Valence (Confluence Book 4)

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  “We decided it made more sense in 2017 to simply pass on the file itself, so Dr. Gibbs and Dr. Bergen adapted the original software so that it would perform on a PC. I asked them to move the Mensententic language software to the core, hoping that it would be found early on. I hope that was the right thing to do.”

  Jane smiled slightly. “I suspect there will have been resistance to learning the language, so I tried to emphasize how important that was when I sent my message to all the peoples of Earth. Regardless, you must be on track now, or you wouldn’t understand a word I’m saying.” Her smile expanded and lit up her face.

  Throughout the remainder of the video, Holloway breathed life into the way the download worked from a sectilian point of view and explained its structure. She went on to discuss what she knew about the Cunabula’s supposed interference in human evolution and the legendary importance of humanity to the rest of the galaxy. There was a lot of new information there. It was fascinating. Then Jane outlined all the potential threats to Earth—primarily the Swarm, which Zara had already read about—providing extensive background information on each and even some images. She ended the video by saying, “I wish you well. Whoever you are, wherever you are on Earth, you are doing good work that will benefit humanity. I thank you.”

  Zara sat back and heaved a deep sigh. She was going to have to take this file to her supervisor ASAP. She saved the file to a thumb drive, printed out ten copies of the text files, and went to knock on Dr. Sakey’s door. He skimmed through it and immediately got on the phone with the administrator’s office, waving at her to sit down.

  This took a long time. She got bored and perused the text files while she waited. Eventually Sakey got off the phone and told her that the current administrator was moving up a visit planned for a few days out. Dr. Kenneth Lin wanted to meet with Zara personally. They hadn’t met before. She’d met his predecessor under the previous administration, but not Lin.

  She protested. “But I can just email this to his office.”

  “Oh, no. He’s taken a personal interest in you and wants to hear it all from your lips.”

  Zara frowned. “All right.”

  Sakey got up and moved between her and his desk. He leaned back on it and looked up at the ceiling. “Don’t share this file with anyone. I’ll take those.” He reached for the remaining printouts and thumb drive. “Do you have anything else on this drive that you need?”

  “No, it was empty.”

  He nodded, then leaned back on his desk to touch a button on his phone. “Cindy, send in someone from Jay Wellington’s team, please.”

  A tinny voice responded, “Right away, sir.”

  “Zara, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this message is sensitive information. We can’t know who has seen this and who hasn’t, but my guess is that you’re the first to find it. I’ve been instructed to expunge it from the sectilian database.”

  Zara shook her head. “Sir, with all due respect, that would be impossible. The number of copies all over the world would make that action meaningless. Other people will find this information eventually. People have a right to know this stuff. It’s important information.”

  “Believe me, I understand. I will even go so far as to tell you I agree with you, but it’s not up to me. Orders are orders. It’s out of my hands.” He looked at her meaningfully, his stare lingering far longer than seemed normal.

  Her brow furrowed. Was he trying to tell her something? Jay Wellington’s team was made up of a bunch of computer specialists—hackers, really. Was Sakey going to instruct them to remove this file from every instance of the sectilian database online? Was that even possible? Why would they do that after all of the international cooperative gains that had been made?

  “Zara, you have been instrumental in this program’s success from the very beginning. You know that.” Was it her imagination or had he loaded the word “beginning” with significance? Did he know that she was the one who had uploaded the language file in 2017?

  Her head was spinning. She nodded absently and swallowed.

  “Go back to your team. You’ll have a few minutes to extract just the portion that pertains to your project—use that to help you complete the work quickly, but don’t show it to anyone else. Destroy that data when the project is done. I know I can trust you to do that. You are not to speak to anyone about finding this file or the contents of the message from Jane Holloway.”

  The intercom buzzed. “Jay Wellington to see you, sir.”

  Sakey leaned back. “Send him in. You’re dismissed, Dr. Hampton.” He made no further eye contact.

  She stood and left without a word.

  When she got back to her desk she stared at her blank monitor, frustration and anger welling up inside her. This information had already been set free. It wasn’t right to try to put a lid on it now—not when the world needed to know what it was up against. They’d already made so many gains. To do this… it would handicap the world when it needed this information the most. Was Sakey encouraging her to take the matter into her own hands?

  If they were going to ground her forever, keep her from fulfilling her lifelong dream, she would be damned if she was going to let them get away with this. The world needed to know about these threats. They needed to see the words coming directly from Jane Holloway’s lips. She wasn’t an abstract figure anymore. She wasn’t reviled as a crackpot. The world believed in Jane Holloway now.

  They needed to see this video now more than ever, to prove to naysayers that the world’s new fleet was not a waste of resources and manpower. Earth needed not just this small fleet of ships, but dozens and dozens more if they were to have any hope of protecting their home from something as hideous as the Swarm. This video would make them understand that, surely.

  Her fingers shook as she logged back into the secure network.

  She did as Sakey instructed and copied the part of the text file that pertained to her work. Then she went still, her fingers hesitating over the command to copy the entire file again.

  No.

  Everything she did on this server could be reviewed. That’s not what Sakey was telling her to do. He had made a point of reminding her what she’d done when she was thirteen, when she’d covered her tracks. She could do something like that again. Except that she was older and wiser now. She had far better tools. And brilliant friends.

  She felt like she was being watched. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She went back to work, the process made much faster with Jane’s help. It was only two hours until quitting time.

  At 4:30 p.m. she texted her roommate Charlotte to cancel their dinner plans, saying that she wasn’t up for anything but canned chicken soup, a blankie, and a movie on TV. She was going home right after work. Then she looked at the sectilian database on the local server. The file was already gone.

  She really wasn’t feeling well. If she got caught, she had so much more to lose now than she had at age thirteen.

  She left the building at 4:55 p.m. and went straight home. They had a Tor relay on their network, one of the advantages of living with computer geeks. She rented a rundown, rambling three-story house with five other former MSTEM Scholars. They were all socking away money toward an uncertain future. Once home, she opened a new account with a Web-based texting service using a made-up name and messaged a few of her international contacts, using vague references in the hopes they would recognize her.

  The first person to respond was a linguist in a program similar to MSTEM in China. Zara identified herself in a roundabout way, gave her the coordinates in the sectilian database for Jane’s text file, and asked her if she could find it.

  She couldn’t.

  Damn. Either Jay’s team was working fast, or the file hadn’t been unmasked in the way Holloway described in China yet.

  She changed tactics and searched for the sectilian database herself. There were dozens of hits. She went through each one until she found one with the video file intact. It was on a ser
ver in Uganda. She saved the database to her laptop and then sent a message to someone she knew in Uganda, asking him to do the same and to post it online if he could.

  The race was on.

  She carefully posted it herself in several places using methods that she hoped wouldn’t be traceable, then continued to contact people all over the world, asking them to find and share the file as well. She had to make sure that people knew this file existed—that the US government didn’t bury knowledge that was vital to the world. The old guys in charge were still playing the same old games. It felt like it was up to her, once again, to keep them honest.

  Her roommates arrived home full of cheap sushi and sake, laughing and joking. They sobered when she told them what she was doing and why. Soon the only sound in the house was the clacking of keys as six individuals sat around on the secondhand sofas and chairs that crowded their big, drafty living room and raced against Jay’s team.

  Zara checked the files she’d uploaded to the Web a couple of hours before. One of them had been found and removed.

  “The file is down in Russia,” Charlotte announced from the floor at Zara’s feet.

  “I’ve got someone in New York City posting it everywhere they can think of,” Jake called out.

  “We’ve got it back up and new firewalls in place in Australia,” Danny said before getting up to make a pot of coffee. Zara asked him to throw a frozen burrito in the microwave for her, so she could keep working. Her hunger was getting distracting but she couldn’t stop. There wasn’t time to stop. She tore off a bite of the burrito now and then, chewing without tasting as she alternated between typing messages furiously into her phone and searching for Jane’s video in the sectilian database wherever she could find it online.

  They went on late into the night.

  Ben leaned forward, excited. “A popular Medium blogger just posted about how this file is appearing and disappearing on servers all over the world.”

  Fifteen minutes later Ben reported, “Getting a 404 on that Medium blogger now.”

  “ui8 has an article up about it.”

  Charlotte shouted, “Turn on CNN!”

  Zara checked the first five sites she’d posted on. Four of them were down. One of them was getting a lot of traffic, though. She looked up as the TV came on and Dominica found the right network.

  “It appears to be a cyber-information war,” an announcer said. “Groups of anonymous individuals around the world are trying to keep this information online, and just as fast as they can post it, another group is taking it down. The purpose of the attacks is unclear, since millions of individuals likely have downloaded the sectilian database and saved it to their personal computers—those files on private computers would be unchanged by these hacking attacks on servers across the globe. Experts suggest this may be an attempt to minimize the opportunity of discovery of a file which is said to be a lengthy message from Dr. Jane Holloway, hidden in plain sight within the sectilian database just as the Speroancora was said to be hidden in the Greater Asteroid Belt. The persons or entities responsible on either side are unknown and untraceable.” The anchor went on to list the five sites currently hosting the file that were most likely to last due to having more secure servers, then showed a brief clip of Holloway’s video file. “This information is being kept as current as possible on our website. If you want to obtain a copy to watch and read for yourself, we suggest you do so now.”

  “Holy shit. They’re on our side,” Dominica whispered as she placed the remote on a beat-up side table and looked at all of them one by one, incredulous.

  “As of yet, we have been unable to confirm if this is indeed a message left in the sectilian database by Jane Holloway. We will bring you up-to-the-minute coverage on this topic as more information comes to light.” The network went to commercial.

  “What do we do now?” Charlotte asked. She looked tired. They all did.

  Zara refocused on her laptop. “We keep going,” she said.

  At 2:00 a.m. they began to notice that the database no longer seemed to be disappearing. By 3:00 a.m. they’d confirmed that was the case.

  Zara rubbed her eyes. “Let’s get some sleep. We made our point and people noticed. We have to go into work tomorrow and pretend that nothing has happened.”

  One by one her roommates shut their own laptops and wandered off to bed, fist-bumping and high-fiving her as they passed by.

  Charlotte flashed her a wan smile. “I didn’t know victory could be so exhausting.”

  Zara nodded.

  It was the second time in her life that she’d thwarted the government for the greater good of Earth.

  39

  ALAN COULDN’T RELAX JUST YET.

  Pio was talking to the other kuboderans. They had questions about humans. They all seemed calm for now, but he wasn’t letting down his guard.

  Anything could happen in the next hour or so. There were thirteen kuboderans out there, and who knew how many of them had drunk the Kai’Memna Kool-Aid. They could be buying time while they reorganized and planned a counterattack.

  Ryliuk said, “Message coming in on the encrypted channel set up by Darcy Eberhardt.”

  “Put it up on-screen,” Ron replied.

  Darcy’s face appeared. She instantly started talking. No small talk. No congratulations. “What the hell was that?”

  Ron snorted. “That was just a couple of inventions by a certain Dr. Alan Bergen.”

  Her eyes were wide with disbelief. “You invented that stuff? What are you, a genius?”

  Alan smirked. “Actually, yes. Yes, I am.”

  “Why did you act so worried when I showed up? You didn’t need my help. Clearly.”

  Alan leaned back in his seat, enjoying the attention just a little, though at the back of his mind a little voice was reminding him that the fight could have just as easily gone the other way. If any one of the devices hadn’t worked, they’d have been screwed. He hadn’t been ready for fourteen ships. Suddenly the praise didn’t feel so great. “Well, those were just experiments I’ve been working on lately. We weren’t sure they would work.”

  Her jaw dropped and her eyebrows shot up. “If those were just experiments, I’m glad you’re on our side.”

  Ron gave him a sidelong look. “All right. That’s enough congratulations for Berg. His head is big enough.”

  A few long, spindly light-green fingers came into the frame, followed by the tree person Darcy had said was named Hain. Her voice was breathy and creepily monotone, like a sexy computer voice. What a strange combination. “Would you be willing to share your notes on these inventions?”

  Alan balked. He hadn’t even considered this possibility. He didn’t really know these people. Sure, they’d just warned them of an impending attack, but…

  Ron saved him from having to reply. “When he’s got all the bugs worked out of them, we’ll talk.”

  Darcy looked rueful. “Right. We’ll hold you to that. Well, I’d love to stick around and get to know you all better, but I’ve got a lead I need to follow before the trail goes cold. You seem to have this under control, so I’m gonna jet. I’ll let Holloway know how things went here. She was pretty worried, though I don’t know why.”

  Alan frowned. What? She was already leaving?

  Ron said, “Thank you for the warning. It made all the difference. We’re in your debt.”

  “When you’re back in civilized space, contact me anytime on this channel with these credentials.”

  Ron inclined his head. “This channel goes both ways, so let us know if you need any help.”

  Alan raised his hand like an effing schoolboy. “Hey, could you give Jane a message from me?”

  “Sure thing.”

  He froze. What should he say? “Tell her I miss her.”

  Ron slow-clapped. “Come on, man. You can do better than that.”

  Alan let out an exasperated huff. “She’ll know what I mean.”

  Darcy raised her eyebrows. “Do you want to take a
few minutes to write a message or record something?”

  Alan waved her off. “No. It’s fine. Just tell her that.”

  “Actually…” Ron bent over a nearby console. “I’ve got a series of messages for Jane and another crew member that you could deliver, if you don’t mind. Sending… now.”

  Alan rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Ron. Way to make me look like an idiot.”

  Darcy’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Will do. I hope to talk to you again soon. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Darcy. Gibbs over and out.”

  The screen went blank.

  Alan sat down at his console again. “I wonder what her story is.”

  Ron looked incredulous. “No idea. Maybe Jane knows.”

  Pio talked to the kuboderans for a couple of hours.

  The rest of the crew sat on the bridge waiting to see what the outcome would be. Alan never let his fingers get very far from the blink-drive controls. When stomachs started rumbling loud enough for a gastric chorus to form, Huna was kind enough to hop off to fetch some food cubes and water for everyone while they waited.

  Toward the end of this meal, Pio announced that the talks had concluded.

  She sounded very calm as she discussed the outcome. “Nine ships are undecided. Of those, seven are inclined to join us, but want more time to think about the advantages and disadvantages of such an alliance. Two believe they want to end their navigation careers and find a planet to settle on. All nine are preparing to leave orbit now, but some may return once their decision has been made. The remaining four will stay in orbit with us, joining us.”

  “Are there any living sectilians aboard the four ships?” Ron asked.

  Pio’s voice was full of sorrow. “No.”

  Ron took a deep breath. “What do we do with them now? I promised them each a crew, but we can’t spare anyone right now. We’re thin as it is.”

  “If I may?” Pio said. “Kuboderans can live for thousands of years. You intend to return to Earth eventually. They don’t expect anything sooner than that. I’ve made them aware of the timeline. No one was concerned about it.”