The Siren Project (23 page)

The two scientists with the chimp stepped
well back from the table, as one of the scientists at the computer console
activated the eight white spheres. They began moving slowly, orienting
themselves, as one by one, the computer generated lines formed crosshairs on
the eight screens, indicating the emitters were perfectly aligned with a point
deep inside the chimpanzee’s brain. When all eight screens displayed a
perfectly formed crosshair over the chimp’s brain, a small flash of light
showed on each screen as the eight sub atomic particle beams intersected inside
the chimp’s brain.

Mouse pointed to the eyes. “See that! Its
eyes are nuts.” The chimpanzee remained motionless, completely under the sway
of the paralytic drug, but its eyes fluttered rapidly. “Maybe it’s in pain,
maybe it’s lost control. Who knows, but my theory is the spheres are emitting
particle streams that intersect in the brain, at a molecular level.”

Gradually, the eight sets of crosshairs
slid across eight slowly moving images of the chimp’s brain while the robot
controls reoriented the emitters.

“Are those spheres firing while they’re
moving?” Mitch asked.

“I ran tests on the pictures,” Mouse
replied. “The spheres move in very small increments simultaneously, then stop. My
guess is only after they’re stationary and have refocused on the intersection
point, do they fire. Because the movements are small and the firing is rapid,
it looks like constant movement, but it isn’t. It’s rapid stop start.”

“Getting those beams to move and intersect
accurately, that fast, is quite a feat.”

“You said it! One beam does nothing, but
eight beams intersecting the same molecular coordinate inside the brain does .
. . whatever the hell it does? The beams might even be different types of
particles that interact when they collide. Like nitro and glycerin being added
together. Tricky stuff.”

They watched the chimpanzee with a mixture
of fascination and revulsion, as it experienced the treatment with glazed
flickering eyes. The eight projectors slid back from the metal table, then one
of the scientists injected the chimpanzee again. Several minutes later, once
the stimulant had taken effect, the chimpanzee began to writhe as it regained
control of its body. The scientist with the cattle prod then stepped up and jabbed
the chimp, sending electricity arcing into the animal, but the chimp showed no
reaction.

“Now that’s creepy,” Mouse exclaimed. “The
monkey doesn’t feel anything.”

“He feels it,” Christa corrected him. “But,
he’s been conditioned to ignore the pain.”

Mitch watched the scientist jab the monkey
with the cattle prod several more times. “If they’re still experimenting on
monkeys, that’s proof they haven’t perfected the technique, even if they can
use it on humans in an emergency.”

“If they can do that to a monkey, the
technique is far advanced. They’re not developing it, they’re perfecting it.”

“The human brain,” Christa said, “Is far
more complex than a chimpanzee’s.”

“Mouse is right,” Mitch said. “This thing
is much further ahead than we thought. When is Knightly going to get back to us
about Peter?”

“When I called him. His first response was
a flat no, but eventually he agreed to discuss it with the Executive Committee.
I really doubt he'll hand it over to you.”

“Call him again. Tell him this thing is more
advanced than any of us suspected. If he doesn’t give us everything he can, it'll
be too late.”

Christa didn't answer. She just looked at
the screen, watching the flashes of electricity strike the chimpanzee who
remained oblivious to the pain.

“This thing is the future,” Mitch said. “Nuclear
weapons can destroy countries, but this invisible monster can control mankind
without anyone ever knowing it. It’s not only the end of our way of life, it’s
the end of all free will.”

Slowly, Christa realized Mitch was right. “I'll
call him.”

* * * *

Gunter drove the blacked out van up to
the ridge above the Newton Institute shortly after 2 AM, parked and donned a
pair of night vision goggles. He settled back to keep watch, while behind him,
Mouse established contact with the signal snooper attached to the air
conditioning control cable. Mitch and Christa sat opposite, watching in
silence, while Gunter’s voice sounded clearly over the intercom.

“Site is clear.”

Mouse had fully dissected the language used
to control the air conditioning units that controlled the Institute’s
environment. There was nothing unusually sophisticated about it, and there was
no cipher protecting it. He typed in some instructions and his computer
transmitted the program to the snooper.

“Worm away,” Mouse said.

“Will they spot it?” Mitch asked.

“Unlikely. It’s coated in the garbage they
use to talk to the air conditioners. And it’s segmented, so no one piece is
enough to show what it does.”

“What exactly does it do?” Christa asked.

“Goes home to mama.”

Christa looked confused.

“Finds the controlling computer,” Mitch
explained.

Mouse watched the screen for barely two
minutes. “Found it!” Control and output codes flashed across the screen. Mouse
scanned the cryptic text expertly, then issued a command that brought up a
screen with a simple list of menu items. “Okay, it’s a dumb box with a one
dimensional brain and a simple job, keep the temperatures constant in various
rooms. Not exactly what I’d hoped for.”

“Can you do anything with it?” Mitch asked
tensely.

“It’s more a question of, is it connected
to anything useful? Unfortunately, it’s totally stand alone. All I can do is
turn the temperature up or down or off. Not much use, unless we want to make
them freeze to death.”

“Well, if they actually froze to
death
. . .” Mitch said thoughtfully.

“I can’t make it cold enough to kill anyone.”
He concentrated on the screen for several minutes, then sat up straight. “This
could be useful!”

Mitch and Christa leaned forward to see what
he’d found. The screen showed another list of menus with a single word heading.

“Diagnostics?” Mitch read aloud.

Mouse typed in some more instructions, then
the screen disappeared to be replaced by more rapidly scrolling instructions as
his worm burrowed deeper. A moment later the scrolling text vanished and a new
screen appeared. “Here we go! It’s the remote diagnostics dial up. If something
goes wrong with the system, the air conditioning company can dial up and run the
diagnostics program remotely, from their head office.” Mouse looked pleased,
but Mitch and Christa still seemed confused. “They dial up, get access to the
main network, then once in, they get a channel into this dumb box. So, this
thing is hard wired to the main network, which is good. Now I've just got to
find the wire.” He sent some more commands to his worm and waited. “It’s
digging. This could take a while.”

More than twenty minutes passed while they
sat waiting in bored silence, then Mouse made a fist. “Yes! There you are.” He
typed quickly, then watched text flash up as his worm tested the security. “Okay,
there’s a whole bunch of shit in there I can’t even scratch. Looks like
multiple fire walls, high grade encryption, and a few jailers.”

“Jailers?” Christa asked.

“Little programs watching for me to break
in. If they catch me, they put me in jail.” He laughed. “Oh well, that’s what I
call them.”

“Is there anything you can crack?” Mitch
asked.

Mouse bit his lip and watched a list of
scrambled letters and words appear, with a few English words among them. “I
can’t even identify what these things are.” He scrolled through page after page
of unintelligible characters. “Here’s something,” he muttered, then typed some
instructions. “This one’s got a cheap cipher. Can’t be anything too
confidential, but we’ll see.” Mouse launched a program, adding, “I’m copying
everything as we go, so I can study it back at the trailer.”

Mitch turned to Christa. “If Knightly
doesn’t give us Peter, we may have to think of something else. We’re not going
in there unless Mouse can unlock the door for us.”

Christa looked doubtful. Her second call to
Knightly had met yet another deferral. “Peter is the most closely guarded piece
of machinery I know of. Gus understands we need help, but handing over Peter is
going too far, he won’t do it.”

“Woot!” Mouse declared.

Christa looked bemused. “Woot?”

Mitch smiled. “It’s a cyber thing.”

“I’m in.” Mouse sat up and started typing
rapidly. “This is some kind of archive. These files are all old, and by the
looks of them, not classified.” He studied the contents of a couple of files. “Invoices,
a construction contract, lots of memos between several engineering companies
and the Newton Institute’s Board of Governors.” Concentration showed on his
face, then realization dawned on him. “I know what this is. They’re documents
related to the reconstruction of the Institute’s interior. Take a look at this.”

Mouse leaned back so they could see the
screen. A dark page appeared with rectangular yellow lines drawn carefully on
it.

“Architectural plans of the renovated
building?” Mitch guessed.

“And very different to the ones I lifted
from county records.”

Christa pointed to where six squares stood
in a line on one side, each square connected to the Institute by a pair of
parallel lines. “Those are the six outbuildings, aren’t they? But what are
those lines, connecting them to the main building.”

“Enlarge that,” Mitch ordered.

Mouse zoomed in on the indicated area.

“It’s marking the paths to the main
building?” Mouse suggested.

“I don’t think so,” Christa said. “Those
thin lines, there and there, mark the path.”

“I know what they are!” Mitch declared. “But
I don’t understand what they’re doing there.”

They stared at Mitch curiously. He took one
more long hard look at the screen, then answered simply.

“Underground train tracks.”

* * * *

“From the cross sectional view,” Mouse
said, holding up a paper printout of the Institute’s blueprint. “Each tunnel is
about three feet wide by two feet high.”

They were gathered around the small table
inside the mobile home, pouring over the plans Mouse had been studying since
the night before.

“It’s big enough,” Mitch agreed
thoughtfully, “But we still don’t know what it's used for.”

“Whatever it is, it transports something
from here, to here,” Gunter said, tracing a line with his finger from a large
square inside one of the six outbuildings to a similar large square deep inside
the main building. “These squares must be the entrance points.”

“We haven’t seen anyone walk out to those
buildings,” Christa said. “Maybe it has a remote controlled loading system.”

“At both ends,” Mitch said. “Which worries
me. Could whatever it transports be too hot for us? Maybe radioactive?”

“They could be injecting isotopes into the
patient's bloodstream,” Gunter said, “And tracking the isotope's movement
through the body.”

“Or a radioactive fuel?” Mouse suggested as
he reached for a doughnut from the stack sitting on a plate on the stove top.

“Nein. What kind of fuel? They could not
operate a nuclear reactor in there.”

“We'll take a Geiger counter along, just in
case,” Mitch said. “What about the cameras?”

“The cameras are housed,” Gunter said. “So
I cannot see the models. From the length of the housing, assuming minimum
camera body dimensions, the focal length of the lens is approximately forty
millimeters for low distortion, wide angle coverage.” Gunter placed another printout
of the Institute’s architectural drawing on the table. “The camera locations
and fields of view are marked here.” He pointed to a dozen camera positions
around the main building, with triangular lines emanating from the cameras. “This
building on the northern end is covered only by a single camera. The others all
have overlapping coverage.”

“Unless you’ve guessed the wrong lens size,”
Mouse said.

“If the lens is twenty two millimeters, the
field of view of each camera will mean an overlap by this other camera here,” Gunter
explained. “Based on standard military surveillance systems, there is a thirty
percent chance of the wider angle lens.”

“Oh man,” Mouse moaned. “They’re shitty
odds!”

“If you could control the security systems,”
Gunter snapped, “The lens size would not be an issue.”

“What’s the coverage on the door?” Mitch asked.

Gunter picked up a ruler and pencil, then
drew a line from the camera through the corner of the building and beyond. “As
you can see, the door is masked by the corner of the wall, but there is only a
few inches. This is not sufficient to open the door and enter the building
without being seen. However, this side street here meets the road almost behind
the outbuilding, with these trees here providing cover. We should park the van
there, and approach the outbuilding across the road here. We would not be seen
crossing the road to the Institute, providing this camera is disabled.”