by Vic Grout
She outlined what she was going to do. It was a simple change, she said, but she needed to make sure it worked in the same manner as the previous version from the day before. She loaded the original program then commented out much of the main code. This meant it would not be run when she experimented with the new section, she explained. However, the comments also changed colour on the screen – to a pale green, making it more difficult for Scott and Larry to see exactly what she was typing. She also quietly put in a function call to a remote part of the code that she could keep off of the screen most of the time.
Bob noticed a poster on the other side of the lab and got up to read it more closely. It showed a full, layered description of a number of new network protocols and how they interrelated across the OI’s various systems. He studied it for several minutes before turning back to the others.
“So will these systems work together?” he asked, pointing with two stretched fingers at different parts of the diagram. “Won’t the switches get confused by the different frame lengths?”
Scott and Larry exchanged glances: neither seemed to understand the question. Larry rose to join Bob in front of the poster. Scott remained with Jenny.
Jenny turned the screen slightly. It was minimal but enough for the light to strike it at a different angle, the reflection making it harder for Scott to see. He was initially still distracted by Larry and Bob’s conversation and, by the time he realised he could no longer follow what she was doing, Jenny had quickly moved to the remote part of the program, typed in three extra lines of code and returned to her starting place. She apologised to Scott and turned the screen back. Finally, she uncommented all of the code ready to run.
“OK, I think we’re ready to go,” she announced. She turned away from the coding screen to point at the revised output window on the display showing the network map.
Larry and Bob abandoned their protocol discussion and returned to the front, Larry leading. As they rounded the workstation with Jenny’s monitor, Bob made sure both Scott and Larry’s eyes were following Jenny’s arm and, without either of them noticing, eased a memory stick into a USB port at the rear of her screen.
Jenny ran the program. As before, the small screen counter displayed the size of the node set, starting with n = 17. Only Bob, from his position, could see the short green glow from the USB stick at this point; then it faded. The count continued: n = 21; n = 25; n = 28; n = 31; n = 33. The OK confirmation flashed. Jenny pressed ‘Return’ and, as before, the 33 nodes were written to the text file on the other screen. She peered at them for some time – largely for show – then pointed at the result.
“Done,” she said. “And it’s the same set. See? So, I’m pretty sure that’s OK. But I’ll check my calculations on paper one last time tonight and confirm with you all tomorrow.”
Scott and Larry nodded in satisfaction and congratulated her on her attention to detail. Jenny rose hurriedly and led the way from the room, looking pleased with herself. Somewhat taken by surprise, Scott and Larry followed quickly. As Bob, making up the rear, passed the screen, no-one saw him silently retrieve the memory stick from the USB port and quickly put it in his jeans pocket.
*
As they returned to the lift, the doors from the VIP floor opened without warning; they stopped. Don Bell, two uniformed generals and the President suddenly emerged. Jenny froze, awestruck; but Bob, with his single-track mind, and no thought of diplomatic protocol, asked immediately:
“Don, can I have a quick word. It’s about those security passes you gave Aisha and …”
“Not now, Bob!” Don snapped. “I think it’s obvious I have more pressing matters?” He made to sweep past, then seemed to have second thoughts, and turned back.
“Sorry. My apologies. We’re all under a lot of stress.” He faced the President. “Ma’am, these are two of the British group we’ve been telling you about. In fact, these two are the technical experts in the team. We wouldn’t have been able to get to where we have – the, ah, understanding we have – without their help.” They exchanged knowing looks.
The President reached out a firm hand to them both.
“Please be aware how much we value your efforts,” she said, with a forced smile, and she shook their hands. “You are playing a large part in determining the future stability of our world, and we all thank you for it immensely.”
For once, Jenny was lost for words but Bob carried on regardless.
“So, Don, do we have a time-scale for implementing the disconnect-set?”
Once more, Don looked somewhat caught off his guard.
“Ah no, well, possibly tomorrow, guys,” he spluttered. “Or perhaps the day after: we still have to work out how to really do it. Or maybe the day after that …” He tailed off into silence, excusing himself as best he could by ushering the President on her way – and out of their sight.
*
It was early afternoon. Jenny and Bob had returned to the canteen: she with her breathing and pulse still racing from their subterfuge in the lab and encounter with the President; he with his tiny, precious cargo squeezed into his pocket – struggling to resist the temptation to feel the raised lump on his upper leg every few minutes to ensure it was still there. They were also still trying to decide how best to broach the subject of the two additional passes with Don – or anyone. Jenny hoped her promise to revisit her calculations overnight would prolong their usefulness – possibly their lives – a few more hours. Still Aisha and Andy were nowhere to be seen.
Eventually, they reappeared; entering slowly and with hands clasped together. Although Andy looked very ill indeed – a flaky, grey ash seemed now to cover his entire skin and he walked with terrible difficulty, the two of them looked as relaxed as they had for many days. They moved over to join their friends and sat down.
“We have something to tell you,” Aisha whispered in a very level voice.
“Let me guess: you’re going to get married?” laughed Bob.
“Ah yes, you’re going to become joined for eternity in the eyes of God?” suggested Jenny.
“Aye, sort of,” Andy smiled. “Can we go back to someone’s room for a wee chat?”
*
Hours later, Bob emerged from Jenny’s room, and cast a despondent look back at the three that remained there, before trudging towards the lift. He pressed the ‘-1’ button for the OI.
He emerged on the floor above and headed towards a row of offices near the main control room. As he did so, however, a thought – and one final spark of hope – struck him. He turned and found the smaller lab Jenny and he had used briefly that afternoon. He looked both ways along the corridor but no-one was in sight.
He closed the door behind him and, without turning on any additional lights – the glow from a monitor being sufficient to see what he was doing, he took the memory stick from his pocket and placed it in a USB port of the nearest machine. It contained only a single, small text file; and this he opened.
A seventeen-line table was displayed on the screen. The nodes were in no particular order: Jenny’s algorithm would have cared little for rank or groupings. He looked at each line in turn. Some places he could not recognise at all, while others were just vaguely-recalled names. Ninth on the list was the EuroNet facility in Brussels. He swallowed hard and continued to read. Still he did not see the one thing, above all else, he wanted not to.
It was not the tenth, or the eleventh, or the twelfth node; nor the thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth. He dared to hope. The sixteenth was somewhere in Moscow. Maybe, just maybe …
Then he read the seventeenth and final line of the file:
896G 109H: 1A: Operational Installation (1) M-Nevada [Bell, Donald] Category A*
A death knell sounded somewhere within his head.
*
Jerry Austin was sitting, in silent contemplation, in his office. There was a knock at the open door. He looked up to see one of his junior assistants, Leroy James, standing there.
“Mr. Austi
n; Mr. Weatherill would like to see you, sir!”
For a moment, Jerry had to remember who ‘Mr. Weatherill’ was. Then he did; then he almost wished he had not. He raised a resigned look to the sky and stood to follow Leroy. As they walked, he asked:
“How’s Maria, Leroy? And the new one? Carla? Born last week, wasn’t she?”
Leroy beamed. “Both doing well, sir, despite all this weird stuff going on. I haven’t even seen the baby yet. But I’m hoping to get home in the next few days.” Jerry winced.
They rounded the corner and found Bob. They shook hands but Jerry had a final word for his assistant.
“Leroy,” he said suddenly, “go back and wait in my office. I may have a little job for you. Bob!” he whispered dismally. I hardly know whether I’m pleased to see you or not!”
Bob smiled weakly. “Can I borrow your mobile, please Jerry?” he asked. “I want to phone my daughter.”
Jerry nodded. “Follow me.”
They walked to the Look Out. Outside was dark once more. The guards let them through the glass and they climbed around the rocks. Jerry passed Bob his phone.
“I don’t think many of the long-distance lines are working any more,” he said.
This hardly seemed to concern Bob. He took the mobile and pressed a few buttons at random. “No,” he agreed, shook his head and passed it back. As Jerry took the phone, he felt a smaller object in his hand along with it. He put the mobile in one jacket pocket and the small block in the other. They went back in. The guards closed the Look Out doors behind them.
“OK thanks,” said Bob simply, and walked quickly towards the lift, his shoulders shaking visibly from behind as Jerry’s eyes followed him.
“Yes, thanks,” Jerry replied. He watched the doors close on Bob, then walked slowly back to his office.
Chapter 31: Split Ends
At 7:30am the following morning, Jenny and Bob met in the canteen, as arranged, and drank coffee without speaking. On the table between them lay the two security passes. They glanced at each other from time to time but neither could hold the other’s gaze for long.
Just before eight o’clock, they picked up a pass each and walked to the lift. They tried but it would not answer their call until precisely 8am. These security passes were no good here; would they work where they needed them to? They knew every step of their journey was to be an ordeal like this – and yet they were still the lucky ones. Eventually, however, the time was right and they ascended towards the OI.
As the doors closed behind them, Andy emerged from around the corner where he had been hiding with Aisha – secretly watching them – and led her to the canteen. They ordered coffee, sat and embraced.
“There was still a part of me that wanted to say goodbye,” she said quietly.
“I know,” he said. “Me too; but probably better like this.”
She nodded.
*
Jenny and Bob turned towards the end of the corridor and the entrance to the tunnel.
“We don’t really know if they even took our readings,” said Jenny. “This might not work before we’ve even started.” They both began to sweat. Bob inserted his pass and stood to be scanned. It seemed like an age.
However, after the longest two seconds of their lives, the system announced its recognition of Bob and the process was repeated for Jenny. The door opened and they entered the dome. A young man came forward to meet them. Bob recognised Leroy James. He smiled and shook both their hands.
“Mr. Austin sent me to drive you to the other end,” he announced cheerfully.
They had their passes and biometrics checked once more by the guards, climbed into a waiting buggy and set off along the tunnel.
*
At 8:30am, Aisha and Andy left the canteen and returned to his room. He took off the cross around his neck and clasped it around hers. They kissed.
*
Nothing was going to make the journey quick, or stress-free, or painless for Jenny or Bob but Leroy’s relaxed chatter helped. He passed the time telling them about his wife and how she had given birth to their daughter, Carla, while he had been stationed at the OI. He had hoped to get home to see them soon but, to his surprise, Mr. Austin had told him to leave that morning. He had been instructed simply to ‘drive two English scientists to the other end of the tunnel, make sure they got out and wait there’. ‘On no account was he to return back along the tunnel’. The instructions became vague at that point but Mr. Austin had said Leroy would ‘figure out what to do’ soon enough after that. He was looking forward to seeing his ‘two girls’. His major concern, though, was that he was hearing rumours of nuclear weapons likely to be fired that day. ‘No-one knew what was happening any more’, he said, and it seems like ‘no-one wants to tell us either’. They sped along; other than Leroy’s light-hearted babble, their journey accompanied by only the occasional scrape of the buggy on the wall.
*
At nine o’clock, Aisha and Andy took the lift to the OI floor and walked round the turn of the corridor to the Look Out. The two guards eyed them with suspicion as they approached; one fingered the gun in his holster. But the two lovers simply stood facing the glass window, Andy describing to Aisha the pale morning outside, the mountains in the distance and the desert – with its sparse vegetation – in between. The guards exchanged looks and whispers and, after a few minutes, one hurried off in the direction from which they had come, glancing back over his shoulder at them several times as he strode away.
“We’re being reported,” Andy whispered to Aisha with some amusement.
*
The escapees reached the end of the tunnel. Passes and biometrics were checked once more and Jenny and Bob took their leave of Leroy. As instructed by Jerry, he waited in the dome area, immediately striking up cheerful conversations with both soldiers and technicians.
The pair worked their own way through the security scanners on each side of the transit room and found the steps waiting for them. They climbed breathlessly to the top and emerged from the shed into a cold, desert landscape with no-one else in sight. The low morning sun told them which direction to take along the dirt track by which they stood.
They had walked perhaps quarter of a mile when they first heard the sounds behind them: the growing roar of approaching jet planes and the whining of other airborne things they could not identify. Their initial impulse was to turn and look but neither did. Instead, they carried on along the track, their eyes filled with tears as the noise behind them intensified.
*
Aisha and Andy still stood at the Look Out’s window. The remaining guard fidgeted anxiously. There was a voice behind them.
“Can I help you guys?” It was Scott, in something of a hurry, accompanied by the second guard. They turned to face him.
“We’re just admiring the view,” Aisha laughed; a clear, ringing tone that appeared to unnerve everyone but Andy.
“You’re making people jumpy, guys,” said Scott. “We can do without folk wandering around the OI this morning. Apart from it not being safe,” a fluorescent bulb mounted on a wall exploded as if to illustrate his point, “Don’s currently giving the President the full tour of facilities.” A thought seemed to strike him.
“So where are the other two?”
“Gone for a walk.”
Scott eyed them with a mixture of suspicion and distaste. But his next question was halted, before it began, by Don’s voice from further behind – along the corridor.
“What’s going on here?” He, the President and her two bodyguards were approaching the Look Out.
Andy seemed to like Aisha’s joke: he grinned as he repeated the answer. “Just admiring the view,” he said, but then added, “What else would we do to pass the morning while another hundred million people die?”
Don bridled instantly and took an aggressive step towards them, but was interrupted by the President herself, who raised a hand to signify a halt.
“They know, Mr. Bell. Can’t you tell? The
y know.”
Don cast her a desperate look; then – as quickly as it had appeared – his anger left him. This was not his fight any more. The President had taken the floor.
“So,” she began, facing Aisha and Andy for the first time, “when I spoke to your colleagues – the other two – yesterday, I thanked them for their contribution to our stability. Whose stability do you think I was referring to?”
Andy sucked his teeth as he considered for a few seconds. “Yours?”
The President shook her head.
“Not mine. At least, not directly,” she answered. “I’m just a puppet in a much bigger show. A well-paid, well-respected, well-protected puppet, maybe, but I’m not the director. Like every Head of State, every senior politician or diplomat, every so-called ‘leader’, I’m really just the marketing material: I make the theatre look presentable. Sometimes I help the show go ahead, even when it shouldn’t; other times I cover up the mess when something goes wrong. But my bosses are much more powerful than that and they control something much more powerful than me – the Media. If either of them were to turn on me, I’d be gone in an instant. Public opinion or a bullet: it makes no difference. Nor does ‘democrat’ or ‘republican’ – they’re just different colours. I’ve no real power; other than that granted – passed down – to me. It’s always been that way (Obama couldn’t even stop guns being sold in corner shops for kids to shoot themselves with, for Christ’s sake) and it always will be.”
“Aye understood,” agreed Andy. “The world is run by business. Politicians answer to business. Those that don’t, don’t last very long. We know that. But it’s a big jump from there to needing to wipe out most of the world’s population. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”
She grinned: her teeth opened slightly and Andy had a sense of pure evil emanating from within. “A fortunate irony,” she said. “The very technology that was threatening to destabilise us, turns out to be our saviour.”
