The Tower A Novel (Sanctus)

11





The Space Telescope Operations Control Centre was roughly half the size of a tennis court and smelt of warm circuitry and ozone.

There were no windows in the room and therefore no daylight. The only illumination came from the occasional desk lamp and the

combined glow of a few dozen flat-screen monitors facing a larger central screen. All of them were displaying the same message:

MANKIND MUST LOOK NO FURTHER

A man stood as they entered, his clothes and horn-rimmed glasses making him look like he had beamed in from the fifties.

‘Merriweather, these are Special Agents Franklin and Shepherd from the FBI.’

They shook hands. Franklin nodded at the big screen. ‘That the same message you found on Kinderman’s computer?’

‘Yes, sir –’ He cleared his throat and stared up at the screen rather than anyone in particular. ‘Well, I mean it was part of

the program that did it – I think. Or rather – this message was the last thing that uploaded and now it’s everywhere and we can

’t take it down. The whole system’s locked.’

‘Any idea what it might refer to?’

Merriweather blew out a breath and raised his eyebrows. ‘Hubble’s a telescope, all it does is look at stuff – it could refer to

anything.’

‘It’s not looking at anything any more though is it?’

Merriweather shook his head and Shepherd felt for him. He knew how attached people got to the projects they were working on, how

they often became the most meaningful relationships you had. Hubble had just been attacked, possibly put out of action for months,

and Franklin was talking about it like someone had dented a car.

‘Talk us through the sequence,’ Shepherd said, trying to steer the conversation back to the investigation. ‘What was the first

physical manifestation of the virus?’

‘It hit the guidance system first. That was when I knew it was serious and went looking for Dr Kinderman. I found his office in a

mess and this message on the screen. Actually no, first there was a command box with what looked like a decaying googolplex in it,

then the message popped up.’

‘Tell me about the googolplex.’

‘Wait a second,’ Franklin jumped in, ‘would you mind translating for those of us who flunked Physics.’

‘A googolplex is a mathematical term for a particularly long number,’ Shepherd said, his eyes staying on Merriweather. ‘It’s

where we get the word “Google” from. All those zeros you get when a search comes back refer to the googolplex. And the fact that

it was decaying simply means it was getting smaller.’

Franklin nodded. ‘OK, got it.’ He turned to Merriweather again. ‘So a big number flashed up on the screen followed by this

message?’

‘Yes, sir. I think the googolplex was probably something to do with the initialization of the malware and I just happened to be

there to see it.’

‘And you were alone in the control room when all this happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that standard practice?’

‘No. I mean usually there are at least … everyone else was at the party.’ He looked at Pierce for support.

‘Merriweather volunteered to man the graveyard shift,’ Pierce said. ‘I checked on the staff rota. He was the only one here.’

‘Mighty public spirited of you, staying back here to watch the store while everyone else gets to go off and party. Not so great

that that’s when the store got knocked off though, huh?’ Franklin stared hard at Merriweather for a long few seconds then smiled

in the way Shepherd was fast getting used to. ‘Don’t worry, son. I reckon you’re too smart to hang yourself out to dry by

throwing a spanner in the works on your own watch. Tell me about Dr Kinderman, when was the last time you saw him?’

Shepherd recognized the interview method Franklin was using. He was moving the questions around, rapidly changing topic and tone

to give the subject no time to think and shake away any subterfuge they might be clinging to. It was a technique you used on

someone you thought might be lying.

‘He was still in his office at around five thirty. I walked past on my way to get a snack before everyone else left.’

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘No. He was at his desk, working.’

‘Did he seem anxious to you?’

‘Not that I could tell.’

‘Did you notice him acting strangely at all in the past few days?’

Merriweather shrugged. ‘I can’t really say. Dr Kinderman doesn’t exactly conform to conventional notions of behaviour.’

Franklin took a deep breath and seemed to double in size. ‘Listen, son, you can either choose to help us or you can choose to be

obstructive, and one of those options is a Federal offence and comes with jail time. Just answer the question.’

Merriweather’s face went blank, like a shutter had just come down and Shepherd realized Franklin had taken a seriously wrong

turn. Threats wouldn’t work with someone like Merriweather. His loyalty to the project would be fierce and would far outweigh any

personal agenda or self-regard. NASA was like a religion, and the faithful did not abandon their beliefs just because someone

threatened them.

‘Listen,’ Shepherd said, cutting across Franklin to try and rescue the situation. ‘I know what you’re thinking: there’s no

way Dr Kinderman would do this, am I right?’ Merriweather looked at him blankly, the shutters still down. Shepherd was aware of

Franklin glaring at him, furious that he had broken rank and taken over the questioning. ‘I know exactly what you mean about him

being unconventional. I crunched some data here on one of the last Explorer missions, remember that?’

Merriweather nodded. ‘They shut it down a while back.’ His voice sounded hollow, like he was talking about someone who had died.

In that moment Shepherd knew exactly where all his nervousness was coming from and it wasn’t guilt: it was fear for what would

happen next. ‘Tell me what happens if you can’t re-establish contact with Hubble?’

Merriweather looked up, locking eyes with Shepherd for the first time. ‘The only way to reboot it would be to manually restore

the system.’

‘So you’d have to launch a mission. Someone would have to physically go into orbit to fix it?’

Merriweather nodded.

‘And is that likely?’

Merriweather took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because of James Webb.’

‘Anyone mind telling me who the hell James Webb is and what he’s got to do with any of this?’ Franklin said, directing the

question to the room.

Merriweather took off his glasses and rubbed at the indentations they’d left on the bridge of his nose. ‘James Webb was the

architect of the Apollo programme, the one who put a man on the moon. But in this case it’s not a who it’s a what.’ He sank

down at the laptop he’d been working on and typed something. The screen filled with an image of what looked like a wide flat

coffin with a golden satellite array on top like a sail. ‘Say hello to Hubble’s successor, the James Webb telescope. It’s

bigger, will have a much higher orbit and will see much, much further. They’re building it right now. My guess is if we can’t

fix Hubble from down here then they won’t bother fixing it at all. They’ll just shut us down and wait for James Webb to come

online.’

‘And you’ll most likely be out of a job?’ Shepherd said, knowing exactly how painful that felt.

Merriweather nodded.

‘Is that why you think Dr Kinderman couldn’t be involved,’ Franklin said, picking up the line of questioning, ‘because he

wouldn’t sabotage his own project and betray his colleagues?’

Merriweather shrugged. ‘Why would he do it? Why turn his back on his life’s work, all of our work? It doesn’t make any sense.’

Franklin pulled out a chair and sat next to Merriweather, bringing his eye level down to his. ‘People do all sorts of things for

all sorts of reasons, son.’ His tone had softened considerably. ‘But if Dr Kinderman was coerced in some way, if someone put him

in a situation that forced his hand in this then we can help him. If he’s in danger we can bring him to safety. So anything you

can give us, anything at all that might help us understand what has happened here will be a great benefit. And you won’t be being

disloyal, you’ll be doing him a favour.’

Shepherd had to hand it to the old bastard. He might have pitched it wrong at the start of the interview but he was playing it

pitch-perfect now.

Merriweather balanced his glasses back on his nose and ran his thumb along the line of his lower lip. ‘OK,’ he said, punching a

new command into the laptop. The image of the James Webb telescope was replaced with streams of code. ‘I’ve been trying to pin

down the virus ever since it was uploaded but whoever designed it knew what they were doing and covered their tracks unbelievably

well. The only way I can see anyone getting a program big enough to do what it did past the network security would be by junk

streaming it.’

Franklin glanced at Shepherd, one eyebrow raised in a question mark. ‘Junk streaming is when you attach tiny bits of code to

genuine traffic. They’re too small to be picked up by the firewalls so they pass through it and then activate and clump together

when they’re on the other side. It’s a bit like sending component parts of a bomb onto a plane one piece at a time then building

it on board. But in the same way, if one piece doesn’t get through or gets corrupted in transit then the whole thing won’t work.

’

Merriweather continued to tap commands into the keyboard. ‘But uploading the virus is only part of the story,’ he said. ‘What

it then managed to do was very sophisticated and precise. It didn’t just knock out the comms and send Hubble spinning off into

space. It actually reprogrammed the guidance systems causing the onboard rockets to fire and carefully move Hubble out of

position.’

‘Dangerously so?’

Merriweather glanced up at him. ‘Sir?’

‘I mean has it been effectively weaponized? Is it currently hurtling towards Manhattan or Washington?’

‘No, no – nothing like that.’ He turned back to the laptop, finished his sequence of commands and hit Return.

High on the wall next to the main screen four rows of red LED numbers flickered into life.

‘See that top figure – 569, that shows the telescope’s current altitude in kilometres. As long as the number doesn’t start

getting smaller there’s no danger of Hubble crashing back to Earth. So far it hasn’t changed. The next two readings are the

relative long and latitudinal positions and the fact that they are changing shows that Hubble is drifting, but in a very

controlled way. But it’s the last reading that’s the most interesting and seems most relevant to the message. That shows us

where Hubble is pointing. Before the attack it was in the 270-degree range, locked onto a piece of thin space in the constellation

of Taurus. But now it’s shifted round to dead zero where it’s remained ever since. Zero degrees is the home position. It means

Hubble is now pointing directly at Earth.’

Shepherd glanced at the message shining out from every screen – MANKIND MUST LOOK NO FURTHER – its meaning more resonant and

emphatic now the instrument of man’s furthest gaze had been turned inward.

‘You think this could be some kind of cover up?’ Franklin asked. ‘Maybe Hubble saw something out there and Kinderman didn’t

want anyone else to know about it, so he put up this warning and turned the telescope around so no one else could see it?’

‘Maybe. Hubble’s not like a conventional telescope where you look through an eye-piece and see stars, it builds up images from

the data it collects. People like me work on specific batches of gathered information and just see a tiny part of the puzzle. Dr

Kinderman’s the only one who gets to see the whole picture.’

Franklin turned to Pierce. ‘Any chance we can take a look at the archives?’

‘No,’ Merriweather replied, hunching over the laptop and rattling in new commands. ‘After the crash I initialized a system

check to isolate any infected files. That’s when I discovered this.’

A new directory opened listing dates running back for weeks. Merriweather clicked today’s date and a new window opened.

It was empty.

He clicked another, then another, working his way back through the week, each file as empty as the one before. ‘All the recent

data has been wiped. I checked the backups too. There’s no trace of anything Hubble has been looking at for the last eight

months. It’s all gone.’

Franklin nodded. ‘So maybe Kinderman did see something – the only question is what?’

Shepherd’s eyes flicked between the telemetry and the biblical message shining out of the screens. ‘You said Hubble was

investigating a piece of thin space before the attack.’

‘In Taurus, yes.’

‘Were you looking for something specific?’

‘Not that I was aware of, I was just looking at edge radiation – Heaven data.’

Franklin turned to Shepherd. ‘Could you kindly translate?’

‘Sorry. The known Universe was created by a single event, the so-called Big Bang, which happened around fourteen billion years

ago. Since then everything has been constantly expanding outwards. Thin space is where the edge of the Universe is closest to

Earth. Beyond it lies whatever was there before everything else came into being. Some think this is where God resides.’ He

frowned as a new thought struck him.

‘When the Hubble project was launched wasn’t there a lot of noise and protests from various religious groups?’

‘Yes,’ Pierce answered. He stepped forward out of the shadows and into the light. ‘I’d just started working here, had to run

through protest lines to get to work sometimes: people waving doom and judgement placards in your face, calling it all a heresy,

daring to gaze so far into heaven.’ He stared hard at the message on the screen, his mind ticking behind his eyes. ‘I didn’t

really connect all that with this until just now, but –’

He snapped to attention. ‘Come with me gentlemen, there’s something I need to show you.’