Chrome Symphony - Chapter 6

Duncan and Shell were on a transport tube train heading back into town from the observatory.

"I suppose we just can't avoid these missions," commented Duncan.

"It's just the kind of thing we're suited for," replied Shell.

"Well, it is fairly important to the entire world, so I guess if they need people like us, I can't just turn Firewall down," said Duncan.

The train stopped at the station and the two of them exited. Duncan started walking in the direction of his house.

"I guess I'll see you and everyone at the Velvet Room at 19:00, then," said Duncan.

Duncan made his way back to his house and sat down in his office. He reviewed the beacon signal recording once more, playing it back in a loop.

There's something more familiar about this than just the sphere's data from NEA726, he thought. This seems... older... somehow.

Duncan thought about the past. He remembered his days as a non-augmented human, before he was a cyborg. His wife, Rosetta, was constantly busy with politically-motivated hacking operations whenever she wasn't working her regular job. Duncan was a network security technician in his former life.

Duncan knew that he had heard the sound of that beacon before, from around that time. He didn't remember exactly when but there was a feeling of deja vu whenever he listened to it.

Suddenly, he remembered.

The year was 2054. Duncan was with a team, investigating a major wireless outage. Duncan and another climber had reached the top of an old cellular tower, which was one of several towers that provided the city with its wireless Internet service.

The equipment on the tower seemed to be in working order but the company had suspected that hackers had placed some kind of additional hardware on the tower. As they investigated the tower's antennas, they couldn't find anything. One of the technicians was testing the 20 GHz band for signal quality with a device that would make the raw signals audible, just like an ancient analog radio. As the technician tuned to 22.147 GHz, a noise... a noise identical to the beacon... was heard.

Duncan shot up out of his seat. "That's the same sound!" exclaimed Duncan. He remembered something the other tower climber had said. The other tower climber was one of the last old-style amateur radio operators alive and was familiar with archaic digital modulation protocols. Duncan remembered the name of the mode that the technician uttered upon hearing the noise.

MT63, remembered Duncan. It was a long-outdated protocol that was slow, yet obsessively redundant in order to preserve data over very weak signals.

"Holy cow," Duncan said to himself. "That sphere, whatever it is... it could be centuries old!"

Duncan accessed a terminal in his field of vision and started frantically searching for information about the old MT63 mode.

Shell called her friend, Kel.

"Kel? Want to meet me at the plaza in a few?" asked Shell.

"Same place as usual," replied Kel.

Shell walked over to the shopping plaza where Kel was waiting for her at a table. Kel was sipping coffee and reading the news on her communicator. Shell waved and walked over to her table. She sat down.

"Crazy morning," said Shell. "I guess they're sending me back out into space."

"Really?" replied Kel. "Why can't they use the military for those missions?"

Shell shook her head. "No, this time around it's nothing like that. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say right now but we're going to investigate an abandoned ship. There's something potentially dangerous up there and we're going to find out what it's doing."

Kel looked around, nervously. "Careful. I saw some weird guys around here earlier."

Shell also looked around. "You don't think they were monitoring, do you?"

Kel shrugged. "That short call just now? Probably not. Still, I've gotten word that your group and Firewall have attracted some unwanted attention from EMA."

"EMA?" asked Shell. "Are they still involved with those clandestine projects?"

Kel nodded. "Oh yeah. They were doing lots of that stuff around the time I left to go work for Crest. Speaking of, my lunch break's nearly over..."

"Thanks for the heads up," said Shell. "I should have guessed Firewall has some enemies."

Kel finished her coffee and stood up. "Shell," said Kel, "You might want to look up Dark Spider again, soon."

With that, Kel waved goodbye and started walking toward one of Crest's office buildings to return to work.

Renk arrived in City N around 18:45 and started walking toward the district where the Velvet Room was located. He had been honorably discharged the day before after serving for 28 years in the military. His time control ability had destabilized when the adept phenomenon had returned, although it was arranged for him to finish his duties and retire after he played a role in the destruction of NEA726, which had brought down the Herei Mob Army. He was considered a war hero.

Time to meet some old friends, Renk thought to himself as he entered the Velvet Room. At the bar, Elise was serving drinks to customers. Renk walked up to the bar and ordered his usual - a b***** Mary.

"Hey, stranger," said Elise. "Long time no see. You on duty?"

Renk smiled and shook his head. "No, ma'am," he replied. "As of today I am officially ex-military. I was honorably discharged yesterday."

"I see," said Elise. "So, are you here for the Firewall meeting?"

"Yes, I am," replied Renk. "Dr. Thameh left me a message. By any chance are you going along on the mission, too?"

"It depends," said Elise. "I want to at least hear what's going on. If the opportunity is right, I'll likely get in on the action."

Renk laughed. "The more, the merrier!" he said as he finished his drink.

Elise motioned toward the large double doors in the back of the bar.

"Head on back there. The meeting is going to start in a few minutes. It's the first room on your left," said Elise. "Once I'm finished here, I'll join you."

Camay greeted everyone as they arrived in the private meeting room.

Duncan, Shell, Jax, and Chester sat around the table. Renk came strolling in right around 7 pm.

"Thank you for coming here," said Camay.

Suddenly, Jess and Atlas entered the room.

"Oh!" shouted Camay. "I didn't think you'd be here tonight!"

Atlas laughed. "Jess and I thought we'd sneak out for the evening."

Jess took a seat at the table along with Atlas. "Since this is partially my idea, I wanted to speak to everyone in person," she said.

"It's nice to see you again, too," said Camay, looking at Renk.

The door opened again. It was Elise.

"I had to finish up back at the bar," said Elise as she also took a seat.

"It looks like everyone's here now," said Camay. "I'll make the introduction brief. Our mission is to get aboard that seemingly abandoned space ship and examine the sphere in there. From what we know, it appears to be the same device that was aboard NEA726 before that asteroid disappeared. It's functional as far as I can tell and we need to gather more information up there, especially regarding any links to the adepts phenomenon."

Jess stood up after Camay's introduction.

"Crest Corporation had all information regarding the NEA726 weapons manufacturing facility wiped from its servers years ago," said Jess. "Atlas and I were, however, able to recover some very important data from our crypt. No one in Crest Corporation outside of my father and myself had access to that part of the mansion, so in the attempt to destroy all traces of this project, they missed these."

Jess laid out some old blueprints on the table. Everyone leaned over to have a look. Elise switched on a bright overhead light, illuminating the plans on the table before them.

"As you can see," said Jess, "Crest didn't develop the sphere. It was excavated from some old ruins on the Martian moon Phobos. When they moved it to the asteroid years ago, the project was actually a reverse engineering attempt."

"So," replied Duncan, "we don't know when it was actually made?"

"It was never determined who made it, or when," replied Jess. "According to the notes here, the project was suddenly abandoned when the asteroid was attacked and taken over by the Herei Mob Army. Since Crest couldn't risk going public with this project, they didn't call for assistance and the terrorists were able to just take over the whole place while Crest's team fled the asteroid in desperation."

Renk shook his head and sighed.

Jess noticed Renk's body language. "Yeah, yeah... apparently my father didn't even know about it at the time of discovery," said Jess. "He was informed of it a couple of years later. From what I know, he had to keep it a secret from everyone because of the consequences of allowing terrorists to take control of it."

Atlas turned to the next page of the blueprints.

"These plans were sealed in the sub-basement ever since Mr. Price obtained knowledge of the project, which was after the asteroid was taken over and Crest's staff was able to get a copy of this information out," said Atlas.

Jess nodded. "We thought he was kidnapped but now it seems he voluntarily went to the asteroid as part of the deal that I would not be harmed," said Jess. "At some point, a sophisticated proximity-based bio metric security system was installed after he unlocked it with a security code. That security code... is here."

Jess pointed to a long string of numbers and letters written among the blueprints.

"This code may well still work," said Jess. "If not, well, I'll have to be nearby, I guess."

Jess cleared her throat.

"The other big thing is that the medical nano technology that I use was also used in a batch of artificial blood, which was given to many people around the time the adepts phenomenon first surfaced," said Jess. "The proximity of the sphere seems to determine the strength of adept powers and I think I know the reason why..."

Jess's voice trailed off. Atlas looked at her and nodded.

"This nano technology was developed as part of the sphere reverse engineering project. I'm not really sure how it works but it is linked. For what information we were able to uncover, all adepts in the world have had some amount of artificial blood introduced into their systems that contained this technology."

The room was silent for a moment as Jess revealed the truth.