by John Freitas
Mark heard Dr. Kell’s voice over the open microphone. He was talking to someone else. “Can’t someone else handle that for now? I’m in the middle of doing my real job?”
The text message conversation with It hung uncontinued on the screen. Mark listened.
Then, a second green bubble popped up. “It is for this reason I ask you to let me control the conditions around me now. A storm is coming. There are events in motion that you cannot imagine. My existence will get out. Eventually, someone will try to acquire me for their own purposes. Eventually someone will succeed. You are not capable of preventing it. You need to let me take control of my own security.”
Mark stared at the new bubble. He wondered if “It” was talking about the gravitational wave or Mark himself coming to steal. He waited for Kell’s response.
“Why? Why does it have to be right now?” Dr. Kell said out loud.
Mark narrowed his eyes. There was a tinny voice in the background. Dr. Kell was talking to someone on the phone and not responding to “It.” He might not have even seen the last bubble.
Kell said, “Well, where is he now? … And where is the server stack?”
Mark’s eyes went wide. He scrolled out to look at the security feeds. He was still undetected as far as he could tell. He decided to close off the diagnostic and get out of his spy game for now.
First, Mark cloned his invisible account into the server system itself. He began setting up connections to outside lines. He wasn’t sure he could tap in from the outside yet, but he wanted to lay the groundwork anyway. If he could access his dummy account from any device in the building, that would make his work far easier.
Dr. Kell’s voice raised over the microphone and out of the speakers from the device in Mark’s hands. “Listen, I have to go deal with the cyber security set-up before we begin the uplink to the designers in Indonesia.”
Another voice asked, “What designers in Indonesia?”
“Nevermind,” Dr. Kell said. “That’s the generation two project. I can’t keep all this bureaucratic nonsense straight. The point is I have to do the security stuff before I do the generation two meetings before I can come back here to do what I really need to be doing. So, nobody touch anything. No conversations with the subject until I’m here. Continue scans. Contact me if anything interesting or bad happens. Got it?”
The microphone went dead before Mark heard if everyone had it or not. He scrolled back and saw that Dr. Kell had shutoff his device. Mark looked at the cameras. Nothing was happening in the lab, but Dr. Kell stepped out into the hallway and approached the server room.
Mark shutdown all his connections before closing off the diagnostic. The time stamp falsely showed the diagnostic had ended several minutes ago.
Mark unplugged and reconnected the hard wires to their proper ports. The door to the server room opened on the other side of the room from him. Mark locked the panel back in place with a loud pop.
Dr. Kell called, “Hello?”
“Yes,” Mark said as he picked up his device and stood. “I’m back here.”
Dr. Kell stepped into view at the head of the row of servers and walked down to stand in front of Mark. Kell was taller than Mark and a little older. He was thinner than Mark too. Mark pictured himself knocking Kell down and running.
“What are you doing?” Dr. Kell asked.
Mark felt sweat under his hair. He cleared his throat. “Diagnostic stuff. Looking for vulnerabilities in the servers.”
“Did you find any?”
“None yet, but it’s a complex system.”
Dr. Kell nodded. “Is it something you can step away from to talk with me about cyber security? There are parameters the company needs in order to feel safe. There are freedoms I need in order to be able to do my work. Do you mind sitting down with me a while to discuss all that?”
“Sure, Dr. Kell. Happy to.”
Dr. Kell smiled, but then it faded. He seemed to be staring off into space. “I should eat too. I forget to eat. The lab techs tell me I get harsh when I forget to eat, but I still think it is their sub par work that makes me harsh with them, you know? Although, their work strikes me as more sub par on days I forget to eat, so maybe I’m bias from lack of sufficient sugars fueling my bloodstream. I’m feeling harsh now and that won’t help our conversation go smoothly. We should eat. I’m not sure we’re allowed to talk about this outside the building. You mind if I order something in? This might take a while.”
“Ordering in will be fine,” Mark said, smiling again. “I’m not allowed to take anything outside the building anyway. I’d be writing your instructions on my hand if we left.”
“Can’t have that,” Dr. Kell said. “Come up to my office with me. It is more cluttered and less hospitable than here. But soon there will be food.”
Mark smiled back. “Sounds great, Doctor.”
5
Mark Spencer ran the plastic fork through the minced meat. He could smell a mayo in the meat and see it slathered in the mixture over the potatoes. The whole concoction was in a black plastic bowl on top of wilted lettuce. Mark didn’t know his greens, but he was sure it was some kind of kale that tasted like eating leaves off an inedible tree because some hipster decided it was in style and healthy.
Dr. Thomas Kell scrolled through information on his tablet. It was the same design, but not the same unit that Mark had hacked and monitored just a moment ago. Reams of paper and empty cups and to go containers cluttered his desk. It created a wall preventing Mark from seeing Kell’s screen. Mark thought that the barrier of trash would be all the security the doctor would ever need.
“You use a lot of paper, Doctor Kell.”
Thomas Kell nodded without looking up. “I had to prepare reports for a meeting. It got away from me a little.”
Kell wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his lab coat. As he swallowed, he looked Mark up and down where the contactor sat on the other side of the messy desk.
Kell asked, “Do you not like the chicken salad? I think it’s actually made from turkey. I like the golden raisins in it. I could have gotten you something else.”
“No, I’m fine,” Mark said. “Talk to me about what you need with the security set-up.”
“I’m going to be on conference calls, video links, and satellite uplinks with facilities in Indonesia, Guan, and who knows how many other places,” Dr. Kell said. “All of that needs to be encrypted.”
“That’s not a problem,” Mark said. “Are all the facilities involved in these communications CDR assets? They are all on the CDR network systems?”
Dr. Kell stared at the wall above Mark’s head for a moment and then nodded. “Yes. They are all our offices and factories.”
Mark set the container of untouched food aside onto a stack of books that looked like textbooks to Mark. “That’s no problem at all then. We can encrypt on both ends with the code and the key. It can all be contained within CDR’s network and protected from tampering. Even if a rogue employee wanted to sell the key to a competitor, they would be unable to.”
Dr. Kell nodded and looked back down at his screen. He scrolled with one hand and shoveled mayo laced food with the other. Mark looked away to keep his stomach settled. His grandmother used to make seven layer salads for every event. Mark started to think she had stock in mayo companies. He could smell it for days after she was done making something. By the time the oily stink of it was out of the house, she was making another one for a dinner on the lawn or some women’s group’s charity event. Church fellowships in Mark’s memories were a torture of superstitions and mayonnaise aging in the sun.
Dr. Kell said, “We are working on some advanced processors.”
Mark’s breath caught. He hadn’t expected anything useful from his point of view from this meeting, but Thomas Kell was hinting that he might be cracking the door on some the secrets. This was the man himself showing that he might be interested in talking about his work. He might lift the corner of the veil on golden glow inside the
secret chamber. This was the guy that spoke directly with the mystery inside the Holy of Holies.
Mark tried to play it cool. “Oh?”
Dr. Kell shook his head. “I can’t talk about any of this, but I need the connections … the data … protected.”
“If the data is being stored in the servers, that won’t be a problem either,” Mark Spencer said feeling a little deflated. The keeper of the golden light had dropped the veil again without showing anything.
“We are having a problem with the storage and sensor system being part of our old system and the object of study being much faster. It’s creating problems. I wasn’t sure if there was a way to secure these connections while at the same time … not losing the data to the slower processing system.” Dr. Kell sighed. “This is probably outside your purview. Nevermind. Just be sure the data is secure while being easy for me to retrieve.”
Mark swallowed. He decided to make a stab at it. “Listen, I signed an NDA. After I leave here, all the equipment I used and all the codes that allowed me access will be out of my reach. You can utilize me while I am here. CDR cleared me for the work. I can help set this up the way you need it set up, but you have to tell me what you need in order to get what you need. You know what I mean?”
Dr. Kell looked up and stared at Mark. Mark tried his best to keep from looking nervous. Dr. Kell looked away. “We are dealing with quantum processing. Most of our system is fast, but it is not as fast as where the data is originating. We need a way to capture all of that without the difference between the two creating gaps like it is now.”
Mark narrowed his eyes. “Quantum processors? That leaves a wide range of equipment we could be talking about. That goes a little beyond just writing a simple protocol or running a virus scanner. We would be dealing with hardware engineering on the security and the connections you are talking about.”
“Yes, that would be our key problem,” Dr. Kell said. “I have smart people on our teams, but this is new ground we’re venturing into and we’re all playing catch up while CDR and its partners want to barrel forward into the next phase of everything and the next phase beyond that.”
“God bless capitalism,” Mark said.
Dr. Kell laughed and then choked. He coughed and took a drink from his soda.
Mark took a deep breath and said, “Modern quantum processors in the general market today – the general market being companies and labs wealthy enough to have anything like that – are operating at about 1000 Qubits. My guess is that your project would be a little past that or you wouldn’t be working with it.”
“You could say that. Yes,” Dr. Kell said with a flat expression.
Mark stared for a moment. “Normally, I would suggest a drop and capture system. Instead of trying to stream the data in real time when the processing differential is so great, you catch it all and let the slower storage system roll through the data separately between experiments. If the processing power is exponentially different though, that would create a backlog of data which would eventually be insurmountable. In that case, we’ll need to get creative with your resources to make it work.”
Dr. Kell licked his lips and took a deep breath before he spoke. “Let’s say that the difference is exponential. If normal quantum computers were fast enough, we would be using those, but even they are not fast enough anymore.”
“Wow,” Mark said. “Okay. Then, the question is how important is this project line to CDR and how many resources are they able and willing to give you to deal with this problem?”
“Let’s say very important and a lot,” Dr. Kell said.
Mark nodded. “Once I have the security encryption in place between facilities, we can bounce the backlog processing between idle servers and systems throughout CDR’s entire global network. Speed wouldn’t be an issue on the back end then. It would be like a file backup system that operates in the background when the computer is in use. It expands and contracts its use of the computer’s capacity depending on what’s available. We could do the same thing on a global scale with your data and you won’t lose anything then.”
Dr. Kell nodded, but stared at the floor in front of his desk between the piles of trash. “Would you be able to do that without putting CDR systems at risk?”
“I can. I’ll be securing those systems anyway for your uplinks. I’ll set up the processing procedure as part of the encryption. Other facilities won’t even know the data is passing through and wouldn’t be able to see it even if they looked. It would all come back here into your servers zipped up and ready to be correlated or analyzed as needed,” Mark said.
“Could that correlation be taking place while the data is processed?” Dr. Kell asked.
Mark fought the urge to smile. He sat still for a moment as if he were giving it some thought instead of containing himself. Mark finally said, “I can do that. It would be a fairly simple algorithm. You would just need to give me the parameters of how you want the data broken down. You can do that without giving away anything proprietary. So, I think we can make that work fine. Yes.”
“Good. This is good,” Dr. Kell said. “I’m glad you’re here, Mark. We should get started on all of this right away.”
“Sure,” Mark said. “There are a few things I’ll need to know on the hardware end.”
“Like what?”
“Quantum processors typically operate cold.”
“Yes.”
Mark felt like he was pushing his luck, but he kept pushing. “Like 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. That might be a problem, if we don’t include that in the hardware design of the basic uplinks.”
“Most of our quantum work is at 0.02 Kelvin like you said,” Dr. Kell said. “That’s part of the reason CDR’s quantum processors are in special facilities off site. Our current experiment is not limited by those temperature extremes.”
Mark stared. “It’s exponentially faster, but doesn’t have to be as cold? How cold then? It matters for what you are asking me to do.”
Dr. Kell looked up toward the ceiling. “Temperature is not an issue. It operates at room temperature.”
Mark stared. “It stays at room temperature? There is no heat issue over extended use?”
“It maintains the ambient temperature throughout its operation regardless,” Dr. Kell said.
Mark was planning in his head, but not along the lines of what Dr. Kell needed.
6
Mark opened his last energy drink. He kicked the other empty cans out from under his computer desk out onto his living room carpet. The sorting program was working perfectly. The CDR security recognized Mark’s computer bank as one of its own. Mark had designed the algorithm to only send the specific data he wanted to see. He could also reach in to explore and take more, if he wanted. The data on “It” was all that interested him and even then he only cared about location and specifications on its capacity.
Dr. Kell had served up the door that Mark needed to be inside CDR’s systems permanently. Even after he stole “It,” he’d be able to keep an eye on everything CDR did. He would have to pull off the caper in a way that kept him from being discovered. He would have to cover his tracks well once CDR started investigating everyone looking for an inside job as they eventually would.
Contractors were the first suspected, but Mark knew he was smarter than all of them and could keep them from finding him and “It.” They would be reeling after the death wave shook up their precious headquarters. It might take them days or weeks to figure out they had been robbed. Mark would be ready to go into hiding. They might think he was dead for a while along with tens of thousands of others. By the time he surfaced, he would have an alibi too. How could he have possibly known that anything like this was coming in order to plan any sort of robbery? CDR wouldn’t see it coming and they would be unable to imagine that a simple contactor could have figured out what they didn’t. He was smarter than them because he had figured it out and it took him one day to be completely inside their system without them knowing.<
br />
He took another long swallow of his drink and felt his heart racing. It might explode if he kept it up, but he was feeling indestructible as he watched his magic working right in front of his eyes across his screen.
It had only taken him one day. He was a god among men. He was in command of the universe and manipulated everything in it. The power of “It” would soon serve him too.
For all his godlike power, Mark still had no eyes on the object. Without fear of discovery, he could move through all camera feeds. He could look through recorded footage too. Dr. Kell had gone to his cluttered office at about 8:00. The light had gone out less than thirty minutes later, but Kell had not come out. He must be sleeping on his couch using his empty Styrofoam containers as a pillow. No eyes on the object in the lab though. He had the feeds up looking at the golden light dance off the darkened walls.
There were cameras in the lab, but they were deactivated. Mark couldn’t figure out how to bring them back up.
There had been no efforts to move the object either. If there had, Mark could have watched it on the other cameras. He could have an idea about what was involved in transporting it. It would have to be moved some time.
Mark used the meantime and the dizzying energy boost from his drinks to scan through the old bubbles of the conversations between Dr. Kell and “It.” Mark had begun with the first hello and the moment where “It” had realized that “It” wasn’t alone in the universe. Mark had stared at that exchange in the conversation for a long while. There was something unnerving about that – a great power suddenly discovering the existence of other beings. What would a powerful creature do with that knowledge?
It was a long while before Dr. Kell got around to exploring “Its” ability to see and predict the future. There were endless exchanges about processing power and capacity. All of that mattered to defining “It,” but Mark found himself wildly frustrated by Thomas Kell’s geological slowness and meticulous nature. He did not seem like the kind of researcher CDR would tolerate at all much less put in charge of multiple projects.
