The Eyes of Tandor, page 21
“Agreed,” said a shadowy figure over the telecom connection who’d been invited to the conference but who declined to be identified by name. Fellow conspirators only knew him as Prelate, indicating, some thought, a relationship with some kind of church, but nobody knew for sure. What they knew was that Prelate always made good on his commitments to ensure that targeted governments felt the need to go to war and that the warring governments would turn to the arms dealers for supplies. “I’ll approach my contacts in cyberwarfare to assist us in this matter. Until then, I suggest we remain off the public stage even more than we are now. If we are able to remove their fail-safe device, we can begin a campaign to discredit their findings. If they can be branded as charlatans, world attention will turn away from them, and we can use our ground-based assets to deal with the threat.”
***
“Here they come,” announced Stonger as he peered through the vertical blinds occluding Tess’s front room. “Same stupid cars, as if they think everyone doesn’t know who drives those black SUVs!”
The Spacers had spent the past few hours in front of Tess’s TV, cycling through the news channels and sharing pizza. Although they had all agreed that the course of action they’d taken that day was the only one open to them with any significant chance that they could get their message out into the world and survive the effort, they all knew that whatever came next would probably determine the survival part. And what came next was apparently the men in black suits Tess and Richard had met at NASA Goddard, and later at Langley.
Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Tess answered the inevitable knock on her door. “Hi guys,” she quipped, hoping to show a brave front. “Long time, no see—at least that I know about.”
“Ms. Bailey, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States sends his greetings and congratulations on your amazing scientific achievement,” intoned the tall, black-suited man sporting an obviously digital device behind his left ear and a suspicious bulge under the lapel of his jacket.
“Yeah, I’ll just bet he does,” called Stonger from across the room. “Okay, son, you’ve delivered your message, now beat it! Tess and I had enough of your company at Langley!”
Unfazed by the hostility in Stonger’s tone, the black-suited man pasted a wide grin on his face in an attempt to reassure his audience that he represented no threat to them, and then proceeded to step across the threshold of Tess’s apartment without waiting to be invited in. “President Walford, along with the rest of the nation, was impressed with your announcement today and would like to invite you all to the White House for a private briefing,” the agent continued.
Tess and Richard looked at each other for a moment, then turned back to address their visitor.
“Is that an order? Or do we have a choice in the matter?” Stonger asked.
“Let’s say it’s a sincere request on behalf of the leader of the free world to enlist your help in defending our nation against the threats you have so ably identified today. We’ve already announced your invitation to the national press, so it will be a high-profile visit. And because it will be so high profile, the president wanted us to ensure your safety from this moment forward. If you choose not to accept his invitation, we at the Secret Service are still tasked with ensuring your safety, so we will have to establish a perimeter for your team to be maintained until further notice. If you do accept his invitation, however, we only need to accompany you until you meet with him. But it’s entirely your decision.”
As this was a turn of events Tess and Richard had not anticipated, they turned to confer with their friends, bunched together at the opposite end of the room.
“Wow,” said Tess. “I think we’ve just bought ourselves some upscale protective custody, at least until we accept their ‘offer’ to meet with President Walford.”
“Meet with the president!” exclaimed Chuck Maddock. “Really?”
“Wow!” said Anna Tran. “I never thought I’d get to do something like that!”
“Does he want to see all of us,” asked Eric Chow, “or just you space jockeys? I’m just a lab rat. It’s Zach who’s the genius here.”
“No such thing,” Rojas declared. “If it hadn’t been for your detection of the alterations, none of this would have happened.”
“Please,” said Helen. “Let stop the back-slapping for a moment and consider the question, and the risk, before us. If we’re all ‘invited,’ and we all go, can we still use the threat of the dead man’s switch to make sure they let us go home again?”
“Absolutely,” Tess assured her. “Our IT team is standing by to transmit the code tonight and every night until we all feel the danger of ‘disappearing’ is past, if it ever is. Besides, if the world press has already been told we’ve been invited to brief the president of the United States, it’ll be a lot harder for anyone to ignore our findings. And if we gain a bit of temporary celebrity, the glare of the spotlight may dissuade any frontal attacks being planned.”
“Well I for one don’t care about frontal attacks or disappearing anymore,” declared Mike Murphy. “I agreed to the risks when we decided to go public with this stuff. Right now, I just want to walk into the White House with my head held high and be treated like somebody important.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s how they’ll treat us as long as we hold those identity files over their heads,” said Tess. “Prasad, what’s your take on this?”
“I do not see that we have much of a choice,” responded the aerospace expert. “I think I would rather have the United States government asking us polite questions than being spirited away by some other government to answer the same questions under some form of duress I do not wish to contemplate. As a naturalized citizen, I will give it a chance to earn my trust.”
“Then it’s decided?” asked Dick Rauch. “We’re going?”
“Looks that way,” said Tess. “But I get dibs on the Lincoln bedroom if we have to stay overnight!”
***
They did stay overnight, and the next three days and nights as well. After their initial photo op with Walford in the Oval Office and a quick recap of what had been announced at the press conference, the Spacers were ushered into meeting after meeting with government experts in all the scientific areas their findings touched—bioscience, physics, aerospace, mechanical engineering, communications, and computer science. At every meeting, the experts appeared to be impressed with the Spacers’ personal knowledge in their fields and their ability to work together to push beyond current thinking.
The final meeting with the president on the last day of their “visit” included NASA’s James Powell, Nancy Arlington from HHS, Brent Ranger from the CDC, and General Elias Brinkley representing the DOD. No press was invited.
“Ms. Bailey, Dr. Stonger, ladies and gentlemen,” Walford began when everyone was seated on the sofas and chairs furnishing the Oval Office, “I want to personally thank you for giving us your time and insight over these past few days so that we might better understand what has happened, and what may lie ahead. As most of you are, or have been, connected to NASA, I’ll let Dr. Powell fill you in on what is now being proposed. Jim?”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” said the NASA Director, turning to face the Spacers who were loosely grouped together in the room. “First, let me ask you all something. If you were running NASA right now, and had all the budget you needed, what would you do to respond to the information you’ve presented?”
Glancing at her team, Tess cleared her throat and took the lead in answering Powell’s question.
“With all due respect, sir, the first thing I’d do is replace everyone in NASA Legal with attorneys who have been proven to be genetically unaltered, something that can be determined quite easily with Zach and Eric’s new DNA test,” she said with the intensity of someone who was finally allowed to say out loud what had been eating at her for more years than she wanted to count.
When Powell expressed surprise at this statement, Tess rushed to explain.
“Look. NASA used to employ the smartest, most capable people in the world. In many Centers, it still does. Every single day, those people come up with ideas that could revolutionize their fields. And every single day, at every Center, those ideas are dismissed or shelved as soon as they get to NASA Legal. It’s widely known in the private sector that there’s no point in trying to license or buy any of these discoveries because someone in NASA Legal will make sure the market window will close long before any progress can be made in acquiring rights. At Ames, I have personally seen so many great concepts die like this that I often wonder why some of the remaining scientists keep trying. It’s not only disheartening, it’s intellectually toxic. My only conclusion as to why this situation persists is that someone, or everyone, in Legal has been so altered by the ELF waves that the mere idea of allowing something new to emerge terrifies them. But if that roadblock were removed, I think you’d see an explosion of inventions and technologies that could do great things for us, like find ways to adapt to climate change, overcome pandemics, develop new sustainable energy sources, and so on. We might even be able to find a way to defend the planet against further wavefront invasions!” she said, relieved at sharing her concerns with someone who might be able to act on them.
Then Stonger took over.
“The next thing I’d do, son, is reestablish the manned space flight program as a national priority!” To Richard Stonger, anyone under the age of seventy was liable to be called “son.” “Probes and satellites are fine, but in the end, they’re bloodless mechanical substitutes for the human heroes that used to turn our eyes toward the stars in the hope we could someday get to those stars.”
Clearing her throat to get Director Powell’s attention again, Tess summed up.
“Again, with all due respect, sir, if we can get NASA back to the inspirational track it started on, we could redirect the energy now being used to kill each other and our planet toward progressing as a species. It seems that whoever or whatever sent those destructive ELF waves our way was trying to prevent us from doing that, and frankly, sir, I’d like NASA to take the lead in defeating them!”
“Defeating them,” echoed General Brinkley. “Now that’s an idea I can get behind. And I think the Congress will, too, Mr. President.”
“But what about the damage that’s already been done?” asked Arlington. “What would you propose we do about that?”
“Eric, Zach, you’re up,” Tess replied.
Zach nodded at Eric to respond to Arlington’s question.
“We’ve just started to understand the human genome and how it works,” Eric replied. “Zach and his friends in the biohacking world jumped ahead a bit, but only enough to see that alterations have happened, not nearly far enough to figure out how to fix them. We’ve got an idea about what may be needed to prevent it from continuing, but we don’t yet have the means or the manpower to pursue those ideas, and nobody in the private sector has been anxious to fund us because as yet, there doesn’t seem to be any easy or quick money in it. What we’d like to see happen is for the US government to launch a Manhattan style project in biotechnology that would have the goal of discovering what each gene in our DNA does so we can use CRISPR to ‘unalter’ the ‘altered’ without causing other problems and in the process, get a handle on eliminating some of the genetic diseases that big pharma is just starting to target!”
When none of the meeting attendees voiced any more questions or objections, Director Powell took the floor again.
“Mr. President,” he said, looking directly at the leader of the free world, “in light of what we’ve just heard and after verifying their information with my people—at least those I still trust—I’d like to propose that Ms. Bailey be appointed to the position of Deputy Director at NASA in charge of Agency reorganization. Further, I’d like to enlist her assistance and that of Dr. Stonger and his colleagues in redrafting the NASA Mission Statement to get us back to the point where manned spacecraft can once again ‘point us to the stars’ as they so ably put it.”
President Walford immediately cut off Tess’s stunned protest with a firm, “Done. What else?”
The CDC’s Brent Ranger was next to chime in.
“Sir, in the same vein, after a thorough vetting process is conducted to identify any altered employees who may have escaped detection of an overt no-can-do attitude, I propose Dr. Chow and Dr. Rojas be appointed to head a new Division of Genetic Studies under the auspices of my Agency to pursue the goals they’ve outlined here today. Of course, that would mean access to an open checkbook from Congress, but if the alternative to funding such studies is that a similar vetting process be required of all our elected representatives, I have a feeling most senators and congressmen will go along with the proposal.”
Again, Walford affirmed the suggestion with a quick “Done.” When the Spacers had time to digest what had just happened, Walford concluded the meeting with a final request.
“Gentlemen, ladies, the one area of your findings we have not addressed is the computer science you’ve utilized for Dr. Shandra to suggest that influence from a parallel quantum universe may be involved. And given that he is primarily an aeroscience engineer and not a computer scientist, why don’t you tell us who is missing from your group and where they happen to be at the moment?”
“We can’t do that, Mr. President,” Tess responded firmly. “Even though we are all thrilled with your offers to make the changes we believe are needed, our only real assurance that those offers will materialize lies in the fact that the identities and locations of our IT team remain unknown so they can keep their fingers on our dead man’s switch. Until we believe we no longer face being dismissed as crackpots or made to go away by whatever means are available, we’re going to keep that little insurance policy in place. Now if that means you need to rescind your offers, then we’ll walk out through the front door and tell the world press how hospitable and welcoming you and your administration have been and ask if anyone else out there is interested in pursuing our ideas.”
As Walford scanned the faces of the Spacers in his office, he saw that they were of one mind on this point and decided not to risk letting a foreign power benefit from what these people could offer.
“Agreed, Ms. Bailey. We’ll leave it there for now. Our previous offers stand and will be announced to the White House press corps within the hour. But when the time comes that you no longer feel threatened, I’ll expect you to bring your computer team in from the cold.”
29
Contact
Greg Banyon and Ben Fischer watched the press conference from their workstations in the basement of the Mothership with a mixture of pride and dread. When Tess got to the part about having a computer-based means of disclosing the personal identities of altered individuals, Greg turned to Ben and winked.
“Watch! I’ll bet you a case of anything you’re drinking that hack attacks will be coming in faster than the ELF waves ever did,” he said, not entirely sure he was joking.
Within an hour of the conclusion of the press event, Greg’s prediction was proven correct. Although nobody was told of the Spacers’ connection to the iconic computer company employing Greg’s team, nothing remained a secret in the age of the internet for long. The digital record of gate entries over the past several months would ultimately tell a dedicated search algorithm how many times individual Spacers had visited a “friend” in the company’s quantum computing division, when that friend had been hired away from his previous position at NASA Ames, and where he most likely was located on the campus.
But knowing who and where did not give digital snoopers a way to access the what that was being protected by Halley’s sophisticated data structures.
“So now it’s a race,” Ben surmised. “Can they get to us before we out them? What do you think is happening to Tess and the others? They haven’t called in since the cameras were turned off.”
“I guess we’ll find out tonight when they either check in with the ‘hold fast’ code or they don’t,” said Greg, turning back to his screen. “And if they don’t, you and I and our families and anyone we care about will have to use our exit plan after we pull the trigger and hope for the best. Personally, spending the rest of our days in that tropical paradise off the grid is starting to sound pretty good to me!”
“No, Greg. I know you,” said Ben, picking up his data tablet. “You couldn’t sit on a beach without access to your Halley for very long before you started barking at the coconuts or scrambling around like the crabs! I know that because I feel the same way.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. But until we have to run for the exits, let’s make sure these cyber attackers can’t get into Halley’s memory core. As good as they are, I don’t think anyone else on the planet has gotten as far into quantum computing as we have, at least not yet.”
When Tess and Richard called in that night to send the hold fast code and let the two computer scientists know what had happened at her apartment, Greg and Ben were relieved, but still on alert.
It wasn’t until several days later when the White House press corps announced the appointments of individual Spacers to new high-level government positions that they began to relax and return to the fascinating pursuit of building the first, fully functional quantum-based computer on the planet. As the months went by and the daily hold fast code continued to come in like clockwork, the sense of threat and urgency that had kept them hunkered down in the lab began to ease. To the delight of Greg’s department manager, who still had no idea he was protecting the most highly sought-after secret in the digital universe, the two computer engineers began to make some real progress with Halley’s functionality.
Cyberattacks in the form of sophisticated code worms and Trojan horse programs continued to batter at Halley’s I/O ports, but after a while even that form of threat appeared to subside when no chinks were found in the Spacers’ IT armor. From their secure location, Greg and Ben watched with satisfaction as Tess and the Spacers slowly implemented the changes at NASA they had all agreed were vital if the US were ever to retake the lead in space exploration. When the budgetary restraints were removed from previously hobbled research initiatives at NASA Centers throughout the country, an explosion of new technologies emerged in the public and private sectors. The unprecedented number of new patents and product licenses injected a level of venture capital into the world economy that had not been seen since the end of the Great Recession in 2012.
