The Sword of Cyrus: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 4)

by JC Ryan

  Before too many weeks passed, little separated the Middle Eastern staff from any of the others. They rapidly learned the company culture, one of tolerance and laid-back social interaction combined with a strong work ethic in most employees. No one worked harder than they, but no one played harder, either. The snow-covered peaks of the Rockies beckoned everyone to get outside for hiking and skiing at every opportunity, leading to organized outings on the weekends for those who cared to be with their co-workers seven days a week.

  Daniel was pleasantly surprised. During the height of the flu crisis, when rhetoric was flying and nukes were deployed, he’d imagined a swarthy face with black hair, mustache and beard as the face of the enemy. Now, he recognized similar faces in the halls every day, but they no longer looked sinister to him. Their expressions were open, their greetings friendly. When he mentioned it to Sarah or others, they agreed. This was working out very nicely.

  Daniel and some of the others who’d had the most misgivings began to relax. A feeling of optimism pervaded the halls of Rossler Foundation headquarters, a shared belief among the founders that perhaps they’d gotten through the bad times and would enjoy peace from then on.

  ~~~

  Roy found that working with Raj on locating references to anything that could be classified as nanotech to be very refreshing. He understood Raj’s work, and Raj was a quick study in the nuances of nanotech. The original meaning of the word had morphed into a broader concept. Now anything that was very small, in other words, microscopic, or that utilized manipulation of atoms on the subatomic level, might have the moniker attached to it. In the 10th Cycle, there was a direct translation of the word technology, but ‘nano’ was unknown. To focus his search, Raj asked for Arabic words for tiny, infinitesimal, delicate and precise. If those turned up no records for similar words in the index, he would go to Aramaic. Though the 10th Cycle language wasn’t actually Arabic, but rather resembled Sumerian, Raj had learned that Arabic was a good start when he wanted to search the index. Pronouncing the words he located was a different matter. The word that was closest to all of those concepts looked like a squiggle to Roy, and sounded, to both of them, like ‘dufokik’.

  “Let’s stick with calling it nanotech,” suggested Roy, rolling his eyes at the unfamiliar sound.

  “Of course. There is no reason to call it anything else,” replied Raj. “But, we must now ask Sinclair to translate this word into the Linear A symbols, and then we can find the references in the database.” His offhand use of the linguistics term caused Roy’s brain to hiccup.

  “Whatever you say, Raj. You lost me up until you said database,” Roy said, laughing. He put his finger close to the computer screen, almost touching the squiggle. “Is this the word?”

  “That’s funny, my friend. I lose most people when I say database. Yes, that’s it.” Raj wasn’t as dumbfounded as Roy that a squiggle and a few dots could convey a sophisticated meaning. His own native language was usually written in Devanagari script, a series of 54 phonemes with inherent vowels, many of which would have looked like variants of an upside-down and backwards lowercase H to the American beside him.

  When he’d had Sinclair transliterate the Arabic into Linear A, he searched the database for relevant references. In the end, there were hundreds of them, and they were scattered across many sections of the library.

  “What do you want to study first?” Raj asked Roy, after he’d prepared an index of the potential subjects. Roy looked up from the article he was reading on his tablet to see the printout in Ray’s hand.

  “The way I understand it, I don’t get to choose. It has to go through the committee that determines what may be dangerous, before they turn us loose with it.” In fact, Roy was on that committee, but because he was working with known translations until Raj finished his search, it had yet to meet.

  “Ah, yes, the security committee. I am a member of this one, as are you. We can run a report by section, and let the others know we have some leads. So, take a look at this and let me know where you’d like to start, assuming the committee okays it.” Raj handed the stack of papers to Roy, who handled them reverently. He was still in awe of the fact that he would be allowed to work with 10th Cycle material. Only the elite of the scientific world had free run of this stuff.

  “Sounds good. Oh, are you going to give me an internal invoice for your time here and the report printouts? Karsten has me reporting everything to that woman, and she’ll have my hide if I don’t remember everything.” Roy shuddered as he thought of Alica. He was screwed either way. If he reported this expense to her, she’d taunt him with her flashing black eyes, and if he didn’t report to her, she’d come after him. Either way, he was likely to make a fool of himself with his stammering and rubber legs.

  “I can do that. Usually I run a monthly report,” Raj answered, the question unasked but implied in his tone.

  “I’ll see if that will do, or whether she wants it every time I spend part of the budget. I’ll tell you, Raj, that woman’s going to be the death of me.” Roy shuddered again, breaking a sweat this time.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’ll be sitting quietly at my desk, minding my own business, and all of a sudden, she’s there, patting my shoulder, or peering into my face while she asks me a question. Which I can’t answer, because she makes me forget what I’m doing.” The look on Roy’s face was comical, but Raj was sympathetic.

  Raj laughed. “I know that feeling. At least I did until my Sushma decided I was the one for her. Then there was no escape. You must learn to control your emotions, my friend.”

  “That’s easier said than done. I get nervous around women.” The understatement was laughable just by itself. The truth was, Roy dissolved like wet tissue around women.

  “My sympathies are with you, my friend,” Raj said, with sincerity. There’d been a time when he was almost as bad.

  The security committee found a number of worthwhile projects to fund under the nanotech program. They decided to focus on those that would best support the reconstruction programs taking place in the Middle East. Since they had all this funding for the special researchers, and since everyone was interested in modernizing their countries, why not give them the newest and best technology? All under the safeguards that Luke had put in place, of course. They decided on three initial projects; air quality, water quality and electronics. The last came after some debate. There would of course be some military applications for electronics, and they didn’t know exactly what the library would contain. Luke reminded them of the safeguard – no single translator or researcher would get all of the information. It was relatively safe, and they’d be under regular security safeguards as well. With that assurance, the projects were funded and research into these three areas began.

  Roy’s mind wasn’t on the discussion, or he might have reminded the committee that rearranging atoms and molecules on this scale leads to new properties, as he’d mentioned in the presentation five months ago. It was an oversight that would lead to disaster.

  Sinclair was as pleasantly surprised as anyone else by the demeanor of the Middle Easterners. However, he didn’t know them as well as he knew the translators who had been with him for years. Accordingly, he thought it prudent to initially put only one new employee on each section of the nanotech files, similar to Luke’s plan to break up the research phase. The way that the translators worked was that each one had a block of symbols which had been first decoded by computer into Sumerian with the proper skip sequence indicated in the index. It was still a marvel to Sinclair that the 10th Cyclers had packed so much information into so little physical space by the use of skip sequences governing which words were formed. That they had done so with Fibonacci numbers was a miracle, something far beyond his ability to do, though he could easily grasp the concept.

  Once the clear texts were generated, the translators had to do something similar to what the Navajo code-talkers of the Second World War had done. That is, they applied the an
cient words to modern concepts. The 10th Cyclers had obviously expected the dominant language of the current cycle to evolve along the same lines as theirs had, but that hadn’t happened. So translating their words was as much an art as a science, even after all the decoding had taken place. It was slow, painstaking work, and the translators had to have a working knowledge of whatever scientific field of study that they were working on to make any sense of it at all. Sinclair was proud of his team. No one could have made more progress than they, in the few short years since the library was discovered.

  When the first translator had finished a section, a second one was often assigned to check the work and make sure there had been no errors. After the translation was finalized, it would normally be turned over to the researcher who had requested it. In the case of the nanotech files, however, a second determination of the security committee would be required.

  Roy found the process too slow for his requirements, but was gratified to be included on the security committee so that he at least was one of the first to get a look at the translated sections. He was interested in all nanotechnology on a theoretical level, less so in the applied concepts. It wasn’t surprising, then, that he had less interest in the method for removing harmful substances, from industrial waste to human waste, from groundwater, or new catalysts for transforming airborne hydrocarbon particles into harmless gasses, than the electronic applications he was seeing coming out of that project. To keep him happy, Raj suggested that Roy be allowed to experiment with the new information.

  The planted agents of the Sword of Cyrus, however, were already at work undermining the security of the data. Even though they could only get pieces of it, they were each instructed to go ahead and get what they could. They weren’t told that somewhere in Iran, scientists were working to see if they could put the pieces together. If it hadn’t been so dangerous, it would have been funny. Computers on the Boulder end taking an ancient set of data, decoding it, giving it over to human beings to figure out the meaning, and then some of those human beings coding it again and sending it to distant computers, who then gave it back to human beings to figure out the meaning again. There was so much room for error, particularly when the data was so fragmented. But, as with a partially-revealed picture, some of the missing parts could be guessed from the surrounding context.

  Roy and JR were taking a lunch break off-campus one day shortly after the first security committee meeting for the Nanotechnology Program, during which Raj had moved that Roy be given carte blanche to experiment with any information found. Raj’s point was that someone with Roy’s level of curiosity and broad interest in nanotech could easily become bored if his expertise weren’t called upon sooner rather than later. To avoid that, Raj thought something in the nature of a nanotech hobby would help, and might even find applications that would be useful to either the Foundation, or could even be licensed to manufacturers if it had broad appeal. To Roy’s delight, the motion had carried.

  “They even gave me a small budget for materials and such,” Roy told JR, while juggling his enormous and very juicy hamburger.

  “No way! I need to get Raj to propose something like that for me,” JR responded. His hamburger was just as big and juicy, but at the moment it was resting on its plate while JR wolfed down one French fry after another.

  “Oh? Are you interested in nanotechnology?” Roy asked.

  “No, archaeology. I’ve got a few ideas I’d like to explore, but since they don’t have anything to do with the 10th Cycle library, I doubt I can get funding for them. I’d like to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting, to hear what Raj said to get yours.”

  “Oh.” Roy wanted to be polite, but ancient mysteries held no interest for him. Rather than pursue that line of conversation, he brightened. “JR, I’ve always wanted a 3-D printer, wouldn’t that be cool?”

  A little lost at the turn the conversation had taken, JR frowned. “I guess. Why?”

  “Because I could design a cool gadget and fill it with nanotech electronics, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.” JR was now completely lost.

  “You just gave me an idea. I’m going to order a 3-D printer and make it,” Roy said, his mouth full of burger so that the words came out a bit muffled.

  “What is it?” JR had looked away from the unappealing sight of Roy talking while eating.

  “A surprise. Can’t tell you until it’s done.” Roy took another huge bite of burger, just as JR changed the subject.

  “Whatever, man. Hey, you want to get a date and see a movie with Rebecca and me this weekend?” JR hadn’t yet learned of Roy’s not-so-secret paralysis around women. Rebecca was one of the few who put Roy at ease and could interact with him without triggering his panic button.

  “Uh, date? I don’t think so. Thanks for the invitation, though.” Roy failed to suppress a shiver of apprehension. Date? What woman will go out with a stupid and clumsy idiot like me? I won’t even be able to talk to her. No way!!

  “Okay, maybe hiking or something another time,” suggested JR, taking up his burger again now that the fries were gone.

  “Sure, I’d like that,” Roy answered. He liked JR, a tall drink of water for sure, but all accounts indicated he had some amazing stories. Roy would like to hear them from the horse’s mouth sometime. Damn, he should have explained his woman problem. Maybe next time.

  ~~~

  JR went about his business, while Roy started searching out the most powerful 3-D printer that would fit within his budget. Like most tech devices, the first personal-use ones cost more than a thousand dollars and printed only in plastic, while industrial application printers were out of reach for most hobbyists. Now, though, they were more sophisticated, used several different materials including plastic, metal and yes, carbon nanotubes. And the price had dropped dramatically. Roy found a ‘gently used’ RepliBot Gen5X for only $2,000, well within his budget. While he waited for it to be delivered, he delved into the information he could find both in the 10th Cycle library and in published papers about nanotechnology and created an AutoCAD drawing of his device.

  After the printer was delivered, and when it was ready, he tested it during a meeting he requested with Daniel for the purpose of doing so. Speaking in very general terms, he asked Daniel about patents.

  “This is probably in my contract, but could you explain to me again about patentable concepts that come out of the 10th Cycle library?” he asked.

  “Do you mean, whether you have any financial interest in them?” Daniel countered.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean. If I invent something, and part of the information I used to develop it comes from the library, can I patent it myself, or does it belong to the Foundation?” Roy was just making conversation. He was pretty sure the patent would belong to the Foundation. He’d invented his gadget on Foundation time, with Foundation funds and materials.

  “Okay, yes, that is in your contract. It’s on the honor system. If you develop it strictly on your own time, even if information comes out of privileged material, you patent it and we ask for twenty percent of earnings as a royalty for that material. Are you with me so far?”

  “I think so,” Roy said, fiddling with something in his pocket.

  “Okay. If you develop it strictly during working hours, we patent it and the royalty is reversed; we have first refusal on licensing it and you get twenty percent of our royalties as a bonus for inventing something that’s financially valuable.” It was a very generous deal. Most companies would claim all rights to it under those circumstances.

  “All right. That seems more than fair,” Roy said, now anxious to demonstrate his gadget, which had been unobtrusively operating in the room as they spoke.

  “Hold on, there’s one more scenario. You develop it partly during working hours and partly on your own time. Then we patent it, but we prorate the royalties, based on how much of your own time you spent. So, if you’re working on something during working hours and come back to do something
with it after hours, it’s worth keeping track of the time. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes,” Roy said, unable to wait any longer for the reveal of his toy. “I have something to show you, and I spent only my working hours on it. I think it could have several uses. Want to see it?”

  “Sure! You mean you already have it done?”

  “Well, I needed a test run. You and I are about to find out how well it works Roy sent a homing command through the tiny remote he had in his pocket, and a small black object flew toward him and landed on his shoulder. Daniel followed its flight with interest.

  “Allow me to present the Spyfly,” said Roy with a big smile on his face, picking it up and handing it to Daniel.

  Daniel held the tiny black plastic device in the palm of his hand. No bigger than a common housefly, it was very realistic, but on closer inspection, Daniel could see that it was made of plastic, with a material he couldn’t identify for eyes. The tiny wings whirred into action at Roy’s command on the remote, and it flew up and hovered just an inch above Daniel’s palm.

  “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Daniel said, surprised into North Carolina slang he hadn’t used in years. “What does it do, besides impersonating a fly?”

  “Let’s see,” answered Roy, who had come prepared with his laptop. After opening it and queuing up a media streaming program, another click of a button on the remote sent the video the fly had collected, complete with audio, during the meeting.

  Daniel watched open-mouthed as the video perfectly captured his explanation of the Foundation’s work-product and patent policy. The picture was clearer than most surveillance video from commercial applications. Good enough, in fact, for government work, he thought, though he didn’t mean it in the way that cliché had been meant for more than fifty years. What Daniel meant was that he could think of a few people, starting with Luke and including Luke’s friend Sam Lewis, head of the CIA, the police the FBI and a few others who would love to have a supply of these gadgets.