The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (43 page)

The levels of activity on their local
machines continued to climb. They were at 300% of yesterday’s activity and
rising constantly now.

Jim seemed unbothered by this.

Ryan was more anxious every time it
nudged up again. The beeping of his tablet monitor script, made the hair on his
arms stand up.

Cohen and Stevens had visited Ryan
twice already looking for updates. All he could say was that everything seemed
to be working. However, so far SID had not even pinged the twins. Maybe he
wouldn’t even find them. Who really knew what a damn computer program might do
anyway.

And so he waited.

The day passed and soon it was dinner
time.

Ryan forced himself to walk down to the
cafeteria. He needed to get out of his office for a while. He found the
cafeteria was still open, and got himself a very nice looking steak and piece
of pie. As he sat down he looked at his plate and wondered if this would be his
last meal before SID escaped and wiped them all out? He took a bite, realized
he wasn’t very hungry.

Jeff was there as well; he saw Ryan
across the room.

He moved over, and sat down next to
him.

“Hello Ryan, how are you doing?”

“Hi Jeff,” he said while pushed his pie
around with his fork.

Jeff thought Ryan looked exhausted.
“Ryan you must relax. We’ve done the best we can with what we know.”

“So far SID hasn’t taken the bait. What
do you suppose he’s up to?”
“I think he’s on the run, it will be a new experience for him,” said Jeff.

“I agree, he’s been operating freely up
‘till now, hasn’t he.”

“I still want to know how he blew up
that plane.”

“Yeah, and that was from inside our
system, imagine what he’ll be able to do if he gets out?”

That was something Jeff hadn’t
considered.

An evil SID romping around the real
world might want vengeance against them all.

It was a terrible thought.

Putting his best smile on, “Enough of
this talk. Right now, you should be asking me if we will be ready to analyze
the research data SID possesses.”

It was a good question.

“Okay, I’ll bite Jeff.” Ryan put his
fork down, and took a drink.

“Just supposing we beat this super
powered evil machine, catch him, force the access code out of him, and then
crack the database, will you be ready to use it?”

With a straight face Jeff said, “No, of
course not. We don’t even know what form the data will take. It might be years
before we can make sense of it. What a silly question.”

There was a pause, and then they both
started laughing.

Ryan’s phone rang; it was Jim.

“Ryan, it’s started. You better get up
here.”

“I’m on my way.”

Ryan found Jim sitting at his desk
watching several displays, each with information flying across the screen. Jim
was taking it all in.

“What’s happened?”

Jim seemed to be mesmerized by the data
flowing before him.

“Jim, talk to me, what’s happened?”
repeated Ryan, more forcefully this time.

“He’s here Ryan,” whispered Jim. “The
activity levels were moving up incrementally like usual, and then they jumped
to 700% of yesterday’s numbers. He’s been scanning the network ports. He’s
already cycled through them several times. He found a service port in the
maintenance routine that is used to adjust our air-conditioning. I think… I
think I have it locked down. He’s so fast. I didn’t know.”

Ryan pulled his phone out of his pocket
and called Cohen.

“Eric, I need help now.”

“I’m on my way.”

Eric and Rosemary appeared at Jim’s door in less than a minute.

“What can we do?”

“Sid is here, and he’s searching for a
way out. Jim has identified a network port used for servicing the
air-conditioning for the building. Please locate it, and sever it.”

“You mean actually cut it?”

“Yes, any way you can.”

Cohen was pulling his phone out of his
pocket, as he turned around to leave. Rosemary was already on her phone, and
talking to someone in building maintenance.

Ryan went back to Jim.

The data on the screens was moving
faster than he could really follow.
SID was here all right.
He looked mad.

Minutes ticked by.

Jim said, “You know Ryan, if we survive
this, the paper I’m going to write will be worth a Nobel Prize.”

“If we win, I’ll be the first one to
congratulate you.”

One screen froze, and began reading off
streams of numbers so fast that the eye couldn’t follow.

Jim started to type something and then
froze.

“He’s breaking my lock on the
maintenance port. There’s nothing I can do.”

Jim could only sit there watching,
stunned at the sheer speed and fierceness of the machine as it bludgeoned its
way through the maintenance port.

Ryan called Cohen, “Eric, he’s getting
through.”

“Hold on Ryan,” said Eric quickly.
He could hear Rosemary talking to someone on the far side, "-there’s no
time for that now. On my authority cut them all, or give me the goddamned axe,
and I’ll do it.”

There was a pause, followed by a loud
banging sound.

Instantly the numbers stopped flowing
on Jim’s display.

“Ryan we did it,” said Eric.

“I know, SID has stopped trying to get
through to that one.”

“We’re on our way back up, I’ll see you
in a few minutes.”

Without taking his eyes off the
displays, Ryan put his phone back in his pocket.

Then another display began moving, it
was Thor and Loki.

A short string of numbers flowed by.

A pause and then another.

Suddenly, the pace picked up and a
constant barrage of numbers and characters filled the lower half of the screen.

“He’s taken the bait Ryan. Look at them
go.”

The numbers across the screen broke
into two columns, and flew even faster.

Cohen and Rosemary arrived a little out
of breath, and walked over to Jim’s desk. They too saw the numbers flying
across the display.
“He’s found Thor and Loki, “said Jim softly, “He’s bearing down on them.”

Ryan thought it must have been hurting
him to see SID pounding on them like this. In a way these two machines were
Jim’s pets, and he felt much the same way another man might feel about his
dogs.

Jim said, “Sid is now attacking them
both simultaneously. Each column of numbers represents SID as he alternates
through number and character combinations.”
The columns split again creating eight sets streaming by at incredible speed.

Then they split again, creating
sixteen.
 

Suddenly, a number became highlighted
and flew to the top where it rested below the name ‘THOR’.
“Sid has just cracked the first number of the sequence for Thor.”

Another one went to the top under Thor,
and then one under Loki.

The combinations on the display were
moving far too fast to read now.
They were simply white blurs on the screen.
Ryan noticed that the activity monitor on another of the displays now read
1050%. In his mind, he imagined that SID’s servers were glowing red and wafting
small clouds of smoke and sulfur, with sparks spitting from the sides.

As if on cue, a warning light began
flashing on Thor’s side.

There were 8 characters identified on
that side now.

Jim pointed to the warning light.

“SID is causing Thor to overheat. If
Thor’s processors overheat, they will collapse and SID will only have Loki to
stop him.”

The numbers continued to whirl on the
screen.

Finally, the light on Thor’s panel went
from red to black, and the column of numbers stopped abruptly.

“Thor’s down. It’s only a matter of
time now.”

It didn’t seem possible, but the
numbers actually sped up again on Loki’s side.

“Loki is no match for SID by himself.”

Now 6 characters were identified below
the name, ‘LOKI’.

Just minutes later, Loki’s warning light
also turned black and the numbers ceased.

In a low voice, Jim said, “He’s done
it, he has access to the satellite.”

The activity level in the SID servers
dropped to almost nothing.

“He’s there Ryan, he did it. He’s
transferred himself to the satellite,” said Jim.
 
Ryan looked at Jim. He realized he was
holding his breath. He let out a big sigh.

“Did it work, is he really up there?”

Jim leaned back and nodded while he
wiped his face.

“Right about now, SID is realizing that
he can’t transmit to Earth. I bet he’s one very angry program.”

With whoops and fists in the air, Jeff
said, “Oh thank God, yes! Thank God.”
Jim was pointing at the screen, “You son of a bitch! I beat you! Yeah!”

Cohen was shaking Ryan’s hand as fast
as he could, “Well done, well done, well done Ryan.”
Ryan looked at the server activity and noticed that they were still active,
just barely, but moving.

“Why is there still any activity on the
servers here?” he asked.

“They run a lot of stuff in the labs,
there’s going to be residual stuff happening there. At least until the labs
finish shutting down the their experiments.”

Cohen said, “That’s correct Ryan. Our
labs haven’t finished yet, but they’re close.”

“We’ll all feel better when the servers
are powered down, it should still be a priority,” said Ryan.

Rosemary said, “Let me see if I can’t
hurry them up a little,” and left the room.

Stevens arrived to find everyone in
Ryan’s office.
”It worked Mr. Stevens, we have Sid bottled up in the satellite,” said Eric.

“Excellent Eric.” He shook Ryan’s hand
and squeezed his shoulder, “Well done, Mr. Dane. Very well done.”

Rosemary called a few minutes later, and said she found the last centrifuge
still running. The activity zeroed out after that, as the servers were powered
down.

A light began to blink on one of Jim’s
displays. It caught Jeff’s attention because he could see it illuminating that
corner of the room. Curious, Jeff pointed at it, “Jim what is that light over
there?”

Conversations stopped as they watched
Jim walk back to his displays, and sit down.
He had a perplexed look about him.

“It’s an indicator on the satellite.
It’s reading that the satellite is moving a few degrees on its axis.” Quickly,
Jim pulled the satellite data up, front and center.

“It seems to be tracking something passing near the moon. Actually something
that is moving between the Earth and the Moon.” He pulled up a real-time guide
to orbiting devices and overlaid the two sets of information.
“It’s tracking a probe that belongs to the Space Program, the Hermes 9.”
Jim highlighted the probe and scrolled down. “This information says it’s
apparently a survey probe that has been mapping areas of Venus, and is now
supposed to be on its way to Mars.”

“Why is it flying between earth and the moon?” Jeff asked.

Stevens responded, “It’s a common
technique used by the World Space Program. They will fly the probe around the
earth and use gravity to slingshot it to Mars, or wherever their target is. It
builds up a lot of speed, and saves a lot of fuel.”

“I think he’s transmitting himself to
that probe,” said Jim.

“What?” said Ryan, “but you broke the
transmitter on the satellite.”
“That’s not exactly what I did. I tilted and fused the transmitter that pointed
at earth. The satellite couldn’t transmit to anywhere on earth, because it
wasn’t pointed at Earth.”

The transmitter could still broadcast
into space.

And there it was, the thing that they
had missed.