Incarna

34 - Numbers Game

George turned to Aubrey, “well any ideas, cause right at this moment I’m sure as hell clean out!”

Aub frowned, rubbed his nose with his right hand then held his chin with his index finger across his lips, “I think we had better put some boots on the ground asap and collect as much intel as we can.” He frowned and turning to George, “we cant allow ourselves to fly blind and that’s all we’re doing. The military will be all over this back in DC!” He looked at his watch, adjusted the data display and turned back to George. “We’d better get down there with some sort of plan,” he held up his wrist and tapped the display. “Meeting in one hour!”

George nodded and turned back to the screens. Chaos reigned on all of them with the chanting of the word Incarna coming and going but remaining a constant theme of all the interventions. He shook his head in disgust as another ISP collapsed under the weight of its overloaded servers.

Aub moved off to organise their flight back to Washington but George remained fixed to the spot. There was something amiss, something not completing the pattern. He felt the link in what these Incarna were doing but couldn’t put words to it.

He scanned the room and found Sloan and beckoned for her, “what do you see Sloan? Tell me in words of one syllable what you see up there on the big screen!”

She frowned at him. She hated when he used her as a sounding board because she could never see what he was getting at till he had it and she was standing right on top of it! Smart arsed bastard, she grimaced and did as he’d asked.

“The room is quietening down with our operators settling back into monitoring and recording anything that appears to be of importance, which is just about everything at this point in time.” George was nodding and staring at the windows showing the Korean troops streaming across the border and makeshift tent cities being erected to feed and house any injured from the effects of the interventions all across the peninsular.

“At every intervention site we are observing the local people supporting whatever Incarna phenomena has occurred, and as yet there have been no reactions by authorities or governments!” George grimaced, then snapped his right hand fingers.

“That’s the key here so far,” and he pointed at the different windows. Some of the anakysts looked up at their boss. Most would’ve seen him do this before, while any who were new to it were soon told to shut up and watch what happened as George Deitmann showed why he was the boss of the NSA.

“We see in all the currently open windows, scenes of intervention where people have been killed by an unknown technique using unknown technology. We have yet to have any accurate analysis of, of the intervention sites, so none of our analysts have been able to assemble any predictions!”

George turned to the top left window which remained hauntingly empty other than showing the coordinates for all the known interventions. Even with those there was no clear pattern other than they had occurred within the shield of dust storms.

“Our analysis of the deaths and financial manipulations of investment bankers has only revealed their deaths or suicides and the process of the transfer of the so called assets to those affected by their decisions. Blood tests have not revealed any poisons or hallucinogens.” Sloan turned to her boss and waited. "We aren't sure whether these events are connected other than the timing!"

George nodded, then turned to her. “Time sequence the interventions please, in a second analysis window.”

Sloan tapped at her ePad and up came the data. The first was of course Owain Davies, so he was I-1, Intervention One. A day later had come another, this time during a dust storm in Afghanistan. The next were two similar Djinn lightning attacks as they had been nicknamed, in northern Iraq. … and on it went

George smiled, he saw it now. The clever, clever, show off bastards. The next were three strikes in Syria then five on the human slavery cargo in France during a rare northern reach of an especially strong and ionised Scirocco.

“… and then there were five,” he said out loud. “It’s a Fibonacci sequence,” said an engineer working on a nearby workstation as George highlighted the 8 across Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and then the 13 on the Russian tank column.

George turned to see who had recognised the pattern next after he had. “James sir, and …” “Yes Gordon I know who you are. The Forest would not run as well as she does without you, nor the Mermaid, and apparently nor does our Situations Command Centre!”

“Sloan, see that Gordon gets into the Analyst team, I want him on a special project with a comm link directly to me!” George said turning back to the wall screen, leaving Gordon with a big grin across his bearded face.

“Listen up people. We have a showoff running this Incarna show and they have sent us a message. These last interventions numbered 21 in total and all across the globe where ever storms were active. The next will be  ..?” and he turned to Gordon who was now standing next to Sloan. “… 34, sir!”

“Thirty four strikes in keeping with the Fibonacci number sequence.” George paused to let this sink in. “I want an active search of all data bases and from that some predictions based on all previous interventions as to likely future targets, and I want that before I get to DC. The President needs something and I intend to be the one to give it to her!”