'Oh, but I was. I was always a believer, Virginia. I still am. It's just that neither you nor Accosta ever thought to ask me who I believed in.'
It was the combination of his eagerness to embrace the Red Pope's revelation and the contrasting vision Ariel had shown her in the dream that had made her reach for the computer.
Using the track pad on the top right of the keyboard, she activated the on-screen Optinet icon to get access to the optical Internet. Within seconds she had called up the Optrix portal and used her own personal access code to enter Optrix's Data Security Provider. With the advent of the optical Internet, speed and weight of traffic were no longer an issue but security was: data travelled at such quicksilver speeds on the Optinet that information thieves could raid a company or an individual's data files and escape with their booty before the victim could blink.
Since the international data security agreement of 2004, hardly any company or individual stored their own data. Virtually everyone was now linked up to the Optinet and subscribed to third-party Data Security Providers or DSPs. Using quantum codes, these data banks were regarded as hacker-proof and security was guaranteed. Each subscriber was given a randomly generated code, known by no one else, including the DSE.
Using her code, Amber accessed the Optrix DSE Once she was in, she used the search engine to check the Optrix corporate client archive, paying particular attention to international utilities. It took her less than three minutes to confirm her suspicion.
'What's this dream you had, Amber?' the associate director asked.
Amber rubbed her eyes then briefly explained, concluding, All I'm saying is that it convinced me the Red Pope's truth wasn't the only truth.'
'Of course it wasn't the only truth,' Riga agreed. 'What Accosta saw was the truth of a damned man, a man excommunicated from the Mother Church. What your sister saw was the virtuous truth of the Catholic-'
Angrily Fleming shook his head. 'Have you learnt nothing? How do you know this has anything to do with being a Catholic - or even a Christian? If Accosta saw a vision of Hell it was because he arrogantly thought he knew all the answers and killed people to prove it. Whereas Amber's sister lived a good life - it's as simple as that. It's got nothing to do with religion.'
'The point,' said Riga, unfazed, 'is that we're at war for the souls of humanity. God has allowed the Devil to test us, and we must rise to the challenge. Until now everyone believed the greatest trick Satan could play was convincing us he didn't exist. But that ain't true. His greatest trick's convincing us that only he exists. That's why it's imperative the signs are stopped.'
'That's not the only reason,' said Jones. 'It might be your job to save our eternal souls, Father, but I'm more concerned here about our living bodies. If I remember my Bible then the four horsemen of the Apocalypse don't exactly bring health, wealth and happiness to the world.'
'Could someone remind an embarrassed atheist what each of these horsemen does bring?' Fleming asked.
Riga leant forward in his chair, his lined face grave and unsmiling. According to the Book of Revelation the four horsemen ride on different coloured mounts. The first is a white rider, who spreads civil unrest; the next a red rider who brings war, then a black rider with famine. The final horseman is the pale rider.'
'What does he bring?'
'Death.'
There was a beat, then Fleming spoke again. 'Will they come in that order?'
Riga shrugged. All we know is that the first sign has already spread civil unrest and, according to the Red Pope, the third and fourth will arrive together.'
'Otherwise we know diddly,' the FBI man said. 'We've got no real way of knowing in what order they'll come or in what form.' He checked his watch. 'Mind you, we'll know soon enough. The second sign's due at any time.'
'The signs will be engineered by man,' Riga declared.
'How do you mean?'
'God is testing us. He won't bring a natural disaster. He's testing our free will. The civil unrest, the first sign, came about as a result of power cuts and Accosta's announcement. I think the others will occur in a similar way. He'll use people, tempting them to do evil. The signs will be man-made. Accosta himself predicted that an "agent on earth" would bring the signs.'
'That's what I was trying to tell you,' Amber said. 'I think I know who the agent on earth is.' Fleming understood. 'Bradley.' 'Yup. I've looked in the Optrix database and confirmed that every single city around the world that suffered power cuts employs a highly sophisticated computerized system to manage their utilities. All these systems are optical based and use key components bought, either directly or indirectly, from Optrix.'
Associate Director Jones frowned. 'You're saying that Bradley Soames was behind the power cut?' 'Yup.' 'But why?'
'He's a pawn of Satan,' said Riga, matter-of-factly. 'He has taken on the task of fulfilling the signs to convince the world that the Red Pope's revelation was the one and only truth. He serves the Devil and intends to kill faith in God.'
The FBI chief looked sceptical. 'What do you think, Amber? He was your partner.'
Amber had always thought she knew Soames better than anyone, but his recent actions didn't tally with the man she had thought she knew - the man. who had changed the world for the good and given away millions in philanthropy and for medical research. Could he have some strange affinity with a darker power? A shiver ran through her when she remembered the time he had woken her from her dream and she had looked into his eyes. 'Frankly, I don't know why he's doing it,' she said. 'What do you think, Miles?'
He rubbed his chin. 'I wouldn't use quite the same language as Father Riga, but for once I find myself agreeing with him. Whatever Bradley's motives, he's committed to proving Accosta right.'
'How?' demanded one of the tech agents. 'All those systems are protected by qubit codes.'
'Yeah, and even if he could break some,' said another, 'just orchestrating every city to power up and power down with the rising and setting of the sun would require an incredible feat of computer muscle.
Amber caught Fleming's eye and could see he was thinking the same as her. 'Soames is a very bright guy,' she said, 'and he's got a computer with the necessary muscle.'
'I saw it in the red sector beneath VenTec,' Fleming agreed. 'It's a massive ball of light in the main borehole of the rig. Right down in the heart of the mountain.'
'I helped build the early prototype,' said Amber. 'It was pretty powerful then, certainly capable of cracking codes and manipulating other computers on-line, and Bradley's refined it since. His dream was always to go beyond the basics of optical computers and create one with genuine quantum capabilities - what he called the Last Computer. It's capable of ten to the power of fifty-one operations per second - that's one with fifty-one zeroes after it - but its photonic quantum bits of qubits can employ an unimaginable number of super-positional states, allowing it to process infinite calculations simultaneously. Breaking quantum codes isn't a problem for a machine of this power.' She looked down at her computer and began tapping keys. 'I'll see if I can use a double S to find it on the web, and then I'll try to access its database, but it won't be easy'
The two FBI technical agents at the table, who were specialists in state-of-the-art computer and electronics technology, were bewildered. 'What's a "double S"?' one asked.
A stealth seeker,' Amber replied. 'Something we've been developing at Optrix. Basically it's an intelligent virus, a package of quantum code that I can send down the optical Internet to search for things. It will find any site I tell it to and then, without being detected, work out how to gain access to its data before reporting back.'
It took her seven minutes to construct the stealth seeker and tap in the search parameters before sending it on its way. 'Done,' she said, with a satisfied smile. 'It's on its own now, searching the Optinet. It should report back in about-'
Her screen froze and began to fizz, a stream of data scrolling crazily up and down the monitor. A bizarre screeching sound like a
fax emanated from the speakers.
'What the hell was that?' the tech agent said, from the unaffected video conference screen.
'I don't know,' Amber said. 'I didn't do it.'
Pandemonium was breaking out behind Associate Director Jones. The lines of agents in front of their computers were staring at their screens and she could see, from the few that were visible, that they were all fizzing like hers.
The phone rang beside Jones and he picked it up. 'I understand,' he said. 'Yeah, I'll check it out.' He put the phone down. 'That was Washington. The Hoover building and the Quantico Academy have the same problem. Their databases are going mad and apparently it's not just the Bureau. This has been happening for the last few minutes and it's pretty widespread. Turn one of the screens to BBC.
Suddenly there were scenes of the New York Stock Exchange: people stood in shocked silence on the dealing floor as, above them, the giant screens giving prices for blue-chip stock went as crazy as Amber's. 'Wall Street is reeling,' a commentator was saying. 'Institutions across the globe are trying to come to grips with a phenomenon that makes past fears of the Y2K bug a fond memory. A world already in shock is asking itself one question: is this the Red Pope's second sign?'
As if on cue, the giant Wall Street screen featured in the live report went blank. Moments later, so did Amber's. Then, almost immediately, she was back on-line, and so were the others.
With one important difference.
There was no longer any data on any of the screens. Every single monitor showed only row upon row of zeroes.
*
The black sector conference room
The chaos and panic of the second sign far outweighed that caused by the first. Every stock and share price in every bourse in the world, from Wall Street to the Hang Seng, was reset to zero. Every bank account of every corporation, government and individual was wiped out at a single stroke. Credit cards didn't work in stores or online. Cash machines wouldn't operate because they couldn't identify customers' smart cards or locate money in any accounts.
But it went much further than the financial markets and the banks. Criminal records were expunged from every computerized database in the world - from the FBI in Washington to Interpol in Paris and Scotland Yard in London. Government records of citizenship, tax liability and voting rights vanished. Medical insurance policies, academic records, including exam results and school registers, were wiped clean. Scientific research files and medical records were erased. Military data and personnel records disappeared. Each of the high security Data Security Providers on the optical Internet was raided and all the data stored in them deleted. Every online computer database, website, archive, library and storage facility in existence was purged. If something wasn't printed, stored offline, written down or remembered, it was gone. It was as if the mind and memory of the entire technological world had been obliterated.
Bradley Soames sat in the black sector conference room, watching the hysterical news bulletins from around the world. All was chaos and panic, and it was good.
Rising from his chair, he walked towards the red sector elevator. The wolves followed him. In the elevator the humming was louder than usual and he looked down through the tinted-glass floor of the cabin. The orb of light beneath him was fiercely beautiful, pulsing as he'd never seen it before. Streaks of lightning seemed to shoot around the inside of the sphere, giving it the appearance of a sunstorm. The elevator stopped just above it. The light-sealed doors opened on to the control room and the laboratories that surrounded the borehole.
Tripp and Bukowski stood at the bank of terminals that controlled the computer. Bukowski turned to him, her eyes shining.
'How's it going?' he asked. 'Any retrieval or capacity problems?'
Bukowski laughed. 'It's incredible,' she said. 'We haven't even deployed a fraction of its capacity and transmission has been even better than we could ever have imagined. No data corruption whatsoever.'
Soames wasn't surprised, but he was relieved. He tried to control his growing impatience to finish this, reminding himself that everything was on schedule and it was his duty to adhere to the predicted timings to fulfil the signs. The last two would arrive together and on time as announced, and then his mission on this earth would be accomplished.
A phone rang. Tripp picked it up then handed it to him.
It was Carvelli. 'The insurance policy is in place and on its way' he said.
'Excellent,' Soames replied. 'Come directly to my quarters when you arrive.'
He sat down and watched the fireball of harnessed light through the tinted viewing window. Sighing, he picked a piece of flaking skin off his forearm and fed it absently to a wolf. Tiredness swept through him, born of decades of waiting, planning and knowing.
It's almost over, he told himself again, quelling the almost intolerable need to bring the final signs forward and finish it now.
You're so close now, he cautioned himself. It's only a matter of time before your purpose is finally fulfilled.
*
The rangers' station
Fleming didn't share the panic that had descended on the world. He was thinking about Soames. Knowing that the man was behind this helped somehow: it offered him the chance of redemption because at last he had someone to fight, someone who could explain the Red Pope's announcement.
And explaining Soames's technology to the FBI had rekindled a memory; something Soames had said about each soul having a unique barcode. It had given him an idea, which offered the hope of finally contacting Rob's soul and proving that he was free of suffering. For now, though, he had to help resolve the chaos and disorder that surrounded him.
Apart from a few blips, communications were largely unaffected by the data crisis, and computers were soon operational again, with software programs largely intact. However, the computers and their programs were empty husks, as if they had just been purchased. All stored information was gone; all databases had been erased. And it was the shocked expressions on the tech agents' faces that helped Fleming make the connection to the Red Pope's prediction. 'This is the second sign,' he said, looking at the zeroes on the screens.
Associate Director Jones stopped pacing and put down the phone into which he had been barking instructions. 'It's a goddamned disaster,' he said. 'The whole world's got Alzheimer's. Society's on its knees. The most basic transactions are impossible. Institutions have no way of knowing who anyone is or even what they are. But it doesn't fit with the four horsemen.'
'No, it doesn't,' agreed Riga.
Fleming rubbed his aching shoulder. 'Tell me again what the black rider brings?'
'Famine,' said Riga.
Fleming sat back and waited for everyone to stop their frantic activity and look at him. 'Isn't that exactly what we've got?' he said. An information famine.'
Amber patted his knee. 'Wait,' she said, tapping keys. 'I think you're right, Miles, but there's even more to it. The stealth seeker I sent out has returned. It couldn't hack into Bradley's computer - it's too powerful - but it has brought back some interesting information. There's been colossal data traffic going down the Optinet into it.' She exhaled. 'Do you want the good news or the bad?'
No one dared say anything.
'Well, the good news is that the data hasn't been deleted. It's potentially retrievable.'
'Where is it?' asked Jones.
'That's the bad news,' she said. 'Bradley Soames has it stored in his super-computer.' 'What?'
'It's possible,' said Amber. 'As far back as the turn of the millennium, scientists used Max Planck's "black body" formula to estimate that a photonic computer of one litre in volume could store ten to the power twenty times more data than an old ten-gigabyte hard drive. And the volume of Bradley Soames's computer is bigger than one litre.'
'It's a hell of a lot bigger,' said Fleming. 'The sphere I saw was at least twenty feet in diameter.' 'We've got to get the data back,' said Jones. 'We've got to do more than that,' said Fleming. 'Not only have we got to rescue t
he data, we've also got to close down his computer. It's obvious that Bradley Soames is using it to carry out the Red Pope's signs. He did it with the first and now this. It's safe to assume he'll use it to trigger the last two, which, according to the Red Pope, are due to happen together in a little over twenty-four hours. It seems he's decided to save the two big ones till last - his grand finale.'
'War and death,' said Riga, with a grim nod. 'Exactly,' said Fleming. 'And if they happen it's game over.' He turned to Amber. 'If you were Bradley, how would you use his computer to fulfil the last two signs?'
Amber leant back in her chair and rubbed her temples. Despite her exhaustion, her feline green eyes burned even brighter than usual and her fuzzy halo of hair had a softness about it that made Fleming want to touch it. 'What would I do?' she mused. 'Well, given that virtually every computer system in the world is linked up to the Optinet, I'd activate one of the military installations. Perhaps one of the biological warfare containment labs at USAMRIID, or in Iraq or Israel-'
Lucifer (aka the Lucifer Code) (2001) Page 26
