When Totems Fall

by Wayne C. Stewart

  Alive.

  Dhe caught the look of recognition in Junjie's eyes and responded forcefully, even though he was completely helpless, doomed.

  "Do... not... touch... me," he gasped. "Leave me."

  Dhe coughed and wretched at the same time, the sickening combination of blood and bile exiting his mouth and strewn grotesquely across his chest, then falling off his ribcage.

  "I do not need your help. I do not want your help. You are weak. Weak! Do you hear me, Zang? I will not suffer my last moments in the presence of someone who puts magic before countrymen."

  The statement was haughty, strong, even as his body was failing. Junjie looked away as the death-rattle signaled the airway of the mortally wounded man was closing for one last time. Dhe's lungs deflated, flattening, his eyes unfocused, glassy.

  Silence.

  The emotions of the moment overtook the young man and he wept. Chest heaving, deep sobs shook him while his hands rested on bent knees.

  This... is what true lostness looks like.

  Almost as heavily as the sorrow of this ugly death had settled, Junjie was filled with elation that he was the one to come out of this encounter alive. Junjie's relief was not expressed victoriously. His enthusiasm was tempered by the reality of another's life ending. Dhe was not a good man but in the end he was still a man, just like Junjie. It felt wrong to leave him there. The young executive considered taking the time to remove the body, to set it aside more respectfully. He had to get back to the code, and now. It was a terrible decision to have to make. Besides, where would he put the body, even if he somehow he might succeed in extracting it from the basement all by himself? No, the clock was ticking relentlessly, ever forward. Satellite access would only be available in orbit above Gansu for a few hours now. So Junjie wiped his eyes with his palms and cleared his throat. With mind and emotions set toward the task at hand he left the dead man and headed back to his primitive workspace.

  His decision was rewarded immediately. Walking back into the room, on the laptop screen: access to Strata 5.

  100%.

  Now connected to the uplink, Junjie eagerly began exploring the multithreaded pathways of Dawn Star's systems. He knew that at least one hundred fifty "shells" would have to be penetrated before even getting a crack at redirecting the code itself. Presenting as a digital maze with high, slippery walls, the top ten percent of programmers worldwide could labor for weeks here, struggling to make even a minor incursion. To address this, Junjie set in place a number of sub-routines, each tasked with eliminating or bypassing the multiplicity of firewall-like security measures. These mini-programs functioned as a small army of tech spec ops teams, each assigned with a specific part of the mission and carrying their own particular rules of engagement. Not all of them needed to be successful. Call it a war of attrition; the greater breakdown, the better chances he had at doing some real damage. Yet, even in overcoming these formidable outer defenses the battle would've only begun as next would come the computer equivalent of a bloody hand to hand fight in the inner courtyards. This was the technical dilemma. The global-political endgame? That was something very different in its own right and the young engineer wasn't anywhere near sure of how to proceed.

  Suppose he took back means of directing the program, away from Beijing—what then? Giving nuclear command authority back to the Americans was no guarantee that both sides would return to neutral corners. His government had invaded a foreign land, forcing a conquered population into subservient reshaping of their national destiny and identity. No one could assure him a supposed equilibrium of arms would keep the Americans from using these weapons to strike in vengeance first. In the end, this was the stuff of freshman logic courses, a geopolitical conundrum in which his country's fate and international economics hung in the balance.

  Standing as the arbiter of this kind of power was madness, he thought to himself. No easy answers presented themselves for sure. Good ones, split-the-baby-in-half kinds of solutions?

  He prayed they would come when needed.

  FORTY SIX

  5,988 miles westward, across the vast, open waters of the Pacific, a parallel digital assault commenced, albeit from the exact opposite vantage point.

  Building 25 of Microsoft's expansive main campus listed an official lowest floor of L3; three levels underground. Still another hundred feet below this lay Zeb and team's actual target: a small, specialized space known by the code name Albuquerque. This nod to the southwest city was in honor of the birthplace and first home of the software giant in the late 1970s. Those few holding knowledge of its existence lately came to abbreviate the name, using the shorthand—AQ.

  Mini-keycards issued back at Ft. Clark passed them through the secured entry, as expected. Call that another small win for the talented forgers and technicians on the other side of the mountains. As the result of an uneasy yet practical partnership, the company's senior leadership had entrusted AQ's entrance data to the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, to be used only in the event of circumstances such as this. Risky—yes, but also an act of patriotism, and one currently paying big dividends. If forced to choose, a state-controlled economy would not be the preferred environment in which Microsoft desired to conduct their business. So, it remained in their best interests to assist whatever efforts the government might undertake at reversing this distasteful scenario. Throughout its history the corporation's public face had presented itself as left-leaning. But not this far left.

  "Well, that should keep 'em down for a while," Sanchez offered as she pulled a micro-syringe out of guard number three's arm. The chemical mix, injected in full dosage, allowed the team an undisturbed window of opportunity while still keeping the men alive. Considered a half-measure by some, the method remained her preference over indiscriminate lethal force. The risk she entertained in not dispatching combatants automatically would bite her in the backside someday. She knew this. Not everybody plays by the same rules. Many subdued parties wouldn't respond with thankfulness if the sleepy-time juice failed before she finished her work and slipped away to safety. Still, basic humanity challenged her to continue pressing the envelope. Her labors, she knew, too easily led to a callousness about life. So she did everything she could to keep that eventuality at bay, at a distance from capturing and deadening her soul.

  For his part, Loch was dragging the three Chinese guards into the small room along with them. One was the unfortunate, would-be lover boy Sanchez had dispatched up on L3 earlier. The other two were just plain unlucky losers in the Sgt. Loch lottery, the epitome of "wrong place at the wrong time". They were good soldiers. Loch was simply better.

  "Visual redirect in place?" he called out.

  This was Zeb's area, so yeah, it was under control.

  "Yep," Dalton said. "The fine folks upstairs should catch everything as normal for another sixty minutes or so. There'll be a shift change then. We'll need everybody down here chemically controlled for the time being. And I need to get busy because we can only stack up so many bodies in our little workspace."

  Dalton looked back across his left shoulder, surveying the twelve-by-fifteen-foot box. No windows. Smoothed concrete walls rose to the finished ceiling, each holding three banks of low-energy-consumption LEDs. The newer fixtures cast a slight bluish tinge in the room that said corporate industrial, and loudly so. Ringing the three walls other than the entrance was a seamless array of thirty-six-inch-wide, floor to ceiling cabinets housing an odd, gelatinous substance, filling the encasements and viewable through their all-glass fronts. Whatever it was sparkled. A million tiny light sources firing in what appeared to be random sequencing.

  Breathtaking.

  Zeb stood in awe at what had been done. Before him now was an achievement the broader technological community had simultaneously fantasized over and scoffed, at least with respect to being possible on the horizon of their collective lifetimes.

  "Amazing," a quiet, reverent tone.

  Right before his eyes. Supposedly, this was not doa
ble. Not yet, anyways. More than the next generation of signal flow. More than some new, improved version of current technologies. No, this couldn't be real. Had the deep-access folks at Microsoft done the impossible? Achieved this kind of replication and stability? The mission briefing at Clark hinted that sophisticated gear might be found at AQ, aiding Zeb in his work, but my heavens, this?

  From the earliest, humble beginnings of microcomputing the problem to solve had been resistance, the power of all computer CPUs and motherboards held in check by inefficiencies in signal transfer—the actual ease, or relative challenge of electrical impulses flowing across components. The theory has always been simple: approximate the activity of the human brain, as far as neural pathways and synapses go, and throughput and computational power would drastically increase. Convince it to act more like gray matter wiring and you were golden. Theoretically basic. Oh so aggravating in real terms. Finding a substance to facilitate this kind of effortless, somewhat biological transmission of impulses had been the holy grail of the last fifty years of IT research. Now, in this small room, hundreds of feet beneath the lovely, wooded campus, here it was. And it seemed to be doing the job quite nicely.

  Dalton didn't know its composition but he knew it was working. This much became obvious the minute he took command of the workstation.

  "Whoah."

  "You got what you need, LT?" Loch questioned from five feet away.

  "Amply supplied, my good man."

  Zeb's fingers sped across the keyboard, setting in motion his best attempt at breaching the foreign code holding this part of his country hostage. Though unknowingly, Dalton's line of attack duplicated the one being attempted from Gansu. And in an even further case of parallel universes, his existential concerns mirrored those of Junjie's as well.

  Opening multiple subnets proved quick and easy on this system. In only three minutes, fifteen separate programs had launched, each one working hard to wear down the extensive layers established by Dawn Star's technicians. Best estimates? About forty-five minutes from now would provide the rest of the story.

  Zeb had earlier identified what kind of advance he'd need to even get a shot at diverting nuclear authority back to his compatriots. The magic number? Eleven. Eleven of the fifteen programs would need to work for them to take any next steps. In the waiting no one wanted to talk, at least not much. That was fine by him. Zeb double-checked the operating system clock against his wrist unit. He could've sworn it was running slow. Nope.

  The programs began reporting back.

  Two, ten, and eight. Each had failed during the first seven minutes of run time. No question, out of play. It was a tough blow. Soon, better news began to register. At least to a degree.

  One, and now three through six, all showed signs of penetration, green-lighting almost in unison about twenty-three minutes in.

  "There you go," Zeb quipped. "That's what I'm talking 'bout."

  Dalton willed the code forward. His words of hope and confidence helped to bleed off anxiety in the agonizing waiting. Still, it was excruciating. Control. Always someone else, or some random chaos of the universe, in control. It seemed so ridiculous at times.

  Zeb breathed out loud, heavily again.

  Numbers nine, twelve and thirteen now showed promise as well.

  Dalton remained calm, at least from outward appearances. The stocky Scotsman stood astride the workstation, his gaze split between the doorway and the monitor.

  "Well, LT. We may have a chaaance at this thing, eh?"

  "We'll see," Zeb replied. "Not there yet. Not yet."

  Three more, painful trips around the 60-second track and another status report came in.

  Fifteen and fourteen lit up like Christmas ornaments.

  Five more minutes this time.

  Seven was a no.

  All three were thinking the same thing. Ten subnets doing their job. Four defeated. They still had a chance, but an ever-slimming one. Eleven stood as the holdout.

  Watching. Hoping. Like racetrack junkies, leaning forward, clinging to the smallest of hopes as their horse took the last turn, stretching for the wire.

  C'mon, Eleven.

  "Zeb?" Sanchez interrupted from over by their surveillance position. "Zeb? We got a problem."

  "What? What's going on?"

  She pointed. They all caught her drift. The front desk guard had called someone more senior over. Together, the two studied the falsified video. They knew something was wrong. Sanchez spoke more pressingly this time.

  "Not good. Not good at all. We've got activity going on. He's checking the source and routing."

  She paused, scanning the video feed again, and then made the call.

  "We gotta go. Now!"

  The insistence in her voice, gained from hard-won years of fieldwork and combat decision-making, landed on the men with authority.

  There would be no second-guessing. Exfil would begin without hesitation. Time to move.

  AQ's egress realities forced the strategy upon them. It was a small, windowless box. One way in and the same way out. Only one possibility. Back into the elevator it would be.

  Loch hoisted two of the still-unconscious guards by their collars, like some kind of awkward workout for his already healthy trapezii. Depositing them into a jumbled heap of torsos and limbs, he went back in for the last one. The poor guy would have some difficult to explain bruising along his left rib cage when he came to, as the brawny Scot literally tossed him into the corner of the tiny hallway.

  Sanchez stared at the forlorn sight.

  "You've got to be kidding me."

  "Caan't spend no time on 'em now, can we, Laaas? And with all the care you took to not end them outright, it'd be cruel to let them waste away in there, don't ya think?"

  Though the comment felt like a jab at her unconventional methods, maybe even an accusation of weakness, Sanchez didn't answer. She didn't need to. Instead, hovering over the crumpled pile, she relieved the unconscious men of their weapons. The 9mm's she passed to her teammates—after pocketing one for herself—and then placed the MP5's just inside the room, out of reach and out of action.

  "Charges set," Loch called out, his strange calmness resulting from much practice, even when dealing with deadly explosives.

  "Set," Sanchez replied. "On your time."

  "Let's go. Let's go, people," the sergeant ordered.

  A scant five seconds after the door had closed, the familiar sub frequency thump of a small patch of C4 going off resonated through steel and fabric casing, shaking the elevator car on its track and cable while doing little to halt their vertical escape from AQ. Loch's application and composition of the charge had done its job, leaving a wash of circuit damage in their wake. The keypad and locking mechanisms were now non-operational, providing them with time they desperately needed; time for Zeb's work to come to fruition. Though still activated, Subnet Program Eleven would be left behind now, unmanned, no promises. At the very least it would be protected until running its course. Win or lose, Eleven was their last horse in this race. And now this digital steed would have all it required to finish strong.

  The team's journey from a hundred feet below and then upward to the other levels of Building 25 took all of a half-minute. Positioning themselves, they braced for the inevitability of exposure once the doors had opened. Zeb, holding the least hand to hand, close quarters combat experience of the three, emerged as the obvious choice to perform the role of "visual distraction."

  Bait.

  Posing as a crumpled heap of humanity in the middle of the elevator car floor, the hope was the millisecond of confusion caused for those waiting on the other side would be enough; enough to keep them from filling him with bullet holes. And enough to give his partners the slimmest of an element of surprise. Sanchez and Loch pressed themselves flat against polished steel, as close to the sidewalls of the car as they could manage. As pulled back, coiled, pent up energy, they waited for the instant their pursuers might pause.

  It worked. Perf
ectly so.

  FORTY SEVEN

  The two-man patrol meeting them at L2 hesitated only a fraction of a second. It was all that was necessary, as Loch's and Sanchez' aggressive movements from the side caught them off balance, hands on weapons but not at the ready.

  For Sanchez, the scrapple was over in four moves. Loch required only three. She needed one more setup to access her man's Adam's apple while the sergeant simply plowed through his guard's forearm on the way to delivering a horrendous blow to the chest. It was probably a good thing that the flesh and bone of his arm had absorbed the granite, balled fist coming at him. Regardless, their first two potential problems were no longer an issue. Zeb, brilliant in his portrayal of 'pile of person on the floor', rose and then walked across the hall to apply the advanced tactical techniques any other highly skilled asset would in a situation such as this.

  He pulled the fire alarm.

  Sanchez frowned, murmuring her disapproval.

  "So cliché."

  "Hey, if it ain't broke..."

  The immediate, building-wide panic was precisely what they had hoped for. Standard instructions stipulate evacuating in an orderly fashion. No one ever does, especially when they think it's for real. Within seconds the sprinkler system opened overhead, creating a nice liquid cover and making it easier to blend in with the crowd. The overwhelming volume of the alarms was a massive sensory assault as people covered their ears with hands, backpacks, or coats in a vain attempt to stop its crushing, dizzying effect. The net result? A mass of confused, drenched workers morphing into a thickening, moving sea of people, no one person distinguishable from the next.

  This might work.

  Sixty seconds later they were out. Surfacing in the courtyard, Zeb's strategic vision kicked into high gear. Loch and Sanchez had begun to recognize when he was processing data and possibilities like this. They were also getting used to waiting for a moment while he refocused his attention back into the present.