The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) (38 page)

Eric turned to Jim, “Jim Safe, please send copies of the video recorded here,
including the detection results to every President, and Facility Director.”

“Rosemary, I
need you now. Please go to my office and compose a letter to send to every
President explaining why we must shut down SID immediately.”

“Go people I
need these steps covered in the next fifteen minutes.”

Eric added,
“And Jim, when you are done come to my office, bring Ben James and whomever he
thinks can help. We must make arrangements to shut SID down.”

“Ryan, come
with me.”

The room
cleared in the next few minutes. The law enforcement and government officials
waited for Cohen outside. He walked up to them and said, “Well, that was
informative. Any questions?”

One of the
police officers was taking off his lab coat, “Man, I wouldn’t have believed it
I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“That thing
was alive?”

Cohen snorted,
“No, but it thinks it is. It’s just a program that was written poorly. And we
all may pay a high price for it. Our first act must be to shut it down now.”

A man from the
state senator’s office stepped up.

“I agree, we
can judge the veracity of its claims later but right now, it must be shut down.
What help do you need Dr. Cohen?”

“Honestly, I’m
not sure yet. I have called a meeting to discuss these arrangements in the next
half an hour. If you are able, it would be good for you to attend.”

“Count on it.”

Ryan stepped
up to the group.

Cohen grabbed
his hand in both of his, and shook it vigorously.

“You did it,
Ryan.
You did it
. He’s exposed and on the defense, maybe for the first
time ever.”

“Thanks,
Eric.”

He followed
Cohen to his office. Taking a deep breath, he said, “You know when this is over
Eric, I want to talk about a raise.”

Laughing,
Cohen paused and called to a fellow just down the hall, “Hey there Jon, round
up some help, and please bring us some coffee, water, drinks and order a big
lunch for about twenty people.”

He walked
inside and put his things down on his desk.

“One last
thing Ryan, go ahead and have your man, Dr. Sarin prepare and send instructions
to the labs requesting testing of the Rn186 vaccine as you suggested before.
Send the message through me to get the ball rolling. I want proof regarding
your theory about our inoculations.”

“Yes, of
course. We’re already prepared; we’ll draft the message and send it out
immediately.”

Eric smiled,
and wiped his forehead. “Thanks Ryan. I believe we’re going to work through
lunch today.”

CHAPTER 16

“The
chess player who develops the ability to play two dozen boards at a time will
benefit from learning to compress his or her analysis into less time.”
 
-
Marilyn vos
Savant
 
“
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for
me at kick boxing.
”
 
-
Emo Philips

Over the next
hour, Dr. Cohen’s office sent messages to every IntelliHealth Facility in the
world explaining why they were requested to power down every SID interface in
their building. Attached to Cohen’s letter was Jim Safe’s video, which had
recorded the whole conversation with the SID entity. Facilities around the
world received the news, and the IntelliHealth System exploded in an uproar of
confusion, anger and fear.

At home Cohen
requested the SID interfaces in his local conference rooms be disabled first.
After the technicians confirmed the units were offline, Cohen moved back in and
set up his camp. He prepared for the next meeting, which would evaluate options
for shutting down SID permanently.

Ben James
arrived with Jim and David, and joined Cohen at the table. Ryan and Jeff
arrived and sat down on the far end. The man from the senator’s office sat next
to Cohen, and next to him was someone from the local police. Rosemary sat next
to Cohen on the other side. Also there were four research scientists on the far
opposite end of the table.

Cohen looked
around to make sure everyone was present before he began.

“Thanks for
coming,” he said, “We need to discuss options for how to shut Sid down, and
what to expect if we do. Here to lead this discussion is our resident head of
Information Services, Dr. Ben James.”

Biting his
lip, and looking a bit nervous he began.

“I’ll begin by saying that there is no protocol for shutting SID down. It was
designed to be the backbone of the research component, of the entire
IntelliHealth System. It’s not an overstatement to say that SID regulates all
scientific processes of our Facility every moment of every day. Put simply,
there is no ‘off-button’ for the SID program.”

He shuffled
his notes, “The SID program lives on the network servers across the whole IntelliHealth
System. He is, I mean
it
is, a distributed program, meaning that it does
not necessarily live in any single place.”

David spoke
up, “We could turn off the servers here, but he would simply shift his presence
to the other locations to compensate.”

Ben continued,
“Yes, that’s true. Complete termination will require a system-wide shutdown of
the network servers supporting SID,” said Ben. “But, there is a catch. Every
server supporting SID, is also supporting most of the research applications
running in the labs right now.
Some of these can’t simply be turned off.
The apps running in the labs include the ones running biohazard containment
areas, and some of those even have mini-nuclear cells powering them.
Applications such as these, need to be safely powered down in the labs before
we turn off the servers. We will need help from the laboratories.”

One of the
research scientists, Dr. Tellis said, “If we were permitted adequate time, we
could pass the word to our labs, and they could begin shutting down the most
volatile work immediately.”

“How much time
is necessary?” Eric asked.

“Maybe a day
or two?”

“Two days is
an awfully long time to let this thing continue to work. Now that we know about
it, who knows what it might try.”

The man from the senator’s office nodded at Eric.
“I agree, that does seem like a very long time right now.”

Jim stopped
typing on his tablet, and raised his hand.

“Jim what have
you got?” said Eric.

“I think it’s
important to realize that not all facilities would be the same. They will power
down the SID servers at different rates, because they each have different types
of research applications running. As each one goes off-line, SID will have to
contract. Each time he contracts he will lose some freedom to act,” said Jim,
“It might keep him off-balance while the rest follow. It does seem to work in
our favor.”

Ryan asked,
“Jim, how do you know if he’s here now?”

“Well, we can
measure the activity on his servers, and we can watch them interact with other
servers.” Picking up his tablet, Jim scrolled through some information and
suddenly looked concerned. “For example, here at our facility SID is still
interacting with the hospital network.”

 
“Oh my god- ” said Rosemary.

“He’s still
sending false treatments to the hospital,” said Jeff, suddenly concerned.

Cohen cut in,
“Rosemary, please go to Dorothy and get her to stop accepting treatments from
the prescribing research scientists. Until this is over, only M.D.s on the
floor may prescribe treatment. Afterwards, please send a message to the other
facilities, and warn them as well.”

Nodding,
Rosemary got up and left the room.

Cohen was
rubbing his eyes. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“So, Sid is
still here and still hard at work.”

“It doesn’t
care that we know,” whispered Jeff.

The room was
quiet as they realized the nature their implacable enemy.

Looking around
the table, Ryan said, “So hypothetically, we could give the order to shut down,
expecting that we will see each Facility power down at its own pace, and by
reducing the places for him to hide, we will run him to ground. Is that
correct?”

Jim said,
“Yes, that’s essentially what will happen.”

“Then I
suggest we make this Facility the last one,” said Ryan.

“Yes, indeed.
I like that Ryan,” said Eric smiling like a hunter before the killing blow.
“Let's run him to ground here, and at the end,
we
will pull the plug.”

Cohen looked
at Ben, “Do you anticipate any problems if we do this?”

Ben turned to
David and Jim, “We’ll need to monitor SID’s servers, and the power usage
associated with them. We should prepare for a huge jump in consumption.”

David said, “I
can get with our team and organize an audit of the servers and associated
systems right now.”

Ben turned
back to Eric, “I believe we can handle it, Dr. Cohen.”

“Very good,
Ben. Let me know if you run into any problems.”

Returning to his notes, Cohen said, “I will draft a letter intended to go to
each facility explaining this plan. I don’t trust IntelliHealth communications
right now, so we will be sending these orders in unconventional ways, and the
deliveries may take more time, but we will get them there.”

“Does anyone
have any questions or concerns about the plan?” he asked.

No one raised
their hand.

“Good day then
gentlemen, contact me here if you have thoughts, or questions about any of
this.”

Everyone stood
and left the room.

When Ryan was
walking out, Cohen stopped him.

“That was a
good point in there about watching SID. Get with Jim and go over that some
more. We should try to know what it’s doing, we can’t afford any more
surprises.”
“I understand, Eric. I’m on my way.”

Returning to
his office, Ryan saw that Jim and Jeff were each busy at their desks. He nodded
to Lara at the workstation outside. He went in, sat down and stared at his monitor.

The plan had
worked perfectly.

They put a
face on SID.

The
conversation with SID still made him shiver; it wasn’t what he imagined at all.
What bothered him the most was how SID had thought it all out. He had expected
they would find a faulty computer somewhere with a program stuck in a loop,
probably spitting out sparks occasionally. This was something very different.

The entity he
spoke with this morning, had conceived of a plan to decimate the human race. It
had then implemented a plan for worldwide genocide. It said that it would
‘collect’ the children of this new age, and that they would worship it as god.

The very idea
was chilling and acts, horrific.

In his mind,
Ryan saw Alex and hundreds of other children sitting indian style, their heads
bowed before a giant view-screen. What would SID’s world look like a hundred
years from now? A thousand? Ten thousand?

They had to
stop him.

He realized
that aside from the messages he sent, he hadn’t spoken with Jean in almost a
week now.

He called her
from the televid on his desk.

In moments,
the screen lit up with her face, “Ryan, how are you? We were getting worried.”

“I’m good,
things are really jumping here at work.”

“I’m glad you
called. I wanted to tell you that we might be staying a few extra days. My
Dad’s birthday is on Monday, and we might all go to the beach. Alex is looking
forward to it, but I promised I would talk with you.”
”Sure Jean, that sounds fine. Good actually. I’m probably going to work through
the weekend anyway.”