Incarna

80 - Brain Damage

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

George looked up and called out to the Situations room, “Right people listen up!” The room went silent and most heads turned toward him. “Whoever or whatever has hacked our systems has sent us a message as well. Its a 33 minute reboot before they take over our system again!” Mostly blank faces stared back at him then there was a snigger off to his left. George turned to the middle aged man with straggly hair and beard and slightly oversized hooded sweater he wore for comfort not fashion. He smiled back at George, “that would be the first episode of the remake sir!”

George laughed and called out, “Sloan, make sure Adama here gets a bonus!” He walked across to the man’s work station, “It's Adam sir, Adam Hunter!” George smirked, close enough, “so any thoughts about how BSG applies here, there’s a few twists in that plot!"

“If I may sir, there are two implications that are the most plausible. The first is that all of this is of human construction. A hacker using the Incarna turmoil to try out new algorithms, oh and with a sense of humour. Kinda, like!” George frowned, he hated the way so many techs actually respected hackers and enjoyed the effort of defeating them. George called it Tech Head Spectrum Disorder. At one end were the criminals, then the hackers in the middle of the bell curve and the techs at the other end. Skill wise they were all capable but it was the socialisation of each that made the difference. George was aware of all the studies on family violence and drug use that was the background to the development of criminal behaviour. He had to be or you ended up with some nutter at a terminal that controlled thousands of lives or billions of dollars and, not a good look.

There were also the studies on lead from petrol and paint that showed that lead altered the size and structure of children’s brains and produced a spike in violence and dangerous behaviour 20 years later. The research he worried about the most though was the chemical exposure findings. Especially about the shitty stuff that made up most of the chemical cloud people lived in and mimicked hormones and caused infertility and cancers. He was infertile from some fuckin’ stupid chemical his mother had used as a cleaning agent while she carried him and left him now with incipient testicular cancer. His first wife had died from breast cancer from some fire retardant their first home was full of.

George focussed in on Adam Hunter, “… and?” Hunter grimaced, “Well the other, and this is purely my own conjecture, is that this is some sort of intelligent software that’s got out of control!” George frowned and stood upright then looked around the room. He took in the ordered chaos out of which would come their answers to all this growing Incarna anarchy. He didn’t want the idea of sentient AI involved here no matter that every bloody university and defence force in the world had some sort of AI program or other, despite all the doomsday warnings

George looked back to Hunter who was glancing at his screen as he waited for George’s response. “Do you write science fiction in your spare time Adam?” Hunter grinned then realised that was probably a mistake, “nothing published!” “Yeah well let’s keep it that way while you work here, ok?” “Yes sir.”

“Now, I’ll put you with Ford Updike and whoever else you two think you’ll need to get a handle on this …”

Sloan approached carving her way through the bustling new Situations Room like a WWII destroyer hunting a Japanese sub, “Five Eyes. Florian Berg!” she said handing him a comm set. George raised his eyes to heaven, “Christ don’t they sleep in Europe?”  “It’s just after 7pm there sir,” said Sloan keeping ahead of him. He pointed to his office and she nodded as he turned and negotiated the nexus of work stations he’d somehow become marooned in.

His staff parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses and he closed his office door softly behind him. He went to his small bathroom and washed his face and hands then brushed his hair. He winked at his reflexion hoping as always that the sea bitch wouldn’t take this moment to appear before him.

Back to his standing work station for this conference call and with nothing behind him to give anything away about what they were actually doing. No need to give his allies an advantage.

He tapped the screen and up came Florian’s well presented visage and with the cabin of a small business jet in the background. “So have you got the Carrier Wave harmonics sorted yet George?” asked Florian diving straight in without any formalities. Georges mind raced. Florian was fishing for his progress on this, which meant he'd had some major breakthrough already.

“Well seeing as you’ve dragged your old buddy Max Parrish into your operations, all I can say is that we’ve identified it and have a team analysing it’s structure now …” 

Florian was nodding and just broke into George’s carefully thought out response. “Is Updike with you, he’s the only one you’ll have at your new office who can get any sense of this, but he’ll need more resources than you’ve got there." FLorian paused while someone said somethiong to him from off screen. "This is big George, very big and if we don’t do it properly, now, the first time, we wont ever have a chance!”

George heard the sincerity in Florian’s voice and nodded as he reached for his comm set. “Sloan, Updike, here now thanks!” and he turned back to Florian's oh so cultured presence. God how he hated Europeans.

“I can't say I agree with dragging Parrish in on this Florian, even with your shared history. I don’t want Private in on this …”  “George, he’s already ahead of us on all of it. His AIME supercomputer was built for analysing this sort of functional systems algorithm. It’s the only system around based on a distributed network architecture, and he’s already running simulations to recreate the Incarna carrier wave.”

George went white, “that far ahead?” “Yes George, and I can catch up with him but, and …" Florian looked over Georges shoulder, "Ah Updike, now listen carefully!”