Discovery

by Douglas E Roff

  Adam was surprised, and said, “Dad was OK with NSA involvement?”

  Cindy smiled and said, “We haven’t gotten around to asking the NSA just yet. Mom and Pops got access through the DL Main. Since they never ask before spying on us, we thought turnabout was fair play.”

  Adam laughed, “When they violate your privacy rights, that’s somehow legal. When you violate theirs, it’s detention at Guantanamo Bay? Or worse.”

  “I doubt Dad’s gonna snitch. Are you?”

  Adam ignored Rod’s unserious question. “Any luck with translations?”

  “Some but not as much as we hoped. Thought the encryption would be hard and it is. Progress is slow. But the language is difficult too. Doesn’t seem to follow predictable patterns and even Misti is stumped. She thinks there may be multiple components to the language and we don’t know what they are yet.”

  Adam looked at Misti. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  Misti said, “What that means, exactly, is that the normal way of communicating involves speaking and hearing and a common set of descriptors that mean the same things for all of us. When we say the word ‘apple’ that has a commonly accepted meaning. We agree that the verbal sound ‘apple’ signifies an object we define as existing in the real world. Written language, on the other hand gives us a visual representation of the sound we agree means and is pronounced ‘apple’, which we previously agreed represented a real object. Language acts like a battery of sorts; it stores information which can then be passed on and widely disseminated out to other people. Spoken language precedes written language, and written language usually represents sounds.”

  “Or concepts?”

  “For what I’m doing, no. The concept might be imagined first, then described. But the written word reflects the sounds of the spoken word. The meaning of the word is an entirely different matter. For my work, I only need to know that the word as written or spoken has a specific meaning attached to it, and we have a consensus as to what that meaning is.”

  “So, a dictionary might come in handy.”

  “Exactly, but a dictionary uses other words to define the meaning of an object word. That may mean we create words and meaning by fiat or by building new words and meanings upon simpler concepts like bricks in a wall. No matter your view, most languages follow a predictable set of patterns almost everywhere in the world. Eventually we can probably decipher all languages using certain basic principles or guidelines. But that isn’t always the case and the Gens seem to have developed an even more complex method of communication.”

  “Not following.”

  “What if their language uses body movement as integral to meaning? Or what if intonation causes a sound to mean something completely different in context? Or if any other set of variables is present, or the time of day affects meaning or the position of the sun or moon? Just saying we don’t know yet but our standard decryption and translation techniques have come up empty so far. We’re still looking for a lucky break but far more than just that. We need to understand the underlying basic structure, or architecture. We don’t have that yet. Could be genetic. If so, then we have a real task ahead of us. So, will you, Adam? Help us out I mean?”

  “How did I get involved in all this mess?”

  “If the key is genetics, and I’m not saying DNA exactly but expression, we’re going to need some muscular processing power to run our simulations and see what comes out. It’s the only way.”

  “You need the DL Main?”

  “And then some.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “And we need your big brain too. This problem is … enigmatic. There’s a tool, a set of tools or some other magic that unlocks this box. But truthfully, we need another mind to look at our problem and figure out the correct methodology. It isn’t just computing power. It’s a new way of thinking. A new way of seeing the problem.”

  “A true paradigm shift?”

  “For these Gens mopes, yes. Beyond that, hard to say. We haven’t figured out where to begin, so we can’t even start the roadmap.”

  “A conundrum of immense proportions.” A smirk crossed his face, an indicator of his smug arrogance, something he usually tamped down around Rod and Cindy and was expressly prohibited around Misti.

  Misti said, in her most conciliatory tone, “You gonna makes us beg?”

  “Nope. Just some gentle persuasion from my girl is all I need. I never said I wouldn’t help; I only said I thought this was an enormous waste of time. I may have been wrong; therefore, I may have to eat my well-seasoned and deep-fried words. And I am humbled to admit that you might have been right, and I may have been wrong.”

  “Really?” That was as close as any of them was ever going to come to Adam saying he was wrong. But they all understood ‘Adamspeak’.

  “Really. Now tell me what you have gathered or what you think you’ve gathered. Don’t leave out anything.”

  Misti said, “I love you. I really, really do.”

  Adam said, “I know. I mean look at this hunkiness; why wouldn’t you?”

  Chapter 16

  The team sent to New Jersey, and the support teams in Portland and Barrows Bay, had secured an enormous amount of data from the BioGen servers. The data was roughly divided into four different and unique groupings, only one of which wasn’t considered primary. One of the three primary classifications involved basic research into seven or eight discreet projects, denominated separately and were led by research teams working independently but often from common research data. Research results were posted weekly, and access was controlled by user password and additional layered security measures. Only a few scientists appeared to have access to all the data and Edward surmised that only a few knew how that data interrelated.

  Not all of the posted data originated in New Jersey, but a lot did. Since other data was communicated via secure server over the internet, the team had long ago intercepted those transmissions. Decryption and translation hadn’t been any easier, however, as little of the core content of the transmitted data was in English.

  The relevant air gapped data downloaded from the Princeton lab could be divided into four primary silos: (1) Project descriptions, (2) Project research data, (3) Project outcomes and (4) Corporate, International and Administration. The data accessible by regular internet hacking included outside communications, email and employee, tax and employment records.

  What they did know was that most of the Projects involved various aspects of genetic research into human and animal tissue and blood, human and animal genetics, and toxicology/virology/bacteriology. Two projects related to bacterial and virus research but beyond the raw testing data, the “why” and “what for” questions remained, thus far, unanswered.

  Project research data consisted of four basic subgroupings. The first three were research subgroupings: research results, research summaries and strategic application. That much they knew; it was all in English. Internal communication was the fourth subgrouping, primarily comprised of personal chatter and technical lingo. The latter was the least interesting to the team as it was almost always in English but contained little of substantive value. But one email was important, not because of its content but because of how it was written.

  That one single email, the team thought, could soon change everything.

  The research data was in English or sometimes in another easily recognizable modern language. By itself, it informed very little. What they were looking at was still a mystery and without that information it was anyone’s guess what they were up to. Sifting through the data had become an almost full-time project for the entire team, minus Adam.

  The team had fumbled around various ideas of how to sort, assess and analyze the data acquired. Adam immediately assembled all the written internal memos from Portland, Barrows Bay and elsewhere on what had been examined, what had been found and how the data could best be decrypted, translated and ultimately distributed to team members who
would need to know content.

  Adam’s first suggestion was to cease randomly looking for the needle in the haystack. “Sort by language, symbolism or whatever. But your first task should be to identify every piece of data by language, then by category. Then look for English or any modern language and see what you find. Then, finally, look for modern languages coupled with unknown dialects or encrypted texts. It could yield clues for translation and/or decryption.”

  Adam spoke to each team member to see what they had been assigned and how they were going about their jobs. Had he been involved sooner; less time would have been wasted. Adam began by designing the programs that could simplify tasks done by rote, such as language segregation and by devising various strategies for decoding and decrypting simple words, phrases, sentences or entire paragraphs from a document. The programs would run in the DL Main, but results were spit out only to his work station. Sometimes days might go by and only fragments of a sentence could be thought to be untangled. Relevance and utility were separate topics. These Gens were cagey, Adam thought, at least so far.

  Then they discovered another email, the email. A simple transmittal of information sent as an attachment from one internal team member to another in different cities. But the email was sent from an unsecure server outside the air gapped intranet secure system. It was therefore rejected and returned as undeliverable. It was at that point that the email had been intercepted and then later processed through the DL Main.

  One of the objects of the security assessment and breach, and subsequent infiltration by the nanotechnology devices, was to not simply secure information that was then available but to secure all future data from all departments within BioGen. The nanotechnology devices had infiltrated each and every computer and work station, internal and external, as well as every form of electronic communications devices, up links and secure servers. The nanites had infected everything electronic, period. Nothing could be read, written or spoken that Edward and the team didn’t now have access to.

  This included the executive offices of Enzo and Paulo Fortizi.

  But that particular email communication was intercepted and landed simultaneously on the desks of Misti and Adam. Five minutes later they are standing in front of the in the hallway between their offices.

  “Did you see the attachment?” Adam was excited.

  “First place I looked.”

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “It’s the key, or part of a key, or the key to the key. Who knows? But this is where we start and see how much we get from it.” Misti couldn’t contain her excitement. This could be a small breakthrough leading to other, bigger breakthroughs.

  Adam said, “We should share this right away with Edward, Portland and the various field teams. They may have some insights based on what they have already seen or analyzed. Someone may have actually been working on something like this in greater detail.”

  “Let’s have a quick sit down with Edward first, then decide what to disseminate, when and to whom. We should be careful with this until we understand exactly what it might mean. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. So, tell Edward to get his ass up here as fast as his little hobbit legs will carry him.”

  Adam dialed his father’s office for a short but cordial telephone call. Edward appeared at their home about and hour or so later and seemed vaguely pleased with the news. And, he wanted to hear more.

  “Hope you don’t mind but I called Rod and Cindy in on this too. Very important news if it bears out.”

  The three chatted about nothing and everything family while they waited for Rod and Cindy to get the girls squared away, then take the ten-minute hike up the road to the Perch, as the residents of Barrows Bay were now beginning to call the Adam and Misti’s new residence. The Perch turned out to have the most excellent view over the entire Institute, the grounds and every known means of ingress and egress from the campus.

  Had they wished to spy on someone, Team Edward would be able to uncover virtually anything they wanted. With Mom and Pops’ added new nanite based electronic devices, systems and software, there was simply nothing that could prevent a facility or its electronically stored data and systems from being penetrated by, or discovered and copied by, Team Edward. Incoming and outgoing audio, video and data communications along with access to most electronic systems at BioGen were now under twenty-four-hour surveillance by Team Edward. Basic audio/visual taps of meeting rooms would soon be activated and functional. The same was planned for the offices of key management personnel, beginning with Paulo Fortizi and his brother Enzo, as well as twelve other executive offices. New functionality upgrades and second generation nanite technology would be required to accomplish this and would be ready in a matter of months.

  Wireless transmission of data in encrypted bursts was already part of the package, accomplished by connecting nanite streams from the interior of the building to the roof. Data was shot to a repeater, uplinked to an NSA satellite and collected in both Portland and Barrows Bay via secure private servers.

  Adam was still not wholly on board with the project, not yet. He was feeling the heat from everyone about his reticence. He could help; he just didn’t want to. The only reason he had agreed to help at all had exclusively to do with Misti, her work and the fact he heard about his absence from the project every day. Misti could not grind him down, not really, but it was a grind.

  They had reached a point several weeks into their part time collaboration confirming that rapid success wasn’t going to happen. A slower process, much like finding very tiny puzzle piece in a million-piece puzzle, was all that could be expected for now. Even though advances were expected to be slow and incremental, they believed it was always possible for big breaks to drop in their lap given hard work, fortuity and just plain dumb luck.

  Maybe, just maybe, one such possibility had just dropped in their lap.

  Rod and Cindy were seated on the couch with Edward. Adam and Misti had printouts of an attachment to an email sent from one employee at BioGen to another with a cc to a young child having an upcoming birthday. The attachment contained what looked like a quiz of twelve questions given to child asking each question in English, then then the same question in two separate and distinct languages. A response was then given in English and each of the other foreign languages. There were three groups of four questions each.

  Each set of questions bore a one fully translated model question and a fully translated model answer.

  Misti thought it was a gold mine and she could now begin to analyse each language while Adam could begin to design computer algorithms to search the mountains of digitized data. Adam could then, using Misti’s linguistic and language skills, incorporate her techniques and methodologies into faster and more efficient modes of translation and decryption.

  Chapter 17

  “So, what have you kids found? Something exciting I hope?” asked Edward, who was most curious about advancing the project in a major way. He thought they were all stuck and going nowhere fast without a more robust understanding of the Gens languages in use and their method of encryption. They needed to get lucky by finding a document with a key to translation of the Gens languages into English or another modern language.

  Adam began by stating they believed they found a document that may have been used in a language translation exercise for an employee of BioGen, or perhaps even an older child as translation homework for skills assessment. Or it may have been intended as a technical refresher for a new hire to undertake new responsibilities. In any event, the reply to the email was quite clear that an improper channel had been utilized to send a transmission whose content was ‘restricted’. Instructions for correct communication procedures were included and noted. Adam would have to see just how much more information he could derive and mine later.

  “Well, Dad, what we think we have found is a series of questions and answers that were posed in one of the unknown languages along with English. Th
e written characters suggest it might be the Gens Common Tongue, in part because the author was chastised for using an improper and unsecure method of communication. On the other hand, it might be an archaic dialect of Gens or relate to some other lost language they use. In any event, the languages employed can now be compared to other materials in our possession and could be the key to eventually unlocking their secrets. It will take some time due the volume of records we possess, but at least it’s a start.”

  Adam continued, “On the other hand, it may be one of their languages, fully encrypted. We hope that it’s option A.”

  Misti added, “We’re going to start applying some of Adam’s new algorithms to test as many of the documents from the Library as we can. We’ll be looking for any similarities in letters, characters and other symbols in other documents. We hope to find something in a few of the simpler documents. Where we go from there will depend on how many other similar passages can be translated to English, or from one set of characters to another, then to English. Unless and until we find the full translation code or key, or some significant documentation simultaneously translated in two or more languages we already know, we will be slowly but surely grinding out progress on our path to a greater understanding of what these nobs are up to. Until then, we should concentrate on assembling everything we have that has any English or other modern language attached to it, so we can begin to at least accumulate all the written references we do have. Maybe then we’ll get lucky.”

  Cindy asked, “How long will it take to find out exactly what we actually do have and can say exactly what we actually do know?”