The Kafir Project

by Lee Burvine

  "It didn't have a name when I was here the last time," Morgan commented from behind Rees.

  Danni spoke over her shoulder. "Yeah. That was before we brought it up to full capacity. Then it started generating its own code. Kind of talking to itself. We joked how it was becoming self-aware. Like Skynet in the Terminator movies. So we named him."

  They reached a T-intersection. Danni led them to the right.

  Rees had done a show segment not long before on artificial intelligence. "You think Alan could really be self-aware on some level? You know, there's a theory that human consciousness arises from quantum effects in microtubules in the brain."

  Danni laughed. "I seriously doubt it. About Alan, I mean. It would be cool, though, wouldn't it?"

  After the AI episode aired, a few hyper-religious viewers wrote indignant posts in the comments section of the show's webpage. Man overstepping his natural limits, etc. Your basic Dr. Frankenstein stuff.

  "That would make you rather godlike, wouldn't it?" Rees said. "If you actually created consciousness."

  Danni shrugged. "I suppose."

  "You could start your own religion," Morgan suggested.

  Danni slowed as they approached the end of the hall. "Eh, it's been done. My parents were Scientologists, so..."

  "Really?" Rees said. "I never met one. I don't think."

  "Well, you still haven't. I didn't follow them."

  "You mind if I ask why?" It wasn't really the time or place, but Rees's own history pushed him to inquire.

  Danni pulled her pass key again and stopped in front of another security door. "Basically, I found out a nutbag alcoholic sci-fi writer made it all up. Not like it's some big secret. Google it."

  She swiped her card. The lock mechanism issued the same soft whir as the door from the lobby. And in they went.

  * * *

  The man known to others in the Office command structure as Mr. Singleton took the secure call over Ohio at forty thousand feet.

  "Dr. Harris has just logged in at Lawrence Livermore," the analyst told him. "No information on whether Rees is with her. The probability is high."

  "All right. Doubleman hasn't checked in. I'm officially taking charge of this account. All decisions come through me from here on forward."

  "Understood."

  Singleton disconnected. He looked out the window of the private jet. Probably Fort Wayne, those lights down there. He'd be in D.C. in less than an hour. He planned to have the new strategy up and running before they landed.

  Doubleman, in New York, was almost certainly dead.

  He would never go incommunicado in the middle of an operation. Massive reprisals would be required for the sake of both the Office's status and its security.

  That would have to wait.

  Sabel out in San Francisco had called in an address in Pleasanton that Gevin Rees sought out. The house was rented to a Dr. Danielle Harris, computer scientist at Livermore.

  You didn't have to be a data analyst to see the connection to Fischer. The Kafir Project had processing components at Livermore Labs. When Sabel lost Rees after action at that house in Pleasanton, Singleton ordered electronic feelers set out for anything connected to Danielle Harris that popped up on the grid.

  And something just had.

  Unfortunately, Sabel was temporarily out of commission. A wound that required medical attention. For that man to take himself offline, it must be a damned serious injury. Rees's new bodyguard was either shockingly effective, or the luckiest woman on the face of the earth. Still no name on her.

  It all meant that Singleton would have to get creative, and bring more resources to bear here.

  Rees and Harris would be there at Livermore in connection with Fisher's DARPA work. That was pretty much a given. And in that case, a very doable option had just opened up.

  All that would be required was some highly classified information and the services of a good hacker.

  The sorts of things Singleton always had right at his fingertips. Even at forty-thousand feet.

  CHAPTER 21

  "I DON'T KNOW if Fischer's name will be included as the lead scientist, but-" Danni stopped abruptly as she entered the computer terminal bay.

  They were not alone here.

  As he followed Danni and Morgan into the room, Rees saw a young man seated at a terminal. He had just swiveled his chair toward them and he greeted them with a look of happy surprise.

  "Hey, Danni. What's up?"

  He had to be one of the computer scientists here. But with his long, black hair and soul patch-the young man looked more like a DJ for an alternative music radio station.

  "Hey, Louis," Danni answered. "I just need to take a look at some results from the last laser ignition fusion simulation."

  Louis nodded. "Ah, and that data is all offline."

  "Yeah, because foreign governments wanna steal technology for fusion reactors that eat more energy than they make."

  Louis laughed. "Well, we're gonna achieve ignition eventually, if you look at the trend lines. So, who are your friends here?"

  Danni turned to them. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Guys, Dr. Louis Tyminski."

  Morgan gave Louis a pleasant smile. "Special Agent Kerry Morgan, DCIS. Unofficial visit."

  They'd agreed not to make up aliases if they had to talk to anyone here. For one thing Rees was likely to be recognized. Besides, he and Morgan both had plausible reasons to be here as their real selves.

  Rees gave Louis a little wave. "Gevin Rees. I'm researching an article on advanced energy sources."

  That little improvisation seemed to interleave nicely with Danni's story about the fusion data. Rees gave himself a mental pat on the back. This cloak and dagger stuff might not be so hard after all.

  "Oh, wow. I thought it was you." Louis stood up. "But I wasn't sure. I used to watch your specials all the time when I was in middle school."

  Feeling decidedly old, Rees accepted Louis's handshake.

  There were four terminals in the bay with privacy dividers between them. Rees assumed they all connected to the mainframe Danni wanted to access. As long as Louis returned to his own work, Danni should still be able to dig around for Kafir Project-related data.

  Louis turned to Danni. "So anyway, by a funky little coincidence, I just happen to be crunching that data right now. From the ignition simulation. I'd love to get your take."

  And so much for that scenario, Rees thought.

  "Ah, that would be excellent," Danni said with convincing enthusiasm. "I need to do a couple things first. But hey, I promised Gevin he could see Alan and we're running a little short on time."

  "You want me to take him on the tour?" Louis asked.

  "Would you?" Danni made pleading eyes. "While I pull up the data and get ready here?"

  "Yeah. Totally cool. I mean cold," Louis chuckled. "But that's not a problem, Dr. Rees. We got heavy jackets hanging up just outside the Core. Does ... I'm sorry, I forget your name." He was looking at Morgan.

  "Kerry."

  "Did you want to see Alan too, Kerry?"

  "I'd love to."

  Rees wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Morgan hold eye contact with Louis for an extra beat. Well, she was an attractive woman. She probably knew how to work that asset when she needed to. Why not?

  Louis led them out of the terminal bay and back into the hallway. And Rees began to feel truly optimistic for the first time today. Danni had a portable terabyte drive hidden in her bag. If the Kafir project data was here, then they were already halfway home.

  * * * * *

  "YES, DR. HARRIS is on campus right now," Matthew Neery told the caller.

  As the head security guard at Livermore Labs, Neery had responded to numerous complaints of cars parked in someone else's marked space. Once he even had to escort out an irate visitor who objected to being told he couldn't take cell phone photos in a Defense Department facility. It's a free country! the man kept yelling, alo
ng with threats of legal action and the repeated assertion that he was a veteran damnit! As if that were somehow relevant.

  But Neery had never before received an emergency call from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

  "Dr. Danielle Harris is wanted for questioning in connection with the sale of classified materials," the DCIS agent on the line said.

  Neery sat up straighter in his chair. "Right. Okay. So then, what do you want us to do here?"

  "First of all, is Harris alone or was she accompanied by anyone?"

  "Let me check." Neery pulled up the log on his computer, scanned the page and found Harris. "Uh, no indication that she had guests tonight. I can double check with the gate. But it would be here if she did."

  "Did your people inspect the vehicle?"

  "Well, they wouldn't have done a full inspection, no. We don't do that here. Not regularly." Someone's gonna try to pin some crap on us now. Just wait and see.

  "Then assume that she has one or two persons with her. The man's name is Gevin Rees. The woman's identity is unknown."

  Neery knew that name. "Gevin Rees, the astronomer guy?"

  "Yes. He may be involved in the leak. The unknown woman accompanying Harris is armed and extremely dangerous."

  Armed. This just keeps getting better and better. Neery felt the phone go slippery in his palm. "Yeah, all right. So what do you need from us? You want us to hold her, or them?"

  He prayed that was not the case. Please. He'd competed in fast draw competitions as a hobby back in college. Even won a few. But that was just a game. He never once fired his weapon in the field. Never even aimed at a live target.

  He didn't get paid enough for that kind of shit.

  "No," the voice said. "Put the whole campus on lockdown. Quietly though. Don't make any announcements. Don't let Harris or any of her companions depart the facility. If she tries to leave, then you detain her. We have agents on the way."

  Thank Christ for that. "Yeah, okay. What's the ETA on them?"

  "Coming in from the Oakland field office, so it should be about thirty minutes give or take."

  Moments later Neery hung up, suspecting that was going to be the longest thirty minutes of his life.

  CHAPTER 22

  Rees set down Fischer's pouch and selected one of the parka-like jackets off a rack.

  Heavy Plexiglas, like the kind that protected bank tellers from bullets, comprised three of the walls here. This space apparently served as an anteroom of sorts just outside the Core.

  Morgan and their computer scientist turned tour guide, Louis, each grabbed a parka as well.

  "Of course, most of the work is done at terminals," Louis was saying, "no one really spends much time in the Core itself. You can't. Not anywhere near the heart of it, not while Alan's running. But I figure you want to see the actual hardware. So we'll just nip in and out real quick."

  "Yes." Rees clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together. "Dying to see it."

  He was genuinely interested in seeing the quantum computer. But more importantly, this was buying time for Danni to find and download Fischer's data.

  Louis pulled on his parka. "Okay, so we're going into a zone where the hardware temperature is nowhere higher than a hundred picokelvins above absolute zero. Much colder than interstellar space. The coldest place in the known universe is on the other side of this door."

  Morgan selected a thick pair of gloves from a bin on the floor. "I don't understand why you keep the whole facility so cold. The computer itself is insulated, right?"

  "Well, you know this is a government funded deal here," Louis said, grabbing a pair of gloves himself. "Basically, it's a money thing. They don't want to spend what it would cost to run our heating system at full blast year round."

  "No, she's talking about your cooling system," Rees said. "Why you run it at such high levels outside the Core."

  Louis smiled. "Yeah, I know she is. We don't. We don't use the AC at all here. We'd freeze to death. It's all we can do to keep the place this warm. Do you know about negative Kelvin temperatures, Dr. Rees? Below absolute zero?"

  "I thought nothing could be colder than absolute zero," Morgan said. "That's why they call it absolute, right?"

  Rees zipped up his parka. "Well, it depends on how you define temperature. The temperature scale can also be considered as a cycle that comes back around to zero through negative numbers. It has to do with the ratio of high energy to low energy particles. Boltzmann distribution."

  "Exactly." Louis entered a key code into a huge door that looked like the entrance to a high tech fortress. "And matter at negative Kelvin temperatures has got some bizzaro properties. It might even be a model for dark matter and dark energy. Anyway, we can't fully insulate against its effects on the surrounding space."

  A green light came on above the big door.

  "So it's sucking the heat energy out of the whole building," Rees said. "That's amazing."

  Louis checked some gauges beside the massive door. "Yeah, negative Kelvin-like I said, bizzaro world in there, man. Plus the qubits are incredibly stable in that environment."

  Straightaway Rees intuitively saw why. And he felt that sense of awe and wonder that always came when a natural principle manifested itself in a physical pattern. He thought of these moments as his version of a religious experience.

  "Yes, yes," Rees said excitedly, "because you have a kind of negative entropy in there too. That's how you beat the decoherence problem."

  He and Louis seemed to remember Morgan at the same time and turned to her together.

  Morgan gave an apologetic little shrug. "You lost me on Q-bricks."

  "Qubits are the quantum equivalent of computer bits," Rees said. "Superposition is the multiple states at once property of quantum particles. It's what would make-or I guess I should say it's what does make quantum computing possible. Ordinarily, the particles would collapse too quickly back into a normal state. That's decoherence."

  Louis nodded along. "Yep. But here in the center of the Core it's like a pyramid wants to balance on its point and it can't fall over. Like Dr. Rees said there, it's a reverse entropy thing."

  Louis grabbed a latch on the colossal door then stopped. "Before we go in, can I just ask both of you one question?"

  Rees and Morgan both nodded, smiling.

  Rees said, "Go ahead. Shoot, Louis."

  Louis smiled back at them. "What are you guys really doing here?"

  CHAPTER 23

  Three months earlier-Jerusalem

  BENJAMIN ZAKEN HAD a headache. Two actually.

  The Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority hoped the double espresso he'd just ordered would help with one of them.

  He also prayed that the man sitting across from him in this upscale café wouldn't be the worse headache of the two. Joshua Amsel was famously determined. The aging archaeologist would not be inclined to take the bad news well.

  "Ben, you must let me dig here," Amsel said. "You've read of the results, from my recent sites. My new methods are groundbreaking."

  For privacy's sake Zaken had asked for this little back section of the café they now had to themselves. Amsel, for reasons unexplained, did not want to see Zaken in his office.

  The place was nearly empty anyway. The recent missile strikes out of the Gaza had a lot of people hunkering down. The possibility of another major conflict loomed large.

  In a very real sense, Zaken and Amsel were lounging right now in the middle of a war zone. Zaken doubted that many people outside of Israel could comprehend how naturally one might do such a thing.

  "It's amazing what you're doing, no question of it," Zaken said to Amsel. "You've always been a good scientist, Josh. But I'm not sure that you're aware of the political implications in your work."

  Amsel literally waved that away. "I'm just trying to get at the truth, Ben, as any archaeologist should. I'm not interested in the politics. You know this."

 
; Zaken's espresso arrived along with Amsel's ice tea and mint. He added two sugars and sipped it. He inhaled the rich smell of coffee and tried to imagine the capillaries in his brain dilating, the throbbing pain in his temples easing.

  "In Israel," Zaken said, "and particularly here in Jerusalem, there is no divorcing archaeology and politics. That's just how it's always been."

  Amsel took a sip of his mint tea. "I know the stories about Yadin."

  Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, had tasked the eminent Jewish archaeologist Yigael Yadin to go out and find me the title deeds. Archaeological validation of the new Jewish nation's historical right to reclaim these lands.

  That's what Yadin started digging for. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's what he believed he'd found. More modern, some would say more accurate, archaeological work by men like Israel Finkelstein (out of Tel Aviv University no less) had called some of Yadin's conclusions into question. They made Zaken's job a lot more perilous in some ways. The wrong interpretation of Israel's history could have something very much like legal ramifications. It could spell disaster.

  A wonder Zaken didn't have more headaches like this one.