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So close. As Heather watched Jennifer’s fingers stroke the keyboard, she could feel the equations in her head converging. The software approximations Jen had implemented on the computer were almost within the variance allowed by Heather’s mathematical derivations.
For two weeks, the three friends had immersed themselves in the new project, to make a miniaturized version of the subspace receiver-transmitter. To make it truly portable this one had to be no bigger than a laptop computer and include its own internal power supply and wave packet generator. The only truly challenging piece of the effort was this last item.
To generate the wave packets that produced the proper range of frequencies to create the tiny gamma pulses required laptop modifications. That meant the addition of four central processor chips and four floating-point processors. Even these additions proved inadequate until Heather worked out a mathematical approximation, which provided much faster computational solutions.
News reports from around the world only added to their sense of urgency. The new president had requested, and been granted, a special assembly of the United Nations, one in which he brought down the house. Never had a United States president been given a larger or longer standing ovation from the traditionally hostile assemblage. Not only had he acknowledged the legitimacy of the UN’s requests for access to the Rho Ship’s nanotechnology, he had promised to begin worldwide shipment of the serum by Monday, November 5, a date that provided time to ramp up production and to get the necessary congressional approval.
This last had proven to be the sticking point, with a small but vocal congressional minority joined in adamant opposition to the plan. House approval was a certainty, but the Senate appeared to be just short of the support required for cloture, the three-fifths majority required to cut off filibusters. At least that had been true until yesterday, when the leader of the opposition, Senator Pete Hornsby of Maine, was killed in a fiery automobile accident on the Acadia Byway as he returned from a Bar Harbor weekend getaway.
Heather looked down at the modified laptop and then across at Mark, who was also watching intently as Jennifer ran through what they hoped were her final software modifications. Without Mark’s incredibly steady hand doing the micro-soldering, there was no way they could have completed the circuit board changes that had been required. Feeling her own quivering left hand, Heather was certain that she could not have done it. Even Jennifer lacked the complete control of her neuromuscular system manifest in each of Mark’s movements. As they watched him work through the lens of the microscope, his hand was as steady as a rock. If his hand had wavered at all she would have seen it, but he hadn’t.
“Got it.” Jennifer’s voice snapped Heather’s gaze back to the computer screen.
A glance told her all she needed to know. Jennifer’s program was working even better than they had hoped.
“Beautiful,” Heather said, putting her arm around Jennifer’s shoulder.
Mark grinned broadly. “Gotta hand it to you, Sis. You play a mean keyboard.”
Jennifer smiled at her brother for the first time in weeks, an action that gave Heather a glimmer of hope. Since the government discovery of the Second Ship, the twins had barely spoken to each other. That, combined with Jennifer’s strange new aura of self-confidence, had made her wonder if the estrangement might not become permanent, something that would be nothing less than a tragedy.
Heather’s eyes took in the data scrolling across the display, her savant brain comparing the readouts against the equations the program was intended to model. Good. Better than good.
She nodded. “Looks like it’s ready for a trial run.”
“About time,” Mark said.
He had been chomping at the bit for weeks, desperate to find out more about what Stephenson was up to. Initially Mark had argued they should use the computer and subspace transmitter that was already set up and working, but Heather had talked him out of it. The heavy pattern of access on that system meant that Jack and Janet were on the trail of something important. To use it would have meant disconnecting them, a thought that filled Heather with a deep sense of dread.
“You have a coordinate for me?” Jennifer asked.
Mark recited the coordinates for the L-shaped Rho Division building. “35.83333 degrees north latitude, 106.30303 degrees west longitude.”
Jennifer initiated a new feature of the program she had just finished, a scan that adjusted the coordinates in tiny steps, searching for any computer networks within a short distance of the given location. For over a minute, she remained focused on the readouts as the scan progressed.
Finally, she looked up. “Looks like we have a hundred and thirteen separate subnets in the building.”
Mark shrugged. “Pick one.”
“Might as well. We’re going to want to check them all,” Heather agreed.
“Okay, but it’s going to take quite a while to make sense of the data going across each subnet.”
“See if you can isolate any that Dr. Stephenson is using,” Mark suggested.
“That might be tough.”
“We should be able to pick up Stephenson’s activity by the way others respond to him,” said Heather. “Dad says he has scared the crap out of everyone on his inner team.”
Jennifer paused. “Okay. It’s worth a shot. If I can latch onto a response chain I can sniff the IP packets for the IP address of the computer Stephenson is using.”
“He may be using more than one,” said Heather.
“Most likely. All we can do is try to follow the bread crumb trail.”
Suddenly, Jennifer leaned forward, staring closely at the computer readouts from the scan. “Now that’s weird.”
“What?” Mark and Heather asked simultaneously.
“I have no idea. It looks like another computer network in the building, but it’s not using any form of Internet protocol, at least none I’ve heard of. From the look of the data signature, it must be one of those new massively parallel systems the lab is working on.”
“Why do you say that?” Mark asked.
“The data is just zipping around in one localized area, appearing and disappearing on separate nodes.” Jennifer paused, a stunned look spreading across her delicate features. “Christ. I can’t make any sense out of it.”
“Maybe the data is encrypted,” Heather said, leaning forward to look over Jennifer’s shoulder.
“Maybe. But I don’t even understand the data flow. Must be some new type of neural net.”
Mark stiffened. “Or an old one. What if you’ve accessed the computers on the Rho Ship?”
Heather’s gaze locked with Jennifer’s wide eyes.
“Oh shit.”