Continued from Part 1.
Everett stood silently outside Admiral Horne’s office. A month had passed since their previous meeting, although the memory of that disastrous encounter was still fresh in his mind. Day after day, he had been diligently crafting his status reports, taking care that they arrived in the Admiral’s inbox on a daily basis. The reports required a relatively small amount of effort, but they were unwelcome at a time when he was already overseeing progress on the quantum anomaly, in addition to his normal job of running the OI center. No matter what was put in each report however, he never received more than a cursory response. Eventually, Everett had begin to conclude that the reports weren’t being read at all, which made it all the more surprising then when he was suddenly summoned to meet the Admiral once again.
This time, Everett had brought along one of his top lieutenants, a lead quantum computational researcher named Dr. Furca. Furca was a short man, balding with bad breath and a face that could only be described as rodent-like. As Everett gazed down at Furca waiting beside him, busily tapping away at his unfolded pagelet, he reflected that he never ceased to be amazed at how his career had exposed him to individuals even less socially competent than himself.
Without warning, the door opened. Oh no, thought Everett. Behind the Admiral, Agent Ellis stood once again, smiling graciously. Everett had not seen the agent since the last meeting, and had been secretly hoping that sometime after its conclusion he had dragged himself back to whatever hole he had crawled out from.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Everett. You were early this time.” The Admiral seemed uncharacteristically cheerful. Everett didn’t know whether or not that was a good sign.
“It’s quite alright. I’ve brought along my colleague, Dr. Furca, who heads up the Quantum Informatics section. I thought he might be able to clarify some of the points in my most recent status update.” Everett motioned at Furca, who smiled and bobbed his head approvingly. The poor bastard doesn’t know that Ellis is from DICE, thought Everett. I wish there was some way I could warn him, but pointing it out would look suspicious.
“Oh. Yes, very good. We will discuss the update in a moment. I haven’t had time to look over the written report just yet. But first I have something to tell you: the reason this meeting was called. We’ve scored a major victory.” The Admiral made a fist and pumped it in a small but triumphant motion.
Everett raised both his eyebrows. “Yes, sir. Please go on.”
“After our last meeting, Ellis brought to my attention your theory about the enemy producing artificial cosmic rays. The high command authorized a new operational priority: perform sweeps for locations where the Infies could be setting up equipment with the intent to sabotage our facility. One week ago, they got a hit; an asteroid base ten gigaclicks from our main perimeter. The Infies were moving in heavy machinery…superconductors for electromagnets. We must have caught their prediction system completely off-guard; we had time to move in a squadron before they could build up any defenses. Forced them to dismantle everything and retreat.
“So, the mystery is solved and the threat eliminated, just like that…” The Admiral trailed off as he watched Everett’s face become a mask of confusion. “Is something wrong, Everett?”
“It’s just,” Everett tried to think of the best way to break the news, “you say the enemy base was detected one week ago…when was this counter-action performed?”
“The whole thing was wrapped up yesterday. Why?”
Everett and Furca exchanged a nervous glance. “It’s just that…sir…as of this morning, the glitch is still present, and still coming from the reverse temporal direction. I verified it myself with Dr. Furca before we came here…”
Everett had rarely seen the Admiral truly angry, but now that it was happening it was far more frightening than he had ever imagined. Horne sat perfectly still, his hand clenched against the desk in front of him, a single bright red vein in his forehead throbbing so forcefully it threatened to burst. He stayed that way for what seemed like an absurdly long time, until Agent Ellis spoke calmly from behind him.
“Tell me Doctor, what sort of information security procedures do you practice in this facility?”
Everett sputtered. “What? Excuse me Agent, this is hardly…”
“Hardly what? Regardless of the current state of our little glitch, the fact remains that the Infinians were preparing to build their sabotage facility, based on what we assume must have been illicitly-obtained information. The security of this facility has now been called into question, security which I believe you are in charge of upholding.”
Everett gulped. Ellis had pinned him completely, and he knew it. “We use standard military-grade security throughout the facility of course. Software is all maintained by operations, with no non-standard installations anywhere. All requests for configuration changes must be personally signed off by my chief of InfoTech. All machines in the cluster are air-gapped, and accessible only by secure terminal. No connection with the Global Hive whatsoever. And all personnel are thoroughly screened…”
“Yes, the personnel…” Ellis interrupted him. “Dr. Furca, is it? You are in charge of the portion of the cluster where the glitch was found, correct?”
“Oh, yes!” Furca nodded his head appreciatively.
The DICE agent smiled warmly. “And the software which contains the glitch, did you have a hand in writing it?”
“Ah…no, no. That’s not the way we do things.” Furca seemed to delight in explaining the details of his work to strangers. “Each engineer is responsible for his or her own specific code blocks, with limited or no access to the rest of the system. For security, of course.”
“Of course,” said Ellis. “And which engineer was in charge of the specific code in question?”
“Ah, that would be Alec Benson,” responded Furca, appearing to flip through a mental rolodex, “one of our junior engineers. Such a promising lad though, and quite bright. The code that runs on the quantum computational unit is so much more difficult to write than standard modules, and he handles himself quite well. I see great things in his future.”
“I see.” Ellis pulled out a pagelet and began keying commands into it. “Tell me Dr. Furca, would you say you have complete faith in this young engineer?”
Be careful Furca, it’s some sort of trap. Everett stared at his well-meaning colleague, whose head was still bobbing up and down obliviously as if he were a toy duck in a bathtub.
“Oh yes, I vouch for him totally. An excellent example of the products of Pisceon public education!”
Ellis cast his eyes forward. “Interesting. Perhaps you should have a look at this.” He tapped his pagelet once more, and Furca’s hand-held display fluttered, as if it were caught in a passing breeze: the indication of an incoming signal.
Everett leaned over to view the file displayed in Furca’s hands. “What is this?”
“A surveillance report. I took the liberty of placing a trace on young Alec after our last meeting. As you can see, there are some…disturbing elements in the report. It appears our bright young engineer has been bending the security protocols behind the backs of his superiors. Transferring classified material from the Cluster to his personal pagelet. And like all personal machines, that pagelet is connected to the Hive.”
Furca’s eyes were wide. It was finally dawning on him who Ellis must be, to have been able to order a trace like that. “You…you don’t understand…the younger generation…they don’t like working on the secured terminals. Sometimes they will use their own workstations in addition…I…I’ll have a talk with Alec immediately. You’ll see this won’t happen again.”
“Oh, I’m afraid that won’t be necessary.” Ellis grinned again, and this time Furca did not return the expression. “The boy has already been placed into custody, and his security clearances revoked. We at the Department shall handle the matter of determining his true intentions ourselves.”
“Ellis!” Everett’s hands were shaking with rage. “You can’t do that! That boy is working for me! Admiral, I demand you protest this action! This whole thing is nothing but a witch hunt against me and this facility!”
“Get a hold of yourself Everett. I was the one who authorized Agent Ellis to make his arrest,” the Admiral snarled. “I will tolerate no breaches of protocol in this facility, no matter who the engineer in question works for.”
“But…but…” Everett felt his grip on the situation failing, with Ellis’ smiling face leering over him, mocking him mercilessly. “Admiral, you spoke yourself about the importance of our work. Why jeopardize us by authorizing this interference from DICE? I don’t know what sort of game he’s playing, but Ellis doesn’t have our best interests at heart. If you would only…Furca…good God man, why are you mumbling?!”
Everett turned in annoyance to see Furca wobbling back and forth as if in prayer, tracing out a diagram on the surface of his pagelet with his finger. “Interference…interference…oh no…oh dear…”
“Everett! What is wrong with that man?” The Admiral believed so strongly in the chain of command that he would never consider questioning Furca directly.
“I’ve made a mistake…a terrible mistake…one that may go down in history…” Furca held up his pagelet for Everett to see, although his hasty scribblings were less than understandable. “Don’t you see? We had always assumed that the S-matrix representation was sufficient to explain the anomaly we were seeing. But what about contributions from off-shell paths…if we sum them in this manner, it’s possible they could cause interference with our initial states…”
“Everett, for God’s sake what is he talking about?!”
Furca looked up at the Admiral. “Sir, I’m talking about the future state of the universe. Quantum physics predicts a myriad of possible futures, not just one. As long as there is any physical possibility of a future existing where the Infinians could build their accelerator, then the result could still be a glitch in the operation of the Prediction Cluster.”
The Admiral looked more annoyed than anything. “But there is no possibility. I just told you, we forced them to dismantle their base.”
“That base, certainly.” Furca was gaining confidence now. “But the enemy could always rebuild elsewhere. Or perhaps there are some futures where our random sweeps did not locate their position before time ran out. If any quantum noise was used to seed the random coordinate generators inside the probes…”
The Admiral sat back in his chair, tapping his fingers rhythmically on his desk. Everett could not help but notice that his puzzlement over Furca’s outburst seemed to have momentarily defused his anger. I need to take advantage of this. “Furca,” he said, snapping the small man out of his reverie, “let’s say you’re correct. Is there any way we can prevent the sabotage from occurring?”
“Yes,” said Furca. “We could build a dome around the facility. Preferably lead, or depleted uranium. Any dense matter will absorb cosmic rays. Of course, some space particles would still be able to penetrate, but we should be able to stop enough of them to eliminate any physical possibility of a glitch in all future timelines.”
Horne raised his eyebrow. “A dome. A goddamn dome. Everett, is he serious? Do you have any idea what that will cost?”
Everett looked at Furca’s calculations, then back to the Admiral. “I’m afraid I agree with Dr. Furca’s analysis sir. The construction may be out of the range of our ordinary budget, but it’s a small price to pay for our global security.”
The Admiral clasped his hands together below his chin for a moment. He looked up at Ellis, who shot him back a disinterested shrug. Finally, he spoke. “Very well, I’ll do it. But you had better hope you’re right about this, Everett. For your sake.” He narrowed his eyes. “And for all our sakes. Dismissed.”
▬
Several minutes later, DICE Agent Ellis walked alone through the black marble lobby of the OI center. All around him, promising young engineers filed to and fro in groups of three or four; explaining, listening intently, often gesticulating wildly to punctuate a particularly important point in their arguments. None of them seemed the least bit concerned about the sudden disappearance of one of their own. Or perhaps they are concerned, and afraid to show it, he thought.
“Ellis!”
The agent stopped and turned. Everett was hurrying after him, trying to catch up before he left the building. “Doctor! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Everett stopped and doubled over slightly, trying catch his breath. “I…I wanted to…ask you…” Ellis looked down into Everett’s eyes. He could see fear there. And worry. Both were always welcome sights, in his line of work. “I want to know…what will happen to the boy?”
“Alec? I’m afraid I can’t tell you Doctor. Classified and all that.” Ellis had to give Everett at least some credit for not appearing surprised at his answer.
“Listen. Why are you bothering with him? You never actually said he had broadcast the data over the Hive. And you know as well as I do that whatever he transferred was of no consequence to our security anyway. Trying to get information out of him is a waste of your time.”
“Doctor, I must say I’m touched by your concern for your colleague.” Ellis placed his hand over the centerof his chest to indicate where he had been touched. “But you must understand, I am as highly trained in my own art as you are in yours. We at DICE have, over time, developed techniques that we’ve found to be highly effective for information extraction. One of those is what I call the Haarlem procedure. Poke a small hole in the dike. Then another. Eventually, from many small holes the dike breaks, and the floodwaters pour in. Alec is one such hole; inconsequential alone, but perhaps his absence will cause enough consternation in the facility to convince someone else to come forward.”
Everett’s face twisted into a snarl. “But the boy is innocent. You’re destroying his life to make him a pawn in your little game!”
Ellis shot him a lackadaisical expression. “Must we go through this again? In war, none of us are innocent.”
Everett stood in silence for a while, until Ellis grew bored and turned to go. He watched as the agent marched through the tiled lobby, and past the security checkpoint in front of the wide glass doors. Then, he mumbled to himself under his breath.
“So you say…”
Continued in Part 3.
