To Hunt a Sub

by Jacqui Murray

  A loud murmur prevented him from answering as the next presenter approached the stage.

  Chapter 8

  Kali gave Cat a thumbs up as she stuffed herself and her baggage into an empty seat at the back of the room. No last minute flights or coffee stains for Cat. A tailored navy blue suit trimmed in white piping snugged her body, her flaxen hair knotted into a braid and secured with a pearl clip. She stood on the dais, just Cat and an oversized screen. The lights dimmed and animated waves appeared on the monitor as she began to speak.

  “An important part of America’s national security is a policy called Mutually-assured Destruction—you attack us, we destroy you with submarine-launched nuclear missiles. Other than that, the sole mission of these submarines, as declared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is strategic deterrence. They can remain submerged for up to six months because they make their own air and water. Their reactors can run for decades without refueling. 24/7/365, loaded with half our national stockpile of warheads, they troll the oceans. Each nuke can split in flight and hit over a hundred targets—thousands of people—with more destructive power than the sum of WWII’s Little Boy and Fat Man.

  “Without firing a shot, they have convinced our enemies an assault on America will be Armageddon.

  “That changes today.” Stockbury held up a glass tub holding a blob of dark viscous goo. “Meet NEV, the computer virus that cyberexperts can’t stop. Unlike traditional data-based malware, this one is built with DNA.” She waggled a finger. “This DNA. I have millions of weaponizable cells on my fingertip.”

  “Excuse me, Ms. Stockbury.” The judge’s lips were pursed, voice stiff and surly. “This is a field I have some expertise in. A Trident computer network is shielded by a high-tech firewall.”

  Stockbury locked onto her.

  “Designed to shield it from the most advanced viruses, yes yes, but it has a fatal flaw: It searches for a script with zeros and ones, not the six organic bases in DNA. This allows NEV to sneak undetected past the gatekeepers and into the living heart of the network.”

  “But,” the judge sniffed, “it would still identify NEV as foreign to the system. It won’t let anything through that doesn’t belong.”

  This time, Stockbury sighed loudly. “Then you know the Sysadmin accomplishes this by looking for irregularities—the dent made on active system processes that are other than those commanded. NEV doesn’t leave one because it’s organic.”

  She turned away and was again interrupted.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Stockbury.” This time it was Dr. Fairgrove. “How does it get in?” His well-established reputation made every word he uttered seem charged with import and authority.

  Cat wiped her index finger through a tiny tub. “I smear this goo on either the Ethernet cable or the computer’s WiFi antenna. It is stuffed with nanorobots so small they slip through the atoms of the cable and then probe for an open port. When the computer calls out, NEV enters with the legitimate traffic—a wolf in sheep’s wool.” A sub materialized, gliding mutely through the black waters. An hour glass tumbled twice, replaced by a green circle. “Once inside, NEV awaits the trigger to unleash its programmed instructions.” Without warning, the sub rumbled to a halt, dead in the water.

  A muted rumble of questions engulfed the room. The lady judge next to Dr. Fairgrove shouted over the noise, “Ms. Stockbury. How can DNA—an organic compound—talk to a silicon-based computer?”

  Her tone was smug.

  “Think about the pacemaker installed in a human body to help the heart, or deep brain stimulators and cochlear implants—mechanical devices that function symbiotically with living body parts. They are expected to communicate effortlessly and effectively with your body though one is DNA-based and the other isn’t. NEV operates on the same principle.”

  Stockbury waved off the rest of the waving hands, her face now rigid, stance wide, eyes piercing. “I neutralized this $2.4 billion key to national defense for the price of a stamp—using one of the most freely-available molecules on earth. The only tricky part is believing it will work. Once the bad guys make that intellectual leap, America is at grave risk. Public Enemy #1 isn’t the suicide bomber or the warrior with an AK-47. It is this virus.”

  With that, Catherine packed up her computer and left the platform

  A cold shiver ran down Rowe’s spine. Is this what happened to James’ missing sub? He scanned the room. Two individuals sat frozen in their seats, faces flushed. One was a youthful man, Spanish or Italian, probably a student, eyes wide, knuckles white where they gripped the chair back. Another was a journalist Rowe vaguely recognized, a glisten of perspiration on his brow, shoulders so tight Rowe thought they would crush his ears.

  Rowe ran the reporter’s photo through a visual recognition program and Carston Devore’s name popped up, a reporter with the New York Times Science section. Worth a chat when the presentations ended. The other, he emailed to James. He slipped into the hall, phone to his ear.

  “Bobby. Look at Catherine Stockbury. Her invention may explain what happened to your missing sub,” and he gave a quick rundown on NEV.

  James listened in stunned silence. “Is it possible?”

  Rowe’s intel training included chemistry, biology, and a myriad of other scientific disciplines. He understood Stockbury’s logic, but it sounded too simple to be true. “All cell walls are permeable to varying degrees. Wires and cables are just a different sort of cell wall, penetration dictated solely by the particle attempting to breach the barrier. The right make-up would allow the nanobots in the goo to do exactly what Stockbury postulates.”

  “We may need her. Tell me if I trust her,” and James disconnected.

  A ping announced the arrival of James’ file on Stockbury. She earned straight A’s in high school despite a penchant for living on the edge. Daddy’s deep well of money bought off several youthful indiscretions. After graduating summa cum laude from Brown University, she toured Europe with one of her professors, but dumped him in Italy when Columbia’s grad program called.

  When he looked up, Stockbury’s penetrating gaze was fixed on him.

  Chapter 9

  “Cute, in a bad boy macho way.” Cat lasered in on Zeke Rowe. He stood along the back wall, feet spread, hands in his pockets, gaze fixed on her but made no effort to get through the mob jostling for her attention.

  “Excuse me. Ms. Stockbury.” A hand tugged her sleeve. “My name is Carston Devore, with the New York Times—”

  Cat shook off the grasp. “I’m not talking to journalists.” Her tone could freeze hydrogen. She turned back to Kali.

  “But keep your attention on that silver-haired judge.”

  Where other men his age thickened around the chest and upper arms, he retained the athletic build of a field researcher, but wrapped in an Armani suit. Bangs spilled artfully over furrowed brows almost hiding his crystal blue eyes. Whatever he was saying to the pinched-face grey-haired woman next to him pulled her mouth into a chuckle, muscles Kali was pretty sure she rarely used.

  “Who is he?”

  “Dr. Fairgrove. Talk about bad boy. He oozes mystery like a bachelor’s bedroom.”

  “Wynton Fairgrove?” Every article Kali had read about Dr. Wynton Fairgrove described an earnest intellectual who accepted with grace the ups and downs of a research career.

  As though he heard Kali, he caught her eye. She flushed and fumbled with Otto’s drives, displays, speakers and scent ports. She felt like an insect under a microscope—until he winked.

  Delamagente stood on the platform, hands folded in front of her body, one leg straight and the other bent. She made eye contact with no one and the only people displaying undue interest were the same two entranced by Stockbury’s presentation.

  Rowe skimmed his notes on her. Pregnant at fourteen, Delamagente’s parents raised the baby while their daughter continued her education. Her Mom taught music on a secondhand piano while Dad did odd jobs. They got by—no arrests, no credit card bills, income tax filed on ti
me. By all accounts, the family seemed happy. When her parents died unexpectedly, her grandparents stepped in to raise mother and toddler. Delamagente graduated high school with honors and Columbia three years later with a double major in Evolutionary Biology and Computer Science. When her grandparents died too, she disappeared, foregoing a prestigious research stipend and a privileged academic future. It wasn’t until Sean entered ninth grade that she reappeared as a grad student at her alma mater.

  One oddity: The grandparents filed several police reports about an unknown male stalking their granddaughter. The officers assumed it was Sean’s father and made little effort to find the man.

  Kali was worried. Cat had left in the company of two men wearing dark suits and bored faces. Her best friend wouldn’t miss this presentation for any reason other than an emergency.

  “You may begin.”

  Kali smoothed her skirt nervously after one final glance at the door, and started.

  “Intelligence services—HUMINT, ELINT, and SIGINT—collect information in the hope they can safeguard our nation. The problem is, there’s too much. Mountains of it every day. Individuals generate over 5.6 zettabytes—that’s five hundred sixty trillion terabytes—of emails, websites, documents, blogs, photos, and movies every day. How does an analyst sort, understand, and ultimately extract clues from that haystack?”

  A picture materialized of a serene meadow. “Meet Otto.” An earthy scent wafted across the room. Unseen insects buzzed and a bird’s mournful call swelled and waned.

  “His job is to collect, analyze, and share information. Lots of it. He excels at pinpointing abnormalities the human eye would miss.”

  A stream of black and white text replaced the meadow, single-spaced in a Times New Roman font, size twelve, rolled endlessly down the screen.

  “What’s anomalous in this text report? To determine that, traffic analysts would eliminate disinformation, highlight repeated words, phrases, patterns, and compare findings to other intelligence agencies. They would use the subjective process of ‘experience’ to decide if, say, a downturn in communication indicates a delay in plans, a lack of them, or a finalization.”

  Kali dipped her head thoughtfully, giving credit to proven protocol. “Otto’s approach is different. He begins each event as John Locke’s tabula rasa, a blank slate unaffected by experiences or emotions or a hoped-for goal. Upon command, he executes a common AI function called ‘grokking’: He sends web crawlers, bots and spiders to collect information—everything, not just what a human agent considers important—sorts and examines, then delivers his report as a movie including the visual, tactile, olfactive, and acoustic elements that informed his deductions.

  “Let’s say I want to write a biography about Dr. Fairgrove.” She approached the surprised judge with slow, measured steps. “I might read articles and interview his colleagues to find out about his research and incendiary rise to fame. I could collect intimate details from a friend he’s dating like restaurants he frequents and movies he’s seen.”

  Dr. Fairgrove leaned back in his chair with an engaging smile. By now, Kali stood in front of him as though this conversation included just them.

  “Does this mean I know you? Am I coloring my conclusions by my respect for what you’ve accomplished in a treacherous field?” There were a few nods among the judges and audience and she stepped back a pace.

  “Otto never does that. He takes everything at face value and in the process, may uncover a hidden secret you shared with no one. A digital detective like Otto reads the electronic footprints marking your passage around our world. He’ll find every receipt ever entered into a database, every image taken by surveillance cameras or doting fans and uploaded to YouTube or Facebook. He’ll grab every internet-based email with your name in it, even if they’re deleted. Then, he’ll make reasoned, logical deductions from these facts.”

  To Kali’s surprise, Dr. Fairgrove went rigid, his smile tight and his face pallid. She turned away, back to the other judges.

  She punched a few keys and the text became a village street with crude shacks spaced along the rough edges. To the casual observer, they were alike, but Otto zoomed in on one.

  “A well-trained intel agent would mention the two windows in the front of this house, but not that one was an inch higher. Since he failed to relay this fact, analysts on the other end missed the local militia group’s headquarters.”

  She shook her head. “This is not the agent’s fault. Human beings are hard-wired to reject inconsequential details—which they may or may not be—and concentrate on what experience and agenda underscores. Otto, though, doesn’t.”

  “Let’s consider a second example. If you walk through a pitch dark room, sealed to preclude the slightest wisp of light, Otto can still record your passage as though brightly lit. His acoustic skills exceed a dog’s and his vision beats any night owl out there. He collects data from the contents of the room—their mass, the scent of the materials they were made of…”

  Kali swiped a finger across the judges’ wood desk and snuffled in the fragrance of oil.

  “…their ability to absorb and desorb heat. He gathers odors—smoke, perfume, food you ate—expelled through your pores. He creates a probable phenotypic representation from the DNA of skin cells or hair shed. He determines your height and mass by the air displacement as you walked through the room and your slight gravitational pull against other matter in the enclosure.”

  Kali took several steps. “He would decipher the impressions of your feet as they hit the ground, your body as it brushed objects, your hand on the doorknob. In the end, he would have a complete delineation of you and your journey.”

  Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she prepared her coup de grace. “My final video shows a revolutionary conclusion Otto reached based on readily-available data. His analysis will upend the scientific world. If you fund my research, Otto can do the same for American intelligence services.”

  Gray snow popped and flickered like tiny fireflies, covering the screen. “Otto is honing in on space-time coordinates I provided.”

  The graininess cleared to show golden grass bordering an archipelago of volcanoes. Kali gritted her teeth, trying to tamp down the panic that threatened to swamp her confidence. This wouldn’t be Boah and Ump and their miraculous story. Otto had dropped her somewhere else.

  “I’m… glad… this happened,” she stuttered as she fidgeted with Otto’s commands, “because it highlights the differences—the difference between my project without funds—sufficient funds—” she flashed a banal depiction of three migrating hominids onto the screen, “—and this.”

  Surely the judges heard the bass drum that boomed in her chest as she paraded a color print of Boah and Ump and Lucy in front of them. They squinted and started writing on their tablets. It took one question to defeat her: How did she authenticate the picture?

  Chapter 10

  Monday, late afternoon

  Rowe sat on his still-unfinished steps and absorbed the last of the day’s warmth. A lawnmower purred and the rich scent of loam filtered through his subconscious as his brain browsed the details of Stockbury’s virus. Instinct told him there was more here than a simple prototype. Somehow, this research had gotten Alfred Zematis killed.

  His satphone jangled. He gulped the last of his coffee and answered. “Hey, Bobby. I’m leaving in a few days and wanted—”

  James interrupted. “We found the sub.”

  Rowe exhaled. The tightness in his shoulders loosened a turn. “How?”

  “Someone banging Morse Code on the hull. One of our Cruiser’s on the way to Haiti picked it up. We were just in time. They were down to their last O2 candle.

  A couple of hours. “Do you know what happened?”

  “The Captain says there were no malfunctions, no warnings. One moment, everything was fine, and then the power vanished and the sub sank.”

  “That’s why you pulled Stockbury out of the meeting.”

  “Pretty suspici
ous her virus can disable a sub. We thought it might be a stunt, to get our attention. When we confronted her, she became hysterical, said she warned us a year ago but no one listened. She told them she could fix the problem if it was a DNA virus, just take her where she could contact the sub.”

  “I hope you took her up on it.”

  James snorted. “Either that or tow a 10,000-ton 550-foot block of iron to port. If that’s even possible. We gave her a lab, a computer, and babysitters to keep her legit. In ten minutes, she built a program to quarantine the virus—if it exists. Our scientists tested it successfully on a mock-up. A SEAL team delivered it via a Rescue Bell. The sub should be underway in a few hours.”

  Before Rowe could get beyond a surprised grunt, James added. “There’s more.

  “Once the patch was installed, Stockbury could study the installation remotely, to make sure there would be no surprises. She said the code is primitive. It was programmed to restart select systems and send the sub to pre-ordained coordinates.”

  Rowe locked down the fear building in his chest. “Like Cuba.”

  James grunted, “But it wouldn’t have worked. One piece of luck. If our Cruiser hadn’t been there or the sub sank into an ocean trench, we never would have found it.”

  Rowe’s stomach heaved. He swallowed. “Does whoever did this know they succeeded?”

  “Stockbury says the virus sent a ping just before everything shut down.”

  Rowe jumped up off the steps and started pacing, head down. “So someone knows they can disable our subs—”

  “Ships, fighter jets, anything run by computers. Stockbury says the virus isn’t selective.”

  Rowe paused a moment, let the silence sit, and then asked, “How do we stop it?”

  James barked at the word ‘we’, but Rowe ignored him. This virus was as dangerous as any he’d encountered. The only edge the US had right now was surprise. Whoever was behind this didn’t know Stockbury had decloaked them.