The Quantum Connection (8 page)

We got back to the hotel about ten-thirty and I walked into the room and flipped the television on. I really had to take a leak so I went straight to the bathroom and set the remote on the sink countertop. Then . . .

I didn't remember sitting down to watch television. The last thing that I recalled was taking a leak. The news channel was on and the volume was way too low to hear. I looked around for the remote and couldn't seem to find it anywhere. The last I remembered was that I took it to the bathroom with me. I got up and checked and there it was by the sink, right where I remembered setting it. Weird. Another side effect of these damn pills must be memory gaps. I sat back down on the couch and started to change the channel, but then I noticed the time in the upper left-hand corner under the news channel logo. It was two-twenty-six in the morning.

"Jesus, I better go to bed," I told myself.

The next morning we were at the complementary breakfast buffet about eight-thirty, and I had way too many pancakes and way too many link sausages. We were refreshed and on the road by nine. Larry took the G.W. Parkway north and we went up past the airport, through Crystal City, and every inch of the way there was something interesting to see.

"If you look right over there, you will see the Pentagon." Larry nodded to the west with his head. "And over there is the Iwo Jima Memorial that is so famous. We'll come back on the other side of the Pentagon so you can get a better look at stuff."

We drove past about three different famous bridges. Just past the bridges and still on the G.W. Parkway we entered an area tht looked like a park. There was a river on the right side of the road with a jogging trail running alongside it and wooded hills on the left. About five or so miles on up northward we turned off the G.W. Parkway onto 123 at the sign that said
Chain Bridge Road/McLean
. Then, almost as soon as we turned onto 123, we had to stop at a traffic light. Just through that light was a very large green-and-white sign that read

George Bush Center for Intelligence

CIA next right.

We turned right. Larry drove through about fifty meters of trees and then up to a gate with a little push-button speaker at window height and rolled down his window. Before Larry had a chance to do or say anything the speaker buzzed, "Can I help you?"

"Uh, yes, Larry Waterford and Steven Montana here for a meeting." Larry looked a little nervous.

"Pull right and park in front of the guard center, then come inside. Have your identification and rental car registration available please." The guy on the other end was all business. No howdy, nice to see ya, please come back or anything.

The guard shack was a typical guard shack, as far as I could tell. The fellows behind the desk were packing serious heat and were all wearing rent-a-cop-type outfits. Larry and I filled out a couple forms, showed off our driver's licenses, and then Larry and the guard discussed clearance transfers and stuff that I wasn't quite sure I understood. They handed us each a badge; Larry's was a different color than mine. He didn't tell me why.

A few minutes later our point of contact on the inside of CIA Headquarters called the guard shack and told them we could come in and which building to drive to. We parked where we were told and then walked what seemed to be about a damn mile across the campus and through a parking garage before we got to the main building.

Inside the main building was exactly like you see in the movies. There was a big Central Intelligence Agency symbol in the middle of the floor under a huge skylight. Larry showed me the memorial with no names on it. It was all like I had seen it before; I guess I had, on television. There was even a gift shop. I started to buy a CIA shot glass, but Larry told me that I couldn't acknowledge that I had been there.

Then we went through the metal detectors and swiped our badges. The guard there informed Larry that he or another cleared individual would have to escort me wherever I went. Larry affirmed that he knew that.

Larry left me with an "examiner" and said he would be back later. The rest of the morning was me answering a bunch of questions--questions I'm not supposed to repeat--both written and verbally, inside a special room. Then I took a polygraph exam and that seemed to last forever. A few hours of that and Larry returned. We then reversed the process we had been through that morning and left CIA for the day.

"What'd you think about that?" he grinned.

"That was pretty neat. We're coming back here tomorrow, right?"

"Yep. We'll eat lunch there at the cafeteria. That is always a hoot. Tomorrow we will be here all day. Hey, we got the rest of the afternoon off; you want to see Robert E. Lee's house and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?"

"Got nothing else to do," I replied.

The next day was the same process. We went up the G.W. to McLean and so on. Again I was given a different color badge than Larry was.

"Clearance takes time, Steve. Don't fret it." Larry assured me. Unfortunately, the weather was not as good as it had been the day before and the long walk from the parking lot was more of a trot. We did maximize our path through the parking garage to stay out of the rain as much as possible.

The same guard told Larry the same thing about having to escort me. So Larry told him the same thing in response, "I know."

This time we didn't go to the same place Larry took me the day before. Today we went down several different hallways and I was completely lost. We finally got to a room just down the hall from a big sign saying
Directorate of Science and Technology
and there was a person waiting for us at the door.

We were told where the restrooms were and shown the vending machines. Larry got a cup of coffee so I followed suit. A few moments passed and the young lady at the door told us we could go in. Larry paused to speak with her.

"The package we sent up here, is it in there already?" Larry shrugged his shoulders, then straightened his tie.

"Yes, Mr. Waterford, the papers and slides you sent are here and are already in there." She pointed her pen behind her at the door.

"Thanks." He turned to me, "Okay, Steve, jump in whenever, but don't make a nuisance of yourself. If we ask you to step out for a bit, don't be upset; it will just be necessary. Got it?" He pointed to my tie and motioned to fix it.

"Okay. I got it." I fixed my tie and my shirttail.

Then we entered the SCIF.

CHAPTER 8

"So that is how we got the QCCPUs to teleport data back and forth between each other," I summarized. The Air Force general, General Clemons, seemed very intrigued throughout my presentation. I could've sworn that I'd seen her somewhere before. She looked to be in her mid to late forties, was very athletic looking, and had bright strawberry-red hair. She spoke in a Southern accent of some sort. I didn't know that they made attractive generals.

"Jim, what do you think of this?" General Clemons asked.

"Well, if you ask me, and you did," Dr. Daniels replied, "it's a damned shame that we only were told about all this a short time ago or we would have been at least this far already! I can even perceive us having prevented the war with knowledge of a larger threat to force us to act together instead of against each other." Dr. Jim Daniels oozed confidence in himself, probably because he was handsome and, from the looks of it, extremely physically fit, with a chiseled jaw and short crop of sandy brown hair. I wouldn't have pegged him for some kind of super genius.

Then one of the other suits in the room interrupted. "Harumph, uh, Dr. Daniels please let me remind you that this conversation is at Top Secret only!"

"Hunh?" Dr. Daniels then turned back to me and nodded at the other fellow. "Oh, yeah right. Sorry Phillip." He turned his attention back to the general, "Well, Tabitha, I would say this is it. I'm not exactly sure how the SuperAgents will apply, but now that we know how to do it, we can figure out how to undo it. I still would like to get 'Becca and Anson's opinions on it, though."

"We'll brief them when they return next week," the general assured him, and scribbled something in her notepad.

The fellow Phillip turned to me. "Mr. Montana, do you think you could show Dr. Daniels here how to recreate and modify, if needs be, your so-called SuperAgent code?"

"Uh, well I don't see why not. But if you're trying to reverse engineer something, I think I would be able to help more by, well, uh, helping." I was hoping to make my point. I wasn't sure who any of these folks were and I sure wasn't about to just give over my SuperAgent code without a fight of some type.

The general laughed. "Jim, I don't think he believes you have the wherewithal to undo his code." There were chuckles from the rest of the room.

"No ma'am," I replied. "I didn't mean to imply that at all. I just--"

"Relax son, I'm just trying to get Jim's goat." She smiled and adjusted the lock of red hair on her forehead. I could tell she was covering a very faint scar with her bangs. She turned to another Air Force officer; she, I assumed, was her aide although I did notice that both she and the general had wings on their lapels and they each wore an insignia patch displaying a missile inside a blue and red sphere with a big blue W
embroidered on it. Not to mention that they looked a lot alike. "Lieutenant Ames," she said.

"Ma'am." The young redheaded lieutenant snapped to.

"I think we can show the abridged presentation now." General Clemons nodded and then turned to look across the table. "Wouldn't you agree, Phillip?" That last sounded more like an order rather than a question. It was my understanding that the Phillip fellow was in charge, but this female general seemed to be getting her way when she wanted it.

"Uh, okay Tabitha. Only the 'abridged' version though." Phillip overemphasized the word abridged.

"Roger that," Clemons said. "Okay, Lieutenant. It's all yours."

"Yes, ma'am. Jim, could you back me up when I get stumped please." Lieutenant Ames sounded humble as she approached the front of the room and tugged on her uniform jacket.

"Annie, I think you will be just fine," Dr. Daniels replied and chuckled. I found it very interesting that all of these people acted as though they had known each other for years. It was almost as if they were family. Our group wasn't like that, it seemed to me.

Lieutenant Annie Ames pointed to the screen. "Okay, here on the first slide is the device." Ames pointed to a photo of an emerald-colored cube-shaped chunk of glass with several orange smaller cubes within it. "We believe these smaller orange cubes might be the intelligent processor components and these dark bands just beneath each of them are the RAM register input interference patterns. Until today, we had no idea how the device managed the data and the problem devolution. I would have to say that I am very impressed by Mr. Montana's effort thus far. The power inputs for the
entangled witness
beams, or as Mr. Montana had called them,
quantum connected
beams, come from here." She changed slides to a cutaway diagram of the device. "This is a scanning electron microscope image of the device. Note the false coloring we used to signify different density levels. It is possible there is something erroneous about the density measurements. Dr. Daniels will discuss this later. This bright spot here in the heart of the main cube is the
connected
light source and it appears the data information falls through here." She paused for that to sink in.

"Uh, excuse me," I interrupted, not sure if it was okay to do so.

"Yes, Mr. Montana." Lieutenant Ames cocked her head and smiled. She looked surprisingly like the general when she was "trying to get Jim's goat" I noticed.

"Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but, did you mean to say the data information, uh . . .
falls
through there?" I leaned forward in my chair, bumping into Larry's leg. "Sorry," I whispered to him.

"That is what I said and that is what I meant to say." She paused for effect. "Now as I was . . ."

"Uh, excuse me, sorry, but what do you mean
falls
through?" I interrupted her again.

Lieutenant Ames turned to General Clemons, "Ma'am?"

General Clemons turned to Phillip. "Well, Phillip?"

"No!" he said.

"Hold on a minute," Dr. Daniels interjected. He turned to me. "Steven, right?"

I nodded.

"Listen, it's just a figure of speech we've been using. Skip it. Just assume the data goes through an I/O port there in the center of the cube, okay?" Daniels was trying to give me a hint.

"Anne Marie, please continue," General Clemons said, attempting to put the questions behind them quickly.

"Yes, ma'am. Uh let's see . . . yes, here we are. The RAM appears to be continuously changing and we believe that it's encrypted in more than machine code. Decryption never seems to take place as far as we can tell."

The big fat bald gentleman sitting in the back finally acted as though he was awake and that the last statement startled him.

"It's encrypted?"

"Yes, Senator. We believe that the data sequence here that is continuously changing is encrypted data." Anne Marie paused for his response.

"Jesus Christ Almighty! It could be a listening device. How do you know that those damned things aren't eavesdropping on us right now?" He seemed almost frightened and looked around the room as if to see somebody hidden there that he hadn't noticed before.

"Okay, okay," Phillip interrupted. "That's far enough for a second. Mr. Montana, would you mind stepping outside please? We will call you back in a bit when we can. Just wait outside." He nodded and an aide beside him led me to the door.

"Carrie, see that Mr. Montana here is taken care of please. We will call for him in a bit," the aide told the young lady at the desk outside the SCIF door.

"Sure thing, Bill," she said. The aide returned through the SCIF door back to brown-nose, uh, support his boss, and I was beginning to worry if my future was going with him. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked so many questions.