Incarna

78 - Episode 23 World Wide Web

Day 12: Mid Morning, A West Coast, US City.

George Deitmann watched the Skycar climb above the city and merge into the clouds. “Put him through every medical test possible without getting us sued for unlawful detention then make him disappear!” George instructed the nervous secretary standing next to him. George turned to the young man, “If your nerves hold up over the next few days son, you’ll do just fine. Just remember to hit the gym at the end of every shitty day like this one!” The young secretary nodded and excused himself as he held the ePad for George to sign then turned and went over to the chief medical officer with the authorisation.

George had shut down all internal emails and memo systems and a host if interns had been hired to carry the deWiFi’d ePads between the various department heads and and chief officers. It was time consuming but George wasn’t about to let some smart arsed super hacker eaves drop on every single thought anyone in his organisation had.

Another eSec as they had been termed, approached him and held out his ePad with its co-signed message. George read through the brief report then signed off on it and sat back watching the show still unfolding on the wall screen of the new Joint Security Operations HQ. They had finally got it up and running yesterday to deal with what appeared to be an increasing Incarna traffic and all his Intel suggested something big was on the way.

So George had got in first and activated this asset he’d been working on for a few weeks, and of course the President had rewarded his insightfulness with the role of JSO Director. Getting Aub on board was easy as they worked well together already. Bringing the FBI, Homeland Security and Military Intel in had been a different matter, but here they all were and ...

The building was owned by one of his divested companies and had been suggested by him and agreed to by the President because it was self sufficient in its own power and communications, thanks to the Californian Energy Policy.

Follow the money George, and he’d bought up big in the early days just after Warren Buffett started buying entire Solar and Wind Power companies. Then the Rockefeller Foundation had divested from the coal and oil industries and the shock wave this produced had pushed Georges’ new portfolio balance higher than he’d thought possible in such a short time. Now this Incarna situation had altered everything. Hence this insulated building well away from earth quakes and volcanoes and anything else California might throw up.

The JSO had been contacted by Incarna along with every other security, police, armed services, media and public interest group in America. This school shooter was a public execution without anybody realsing it till it was happening then it was too late. It seemed to George that the entire US and most of the wired world had watched it unfold.

Fuck it, fuck it fuck it, George swore under his breath. We’d had everything under wraps till this. His firewalls had kept every mention of Incarna off the web for weeks, until now. He had the distinct impression that really all he’d done was stick his finger in the hole in the wall of the dam till the Incarna decided to take the complete wall away. The entire World Wide Web was now awash in every single Incarna activity, and everybody’s thoughts and nightmares about them.

We’re in deep shit here George ol’ son, and he shook his head and tried to focus on the pattern he was discerning amid the confusion of information coming to him from the wall screen. Another eSec arrived and handed him a thumb drive. It was from Gordon and had been sent yesterday by JSO courier. Fuckin expensive George, but until someone figured out how to stop Incarna hacking quantum encrypted communications they were all fucked!

He slid the 1 Terabyte thumb drive into the USB 8 slot and watched the video of Gordon talking him through the results of their research. George was about to unplug it and toss it because it was all irrelevant now when Gordon said the magic words, “and then we found this pattern.” Georges screen then gradually filled with a slowly spreading fractal pattern. “Oh you clever, clever bastards!”

George loved putting people of completely different skill sets together in research groups and awaiting the results. When it worked it was truly insightful and such an approach had often given him an advantage where none had previously existed. Putting his beautiful Susan and the old gnarly Gordon together had yielded exactly what he needed and nigh on immediately. If this worked out he’d get Gordon his own wooden ketch to retire to.

He waved to Sloan and she excused herself from the knot of very confused faces who were watching a group of windows on the top left of the wall all showing demonstrations and rallies in various US cities. She approached him cautiously then stopped short and carefully listened to her ear piece.

“Sir, you’ll want to hear this!”

“People everywhere, listen to us. We are the Incarna and we have returned in this time of times to stop the evil from spreading further through the hearts of humanity!”

Don’t you fuckin’ dare, don’t you dare, George screamed silently! He watched as a swirling vision started to form on screen after screen across the wall and the same message was repeated from each.