Chapter 17 going bonkers in the bunkers
It was just as well I had been working with Damian. Once we drove into the cave mouth of the underground research facility we entered a whole new world, and I was strip-searched and my fingerprints and retinal scans were checked; and without Damian’s co-operation I’d have been sunk at the retinal scan phase.
They didn’t strip-search my milspec rig for gurfing their system largely because nobody understood it all, which is why they needed a cybersecurity expert in the first place. I was to cover the security of the transfer of whatever they had been working on to real life tests. As I had a small 3-D printer concealed as a part of it, this was just as well.
I was trotted along to Harley Plunkett’s office, once I had been cleared of being a danger to anyone. Plunkett was a stocky, rugged sort, who oozed good will and military propriety.
“Ah, Orren! Good to meet you, at last,” he said. “I’ve heard some good things about you.”
“Thank you, sir,” I replied. “I’ve heard a lot about you, and I’m really keen to work with you.”
He looked at me cautiously.
“What do you know about wolves?” he asked.
“Less than I would like,” I said. “I like what I know.”
“Well, we might have to see about that,” he said. “An opportunity to rebuild ecologies is always good.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
The last lone wolf was feeling lonely, then… well that might make things easier.
I finally got to discover what the top secret project was. And it was quite stunning in its scope; the concept of a drive of cold hydrogen fusion. It had implications which were wider than the journey to Mars; cold fusion in small units would solve all earth’s energy problems. At the moment the plants are huge, and not especially cost effective.
“That’s incredible!” I said to the scientist whose protocols I was checking out. “And it works?”
“Sometimes,” he said, not meeting my eye. “But when you have something which works sometimes, getting it to work all the time is just a matter of time.”
“I thought it was supposed to be ready for test in real life applications,” I said.
“Well, the first shipment to Mars will be a robot ship, just in case,” he said.
I didn’t like the way his eyes slid sideways.
I had a proper interview with Harley Plunkett.
“You’ve been very cautious,” I said, “What sort of security problems are you anticipating?”
“There are one or two wrinkles in the system to iron out, as yet, but there are one or two people working on the project who have made noises about it not being anything near ready, and who might cause a nuclear panic by trying to go public with it,” said Plunkett. “They are conspiracy theorists, obviously, and panicking unnecessarily, but I will need you to be ready to clamp down the moment we move out of this facility when phones will work again and messages might be sent.”
“I see,” I said. “In other words, the system is still full of glitches which you are trying to cover up in the hopes that it will work better in real life than in laboratory tests, and you can’t afford to jeopardise your funding if anything looks even faintly like failing.”
He glared at me.
“You have no right to make that assessment! You don’t have the scientific background….”
“I don’t have the scientific background, but I have the psychological profiling background, and I know a man who has to have a success at all costs,” I said. “How much more time is needed?”
“Another week,” said Plunkett. “What do you intend to do?”
“Invent a security glitch I’ve discovered and possible sabotage,” I said. “That should buy time to get it completed.”
He sat back.
“I’m surprised; I thought you were going to be a whistleblower,” he said.
“I want to see it succeed,” I said. “I remember the members of the Martian colony drawing lots to see who was going to die, when those bastards blew up the supply ship.”
“Well, if we can cooperate on this, I think it will be quickly ready,” he said. “But I’ll tell you another security risk; I don’t know if you can do anything about him. He’s a teacher named Horace Tiber, and he specialises in kidnapping and brainwashing the children of those who belong to the new order. He has a wife and kid, and he may have younger siblings.”
“What do you want done about him?” I asked.
“I want you to plant evidence that he’s been abusing the kids where he has been teaching, and trafficking them when he’s tired of them.”
“Not too difficult,” I said.
My belly was clenching.
Not merely over this attack being made on my family but in wondering if Plunkett knew I was me, and was playing with me, isolated with him, and shut away from defending Willow, Quin, and the kids whilst some other sick bastard manufactured evidence about me, and this was his way of torturing me.
On the other hand, my expensive nose was not picking up the sort of pleasure I would expect him to be exuding from watching me sweat; only emotions associated with irritation over the threat of Horace Tiber.
“So, he’s what, some kind of psychologist who is using something akin to Stockholm Syndrome?” I asked.
“I suppose so,” said Plunkett. “I don’t really know, only that people, good people, have been disappearing completely. I suspect him of multiple murder, though goodness knows how, he has a very average school record, a simple degree, and no apparent skills outside of math, and an interest in literature. Just eliminate him as soon as you can, when we’ve done here.”
“It does not sound a hard job.”
“Well, don’t underestimate him; some of the lower echelons made that mistake. Whoever does his security is very good, and he has resources which enable him to hide evidence very quickly. Possibly former pupils trained by him into being his soldiers.”
How little he knew.
“And his wife and child?”
“Oh, they are nothing; but you can use them as leverage, maybe,” said Plunkett. “The wife is beautiful, but all big blue eyes and nothing behind them, a trophy wife, undoubtedly.”
I did not splutter in indignation on Willow’s behalf. If the fellow only knew that my very good security was mostly Willow! She’s been in charge of my security since she decided to set up a web cam to watch me come home when I was just a lodger with Aunty Fee. And it’s saved my skin more than once.
“How come he is so tricky?” I asked.
“All those brainwashed pupils, I expect,” said Plunkett. “It’s a valid tactic, of course, but annoying that he stole our modus operandi.”
“You haven’t tried recruiting him?” I asked.
Plunkett made a sound of disgust.
“No, he’s some kind of bleeding heart liberal who believes in democracy without understanding any history, that all through the history of mankind, it’s the strong men who have taken control, and ruled by fiat, those who can see what needs to be done and do it for the greater good; and I suspect he also holds views that we should not be allowed to do as we like with the lesser beings. Those who have won their way to the top hold the right of the spoils which includes the rest. Vae Victor vae Victis.”
“To the victor, the spoils,” I said, nodding like his intelligent dog.
“Precisely,” said Plunkett.
If you are wondering why I did not break the little tick’s neck there and then, there was something very important stopping me.
All of us in the facility wore a bracelet which monitored our health. This is to say, there was a significant kerfuffle starting with an alarm going off if the damn thing deviated outside of a reasonable norm – it could tell if one was exercising, and it did not take lying down as a fall. But it was ridiculously sensitive.
And I wanted to get out with my skin intact.
I would probably have taken him down and looked on my death with philosophy before I had Willow and Quin, and Ruth, Marie, Hammond, Auntie Fee and so on. Family adds a different perspective to one’s mindless heroism.
“Is this Tiber likely to trouble us here?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t get the clearance,” said Plunkett. “And even if his gurfer follows a signal in, it’s only the standalone.”
I nodded.
“What sort of trouble is he likely to cause while he’s out there?”
“I don’t know,” said Plunkett.
“If I am to report sabotage, you could write me a pass to leave, and I can go and make an assessment on his activities,” I said. “Getting spare parts for the security sabotage.”
“That’s good thinking,” said Plunkett. “You’re definitely worthy to become a wolf.”
If only you knew, omae.
“Give me a couple of days to find supposed problems,” I said. “Then I will go and deal with him, and return.”
He nodded, pleased with this.
Play on the victim’s weaknesses. Fraudsters do this; and it works with a sanction, too. It would be nice to know that he wasn’t playing me.
Paranoid, much? Well, I’m still alive.
And I went to test the internal system. Getting a signal out without a physical wire, tucked into a cave which was a worked out Uranium mine was going to be hard.
I wandered along to the security entrance.
“Do you mind if I stand here and look at the way out?” I asked. “I’m claustrophobic. If I can have a look at the sky once a day it’ll stop me getting panic attacks.”
“You can go right to the cave mouth if one of us goes with you, sir,” said one of the guards. “With me, it’s heights, so I appreciate how you feel.”
I established a pattern, making myself pant and speeding up my heart, hastening to the entrance and going to the cave mouth with my escort. Meanwhile, I had established a back door into the system, with an uplink, but it would need a booster outside. I planted that at the cave mouth on my fourth ‘near panic attack’ by which time the guards were used to me, and my deprecating smile at my own weakness.
I had built in a wall of ice so formidable most people would not even see it; but my password through it was ‘Neon Flower’ so I could test whether or not I was out in the ether.
I was. I tapped on Willow’s deck.
You can’t readily embrace in cyberspace, but she did her best.
And now she would be in the system, looking out for me.
I felt much, much better.
Fortunately, the security was so draconian that they relied on it; there were no daily searches to find a small package of uplink whiskers.
So long as Willow was passive in the system, there should be no alerts at all; and if she needed to be anything but passive, then I was probably in enough trouble that a cyberalert was the least of our worries. I missed her murmuring sweet nothings into an ear bud, but that took too much band width. She was communicating via the datajack I was wearing, and that was good enough.
I was checking the net control of life support systems – there was a massive A/C system to make sure everyone had enough air coming in – when someone unfortunately noticed Willow in the system, and hit the panic button.
As cybersafety officer, and already at a monitoring station, I moved out my frame which emulated Willow, to give her the chance to retreat behind it. Not terribly difficult. I smiled brightly.
I demanded a conference in my office.
I had one; it was cramped, but it was an office, and it was mine.
I had the cybersec guards piling in, as one of them complained that an intruder was getting away.
“Well, it only took you three hours to pick up my intruder emulator,” I said. “I built it to see who was on their toes. You’ve all grown complacent. Well, my little test has shown that up.”
They were horrified.
“It was a test?” demanded one, incredulously.
“Well, do you think an intruder could really get in?” I asked. “But it’s always as well to assume the worst. I made a copy of the profile of one of the better-known shadow-gurfers.”
“It’s Neon Flower, isn’t it?” asked the one who had raised the alarm.
“Top marks,” I said. “Now, if you’d been running against the real Neon Flower, you’d have been in trouble.”
“But she – I think Neon Flower is female – couldn’t get a repeater in here,” he said. His name was Brian, and he was head of cybersecurity, and he had been resenting me like hell.
“Couldn’t she?” I said. “Now, if I was the Neon Flower, having discovered where we were, I’d set up one very powerful repeater on the hilltops opposite, if she wasn’t there herself.”
“I’ve heard it said she doesn’t have to stir from her house; one report says she’s bedridden, and lives only in the matrix,” said Brian.
“It is possible,” I said, pushing down thoughts of Willow and bed. “A good gurfer can get a team to set up relays.”
“But it wouldn’t be enough,” said Brian.
“No, it wouldn’t,” I said. “She would have to have a secondary relay; and that would likely be placed on one of our cars.”
“How could anyone get close enough?” scoffed Brian.
“Well, now, in the city, do any cars ever park over manhole covers or drains?” I asked. “Have there ever been traffic accidents which stop them and make people mill about? We’re a free country, our cars can’t just run over someone in the way. Can you guarantee that stones being thrown up in the dirt track approaching the cave weren’t projectiles fired into the car carrying a repeater? Less likely, of course, as the force would be enough to risk breaking it. But that’s just off the top of my head.”
Brian was looking very thoughtful.
“We need to search the cars thoroughly, and from below,” he said.
“Good; you have identified a potential weakness. Expedite solving it,” I said.
That got them out of the system whilst we explored it from guzzle to zorch. It would take hours to examine all the cars sufficiently minutely.
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