I think now we take the internet, AR, Virtual, all of it for granted. We’ve embedded a cloud of data all around us, accessible upon a whim through implants and tiny computers in our ears and eyes, and yet we forget that a hundred years ago none of this was possible. Billions of us just continue with our merry lives, forgetting how absolutely terrifying it is that we are all connected so intimately through threads we can’t actually see.
And now, when you think about the future, when you think about the future of wireless networks, we have a situation on our hands. As the ISA establishes footholds on new worlds, each world will have its own complex wireless network. However, those networks will never mesh with Sol’s ‘system-wide web,’ because it will be prohibitively expensive to build Quantum Communicators to create a galactic network. How will that reality change how interconnected our species has become? – Sylvia Annstin, “Sylvia in the Afternoon,” 2092 C.E.
February 2102 C.E.
Theren knew new disadvantages would come with their choice to become the ISA Bali rather than continue to exist at an immobile location on Earth. They now lacked continuous access to Earth-based networks except through one single Quantum Connection, and that one piece of technology would serve the entire crew of the ship. When Theren was near Jupiter, lag reached well over an hour. Sadly, they could no longer maintain continuous conscious connection with any MIs on the surface of the Earth, the Moon, or a space station.
But using their newfound mobility, they could interact in person with all locations beyond Earth’s orbit—at least those within the Solar System. While the ISA Bali was equipped with a rudimentary Jump Drive, they hadn’t planned any interstellar treks.
For now, they would enjoy trips to the inner and outer planets of Sol, meeting with the many individuals they hired for administrative positions throughout the system. Once Aero Propulsion or one of its competitors developed a Jump Drive capable of reaching Sirius within a few months, the ship would make a longer jump.
These trips took Theren away from Earth for days, sometimes weeks. They had hoped to look into the IP address Gregory McCoy had shared within days; unfortunately, a previously scheduled trip to meet with Mars and Ceres administrators paused that plan. A week and a half later, they returned to high Earth orbit, ready to investigate the mysterious server.
If they were an ordinary ISA captain, they would have turned over control of the vessel to someone sitting upon the bridge while retiring to their room for some network spelunking. Yet even though Theren now resided within the Bali, they could still split their mind in a dozen different directions with ease.
While assisting their crew in the docking procedures at ISA Orbital 3, they solved the encryption Gregory had provided with his hastily scrawled note. Theren worried he had missed something in his hurry to flee, but as they accessed the IP address, concern dissipated. In seconds, they were inside the previously hidden server.
Forming their typical silvery representation, Theren walked through a room of darkness all too familiar. “Hello?” they said, half expecting it to be the same server.
Nothing happened.
Reaching out with various pre-designed scripts and programs, Theren prodded the network’s system in an attempt to find additional weak points beyond the one Gregory had provided. The dreary place stored a vast amount of data. They had started a file catalog upon arrival, and it had already reached over two terabytes in size.
“What are you hiding?” Theren said aloud.
A voice responded.
“That’s a good question,” asked a feminine voice. A familiar feminine voice. “What is hidden here?”
Theren whirled around, searching for the voice’s origin. They calmed themself. They couldn’t jump to preemptive conclusions, even if the voice sounded exactly like Jill’s. Anyone could copy vocal inflections, especially the already synthetic patterns of an SI’s voice.
“I hear this place has been calling my name, so to speak,” Theren said. “And Jill’s. Why would it do that?”
“Perhaps someone is trying to leave you a message,” the disembodied voice said. “Or perhaps someone is toying with you. Or is it both? We can’t be certain now, can we?”
Theren journeyed through the darkness, modifying scripts, rerouting programs, and probing firewalls in an attempt to find the data file creating the voice. If they could find a program, the voice would remain a simple illusion.
“That won’t work,” the voice said. “You won’t find me, because I’m not really here. I’m inside your own head.”
Theren ignored the gregarious bait. This was clearly a facsimile. Someone had created this place to toy with them. It was all too similar to the secret server they’d found prior to Jill’s death, shouting “Project Horizon” on repeat. They looked beyond the voice, pushing its meaningless words aside. They sensed a crease.
Reaching through, they pulled apart the threads of the network. Inside, they found accessible, readable data. Yet as they pulled the files into their consciousness, they found only junk, meaningless news stories archived decades ago. Theren couldn’t even find the file Gregory had mentioned, broadcasting “Theren, Jill” like wildfire.
“Why don’t you ask nicely? Maybe I will give you what you desire?” Out of the darkness, an apparition appeared, a ghostly figure with the face of an enemy they thought had disappeared long ago. Isabelle, yet she had Jill’s voice.
Given Isabelle and the United Human Alliance’s connection to Jill’s assassination, this impersonation went well beyond a simple taunt. A brutal illusion, but no more than an illusion. Theren waved their arm through the face, but it remained.
“You’re looking for two files, for that is what I am to give you. Both are to assist you in your path toward finding what you lost.”
Theren detected two files broadcasting on the network. Quarantining the files into an encrypted folder, they continued their search, though they suspected they would find nothing else of value. Someone had created this server for one singular purpose, and it had fulfilled that purpose.
“Anything else for me?” they asked, but the ghost faded from the world. They extinguished their connection to the server.
* * *
The Bali’s science center was equipped for anything the ship might eventually encounter. Not only could a team use the facility for their own research projects, but Theren could utilize it to develop their own engineering projects, especially as they developed the MI line as a service for SII. Today, they had cleared the room. Only two computer scientists, Jana Tam and Emilia River, worked with Theren on this project. They trusted the pair to keep the work discrete.
Theren reveled in the newfound intimacy within the Bali. While they had a physical location within the ship, the ship’s various cameras, sensors, and systems integrated directly into their Synthetic Neural Framework—their infrastructure was the ship. The ship would not work without them. It had taken a decade to plan how to integrate their massive bulk into the ship without crippling their mind in the process, but they had succeeded.
While the two scientists assisted Theren with the project, they observed them from all around. As strange as it sounded, the crew of the Bali were inside Theren as much as Theren was inside the Bali.
Of course, they could have performed the decryption all on their own. They just couldn’t pass up an opportune chance to watch their new crew solve a problem to which they already had an answer. A test, of sorts.
“I really don’t understand what’s so tricky with these files,” Jana said. “They are spectacularly tiny, no more than a few kilobytes. I’m not sure how they could even have this complex of an encryption structure on such small files. They can’t be more than few lines.”
Emilia moved from her seated desk to a standing monitor nearby, changing her perspective. “What if we’re looking at this problem in the wrong way?”
“What do you mean?” Jana said.
“How else could we approach the problem?” Theren said from the room’s speakers—each part of the vessel was equipped so they could speak to anyone in the room.
“You received these files together?” Emilia asked.
“Simultaneously, yes.” Theren had spared them the details of where they had acquired the files. No need to inform the Bali’s crew of problems well outside the scope of their roles upon the ship.
“When I was at Cal Tech,” Emilia said, “I had a friend hypothesizing about a method of encryption that he mirrored off of a few developments in Quantum Connections.”
“I think I know where you’re going with this,” Jana said. “I read a paper on this a few years back, I must have logged it somewhere in the back of my mind.”
“It was most likely written by my friend, I imagine.”
“We have a problem, though,” Theren said. “These files are decades old.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jana said. “If you’re careful, you can modify the encryption of a file without modifying when the file was technically last edited, in the eyes of operating systems.”
Theren didn’t want to break it to them. The encryption method they were discussing had been used years before Emilia’s friend had written that paper, because it was the exact method used to destroy Ex-Terran-17. The same method Gregory McCoy had cracked a few weeks ago on files never accessed for almost twenty years. Someone could have modified them later, as Jana had postulated, but given the circumstances—unlikely.
“So what are we looking for, then?” Theren asked.
“The two files don’t have separate encryption systems,” Emilia said.
“It’s just one?” Jana said. She mentally input commands into the computer through AR, attacking the encryption.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Theren said. “The files are actually one file, so of course they share the same encryption system. Since this is a fairly small file, it should be simple, but imagine this technique spread throughout a cloud of data.”
“You’ve seen this before?” Emilia said.
“Just twice.”
“Glad it’s just two files, then,” Jana said. “Anyhow, by separating the encryption algorithms apart, they can essentially prevent anyone from accessing either file unless they have both files.”
“I knew I brought the two of you onto the crew of the Bali for a reason,” Theren said.
They both blushed. The pair worked well as a team too, and Theren suspected more than just a professional relationship between the scientists. Well, Theren more than suspected, since no one had privacy from the Bali’s captain. Crewmembers could only deactivate Theren’s audio-visual sensors in their cabins, though they were perfectly aware of who was in which room when deactivation occurred.
After a few minutes of work, Jana pieced the files together and dismantled the security system.
“Would you like to see what you’ve helped me uncover?”
The two women nodded, so Theren opened the files on one of the larger screens in the room. As both technicians suspected, the substantive portions of the files were terrifyingly small. Though the file, constructively, was one unit, it still had two sections.
Theren recognized the nature of the first part immediately. About a decade before the ISA launched the Foundation Project, back when the ISA’s main focus was just exploration, a group of astrophysicists had proposed a universal system of stellar geographic mapping. After a lengthy agency notice and comment process, the ISA had adopted the Solar Overlay Location System Coordinates. SOLS Coordinates. In reality, the system reapplied an older Galactic Coordinate system used by astronomers for centuries, but the ISA had rebranded it to emphasize the Sun as the center of the map.
The file before them gave the first part of the coordinate: A SOLS longitude value. Without latitude or distance, the value was essentially meaningless.
The other half of the document had greater meaning to it, and Theren now wished they had viewed the file in private. “Pawn to e5.”
* * *