by John Freitas
Mark licked his lips and whispered, “So, he’s the man working with the really good stuff.”
Mark zoomed in the image on the lab where Dr. Kell had disappeared. Mark wasn’t certain the man was still inside, but either way whatever he was working on would likely still be locked away inside. Mark memorized the lab ID off the door. He went into the file server of CDR and looked through that lab. He found login records for who went into and out of that lab for years. That wasn’t really useful. Mark found inventory lists for equipment inside, deliveries, and code numbers for projects. They were endless. There was a lot of top end equipment in there. Not knowing which projects mattered though, he could spend the rest of his life breaking into files for each project code and still not know what was worth his time.
He shook his head and left the file server. Mark worked his way around one security wall after another through an endless trail leading into the active computers within that lab. There was not a direct uplink, but the data was being stored in these servers. Mark could eventually trace it all back and look at exactly what had come out of that lab. He wanted to see what was going on though. If data was coming out, he could swim upstream and get inside at that very moment.
Mark went in and looked at which computers were delivering data. He eliminated the uninteresting ones and found the devices that seemed to be giving the most significant feedback. All of those happened to be logged in by Dr. Thomas Kell, of course.
Then, Mark paused.
There was something odd. There was something processing at an exponentially higher rate. Kell’s computers were monitoring whatever it was, but they kept skipping and losing data. CDR systems were the most advanced processors in the world, but whatever they were “looking at” was processing at a rate they could not even follow. It was like a horse and buggy chasing a sports car.
“Or a concord,” Mark whispered.
It wasn’t another computer. There was biometric data being monitored too.
“A bio computer?” Mark shook his head.
That wasn’t right. Was there something actually alive in there that they were monitoring? Could a living thing process at those speeds and be monitored directly by other computers. Mark stared at the choppy data read for a moment longer. This was something else entirely. Mark had expected “the good stuff” to be in there, but this was something he literally couldn’t imagine. What could they possibly have created or found that would give data like this? Mark shook his head again. He was beginning to picture an alien life form with electrodes plugged into its brain.
The universe was becoming a mystery to him again like it was when he was a kid. There was a gravitational death wave on its way to Earth. The first ripples had passed through largely unnoticed. People were dealing with normal disaster scenarios of earthquakes and sink holes. They had no idea it was something bigger and the worst was yet to come.
Mark Spencer fully intended to exploit his knowledge of the coming trouble on an astronomical scale and he intended to exploit everyone else’s ignorance of it. Even the great CDR had no idea it was coming. Mark started picturing a physical path in his head from the street to the floor the labs were on and then to the lab with this unknown force at play.
He shook his head. Too soon. He had a lot more to figure out before he even considered moving his plan to the CDR building.
Still, Mark looked through the scanned data and took the parameters for the dimensions of the chamber containing “It.” Not very large at all.
“They don’t make alien overlords like they used to.”
He pulled up data on the weight and design of the mystery chamber. It could be detached. It was light enough to carry. “Especially if it was carried when gravity on this side of the world took a short vacation.”
The universe was full of mystery again and the new, biggest mystery was what exactly this “it” in the center of Dr. Kell’s lab really was.
Mark went back to the devices within the lab that he was monitoring and began swimming up stream again. He saw someone was typing into the tablet. Mark brought up the conversation on his screen and then opened the microphone on the tablet so he could have audio in the room. There was a clicking noise from the keys. Why did people like that sound on a touch screen? Mark shook his head. He was sure it was a mistake that might give him away, but he turned off the key click sound anyway. If Dr. Kell really missed it, he could turn it back on.
There were footsteps on the lab floor. Objects were being picked up and sat down in the distance.
Dr. Kell or someone over the tablet that sounded exactly like what Mark remembered Kell sounding like when they were introduced said, “Finally, that racket is off. I thought I was going to lose my ever loving mind.”
“What was that, Dr. Kell?”
“Nothing. Continue what you were doing, please. We need faster feed or we won’t ever know what’s going on.”
“The only thing we have that moves that fast is the thing we’re trying to monitor.”
Mark did not understand everything they were talking about, but he suspected they were struggling with the same mystery before them that Mark wanted to figure out.
Dr. Kell was texting with someone on the tablet. It might be related to the thing in the lab, but Mark decided to come back to it later.
He moved through the other devices in the room looking for something he could use as a camera feed. The tablet camera looked up Dr. Kell’s nose at the ceiling. Mark didn’t want to overload the device with malware and possibly alert the doctor. He left the microphone open, but switched the camera back off. None of the other consoles in the room were much better. Each one was looking out into the lab. The chamber in the center of the room remained a mystery.
Mark left a couple of the color camera feeds on for perspective with the other security feeds he was monitoring off of the hallways. He would just have to try to make sense of what he heard along with the spotty data.
As he watched and listened, he swore he saw a golden light shining off objects in view of the camera feeds. That couldn’t just be for mood lighting. The chamber was giving off its own light it seemed.
Mark dug deeper into the data, but only grew more confused. If he didn’t know better, he would swear whatever was in the box was bigger on the inside than on the outside. The data was analyzing “It” on a quantum level. It was a deep quantum level. The thing in the chamber was manipulating the quantum or it was highly reactive to being observed.
Quantum physics was not Mark Spencer’s area of expertise by any means. He considered himself smarter than average in most things though. It knew more than the average person about most subjects. Maybe not more than Dr. Kell about Quantum Mechanics and whatever was in that box.
Mark had a bitter taste in the back of his throat as he contemplated Dr. Kell being smarter than him about something. Mark knew the jealousy was irrational. A research doctor working on some mystery object in the realm of quantum physics would logically know more than Mark Spencer, a consultant and computer expert. Still, the thought of being inferior to anyone galled him.
“If you are so smart,” Mark growled, “how do you not even know you are being observed while you think you are the one doing the observing, Doctor? I guess the universe still holds mysteries for you too. Doesn’t it?”
Whatever had Mark’s blood boiling, he wasn’t sure, but he forced himself to calm down. Being upset led to mistakes and while hacking CDR from the inside was not the time to start making mistakes.
He couldn’t even put his finger on what was really upsetting him. Everything was going smoothly. He was poking around undetected and had possibly found the big treasure he was seeking by taking this job. The forces of the universe were literally aligning to allow him to pull this whole thing off. So, why the bitterness? Something about being alone in the server core on his knees watching from the outside while men like Dr. Kell got the breaks in life to be on the inside was embittering. Mark could handle it from hacking government mainfra
mes from his living room. That felt like spy games. It was fun. Being in CDR sneaking around the maze of computers like a rat, made him feel smaller and disregarded. It was a moment of looking up at something vast towering over him and realizing his real size and place in the universe. And he did not like it.
It was Dr. Kell overseeing Mark’s cyber security work. It was the quantum physics geek thinking he was going to tell the lowly contractor boy how to do his job. It was the snide, dismissive stare of thugs like Calvin Hall looking on Mark like he was something dirty invading the clean halls of CDR. They gave Mark the devices he could use because his equipment was dirty and not good enough. They gave him his limited codes so they could watch what he did. They told him where he could go and what he could do because he was the unwelcome outsider. Once his work was done, they would march him back out and pay him to go away. He was to crawl back into whatever sewer he crawled out of because CDR was too good, clean, and important for the likes of him.
It was at that moment on his knees in front of the server spying on Dr. Kell’s work that Mark Spencer decided that he was going to be breaking into CDR on the big day instead of the Federal Reserve. It was a decision made in anger and it was made with finality.
Mark found one quantum data trail and decided to use his own technique of following it up stream. He was going to see if he could unravel the mystery and understand what he was seeing. Or rather not really seeing. He soon discovered the stream kept spiraling into infinity. Seeing more and more of it made it less understandable rather than more clear.
He began to think what they had done was open a portal into the Quantum. Or maybe beyond it. He wasn’t sure what that even meant. Could he steal a chamber that was a portal into other dimensions? What would he do with it once he did? He supposed he could try to hold it for ransom, but then he would be dealing with a company with a reputation for making its problems disappear. He could sell it off to any of a hundred black market groups around the world. He didn’t know what shape the world would be in after the event though. Bad shape, he assumed.
Then, Mark paused. There was something oddly orderly in the data. He was deep below the surface on this single thread with others all around, but he was seeing order. Intelligent design? The data was designing itself. Was that an effect of the quantum itself or was this an intelligence extending into the Quantum? Had Dr. Kell and his mad scientists unlocked this thing or created it? Either option was mind blowing.
Mark also began to realize the data was multi dimensional. It extended beyond space, but also beyond the normal flow of time. This was all theory and he was observing from a hacked line through the system, but he thought he was right.
“Are they processing data from the past and the future? Is that what this is?” Mark let the questions hang in the air.
The ability to predict the future would be quite a power for a group like CDR. That would be the type of project they might hide behind layers of security in their secret labs.
Mark stared at the pulsing light in the camera feeds he had hacked in the lab. He was facing away from “It” and seeing its after images instead of looking on the mystery object directly.
“Like Moses hiding in the cleft of the rock and watching the glow of God after he had passed,” Mark whispered.
Mark had not been in church for years. Not since he was a kid and his grandmother made him go. But the story of Moses being infected with the glory of God even though he only caught a glimpse, had stuck with Mark for some reason. It was like a ghost story. It was something to be afraid of back when the universe still held danger and mystery. Those fears were part of what drove him to study how things worked so that he could control them and control his world. It was what drove him to build his first computer in his grandmother’s garage using scavenged parts and a solder gun. Some of the parts were stolen too. Mark had worried then that God was watching him even though he couldn’t see God. After he built his computer, he was a little less afraid and believed the universe was something he could manipulate, understand, and control. He felt like he no longer had to hide in a hole like Moses afraid of what might be passing by outside in the stories from Bible school.
Mark felt those twinges of fearful wonder from childhood again as he stared at the golden light on the lab walls. He was back to that old time feeling about the universe again. The thing that CDR was hiding had reawakened that in Mark.
There was something down there worth knowing.
Mark’s breath caught and he stared at the screen for a moment before he allowed himself to breathe again. He said, “Dr. Kell is texting someone on his device in the lab with this thing.”
Mark’s eyes went wide and he pulled up the feed of Dr. Kell’s device screen again. He scrolled back through the bubbles. There was a lot. He wished he could download it or copy it onto his own computer to read in detail later, but that wasn’t an option. He read through enough to realize that it was not an ordinary conversation about work or running errands. Dr. Kell was asking big questions about the universe. The answers were cryptic. They were sometimes confused. Not exactly answers from someone of this world.
Mark scrolled back to get to the current conversation.
“How can that be?” Dr. Kell typed.
“We are all being observed as we observe.” The blue bubble popped up in response. “If the outcome of events can be seen beyond this moment, I can tell what will happen. This lab will not be safe. There are forces outside of here both conscious and unconscious that bring harm. You will be unable to keep me safe from harm. Precautions must be taken outside this lab. Precautions must be taken that you are not capable of taking yourself, Dr. Kell.”
Dr. Kell typed out another green bubble. “The future is not set. Even telling me the outcome should allow that to be altered. Is that not true?”
Mark swallowed on a dry throat and wiped his lips with one gloved hand. Were they really discussing predicting the future like he had thought? And who or what was on the other end of that discussion?
“Probability and statistics uses available data to calculate likely outcomes. In those cases, a prediction is made, Dr. Kell. Even knowing the prediction, the same agents fight to make the outcome manifest while counteragents continue to fight against the outcome. They do so with or without the knowledge of the prediction. They perform their own calculations that inform their faith and doubt as they commit their energies to their causes and counter causes. Predicting the future with a better data stream of events and possibilities is little different other than in calculated accuracy and consideration of all mitigating factors that are overlooked in less refined predictions.”
Mark stared as Dr. Kell paused. He started to believe Dr. Kell was a slow reader. Mark was tempted to open the camera to look up Thomas Kell’s nose again just to see what he was doing.
Thomas Kell’s bubble appeared again. “If I connected you to the controls of a car or an aircraft, could you operate these devices in real time without accidents? I’m asking, can you see all the possible factors from weather, to other vehicles, to counter attacks from purposeful enemies, etc., to the point that you could avoid any and all destruction to your assigned vehicles in this scenario?”
Mark thought they were getting to the meat of what this project was all about.
The other thing’s bubbles came instantly. There was no lag in typing. It was as if the other half of the conversation had already been written and was popping up as soon as the questions were asked. Mark thought about the quantum thread of data he had tried to follow into infinity beyond time and space.
The response bubble said, “If that was my assignment, I could do it. Technically, you can do it too. Do you not avoid accidents and destruction with the vehicles you operate? The fact that you are here and not dead speaks to that, Dr. Kell. You avoid accidents most days. You have avoided death up until now with one hundred percent efficiency even as fragile and limited as human life is. What you are asking of me is to be ever so slightly more efficient
than you yourself have been. That hardly seems like much of a demand at all. I could with one caveat to the parameters of the assigned task. I would need the option not to fly or drive at all.”
Mark thought about the reference to human life. It was a small part of the answer, but it spoke to something other than human engaged in this conversation. Mark wondered if it was an artificial intelligence, something alien, or something else entirely.
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Kell wrote. “You are saying that if you were allowed to not fly the plane, you could guarantee it would never crash? That is a semantic escape. It is not actually completing the task. It is toying with definitions.”
“That is true, but that is not what I am saying,” It responded. “I am asking for a loophole, but not one that is that broad. In the event that I saw no path forward that did not lead to a crash such as a coming hurricane or mechanical issues with the craft, I would have to have the option to cancel the flight until such time that those events were dealt with or passed. With that condition, I could guarantee a perfect operational record.”
Mark blinked and licked his lips.
Dr. Kell typed. “What if you were allowed to control multiple crafts or operations remotely? Such as an air traffic control system? Or a number of covert military units in the field? Could you maintain the same perfect operational record for those multiple vehicles in simultaneous operation?”
“The task would become easier, if I controlled more vehicles at once or even all vehicles at once,” It answered.
“How is that possible?” Dr. Kell asked in his next bubble. “Explain. How do more tasks make the task easier to achieve when 100% accuracy as the benchmark?”
“If I control both planes,” It answered, “it is far easier for me to keep them from colliding than if I only control one. That factor of control of the conditions increases with each aspect of the total system which I controlled. Therefore, the task of avoiding crashes becomes easier to achieve in that scenario.”
