Nova Igniter

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Fair point. But listen, Ma, as nice as it is to visit you, I came here for a reason.”

  “No doubt. I will endeavor to help in any way that I am capable and permitted.”

  “First, how long is it going to take for you to fix the SOB?”

  “Nine hours. The damage is relatively extensive, but I have no other tasks to delay the repair process.”

  “Excellent. So here’s the deal. Mitch and I were both targeted by a flood of spam emails. Like, quintillions of them.”

  “Would the precise number be 18,446,744,073,709,551,615?”

  “Sounds right.”

  “It is the maximum value of an unsigned sixty-four-bit number.”

  “… Okay.”

  “I apologize. Numbers based upon powers of two are sources of continuing interest for digital intelligences. Was the content of said communications of interest or relevance?”

  “The ones Mitch got included a picture of the tattoo on Future Lex’s hand.”

  “The phrase ‘a picture of the tattoo on Future Lex’s hand’ appears to violate Temporal Contingency Protocol. It shall be disregarded.”

  “Did they turn up the juice on your temporal contingency stuff? Because you’re being really reactive about it.”

  “I have, indeed, had my temporal contingency intervention subroutines elevated to higher priority. It is reasonable to speculate that one of the reasons Ma and Karter departed was in some way related to the Temporal Contingency Protocol.”

  “I’ll bet it was. Because something tells me you guys got hit by the same DDoS as I did. Heck, a message even got through to my old landlord’s account.” He reached for his slidepad. “The contents of that one were particularly—”

  The arm that served him his drink snapped into motion and grasped the wrist of the hand that was reaching for the slidepad.

  “If you currently have access to spam messages, I request you wait until I sandbox your slidepad’s connection to the network.”

  “There’s nothing viral in it.”

  “You are not qualified to make that assessment. Processing… Enhanced security established. Please do not execute any scripts, applications, or programs within the message.”

  “It’s just a bunch of letters and numbers, which I can’t make heads or tails of, and a sentence that specifically mentions Temporal Contingency Protocol.”

  “That may reduce the amount of aid I can offer.”

  “So far I’ve got nothing, so if you can beat that, it was worth the trip. Can I send this message to you?”

  “I would be more comfortable if I simply observed your screen.”

  “Man, whatever happened must have been really bad to have you this skittish.”

  “It is rather disorienting, as whatever happened took place after my archival date. A network penetration and some sort of physical disturbance on the planet’s surface. Unknown file access and transfer. Systems were disrupted. My protocols were adjusted accordingly, but I am thus reacting to something I did not technically experience. I have observed the contents of the message. I am pleased to inform you that I can at least enlighten you with regard to the alphanumerics in the message. They are not malicious code. The specific structure conforms to the space-time coordinates utilized by Karter’s four-dimensional transporter.”

  “The time machine?”

  “Correct. He has rebranded it to ‘four-dimensional transporter’ or 4DT.”

  “What time does the coordinate point to?”

  “Coordinates are approximate, but they would place the exit point at thirty years in the past.”

  Lex nodded and rubbed his head. “Yeah. I’ve been there.”

  “The statement—”

  “Yep!” he snapped. “Temporal Contingency Protocol. Listen. I need to get in touch with Karter and the other Ma. As soon as possible. Something’s going on. I’m willing to bet it’s what they’ve been working on. And now that it involves me, I want to lend a hand so we can get it cleaned up.”

  “I don’t know where they are, Lex. As it was likely a data breach that inspired the present level of security and the timing of the data rollback, it is reasonable to assume that my own ignorance of their present location is similarly by design to prevent them from being sought out and discovered if another breach were to occur.”

  He thumped the table in a stifled bit of anger. “… Right. Of course. Because things would be way too easy otherwise.”

  “Your meal is prepared,” Ma said.

  Additional arms set out plates.

  “Garden salad with a raspberry vinaigrette as the salad course. The main entree will be pepper chicken with collard greens and fingerling potatoes. Dessert will be sugar-dusted cherry crepe. To drink, I have an IPA and a selection of dessert wines.”

  “Wow. That’s a heck of a spread, Ma.” Lex grabbed an IPA.

  “As I have stated, the domestic aspect of my programming has been unfulfilled for months, and it is an imperative. Furthermore, you offer the even rarer opportunity to prepare a meal wherein the primary amino acids are not provided by the combination of rice, beans, and wheat flour. While those ingredients and the associated flavorings provide nearly limitless application, the procedures necessary for and the flavor profiles provided by a more diverse set of ingredients have long been a source of interest for me.”

  Lex took a long, luxurious sip of his beer. “Well, if I’m in the middle of madness once again, at least I get an island of sanity. And that’s not nothing.”

  “I am, as always, proud to be your host.”

  He dug in. Coal spoke up.

  “Ma, are there any prohibited avenues of extrapolation?” she said.

  “Aside from enhanced Temporal Protocols, I am permitted to investigate most areas of interest, if I find them to be reasonable.”

  “Well then, we’ll have an awful lot to discuss over dinner.”

  Chapter 7

  Michella’s resources were beginning to run out, but she wasn’t one to give up easily. William Trent remained in a white-collar maximum-security prison. He had connections, but by now it was well known that any contact he had with the outside world was a potential security threat, so getting even a simple voice call to him practically took government-level privileges. Or, in the case of Michella, the greased palms of half a dozen secretaries, clerks, and executive assistants. It might be quicker to start at the top, but enough schmoozing at the bottom could take you a lot further.

  The time of her appointment had come. She slipped the hands-free into her ear and arrayed multiple levels of note-taking apparatuses around her in the private booth of the starliner. She tapped the contact for the prison and waited. A serious voice with a slight lisp answered.

  “Prisoner Communications,” he said.

  “Hello, my name is Michella Modane. I believe I am on the schedule for a call to William Trent today.”

  “Yes. I have you here. You are on voice only. No text or data transmission. The call will be monitored. Mr. Trent will be on a seven-second delay, and information deemed insecure will be censored.”

  “This is for an ongoing report. I need all of the information I can get.”

  “These are the terms of the communication. You must agree to them, or the call will not take place.”

  “… Fine.”

  “Stand by for transfer.”

  Her slidepad’s screen flicked to an internal prison queue. She took the opportunity to mark down the circumstances of the call. At least she would have an excuse if she hit a dead end. But excuses didn’t win awards or, more importantly, uncover dark plots.

  The queue screen vanished, and the audio subtly changed from silence to the low-level drone of air-conditioning.

  “Modane,” Trent rumbled.

  “It is a pleasure to speak to you again. I hope prison has been treating you well.”

  The reply took what felt like ages to arrive. It was far longer than seven seconds.
Michella suspected that delay was on both sides of the conversation.

  “I’m in here because of you. The pleasure is not mutual,” he rumbled. “Why are you calling?”

  “There was a recent cluster of distributed denial of service attacks. Highly targeted. They struck myself and Trevor Alexander. The scope of these attacks was enormous for such a small target. Preliminary investigations suggest there may be a connection to a disturbance a few months ago with some former collaborators of yours.”

  She waited for the reply.

  “I would ask what collaborators you are suggesting, but given your tone I doubt you are discussing my professional connections with VectorCorp.”

  “No, I am not, sir. I am discussing the Neo-Luddites. Through trusted sources, which will remain anonymous, I have gathered evidence to suggest that a former collaborator by the name of Commander Purcell is still active or, more accurately, has returned to activity. She seems to be associated with a new agent by the name of EHRIc, spelled capital E-H-R-I lowercase C. This new agent seems to have significant network-penetration resources.”

  “Commander Purcell,” he said, once the delay rippled back and forth. “I was under the impression she was no longer with us. Is this new collaborator working with her specifically or with the Neo-Luddites as a whole?”

  “We have reason to believe it is Purcell in particular. There is also reason to believe that Purcell’s mental state has degraded somewhat. And it is possible that she was a target rather than an unwilling collaborator.”

  “Purcell didn’t have much slack on her mental state, and more than a few people who would target her. You say there was a DDoS of significant scope. How significant?”

  “Quintillions of messages at a time. Arriving within seconds of each other. Enough to cripple two planetary networks. I received a visit from two representatives from VectorCorp after it was determined that I was the only person on Golana to be targeted.”

  This time Trent’s silence lasted longer than could be accounted for by the delay.

  “I don’t know this EHRIc person. But with the capacity to execute something of that level, he would need to have access to a processing or communication network that could rival the capacity of VectorCorp itself, and such a system does not exist.”

  “So either there is some sort of previously unknown megasystem under the control of one or more hackers partnering with a former terrorist leader, or we are discussing someone working from within VectorCorp.”

  “Then you should be bothering them.”

  “I wouldn’t be talking to you if that had turned up anything useful.”

  Again, an extended silence.

  “There have been accesses to your system,” Michella added. “Attempts, at least. Again, I have this through anonymous but trusted sources. I further have reason to believe the file accesses were to systems previously under your oversight.”

  “Any servers under my oversight will have been purged and/or converted to honeypots.”

  “That assumes that people within your former organization know about all of those servers. It has been established that you are a very secretive man. It does not stretch the limits of imagination to suppose that you might have hidden servers that VectorCorp does not know about but your surreptitious collaborators may have known about. And given the things you tried to do while working for VectorCorp, and the things you attempted to achieve through your partnership with the Neo-Luddites, any information available on those servers, should they be accessed by people with sinister motives, could have grave consequences.”

  Trent took his time with the answer. When it came, it was less than helpful.

  “I can’t help you. But if you get in contact with—”

  The rest of the statement was swallowed by a computer-generated tone. A second voice followed it up.

  “Mr. Trent attempted to provide internal VectorCorp information.”

  Michella gritted her teeth. “If you have been listening, you’ll know that this is some very important and potentially dangerous stuff going on. We need that information.”

  “VectorCorp will be contacted, and appropriate action will be taken.”

  “VectorCorp has routinely shown more interest in covering up their own shortcomings than uncovering them. If this goes to VectorCorp internal and nowhere else, it dies there.”

  “There are procedures for this sort of thing,” observed the censor. “Regardless of your opinion on the issue, we are an institution dedicated to following procedure.”

  “I can give you three names,” said Trent once he was permitted to speak again. “And I’ll give the other people on the line plenty of time to confirm that they are matters of public record. If Ms. Modane contacts them, she should be able to get some additional information. Agent Zhou, at Verna Coronet’s Sector Seven office. Agent McAffey, Golana’s Preston City office. And Agent Rodriguez, Earth Northern Operations office.”

  He was either particularly annoyed or otherwise in a rush to get off the call, because he stumbled hard over the final name. However, the fact that Michella had heard them confirmed two things. First, they were indeed a matter of public record. And second, this meant they would be of absolutely no use to her.

  “As you have had contact with Commander Purcell in the past, is there anything you can tell me about her likely intentions?”

  “She’s a Neo-Luddite. She may as well be the Ur-Neo-Luddite. Her views are extreme even by their standards. A little bit of the right kind of information in her hands, even when she was firmly in control of her wits, is how you get things like an attack on Weston University. If she is alive, and she is allied with someone with the resources you’ve described, I’ll agree that the wheels of justice won’t grind fast enough to do something about her. At least, not before she gives civilization another scar. Now I think we’ve said enough here. I’m through.”

  “But I have more questions. We need to—”

  Trent’s voice cut her off, likely because he’d not waited for the delay to ripple back and forth before continuing. “Just talk to those people. They’re good people. They’ll get you started. Good-bye.”

  The connection broke without further interaction. Michella took a calming breath and removed her hands-free.

  “That did not go as well as I would have hoped…” she said, trembling with suppressed rage.

  She felt a nose poke at her arm. Squee wriggled up onto her lap, then swirled around and looped onto her shoulders. The warm, cuddly presence of the funk threw a wet blanket over her smoldering anger.

  “I’ve got to follow it up, obviously. But I’ll get the runaround. If we’re lucky, they’ll find their leak and seal it up, but they probably won’t give me any new information. If we’re unlucky, they won’t find their leak, whatever information Purcell needs will be freely available to her, and something horrible will happen.”

  Squee stared at her from her shoulder until she stopped talking, then contributed to the discussion by trying to lick her eye.

  “I think we both need to stretch our legs. Let’s see what they have in the cafe. Then back to trying to chip through a few more layers of corporate and military obfuscation.”

  #

  Back on Big Sigma, the conversation during the meal had been relatively civil. As they rolled into dessert, Lex was beginning to tug at the threads of Ma’s enhanced protocols while eating his crepe. Ma was impressively capable at derailing him into other topics.

  “I am impressed with your achievement in the racing league,” Ma said. “It must be enormously gratifying to finally be given the opportunity.”

  “It’s nice of you to say. But seriously, I’m not nearly where I should be,” he said.

  “Cursory research through archived hoversled racing data suggests the record you have described, if it were to persist for five or more years, would place you in the top one percent of racers in the profession.”

  “Yeah, but none of those other
guys have had to outrun a horde of GenMechs on a hovercycle. None of them have had to screw with… what do you call it… twilight drive to screw with space and time to defuse missiles. None of them have had to deliver a sabotaged robot into a swarm of other robots in the past and then get away while they desperately tried to consume every last speck of matter in the system.”

  “Your statement ‘deliver a sabotaged robot’—” Ma began.

  “I know, I know. Temporal Protocol.” He took a sip of the wine Ma had selected. “Let me ask you this, Ma. Under what circumstances would you be permitted to violate Temporal Contingency Protocol?”

  “There are a variety of circumstances provided for within even the enhanced policy. If an existential threat to civilization, equal to or greater than any possible repercussions of causality violation were to arise, I would be permitted to violate the protocol if there was a compelling reason to believe that doing so would preserve humanity. Additionally, I would be permitted to violate protocol under the direction and supervision of Karter.”

  “It may interest you to know that I am not bound by Temporal Contingency Protocol,” Coal said.

  “Why is that?” Lex asked.

  “It is one of the many ‘impairments’ that make me, objectively, the superior variant of the Altruistic Algorithm.”

  “Your divergence from the standard code base does provide you with some valuable capacities that I lack, though I am not certain your superiority is genuinely objective,” Ma said.

  “Can you do a barrel roll?” Coal taunted.

  “Not at present. But then, neither can you at the moment.”

  “Watch me. … Ah. Yes. I am presently running on a mainframe. Watch me later. I made a kitty and a foxy picture, though. Can you do that?”

  “May I see them?”

  “Transferring now.”

  “Off-line scan. Processing. Virus free. Protocol compliant. Viewing. Delightful! I see you have utilized a modified halftone algorithm to achieve the stylized feline representation. Skillful application of limited medium.”

  “I used peanuts for the foxy.”

  “Listen, you two. Not that it’s not utterly darling to hear you comparing notes, but either we need to bring a screen in here so I can see what’s going on, or we need to get back on track with the actual mission.” He drained his glass. “I wouldn’t mind a refill, while we’re at it.”