IT WAS WELL BEFORE SEVEN when she finished swiping and reached her desk. No one else was in yet, not even Wai. Allison would want to speak to her, and Em wanted to make sure she at least had good notes to accompany her lack of results. She unlocked her machine and set about putting together a basic report on her method.
It didn't take her long to piece everything together. She didn't have a copy of the log files from Red 5 to show the success of Stoakley's live telephone test. Stoakley said he'd fire everything over once he'd had another look through it all. But she did have her own results from her test net on Meta-Pro's servers. They would be better than nothing. She connected to the database to check the logs.
The first thing she noticed was that her net was still running. The second was that it had found a signature while she was at the Doughnut. It must have come up with Stoakley's test too, she thought. But she realised that it couldn't have — Stoakley's test was on GCHQ's phone recordings and her servers at Meta-Pro didn't have access to that data. Her heart rate increased. The time on the log file said the match had been made at 2:12am, nearly two hours after she left the donut. It was a new match. Her net had worked!
As excited as she was, she needed to verify the result. She had to make sure that the audio capture that her net had identified actually contained a signature, and not some random background interference. The log file told her that the audio had been captured from a server for a game called Counterstrike. That was one of the games mentioned in the Five report, and its servers must have been in the live game captures she'd pointed her net at. The log also contained an identifier for the image file which gave the coordinates of the signature. She pulled up the image and found the corresponding audio file her transform script had processed.
She made a copy to her machine and plugged in her headphones. A quick calculation on the coordinates told her when the signature should occur. She skipped the audio file to roughly the right time. There were lots of explosions and some laughter. She listened to a few seconds and there it was — the clicking of a keyboard. There was no point trying to hear what had been typed, she trusted her net to get that part right.
She went back to the log file. 37_Fl3x0r. It showed which of Ratkai's settings the signature used. She'd been right; it was a fast, confident typist using both hands in the proper way. Lucky for them. If it had been a one-armed hesitant typist on a touchscreen, the net would never have found it. She felt good. Really good.
The next ten minutes were spent compiling all the information into one summary file. She wrote an email to Allison with a quick summary and included a link to the summary and the brief report on the method. She copied Stoakley in, both because she wanted him to see the net's success, and to keep him up to speed in case Allison wanted to speak to him. She sent the emails as Wai came in.
He put his coat on the back of the chair. "How'd it go at the Doughnut?"
"Not very well," Em said with a smile. "But my net here might have caught something useful."
"Well, I didn't hit anything and neither did Paul or James," Wai said. "So well done."
"Thanks."
Em locked her machine and stood up. She hadn't felt like eating earlier, but now she was starving. And a celebratory coffee seemed in order.
"You want anything from Optimal?" she asked on her way out.
Wai held up a takeaway coffee cup and shook his head.
There was a pause in the drizzle that coincided with a gap in the traffic. Em took advantage of both. Optimal was full and buzzing. Five members of staff were busy behind the counter. Em found herself absentmindedly looking for the guy with the accent while she queued. He appeared from the back office with a tray full of clean cups and plates as she reached the head of the queue. He dumped them on a draining board and turned to take her order.
"You're in early," he said. "Good weekend?"
"Better than I imagined for two solid days of work," Em said.
"They work you hard in there. What would you like?"
"Bloom filter and a croissant please." Em couldn't think of anything else conversational to say. She just smiled.
He scribbled something on the bottom of a takeaway cup and passed it to a woman behind the coffee machine. Em shuffled along the counter and he started to serve the next customer. She heard him ask another question about the weekend. It made her feel glad that her coworkers barely spoke to her all day.
When her coffee came she added two sugars and carried it out with the croissant in a brown paper bag. She swiped and sipped her way back to her office. Before she sat down Wai rolled his chair sideways, head coming into view from behind his screen.
"Allison came down just after you left. She wants to see you." He rolled back.
Em left the croissant on her desk and took the coffee up with her to Allison's office. As usual, Allison was behind her desk, but the door was closed. Em hovered in the corridor for a moment, looking through the glass door at her boss talking on the phone. Allison caught her eye, and waved her in while continuing with her phone call.
"Yes, yes, we've checked on the integrity of the intercept. It is perfect, a live capture, direct from the game servers and copied to us, no chance of interference or doctoring. We've got people looking at tracing the source right now, and if we're lucky we'll get all the way back to the ISP, and from there we'll have them."
Allison sounded excited, and Em sat down opposite.
"No, I haven't run it past D-Ops yet, I wanted to take him the whole package." Allison listened to the other person, and as she did her expression changed, and her back straightened in her chair.
"Ok, I'll do that now. Goodbye." She turned to Em. "Fantastic work. Really. Stoakley had already briefed me about how brilliant you were, regardless of the results at the Doughnut. But this audio file you found in the light is exactly what Retina was set up for."
"What happens now?" Em asked barely noticing the compliments.
"Things are in motion. We have to check the integrity of the capture to start with. Then we can give the information to MI5 who are running the investigation. They will want us to dig deeper into any relevant captures. Stoakley is already on it. He said he's going to fire your net back up to see if it finds any more."
"Could it lead directly to the terrorists?"
"Unlikely, but not impossible. If we trace the capture back to the internet service provider we could get lucky. It's more likely that it will support other evidence and narrow things down."
"What do I need to do now?" It seemed like it was all out of Em's hands. She would be happy to get back to her ongoing project. Unless she was needed back at the Doughnut.
"Not too much. Your email was good, but your method didn't mention the servers here — it was all about Red 5. Can you give me something with more detail about exactly how you implemented the neural nets here. We need to make a clear case for how we handled the data, in case the audio capture is ever used as evidence for a conviction."
"Oh, er, what exactly do—"
"I'll amend your file and send it back," Allison cut in. "Just look for anywhere I've asked for more detail and put exactly what you did. After that we'll have to wait and see if Stoakley needs any more from you in Cheltenham."
Em nodded.
"I'll let you know if anything changes," Allison said. "And again, that was really great work."
"Er, thanks," Em said. She wasn't a fan of direct praise and had never worked out what to do with it. Any response either felt gloaty or awkward. She turned and left Allison's office.
***
It was still only 8:30am so Paul and Jamie weren't in yet. Em took a bite out of her croissant and decided to wait until she received Allison's email before doing anything more. She checked her inbox and there was an email from Jason Stoakley. It contained a link to a secure folder with the log files. He'd also congratulated her on her first interaction with the Alliance, and again mentioned that he hoped they'd be working together again soon.
There wasn't much of a need to look at the logs from Red 5 as they'd produced nothing. Just out of interest she had a look at the test match that Stoakley had typed over the phone. It showed four different settings, confident left shift, confident right shift, and with and without caps lock. He had typed them all within a couple of seconds. Em didn't think she'd have been able to modify her typing styles that quickly and still type the correct string. She saved the logs in her "for review" folder.
Allison sent two emails. The first was to the team thanking them for their efforts over the weekend. The second was her amendments to Em's methodology report. There were a few comments about the structure and then a bunch of question marks which Em took to mean 'add more detail here'. She was fairly happy to make the changes as it would be a good record of the project if she were ever needed to do something like it again.
When Jamie and Paul came in, Wai told them about Em's success before they could check their emails. Paul was genuinely pleased, while Jamie barely moved his mouth while muttering "Not bad for a new recruit" under his breath. Em didn't mind, she was pleased that Wai had told them early, so that she could get back to work without having to worry about bringing it up herself.
She finished the changes to the report before lunch. She'd heard nothing from Allison so she spent the rest of the day re-aligning herself with her original project, and working out which parts of the last three days' work could be used. Not that much, she concluded. Some of the audio processing might be useful, but in the end, she wouldn't be using a supercomputer to run her nets on a day to day basis. She needed a much lighter-weight net that could be easily tweaked by other non-technical analysts.
When her normal working hours came to a close, she was pretty much exhausted. There was still no word from Allison, and she decided not to bother finding out why. Over the last hour she deliberately wound down, and tried to stop thinking about any particular problems that could trap her into a solving frenzy. She got up to leave promptly at six, locked her machine, threw her coat on and said goodbye to Jamie and Paul. At the first swipe she remembered she wanted to call her mum. At the fifth swipe she had her phone out and was in the process of unlocking it while nodding to the receptionist. Rather than nodding back, the receptionist caught her eye and waved her over.
"Hello, I've just received a call from Allison — she'd like to see you in her office."
Em wanted to ask why, but there was no point. She sighed, thanked the receptionist, put her phone away and headed back upstairs. Allison's door was back to being propped open by the piece of bent metal, but Allison wasn't at her desk. Em stepped into the office to glance around. As she did this Allison appeared in the doorway of the meeting room and beckoned Em over.
"I don't believe it," Allison said closing the door behind Em. She sounded serious and she shook her head. "Five have decided not to use the captured audio, and aren't going to trace the source. I've been told to put a hold on it, even though there's an imminent threat. It doesn't make any sense, and I've been offered no explanation."
"Do you think they already know who the terrorists are? Perhaps there's other, better evidence to use against them." Em offered.
"It doesn't matter if there is. It's a formality to run the trace, there's no reason not to do it, even if it is not going to be used later. We do it all the time. And if they knew who the terrorists were, why involve us in the first place?"
Em didn't know. She wasn't even sure why Allison was telling her, especially as there was nothing they could do about it.
"I've spent the entire afternoon trying to find out what is going on. I managed to get hold of the Director of Operations and he said that the ball was in Five's court. The fact that he already knew about our part of the operation shows how far up Five have taken this. He also said that we need complete silence on this. All of it. Regardless of how it fits in with your ongoing work, what we did over the weekend is now Impact 6 itself."
"So I can't continue with my existing project?" Em didn't like the sound of complete silence. Not if it meant she couldn't do any work.
"Your existing project yes, but you're not on the MI5 operation any more. Nor are Paul, Jamie or Wai. It means you can't do anything with the neural network used over the weekend. Or the data it collected, or the log files. This could just be for the short term—"
"Why?" Em cut in. "We actually got some results, why take us off now?"
"I don't know for certain. Five don't need to give reasons. Was there much work from the weekend that you need to get your hands on?"
Em was tempted to say she needed all of it. She wasn't feeling happy about her work being taken away for no good reason. But in reality, she knew there was not much there that she was going to use again.
"It's always good to be able to review old work," Em started, but she kept herself calm. "I'll need access to Ratkai's word-sound compiler, but the rest I won't need urgently."
"All right then. For the time being at least, we'll forget about the weekend." Allison stood and opened the meeting room door for Em to leave.
As she walked back downstairs, Em had her first major doubts about working for GCHQ. It was one thing having your results slammed by a professor, but having to just 'forget' them seemed crazy. Whatever, it didn't matter, and she was too tired to object. She'd done her job, and got the data that they needed. If the attack was going to be stopped by other means, then it was all academic. But if the attack still happened? Em didn't want to think about that, so she made a note to check with Allison in the morning to see if Five did have things under control.