Incarna

35 - Shut It Down

Aub came back into the SitCom cabin and began applauding from the open doors! George turned, took a bow then turned back to the room full of operators and analysts, spoke to a few of them and then turned to leave.

Aub waited for George and they both turned to watch the melee settling into order as George’s team swung into their usual efficient style of taking on the world.

“Well the good news is that the President will wait for both of us to arrive before she declares war on the world! The bad news is, that there’s no real good news. Just no clear leads anywhere.” Aub shrugged, it wasn’t the first time the CIA had had no idea what was going on and he was determined it wouldn’t happen on his shift, but that’s exactly what looked most likely at this stage of events.

“Who ever this Incarna are, they’re way ahead of the rest of us!”

“Maybe!” offered George distractedly. His private secretary Petersen came up and stood just behind him. “Everything is ready sir, and Susan says not to bother contacting her until you have clear air!”

George smiled and turned to thank Petersen. He stopped in his tracks turned and stared at the Wall Screen, his right coming up and rubbing the top of his head.

Aub recognised the tell and stood back. Petersen doing the same then he turned to instruct the helicopter pilot to go to standby. Aub walked out onto the aft observation deck and looked at the Stealth Wolf helo, it’s main rotors slowing to idle. Aub rang his secretary in Washington.

“Something’s up, tell the President to standby please, we may have something for her soon!” He turned back to the SitCom cabin and stood in the doorway watching George at his theatrical best!

Aub thought of how hard George had fought to create the Mermaid. In fact he had five SitCom centres around the US now and could take his main team with him to any one of them and conduct all the research and analysis he wanted without a pause in the output. Aub preferred the one on Airforce One personally, but he had to admit the Mermaid was one hell of a cruiser and the team did appear to work better on her and especially when anchored at places like Rogue Island where they were well away from distractions.

George snapped his right hand fingers and let out a little chuckle! “Sloan?” “Sir,” she was standing behind him waiting for the briefing she knew would come after he had cogitated on an situation in this fashion.

“Don’t change any of our methodologies at all. Stick to all our usual routines of coding and scrambling!” He turned to Aubrey, “they or this Incarna, I believe are setting us up! Providing us with just enough information to make us think we are onto something.”

“… and so?” asked Aub. “Putting boots on the ground as you suggested is what they’ll expect us to do next, so of course that’s what we’ll do, AND!”  “And?” asked Aub shrugging. He also hated George when he was like this. He always behaved as if he was the smartest mind in the room, even though classically his IQ wasn’t exceptional. The way he used it though, was!

George turned back to the room and called out over the general murmur of busy people. “Gordon?” “Here sir,” and the engineer quickly made his way across to George and Aubrey at the SitCom Cabins door out onto the Obs deck.

“That special project I need you to do!” “Gordon frowned, “Ah Sir, ah, if I can be honest sir?” “George please, and yes …” “Ms Sloan has just explained the sort of work you’ll want me doing and honestly sir, George, I’m too flat out as it is keeping all this running.”

George smiled, “Gordon, I asked you to join the analysts because you spoke up about the number sequence. To be honest with you, every analyst in this room knew it was a sequence as soon as they saw it. Some of them would have already started the data acquisition and a couple of the real geniuses in the room had already begun constructing the data prediction algorithms.” Gordon frowned, he hadn’t dealt with Deitmann like this before and was taken aback by it.

George continued, “as far as I’m concerned you have a position for life as engineer of the Forest, no matter where she, or you are, on the planet. You spoke up in there and stated the obvious. You showed me a fresh approach not linked to my existing team. So yes you’ll stay with the Forest, and tell Susan you are now with the Insight Program!”

Gordon smiled and nodded. He could stay on the Forest and got to work with the Professor and with George on ..? “what exactly …” he began.

George smiled, he liked the way Gordon thought! “This use of the number sequence is too obvious. Fibonacci or any other, it doesn’t matter, it’s too easy! This Incarna lot are playing with us, they want us to see this pattern and think, aha!” George watched the growing awareness spread across Gordon’s face. “So, we need to act as if  we’ve gone aha! Meanwhile I need you and Susan to research every scientist of any sort who has published anything on Fibonacci sequences. ... but you must do it in a way that looks like any high school student is researching it. This Incarna, whatever or whoever they are, will be expecting us to research them the way that my team in there are doing. Meanwhile Susan and you will undertake the real research!” 

George looked over to the helo pilot and and twirled his hand in the air, giving him the start up signal. Gordon cleared his throat, “so George, you think Incarna is, are people?”

“Of course, we are seeing things occur that we can’t explain but they aren’t beyond description. … and I’ve never encountered any evil that isn’t human. Nature is wild and you get eaten if you don’t adapt. No this Incarna phenomena is a person or people phenomena. Highly sophisticated, advanced and intelligent. I can feel it in my bones! … and they want us to follow their trail and they know, that we know, that it is a false trail …”

“… and we play the game anyway!” George smiled and tapped his nose!

“Your findings will be collated on an isolated laptop with all its external ports superglued, bar a special printer port, and with it’s wifi card removed. It cannot be accessed externally in anyway what so ever. You will print off and store on special drives that Susan will instruct you in.” Gordon nodded, he was in at the deep end and loving it!

“Meanwhile this crowd in here will be watched by Incarna, as they think, we think, we are getting a handle on them!” George turned back to the SitCom Cabin.

“… and people, I want this Incarna shut down. Initiate the Insight Protocols! I want every mention of the word Incarna blocked from every server on the planet. Get every ally we have onto this now, and I also want it done before I get into that room with Madam President. I don’t ever want to hear the word Incarna mentioned anywhere on the web or in the media again. If it’s publicity Incarna wants well they can …! Let’s move people!”