Deep

Chapter 77 Lunch time.

Seki and Su took their chairs, and the bot deposited a tray with the meals and drinks on my desk and departed. 

'Well, you two, let's eat.' I had ordered the same menu item for everybody, but they would customise each meal for the individual's caloric needs. I grabbed my meal and settled behind my desk to dig in. Seki and Su watched, confused and aghast, as I wolfed down my portion. 

They both shrugged and retrieved their meals.

'Drew, since when did you eat such large portions?' Seki asked.

'Ever since I had my implant replaced.' I said my mouth full. 'I am always hungry. My last scan showed increased brain activity, and Cassandra had a special dietary program designed for me.' 

'Is there any explanation why you have this increased energy requirement?' Su asked.

'She wasn't sure, but I think it is because they designed the grey space to keep Bob's in check.' 

'Keep Bob in check?' Seki asked. Her voice betrays her distrust of Bob and anything to do with him. 

Su gave Seki and I, a questioning look. 'Who's Bob?' she asked.

'Bob is his pet name for that thing in his head.' Seki snapped. 

'He is not a thing. He's a him, and he likes the name. And he's not my pet.' 

'You gave the voice in your head a name?' Su looked at me incredulously.

'Yeah, I did.'

'Why don't you tell her what else you did with Bob?' Seki was not giving Bob a chance, and I tired of it.

'Well, I gave him ShipNet access. Are you happy now?'

'You did what?' They both asked in unison.

Oh, dear. I was planning on easing into this, but now it's spilt all over the place.

Su asked, 'How does a voice in your head access ShipNet?' 

'Well, he set up a virtual machine, and I gave it access to ShipNet.' 

'The voice in your head...'

'Bob.'

'Bob, the voice in your head, created a virtual machine that could access ShipNet?' 

'Yes, yes, he did. And it was useful too.'

'It was useful. How?' Su sounded like she was speaking to a potentially violent psychotic and, to be frank, after listening to myself, I almost agree with her.

'Wait, I'm not giving a proper explanation...' I explained all about Bob to Su, including his discovery of the Malware hidden in the EMP waveform and his discovery of the potential intruder. When I had completed my account, Su's face was unreadable and Seki's stance had softened. 

'Are you certain about his latest discovery?' Seki asked.

'That is the main reason I called you two here. Let's set up a private network and show you what he found.' We set up a peer-to-peer network, and I shared Bob's simulation with them. 

'When are we going to catch a break?' Su asked. Her voice ladened with despair. 

'Frankly, Su, I don't know either.' 

'So, what are we going to do now?' Seki asked.

'I hoped that you two could tell me. We can't rely on Alice.' 

'Why can't we?' Su asked.

'With the network compromised, we'll never know if someone else is listening in.' 

'I would prefer that Alice remain focused on all that she is currently doing to the best of her ability. In addition, I don't want to tip off our opponent that we are onto them. Right now, Bob is attempting to anticipate their next action.' 

'I don't think it's on the network at all.' Seki looked thoughtful. Su and I looked at her. 

'Why do you think that?' Su asked.

'If something was on the network, it could analyse the entire ship in mere moments, but it spread its search over a few days, and each search was localised.' Seki manipulated the simulation and pulled up each area and delineated them by time. 'Notice that it analysed each facility over an hour, and then there's a longer delay between that and the next place. It's doing a systematic search one system at a time. It appears, it's hacking into the network close to a facility and then using the nearby sensor nodes to investigate. After it's done, it moves to somewhere else. Besides, any significant increase in network traffic, Alice would have noticed.'  

'Brilliant, where hasn't it searched yet?' Su asked.

We eliminated all the places that it scouted already and found one hundred and thirty-five locations that were significant to ship operations that it had not. 

'Wow one hundred and thirty five, we don't have enough personnel to guard every location. So what do we do now?' Su asked. 

'We secure some places and leave a few others open as a trap?' Seki asked.

'I think we should let it search some more without letting it know that we're on to it.' I offered.

'What? Why?' Seki asked. 

'Then we'll have fewer places to guard and more time to figure out its intent. We'll give Bob a list of the unsearched places and have him focused on those. Okay, that's the plan. Let's finish our meal like everything's normal and get back to work.'

At this point, everyone had lost their appetite except me. We continued to eat in silence, each one in their own thoughts.