An Eighty Percent Solution

Measure Performance—Phase One



Linc and Tony worked side-by-side in what passed for the militia’s armory, an abandoned automotive service garage at ground level. Linc’s bald head beaded with perspiration that also rolled down the side of his face. “Hot in here, isn’t it?”

“Are you nuts?” Tony asked. “It’s November, we had a high of ten degrees today, and I’m ready to set fire to this dump just for some heat.” Tony watched Linc wipe a thick layer of moisture from over the top of his head with his forearm before preparing another explosive charge. Linc’s face didn’t have any of its normal healthful vigor, but instead wore a mask of white mottled with pink. “Maybe you’re pushing too hard?”

“Don’t worry about me. I can work the long hours. I want to win, and now that we can finally see some successes, I’m just a little eager.” His outburst drained what little color remained in his face.

“Linc, let this one go. What is this, your ninth mission in seven days? I’ll pick up someone else for this one. Christine’s been itching to do something, seeing as we’ve all but nixed her specialty from further field operations.”

“Well, I must admit I’m not feeling very well.”

“You don’t say? OK, sorry for the sarcasm, but I really think you should call it a day. You don’t look so good.”

“You sure you can do it without me?”

“Yeah. Walk in the park compared to the risks we were taking when I first started this show.”

“Well, OK. Thanks, Tony. I’m going to go lay down.”



* * *



Nine miniature solidos once again sat on the matte black surface of Nanogate’s desk.

“We’ve heard enough of your complaints. These impromptu meetings are dangerous and costly.” Several others nodded.

“We did agree to meet more often. We’re meeting remotely only in deference to Tokyo Industrials and Unified Textiles, who could not alter their travel schedules.”

“Yes, quite right. Taste Dynamics, please refrain from changing the topic. We shall now continue, with Nanogate having the floor.”

“I’ve brought this to your attention previously, but now things are becoming perilous. All of those companies in my linked directorate have fallen under attack. Sixty separate incidents over two weeks. Our cash reserves are dangerously low. If it continues it may force us to close our doors…all of them.”

“Your poor foresight is not our concern. Why are you whining when—”

“Gentlemen,” CNI interrupted, “There is a perfectly simple solution to everyone’s troubles. This effort was supposed to be a shared risk to us all. As it’s been directly affecting only one of us, I suggest we all provide unsecured loans to weather these issues.” Most of the quorum nodded.

“Passed by acclamation.”

“A practical solution,” offered Wintel, one of the more conservative of their group. “This will get you past the worst of it. If you’ll refer to our simulations, you’ll see the weapons should begin to be felt any time now. We’ll see an easing of this area steadily for the next three weeks.”

“I don’t believe this body really understands the gravity of the situation. Two more weeks of this will cause a significant portion of our directorate to declare insolvency. Three weeks would completely destabilize not only my administration but also the corporate fold I control. This could easily cause a ripple effect that would impact you as well. My simulations show a fourteen percent chance of catastrophic failure, a twenty-nine percent chance of a system-wide depression, and a further thirty-eight percent chance of recession. My data is available to any who wish to examine the validity of the simulations.

“With these thoughts in mind, I would like to propose something more than just loans. Loans only temporarily prop up what has become a sinking ship. I propose we each assume an equal share of the losses. I ask for a vote.”

Nanogate knew what the outcome would be before it even showed. The world of finance bred cutthroats, not altruists. They couldn’t see or smell the danger to themselves for the blood in the water. Most of them were already deciding how they could snap up pieces of his company for the biggest profit.

Eight nays carried the vote.

“Thank you for your time, gentlebeings. I must prepare what I can and determine what loans I’ll need from each of you.”

Without fanfare he terminated the connection. His single button push summoned Mr. Marks in his yellow vinyl. “I have another job for you.”

“Of course, sir.”



* * *



“As we—I mean, Tony—predicted,” reported Beth, “we’ve been experiencing a large influx of not only volunteers, but warmth from the community, where just a short while ago we were beginning to see signs of support erosion and in some cases even hostility.”

“Excellent. With that and our next steps in place, I call for new business,” Sonya said. As one the group remained silent. “Well, in that case, I have a new item. This one’s a two-edged sword. We’ve been contacted by the head of the Nanogate syndicate.”

“How did he find us?”

“There were two messages. Both found their way to me. The first Augustine ferreted out when she spent last weekend trying to break into another Nanogate mainframe level. There in the open for even the most moronic of icebreakers to find was a message addressed to the GAM.

“The second came to us from the brother of one of our current members. I won’t mention who, as he or she would be embarrassed to admit they have a corpie as a sibling. Somehow, the Nanogate sent us a personal message buried as an implant in the man’s brain. The details are lengthy, but after they fired the man he came to his brother for help. Our medical probes, the same ones you each were subjected to, discovered it easily. Both conveyed exactly the same message, word for word.

“He wants a percomm meeting at a specific time. He assures us there will be no attempt to trace the call. There’s no reason for the call given. It’s signed with the CEO’s DNA.”

Tony fingered a crack in the upholstery as he considered Sonya’s words. “That really is a basket of snakes,” he remarked after a moment.

“Why go ’o such ’engths?”

“Yeehaw! We got him on the run. He must be desperate.”

“You think he might want to negotiate a peace?”

“Or buy’n time to fix his stuff.”

“Or even it could be a trap.”

“I congratulate you all,” Sonya agreed. “I came up with exactly the possibilities you proposed.”

“So why chew with him?”

“Well, he tipped his hand with this message,” Tony answered excitedly. “He gave us info we didn’t have before. He knows we’ve infiltrated his nets and he knows the people they’re nilling are coming into our fold. And, perhaps even more interesting, he’s contacting us in a clandestine manner.”

“True. Hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“If you don’t mind, Sonya,” Tony said, waiting for her nodded approval. “Well, let’s take each option in turn. Option one: We have him on the run and he wants to negotiate. If he is, he knows he has to offer something sweet to make us lay off. I think we’d be foolish not to at least listen to an offer.”

“Yeah, righ’. We ge’ more from him than we’re sucking up now!”

“Agreed. Option two: We have him on the run and he wants to buy time. Again, I think there’s no loss in listening. If it’s a ploy for a stall, we can always ignore it.”

“And we can shove it up his arse if it’s shonky.”

“Times two on that comment,” Colin added.

“OK, OK. Option three: It’s a trap. I think ninety percent of avoiding any trap is knowing it’s there in the first place.”

“And then we can shove it up his arse.”

“Goes ’ouble for me.”

“OK, Suet, I think we understand your sentiments,” Sonya said.

“What about risks?” Jackson offered, almost as if scripted.

“Well, if we decide to go through with it, we can limit the damage by isolating the person making contact. Take one of the new recruits and limit their knowledge of our organization even further.”

“Agreed, but then we’d limit our ability to have a dialogue.”

“Not necessarily,” Linc offered from his professional knowledge. “Have that someone, a cutout, physically tie two phones together receiver to transmitter. The person would only be needed to dial the number and put the phones together. Additionally, we could also use multiple cutouts before the call goes through. It’s such an old dodge I don’t think anyone would think of it.”

“Yes, and I’m certain Augustine could monitor a trace. Even if successful, the manual percomm links would deny anything but a signal to process for comparison on other lines.”

Now Sonya took her time thinking. “Any other risks?”

“We could put everyone on watch duty to make sure if someone does show up we have time to escape,” Jonah offered.

“Well, then I call for a vote,” Sonya said. “All opposed?” No hands showed. “I guess just as a formality…all in favor?” Everyone thrust up their hand.

“Carried. The call time is set for tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Better sooner than later. Set it up. Jonah, you set up security. Linc you handle the cutouts. Tony will be our voice.”



* * *



At one time in her early youth, Sonya learned to isolate a single nerve in her body and heighten or deaden its input, a survival trait. She sat in a lotus, nude, in the center of her meditation room with her eyes rolled up in her head. She searched inside her body for groups of nerves to deaden to attenuate the pain. Her head throbbed in a way she couldn’t seem to control.

One by one she turned off the nerve endings until she couldn’t feel anything of the outside world, but the pain remained. Many years ago her mother had taught her how to encapsulate illnesses and since then she’d never been sick, but she remembered some of those feelings—the loss of control, the pain and the lack of well-being, just like her body’s responses now.

She turned her sight inward. For a brief moment she just relaxed and rode on the flow of her bloodstream, trying to adjust her senses to her new state. The pulsing motion, timed with each pump of her heart, started to make her nauseous. She contemptuously turned off those neural inputs, an oversight and lack of focus.

It took several more seconds before she got her bearings and realized she now navigated through her kidneys. Everything looked in exceptional health. She flowed along out of the kidney. Ahead she sensed a foulness. As she floated further down, the blood pathway became clouded with necrotic cells, obscuring her vision. As she rolled into the liver, lesions spotted across its width, with entire branches clogged in an all-out war between her body’s immune system and the cause of the damage.

Breaking her consciousness from the easy flow of the bloodstream she fought through tissue to worm deeper into the liver. She stopped next in one of the more virulent patches, visibly expanding before her. Healthy tissue and body defenses fought a losing battle as the invaders left naught but the dead and dying in their wake. She’d never seen anything move so quickly.

Sonya encapsulated the infectious patch in a gossamer bag, allowing new defenders to rush to the defense. In the past this gave her body the ability to not only defeat the disease but to learn from it and become protected for the next time, just as a body is supposed to learn. But this time she watched the new defenders die just as fast and her isolation expand like a balloon continuing to be inflated. The rate of expansion slowed to a crawl compared to its previous rampage, but it continued. Sonya put more of her personal strength into the enclosure. Still it expanded. She poured even more power into it. Still it expanded.

For the first time in many, many years, fear touched Sonya’s mind.