The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (42 page)

A few minutes later, Stevens returned
to his chair.

“Okay, they are preparing a shuttle for flight, with a ready-crew capable of
retrieving a satellite. It will be on hold until you pull the trigger. Ryan,
when you are able, please send me details of the satellite, we need to know the
name, location and size.”

Stevens put his phone away, and handed
Ryan a card with his contact information.

He sat down in the chair next to Cohen,
“Now gentlemen, can you tell me what your intention is?”

Cohen nodded to Ryan, “It’s your plan
Ryan, go ahead.”

Ryan nodded.
“Mr. Stevens, We believe we’ve identified a mass storage of SID’s research. It
may prove to hold the key to restoring our reproductive function, but it is
encrypted.”
“We have excellent code breakers,” said Stevens.

“I believe you, but this is a different
kind of lock. Some sort of fractal-based, repeating algorithm. We need SID to
give up the code.”

Ryan sipped his coffee and said, “It
makes it a bit stickier, doesn’t it.”

“I understand, Mr. Dane; please
continue.”

Ryan put his coffee down.

“So, we’d prefer to catch SID, rather
than kill him. We’re setting a trap, and hope to isolate the SID program in an
old IntelliHealth satellite. If we’re successful, we’ll use the shuttle to go
up there and bring it back. Then we can take our time to force him to comply.”

Ryan continued, “In the meantime, Dr.
Cohen has successfully passed the message to the other IntelliHealth Facilities
regarding SID’s servers, and they are continuing to shut him out. As each
Facility powers down, he moves more of himself here. So far, it seems to be
working.”

Ryan got up and walked to the window;
it was nighttime outside and the city was lit up down below. He stretched his
back as he turned back to the two men at his desk. In the light of his lamp,
they appeared only as silhouettes.

“Another member of my team is working
with our local labs to test the Rn186 vaccination for additional components.”
“Additional components?”

Cohen said, “Yes, we believe that SID
has used these vaccinations to shut down our reproductive systems.”

“We’re testing the latest vaccination,
without using SID,” said Ryan, “I’m told that it will take several hours before
we have the results. And lastly, right now, we’re waiting for one of my team to
finish preparing the programming for the trap.”

“I can provide a lot of computer
programmers,” Steven offered.

“I think I believe you,” said Ryan,
“but this will be over by the time they get here and get up to speed.”

“So, you’re saying we just have to
wait?”

“Yes.”

Unperturbed, Stevens turned to Cohen,
“Dr. Cohen, do you have someplace where I can work?”

“Sure, please come with me, and I’ll
get you an office where you can set up. All I ask is that you do not use any of
the IntelliHealth communications devices. We don’t know how much SID can hear,
so I choose to treat them all as compromised.”

“I understand completely. Thank you Dr.
Cohen.”

Stevens stood up, “It was nice to meet
you, Mr. Dane, and I look forward to working with you to a successful
conclusion. Call me directly with anything you might need, and please keep me
updated.”

“Yes, I will, thank you Mr. Stevens,”
Ryan said as he walked with them to the door. He shook hands with Stevens on
the way.

“Just one last thing Mr. Dane,” said
Mr. Stevens, “I understand that SID tried to blow up a plane scheduled for your
wife and child. Is that true?”

“He did blow up it up. My family made it, but people died.”

“I understand. Are you able to finish
this with a clear head, Mr. Dane?”

Ryan was startled, not really sure what
to say.

“You see, Ryan, it’s clear to me now
that you’re the lynchpin in this affair. You discovered the enemy, and you seem
to understand its behavior. Your team looks to you for direction. I have spent
my career serving causes for our leaders. From my experience, I will tell you
that I believe the SID entity will fight back again, and as it becomes more
desperate it will become even more dangerous.”
He took a step closer to Ryan.

”To prevail, Ryan you must remain calm
and detached. Don’t get emotional, and don’t let it rattle you.” Ryan still wasn’t
sure what to say.
Cohen said, “I have complete faith in him, Mr. Stevens, we need him.”

“I see that,” he said, “It’s important
that the three of us understand each other. Good night, Mr. Dane.”

Cohen and Stevens left Ryan alone with
his thoughts.

He understood what Stevens meant,
was
he right?
 
Earlier he’d said to Eric how personal the matter was now that SID had
tried to harm his family. Ryan stepped back to the window and looked outside.
He remembered when he started, and how much he appreciated the view. He cleared
his thoughts, and returned to his desk.
 

Stevens would have to answer to a lot
of people if this got out of hand. It was his job to keep the problem
contained. Maintain control at all cost. He wondered how far Stevens would go
if he and Cohen failed.

What would he do if SID found another
way out? Could there be a nuclear missile warming up in a silo somewhere? He
imagined a white nose cone with little puffs of steam wafting up. Would they
remove the city to prevent SID from escaping the Facility?
He thought they might.

Suddenly, he was glad Jean and Alex
were in Florida.
 

He laid his head down on his desk, and closed his eyes. Next door, he could
hear Jim still typing on his keyboard. As he drifted off, he thought he could
hear his tablet lightly beeping again.

Startled, Ryan woke to hear Jim’s voice
repeating something.

He snapped up, suddenly aware that he
had fallen asleep.

Jim was there, saying something to him.
He looked for his clock, and was struck in the face by sunlight streaming in
through the windows.

“What time is it,” he said.

“Ryan, wake up! It’s 9:00 AM, I did
it!”

Ryan sat up, and leaned back in his
chair.

“Okay, I’m awake,” he said through
squinting eyes, ”You’re finished?”

“Yes, I’m done. I have the twins blocking
the way to the satellite.”

“Good work, Jim. Has SID noticed?”

“No not yet.”

“Okay, let me get some coffee, and I’ll
meet you in your office.”

Jim left, and Ryan stood up. Looking down, he realized he was wearing the same
suit he wore to the meeting yesterday morning. He felt a lot like the way the
suit looked. He took the tie off, unbuttoned the shirt collar, and rolled the
sleeves up. Ryan walked out front where he saw that Jeff was talking with Lara
about something.

He picked up a croissant from a tray
near her desk, and saw Jim was eating something in his office too. He walked
past them to the restroom. He walked in and washed his face, and smoothed his
hair. Feeling a little better, he made his way back to the tray of croissants.

“Good morning Ryan, we didn’t want to wake you.”

“Thanks, it’s fine. Any news this
morning?”

Jeff said, “The testing of the Rn186
vaccination is still underway. With everything being done by hand, the process
is much slower.”

“I understand.”

He reached down and poured himself some
coffee from a pitcher next to the breakfast tray.

Lara said, “Rosemary reports that about
half of the IntelliHealth Facilities around the world have reported in to say
they’ve powered down their SID servers. She says that Dr. Cohen is very
pleased, and that it seems to be going very smoothly. So far there have been no
accidents in the labs.”

Ryan remembered that the primary
concern was to shut down the more hazardous experiments, quickly and safely
prior to powering down the SID-supporting computer servers.
“Thanks Lara, that is some good news.”

He picked up a croissant, and with coffee in the other hand, made his way into
Jim’s office.

“Good morning, Jim,” he said sitting
down next to Jim’s desk.

“Hey Ryan, I see you’re with us now.”

“Yes. So tell me about Thor and Loki.
How did you lock access to the satellite?”

“I reassigned their network address to
move them from the research network to the hospital network. Then I adjusted
access to the network where the satellite lives so that any user request will
have to be approved by the twins.”

“Lastly, I created a password
encryption that is redundant across both machines. In other words, once you
enter the correct password for Loki, then you have to enter the correct
password for Thor; or vice versa, the order doesn’t really matter, but both
machines are necessary to gain entry.”
“Can SID crack that?”

“Last night I really wracked my brain
on that question. How hard should the encryption be? What I believe is that,
it’s the method I would’ve used if I were trying to protect something,
before
I knew about SID
.”

“Yes, I understand your point.”

“Well, now we wait and see,” said Jim.

As they ate breakfast, Jim’s terminal
began beeping. He turned a display monitor to the side so Ryan could see it
too. It showed a line graph with data that was sloping upward. Ryan recognized
it was the activity level of the SID servers, here at their Facility.

“It has jumped again.”

“Jim, is it possible that he can burn
up the computer servers here, simply by moving himself here?”

“I don’t think so. The servers are
pretty huge. They were designed to handle the research at our building, run the
SID program, and interact with the rest of the IntelliHealth System all at
once. As we shut down most of the research activity upstairs, it frees up
computing power here. Also, the lack of interaction with the rest of the
network will help.”

“Eric reports that about half of the
Facilities have powered down. So doesn’t that put him at about 50% here?” said
Ryan.

Jim leaned back and stretched his arms.
“Assuming he’s evenly distributed, yes. The truth is, he may be more in one
location than another. We don’t even know how big he really is, or what level
of activity is adequate to sustain him. There’s a lot of guesswork here.”

Ryan sipped at his coffee.

The beeping began again.
Jim added,
 
“It also depends on what
he’s trying to do. The less he does, the smaller he can get.”

“I’m ready for the show,” said Ryan.

Ryan returned to his office, and read
his mail.

He saw another request from Mr. Stevens
for the IntelliHealth Satellite information. He forwarded it to Jim and asked
for the communications data.

A short while later he got the
information back, and read through it.

It was an IntelliHealth Communications
Satellite Array CNCS – 103d. Apparently it weighed almost four tons, and stood
about twelve feet tall. It was a medium sized satellite with a solar powered
battery system.
That was interesting.
He hadn’t thought of a power source.

When he sent the location information
and satellite specs to Stevens, he asked if Stevens could arrange for an
alternate power source to be employed after pick-up. If SID ran out of juice,
he might lose his memory, and the code to his database could be lost forever.

Ryan’s hands were sweating again
.

‘Damn, that was important. What else am
I missing?’

Within a minute or two of having sent
it, he got a response.

‘No problem Ryan, the alternate power
source will be ready, and the crew taught how to attach it.’

The man continued to impress. Whatever
Ryan felt about bureaucracy, Mr. Stevens was a good guy to have on your team.

The hours passed, and before long it
was late in the afternoon.

IntelliHealth Facilities around the
world continued to stop their research, and power down their SID servers. It
was working too.