The foundry, p.7
The Foundry, page 7
“Chief, I can see this is a surprise to you, but I assure you we need you. I’ve looked at your stellar service record and your thirty years of experience....”
Frustration began to grow. Why didn’t Clienen tell me? Where were his orders? Why did he hear this from a total stranger? Someone who thought he was his new boss!
“So I was hoping you could get out here in two weeks. Field assets are starting to come in, and I need you to take over. Get the logistics in order; the teams organized. Tasking roles established. You know the drill.”
“Two weeks?” he croaked, though he’d not meant it to sound that bleak.
The director paused, intent on Achelous. “Well, sure. Is there a problem?”
“Um, director, I’m going to have to call you back. I have my teams here on Dianis to manage. I need to clear this with Margel IDB. Let me call you back.”
The director was about to say something when Achelous terminated the call and threw the Spark in a corner. He stared at it, hoping it was broken, but they built the old Sparks tough. Then, on second thought, he scrambled for the communicator and did a total power shutdown before it could ring again and deliver more bad news.
He leaned back in his chair, stewing, confused, and depressed. He mentally triggered an adrenalin hormone injection through his embed and waited to feel better and for his head to clear. He had a serious decision to make.
Achelous strode into the Central Station admin area. Ready to go back in-country, he was dressed accordingly, baggy canvas pants, tall leather boots, a linen tunic, and a Tivorian robe. Field Outfitting had Echo and his gear at the field generator station ready to go. He stopped at a wall hologrid and brought up Civilization Monitoring’s artificial intelligence program. “Jeremy, locate Clienen, please.”
“The director is in his office,” came the AI’s immediate reply.
“Thank you,” he said, a simmering angst driving an edge to his voice.
“Achelous, is there anything I can do?” Even though Jeremy was just a computer program, a complex one, he—it—was trained to perceive human emotions and respond appropriately.
“No, not now, thank you.” It always paid to be polite to an AI, especially his own. They had a long memory and stored responses and actions with each individual, effectively forming unique relationships with each person. Supposedly, an AI was programmed to ignore slights or provocations, not allowing them to affect the quality of services it rendered to a person. However, Achelous had seen enough examples where he didn’t think the objectivity programming was completely effective.
In the hologrid, Jeremy’s avatar waited patiently. The AI’s image was a human from Calinextra III, the original IDB team who built and staffed IDB Margel. Calinextras bore a purplish tint to their skin and unusually large upper and lower canines, attesting to their vampiric genes. Jeremy wore the classic Calinextra tunic: black, tight fitting, and with a red sash over his shoulder.
“I need to speak with Clienen,” Achelous said. Walking past the glass-walled data center beside Clienen’s office, a data analyst in the center stood up and waved at him through the glass. Achelous stopped and waited for the analyst to come to the door. “Hey, chief, do you have a minute?”
“Sorry, I need to speak with Clienen, and I’m due to shift in-country.”
“Okay. But can you send me the geo-coordinates for your aquamarine finds?”
The director’s office was a few paces away, and the door stood open; he could see the director was in. Achelous cocked his head. “What aquamarine finds?”
“Well, these.” The data analyst, Mitch, led him to his holodesk in the data center. Achelous could see on the hologrid that Jeremy had alerted the analyst. The subject was important enough for the analyst to set an aural tracker on him.
“The aqua finds you listed in your 2.52.4007 operations journal. Why didn’t you include the geo-coordinates? It would have saved me a lot of time. I couldn’t find them. Do you have them?”
An overwhelming sense of déjà vu struck Achelous, like falling into deep water and unable to breathe. He feigned indifference and leaned over the desk. “Why do you need them?”
“I received a data request from Branch headquarters on Avaria. It came with a complaint that the report did not follow field report guidelines. In this case, missing standard data.”
“What was it, a program check, AI scan, or a human query?"
“Oh, definitely human, an analyst in Sector Resources.” Mitch slid into his seat. He was an energetic, diligent sort; his forehead was creased with care lines.
Achelous's sense of déjà vu was complete. Didn't I just talk to Gail about this last night? It was just last night! Taking a deep breath, he said, “Okay. Give me their network number; I’ll take care of it.”
“Uh, alright, but what should I do with the request?” The analyst looked perplexed.
“Flag it as data unavailable and close it out.”
“Uh, I don’t know if I can do that.”
Achelous fixed him with a stare, his lips set. “You can either let yourself be hounded by the request, or you can close it out. Either way, the coordinates—" he paused. He wanted to say he would not divulge them unless the request came as a formal inquiry. Instead, he said, "I'll have to retrieve them from the surveyor system and figure out which site you are referencing so we don’t confuse coordinates. So give me the network number, and in the meanwhile, reassign the request to me.”
Mitch appeared to think about it, then shrugged. “Okay, fine with me.” He reached across his work panel and tapped a series of grids on the display. “It’s in your inbox, along with a copy of the request.”
“Thank you.” Achelous thumbed to the communicator page of his multi-func. He indexed to the newest message and called the network number at Branch headquarters.
He waited for the call to connect at its destination some twenty thousand light years away on Avaria. An older woman with grey hair appeared on the screen. Her title showed Penni Donia, Senior Analyst, Sector Resources. “Hi, this is Penni; what can I do for you, hon?”
“Hi, Penni, how’s life at HQ?”
“Fast and non-stop.” There was a twinkle in her eye. “Let’s see—” she looked away from the imager at something on her desk hologrid. “I know your name, and that’s not usually a good thing—Ah yes, Chief Inspector Forushen, you’ve been a bad boy. You left out information in one of your ops journals.”
“Yes, Penni, I was curious about that.” He turned to look at the analyst, who was all ears. “We’ve filed numerous ops journals with reports of sensitive finds, and depending on the situation, we either included the geo-coordinates or left them out for security. I’ve never been asked afterwards to provide the data. We keep that here on-site. And Penni, I’m quite surprised someone even fact-scanned the journal. Most of them just get filed."
“But inspector, you know the reports are on our secure servers, and only personnel with the proper clearance have access to them. There is no real need to exclude the data from the journals."
"Actually, there is a real need. We are decommissioning IDB Margel and Dianis with it. There'll be no one here to monitor the sites." If Penni were a simple analyst putting in her time, she wouldn't care. If she were devoted to the IDB cause, she would. Either way, he was curious as to what she would say next.
“Oh—they’re shutting down the Margel Arm?” Penni’s posture changed.
"Yes, they confirmed it yesterday. So you can see why I'm concerned with this sudden request for omitted data in an ops journal submitted two months ago. Longer, actually."
She looked distant, then admitted, "You're right, few people have ops journals on their distribution lists, and a fact scan on the journal should have triggered right after the journal was posted. And this scan," she tapped in the hologrid, "was initiated last week."
“Hmm, so you didn't set the scan for aquamarine in our field reports?"
"No—" Penni was working her hologrid, swiping the command screens in a blur.
"Which tells me someone has a particular interest in aquamarine on Dianis,” Achelous asserted.
“Hmm, I have your answer, dear.”
“And?”
She was frowning. “The data request didn’t come from IDB; it came from the federation office of Galactic Resources, the Water Survey unit.”
Achelous could feel his jaw tighten. “Water Survey unit?”
She looked up from the readout. “Yes. I can forward the request to you.”
“Thank you. Would they have clearance to scan IDB classified reports?”
She pursed her lips. “That would depend on the level of classification assigned to the report. Water—especially saline and contaminant free—as you know, is also a strategic resource we track closely, and the location of those resources is classified as well. Although, why the water unit would want to know about aquamarine is beyond me.”
He nodded. “Until I identify the source of the data request and they provide an explicit answer as to why they need the geo-coordinates, I will not be releasing the information.”
She inclined her head, peering from beneath her eyebrows. “I understand.”
“You can close this request and make a note to the originator that the request for more data must be sent directly to me."
She smirked. “Whatever you say, Chief Inspector.”
He ended the call and opened the Water Survey data request in his message queue. His sense of trepidation percolated. Who in Water Survey is interested in aquamarine on Dianis?
Staring at the requestor’s network address, he tapped the network address, and his multi-func placed a call to the entity in Water Survey.
The call went through. The contact information indicated AI Matadraxal, and then the AI’s avatar came on the screen wearing a pristine white tunic with gold buttons. “Office of Galactic Resources, Water Survey Department, how may I help you, Chief Inspector?”
He wasn’t surprised an AI answered his call but was disappointed, nonetheless. He explained his question and waited for the AI to track back through the system and locate the data request sent to Penni.
“Yes, I have it. The data request was submitted by a staff researcher.
Achelous was encouraged. “Can I have their name?”
“I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but the log only lists staff researcher.”
Achelous frowned. “Why is that?”
“Scan requests can come from nineteen different applications, not all of them forward the ID of the requestor.”
“Fine, but if we provide the data, where will it go?”
“It will be posted to the findings section of the scan report.”
“And where will that go?”
The AI paused a moment, “There are three hundred and twenty-two user accounts that have direct access to those scan reports.”
Okay, thought Achelous, this is getting me nowhere. “Matadraxal, are there any active projects in the Water Survey Department where aquamarine-5 is listed as an item of interest? Perhaps somewhere it is needed for the completion of the project?”
“Do you mind if I check your security clearance, Chief Inspector?”
“Go ahead.” While he waited for the AI to return, he glanced at Mitch, the analyst, who waved at him. The analyst came to stand next to him but was careful to stay out of the communicator’s camera field. “Mute it,” he whispered.
Achelous did so.
“Analysts can submit anonymous queries through any number of applications. There can be hundreds of information scans, maybe even thousands, in a batched set of queries. Slipping in an extraneous query in a batch is easy. If you have the right security clearance, you can use an admin account for the query, and your ID will not appear in the report. I knew a guy, an analyst in—” he hesitated, “well, who did a trace on his wife’s aural signature as she went about her business during the day. Strictly illegal, of course, unless authorized by Internal Security, which it wasn’t. Found out she’d been regularly visiting a hotel with another person; the aural signature was always the same. The agency never knew he was using their data system to stalk his wife.”
Achelous pursed his lips, “And?” He could see Matadraxal was waiting for him to come back on the line.
“The way you unravel this particular knot is to ask the AI to scan A-wave communication packets with the keywords from the scan results. Whoever issued the query, if they are an analyst like me, would forward it to someone else. We all use A-wave. We never think about it.”
Achelous nodded. It made sense. He thumbed the mute button, “Yes, Matadraxal. Sorry for the delay; I’m doing a bit of multitasking. What did you find?”
“I scanned all projects and programs which your security clearance can access; there are no records of aquamarine-5 listed as an element of interest.”
“I see. Are there any projects above my security clearance?”
Matadraxal tilted his head, made an apologetic smile, “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to say.”
“Okay, my director has a class A4 security clearance. I know because his position was offered to me. I’m sure that’s as high as any Water Survey project would go. If any projects above my clearance specify interest in aquamarine, will you confirm with him? This is of vital importance to the IDB, and he needs to know.”
“Yes, if there are any, I will message him.”
Achelous thought about it. “Send him a message immediately, regardless of the answer, yes or no. He’ll be waiting for it.”
The AI, even though it was a program, pursed its lips and nodded. “I will message him immediately.”
“Good. And one last request. Please search all A-wave communications in Water Survey that occurred on the day after the alert triggered; search for the text of the scan results.”
Matadraxal actually arched an eyebrow.
Achelous smiled, "And, of course, please apply Internal Security decryption routines."
When the AI just stared at him, he offered, "This is an official request, and I can escalate to IDB Headquarters Avaria."
The avatar visibly relaxed. “I will comply.”
While the query progressed, time passed, and the AI, for Achelous’s sake, appeared to be working his workstation performing other tasks, an absorbing, if visual, charade. “Still checking,” Matadraxal reported. Almost another minute passed. “Still checking.” Then his – its—face brightened. “I have results for you. The scan results were transmitted, via encrypted A-wave, ninety-three minutes after the search triggered.”
“Encrypted?”
“Yes, using a new commercial shifting band multiplexer.”
“And you were able to crack it?”
“Yes. It is unusual for anyone to use a non-Internal Security encryption method, so I immediately targeted that message. Internal Security acquires rights to all commercial encryption methods, which by the way, Chief Inspector,” the AI accentuated the title, “is classified.”
Achelous nodded, hoping the analyst was cleared for the information. “Thank you.” It always paid to be polite to AIs. While they weren’t human, their developers were, and they tended to be a quirky bunch. “Please forward the message ID and send the destination address to me.”
“I can put a call through if you wish. I have already checked the locator domain. It is not registered to a federation agency.”
He considered this new piece of the puzzle. “No, that won’t be necessary. Send me the network address and message ID, and I will have Internal Security take it from here.”
The AI bobbed its head. “As you wish.”
After he closed the connection, he turned to the analyst. “Your data request came from somewhere outside of the federation government.”
“Too bad you didn't ask for the decrypted message. It would have saved time.”
Achelous smirked. “Yes, well, I’d need an Internal Security privacy release order for that. My authority and security clearance allows me to trace communication packets, but I’ll have to bump it up a level to view private correspondences.”
“What are you going to do?”
The chief inspector smiled. “Before I take this to Clienen and we involve Internal Security, I have one more thing I want to try.” He called up Jeremy.
“Yes, Chief Inspector?”
“Jeremy, there is a network address in my message queue from an AI in Water Survey. It is not a federation agency number. I am curious as to who or what is using that number. Can you check the number’s registry without tipping off the owners as to your inquiry? I do not want them to know who is asking.”
Jeremy’s programming immediately registered the delicacy of the situation. He, like the CivMon agents he served, was trained, or more appropriately – programmed—for counterespionage. “Certainly. I can route my inquiry through my affiliated AI network and have it appear as a marketing search for prospects of water filtration equipment.”
Achelous smiled at the logic of it. “That will work.”
“Shall I run it now?”
“Go ahead.”
The results came back swiftly, “The address belongs to a pool of a thousand A-Wave channel accounts registered to a firm called Tangent Assets.”
“And what does Tangent do? What type of business are they in?”
“They are a private company and do asset planning and strategy development.”
“What sort of assets?”
“Sorry, our records don’t say. And there is no listing for any Tangent Assets publications on the Fednet Interconn, which is odd. No marketing materials, nothing.”
Achelous scowled, but Jeremy just stared back. “Okay, try dialing the number, see what you get. Act like you’re a pushy AI trying a hard sell from that equipment company.”
“Will do. I will use one of my alternate avatars. Marionette should suffice. Connecting networks now.” The call was opened by what seemed to be another AI, but the screen remained blank, not even the courtesy of flashing the Tangent corporate logo. A simple voice said, “Hello?”
