette had the phone number with her of the residence of one Mr. Damian Sanders. She made sure the call-ID function of her mobile phone was turned off, entered the number into the phone and handed it over to Mara.

  Mara pressed the call button and waited a moment and the phone rang. A fraction of a second later, she could hear the phone ringing through Mike’s computer as the equipment picked up the sound from inside the house relayed it to the laptop. This began a series of screeches and echoes that would make talking difficult. Mike made some more adjustments and the sounds died away. On the screen, she could see the person shape pick up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Is this Damian Sanders?”

  “Yes? May I ask who’s calling?” Mara got the impression he wanted to end the call probably thinking it was an during-dinner telemarketer.

  She drew a deep breath and boldly went on, “This is Mara Chandler... I thought that you should know that I know all about the tricks you and your friends are up to. I’m sick and tired of playing these games because it’s my life that’s at stake here. I’m going to burn you, you rotten son of a bitch. You better watch out , your little data theft enterprise is on borrowed time.”

  “I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about,” came his quick replay. A little too quick. An innocent person who really had no clue as to what she was talking about would have taken a couple of seconds to consider what this lunatic woman was raving about before finally denying any knowledge. “Whoever you are, you’d better think twice before you call and threaten me, I’ll call the police!”

  The phone went dead and she could see on the screen that he abruptly hung up.

  The three of them crammed their heads around the screen wondering what he would do next. Was he indeed the bad guy? Did they come out here and set up surveillance for nothing? Or would this pay off? Would Mara finally be able to identify the person behind her tribulation?

  Mike said in a low voice, “Nice job, that should get him to thinking.” He was hoping that the guy wouldn’t decide to leave. On the screen he stood up and paced a couple of times and simply walked out of the room.


  “Oh-Oh…” was all Annette could think of to say.

  “Quick, let’s keep an eye on him.” Mike said. He went to work for a moment on the main processing computer. “OK, change to time index .2113.”

  Annette went back to the control unit for the transceiver and made some adjustments. Another room came into view in the window on the laptop. It looked like it was laid out like a kitchen. Nobody seemed to be in the room. Mike made some further adjustments and another room, a bedroom came into view. A person was moving about, but all agreed, it was obviously a female. Could been the wife or a daughter perhaps. They hadn’t even considered that there could be more people in the house besides the target. Mike began to get nervous, should he view the garage in case he was leaving? Would they even be able to follow?

  Instead of going to the rear of the house, he examined the rooms nearest to the front, actually, from the street, it would have been the back that faces the fields. They found a room with bookshelves, desk and larger work surface, likely an office, cluttered with a computer monitor, phones and such and there he was, just coming into view. Mike breathed a bit of relief.

  They watched as the target played with what must have been a speaker phone, but they were getting no sound. After fiddling around some more with the signal processing, they could hear the tail end of the phone number being dialed.

  “Too bad we didn’t get that whole number, it would have been nice to know who he was calling!” Mike exclaimed.

  They could make out the ringing of the other end and then a person answered, “Hello? Damian, is that you?”

  “Hi Red, yeah, it’s me.”

  “What are you calling me here for! I thought we agreed not to unless it’s an emergency!”

  “You got your scrambler up? We gotta make sure this conversation is scrambled.”

  “Hang on a second…” From the laptop in the van, they could hear some pretty loud hissing for a moment and then a crisp “beep” as the phone scramblers synchronized.

  “Now what’s this all about?”

  “She called…”

  “What do you mean, she called? Who called?”

  “The Chandler woman, she called here and made threats.”

  “What!?”

  Although the voice on the other end was weak and fairly distorted, Mara had the odd feeling that she had heard it before. She just couldn’t place it. And there was that name that Damian used again, ‘Red’. She didn’t think she knew anyone named Red. She racked her brain trying to think of where she had heard the voice before.

  Damian continued, “She said that she knew all about what me and my ‘friends’ were up to and even made reference to our little data mining operation.”

  “You’re kidding?! How would she know? Does she have evidence?”

  “I don’t know. But if she had evidence that we were copying data and decrypting it, I don’t know why she would call me. Why not just go to the police?”

  Mike whispered excitedly, “That was it! They said it! They’re copying and decrypting data! We’ve got them!”

  Mara sat back and tried to sift through her thoughts. First, Mike and Annette were right about this Damian person. He seemed to be in the middle of it all. She could not understand for the life of her who he was and why he would be trying to kill her. Somehow it was connected to Viiradium, it had to be. And who was the familiar voice? It was driving her nuts.

  The small voice of Red came from the laptop, “Wait, she just called you and made threats and now you are calling me here? Are you Nuts!”

  Damian responded, “What? What’s the matter?”

  “She’d trying to get evidence you fool! She wants to see what you would do after she called you. And what’s the first thing you do? You call me!”

  “Well at least we’re on a scrambled line.”

  “Aren’t you using a speakerphone? Perhaps your house is bugged!”

  “No, it’s not, it gets checked all the time! Calm down and let’s think about this for a moment.”

  Just then another figure noisily burst through the door of Damian’s office. “Mr. Sanders!” a grey shadowy figure huffed heavily. Damian was offended that Sonner, one of his security people, intruding during a private conversation.

  “What is it Sonner!?”

  “I tried to get you on your line but couldn’t get through! We’ve detected a security breach, I just wanted to make sure you were all right! I’ve got men outside looking right now…”

  “Find them! Red are you still there?”

  Red had apparently hung up the phone.

  Mike began hurriedly shutting down the machines. “Looks like the party’s over girls, we better clear out of here… Now.”