Incarna

81 - Prion

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

“You’ll need access to the Aurora for this, yah!” George watched Updike frown. What was Florian up to, telling them to use an outdated machine.

“At 180 PetaFlops it’s fast enough and the team there should get this up quickly enough with your guidance, yah!” Florian turned away to respond to him being called then over his shoulder. “Oh and don’t be tempted to use George’s new project. There’re too many unknowns with that architecture yet, yah? The 1 ExaFlop AIME is based on a distributed network architecture and is quite remarkable for pattern based simulations. I know yours is projected to be 1 ZetaFlop, but zi architecture, yah!””

Updike nodded and George was frowning, no one was supposed to know what sort of architecture the Brain Replication Project was supposed to have nor anything about his involvement in it. Florian turned to George, “I was one of the international team that helped establish the architecture parameters George. There’re only a few of us who can, yah!” George nodded but wasn’t happy, not at all. It was just this scenario that he hoped to use the BRP for.

Florian nodded at an ePad that was handed to him then he turned back to the screen. “Right, yah, now. I’ve the Five Eyes Observer Team with me and we’ll be touching down in Jerusalem in,” he checked his eWatch, “twenty minutes or so. After we’ve met with the Australians we’ll introduce ourselves to Davies. The purpose of the trip is to personally carry out blood and CNS tests. I need to rule out the possibility of any residual effects to his Incarna exposure.”

George began to speak but Florian cut straight over him. “As Davies was the first to directly experience Incarna intervention his body has had the longest time to respond to anything that may have infected him so to speak!” Florian turned off screen again and George stifled the the urge to yell at the man.

Florian leant in close to the screen, “Once that is done we can correlate our findings so far and then I can confirm or deny whether we have multiple players in this theatre!”

George put on his best diplomats face, “The team on screen please Florian.” and up came small windows with new faces appearing quickly afterwards. “Coutu, Mr Deitmann. Canadian Dept of Foreign Affairs.” “Colm Heron at your service there Mr Deitmann. Mi6 Field Officer!” 

George nodded, “Abd al-Latif ibn Yusuf al-Baghdad. Saudi Security Agency.” Sloan handed George her ePad with all their files on display. “Thank you gentleman. I look forward to your reports.” He glanced down at the ePad. “Florian, when you’ve got up to speed on the simulations I want Parrish and Jaeger International out of the loop. As it is, I will no longer sanction any US cooperation with any private companies no matter how specialised their assets. I want to be able to control the flow of information out of our efforts here and not have some god forsaken free for all with any technology that comes to light from all of this!”

Florian smiled and nodded to him, “Yah, I think that is very wise to do so.” He paused and pursed his lips, “I am quite over booked here in my own research facilities, yah. Which is why I requested access to the Jaeger AIME facility in Hamburg.” He frowned and looked at Updike on his screens window. 

“At present my team has simulations running on a Mad Cow disease outbreak. A multinational cartel tax evasion scheme and a weapons black market network” He ticked off his fingers as he spoke, “An epidemic prediction for a new resistant Staphylococci and an analysis of Russian motor bike gangs running drugs across Europe. Yah it is all very time consuming but sis is what we are given yah? I will be in touch soon. Ciao”

The screen went dark and George saw that Updike was madly scribbling with pen and paper. George made to speak but John held up the paper, “Systems compromised ssshhh,” and he held a finger to his lips.

George felt his anger rise, fuck it this building was brand new and built to withstand anything, what the f…

John went to the door console and keyed in a sequence. Everything in the room shut down. He took out his phone and ePad and holding it up shut them down, then nodded to Sloan and George. He watched them shut their devices down and then keyed in another sequence and the rooms lighting went to a soft blue accompanied by a dull hum.

“Right then we are now completely cut off from the outside and and with maximum shielding!” George was furious “This better be good Updike,” he said coldly. “It is sir, it most definitely is,” and he returned to the work station and turned the page of the note pad. Here he’d written down ‘Over Booked’ and then the list of simulations Florian had described to them.

“Over Booked is a code term for security breach that Florian and I agreed upon when his team became involved with our Five Eyes Counter Incarna program.” George gave him a withering gaze, “Sorry sir, need to know basis …” George nodded for Updike to continue.

“Now these projects he mentioned indicate what he believes are the main components of this Incarna chaos.” He pointed to the list with his pen. “So with these he’s saying there are a number of players involved, it no longer appears to be one new unknown power carrying out these interventions.” John pointed at the list, “these I think I know but what’s mad cow disease?”

George frowned as he tried to stop the images of mad cows from taking over his mind. God this was going to ruin his complexion, then Sloan clicked her fingers. “It’s a brain disease caused by some sort of protein metabolism problem. Ah, yes prions I think they call the …”

Updike snapped his fingers, “Smart arsed bastard Florian,” he interjected. “Prion is the code term for a Parrish designed algorithm that is the smallest sequence of code known to date that replicates by corrupting any small piece of code anywhere and usually undetected.” John shook his head then rubbed the back of his neck. “Phenomenally hard to prevent and in our tests it is 100% effective or lethal to any system it gets into, soo …”

“So Florian believes the interweb side of Incarna is prion based …” “Yes sir,” jumped in Updike and began to describe the Prion mechanism. “That’s enough son. I’ll put this out there for the two of you to follow up. “ He paused and rubbed his forehead trying to reduce the frown lines. “Either we have as you say multiple players or, and this is just thinking out loud, we have one player who is using lots of other peoples technologies to disguise who they really are!”

John tapped his analogue watch, “three minutes till Incarna collapses our firewalls again.” George closed his eyes and waited. It was calm in here without all his tech. Perhaps he’d leave it this way for the duration, the Quiet Room, the Sanctuary.