Chapter 3
Marcus found it difficult to return to his own personal monotony after that night. He could not concentrate on anything that was not in some way related to the data that Teddy was currently trying to make sense of. The smallest suggestion of something would constantly bring his mind back to this point. He continuously found himself desiring to send a message to Theodore, asking if he had made any progress, but he also figured if they faced an unknown and electronically powerful enemy, it would be best not to use the communications devices without exercising great care, and only when in dire need. Such it was that he passed the week, going to his lectures and pretending to listen, whilst he doodled on his notepad and his mind played nightmares that would dress as daydreams for him, as a reminder simultaneously of how little he knew, and how much he feared. The biggest problem he found quickly was that his thesis contained a darker side much thought of but little written, that electronics of many kinds could be easily turned to nefarious uses, those of control, of debasement, of complete destruction. Every fear that his thesis had brought him to consider now seemed a simultaneous reality, and also but the tip of the iceberg. He went to his lectures with the same feeling a mathematical undergraduate may feel when asked to attend a remedial maths class in senior school. It was difficult for him to pay attention or to do anything really. He had little in the way of regular social contact, even few people in his classes that might be called friends. In general he passed the time trying to think of what could have been done by the scientists in illegal research. So far he had the obvious ideas, genetics, and possibly biological weapons, but past that he continuously drew a blank. Such it was that his week was passed with much wondering and little understanding.
On the friday of the same week, Marcus woke to find his phone had a notification for him from Theodore. He had texted to say that Marcus should go to the same place i had met him before to find the address of the place Theodore was now staying. Marcus went to the hill, and found a small scrap of paper pinned to one of the trees, which held a post code, and stated that he should walk in the direction of increasing numbers, and turn right when there are no more houses. By the time Marcus had followed the directions, the light in the sky was failing and he had some difficulty spotting Theodore's position, he had walked down a fairly normal suburban road, and near the end was a gravel path leading off to the right into a large expanse of natural land, dominated by a forest on each side, and a huge area of grass in the middle. Marcus had walked up the path until he had met the end, and then turned back, expecting that Theodore had chosen somewhere along the path. As he approached the halfway point on the return, he spotted a shape on one of the posts, the flashing of something shiny had caught his eye. So, he investigated, only to find the glint came from a glass eye on the face of a small teddy bear that had been nailed to the post. Marcus achieved a broad grin considering this, and promptly turned directly towards the adjacent forest, and walked straight. Almost as soon as Marcus had penetrated deep enough the path had begun to disappear, he spotted a distant fire casting shadows ahead of him. He continued forth, and found Theodore had found a clearing and made it into a cosy little spot. At the left most edge, from Marcus' perspective, there was a large tree trunk offering the comfort of a rudimentary sofa, in front of which was a modest but effective bonfire. On the opposite side from the tree trunk was the tent Marcus had given him, which was currently occupied by Theodore himself, wrapped in the sleeping bag also. As Marcus neared him, Theodore was intent on the screen of the tablet. He did not appear to see Marcus approach, and so Marcus chose not to immediately interrupt him, as he looked busily lost in thought. Marcus stood for a moment, when Theodore spoke, almost making Marcus jump, "Hey there Marcus, take a seat man, ill be with you in a moment."
Marcus felt a smile creep onto his face as he sat on the tree trunk, and looked around. Theodore had managed to take the bag of goodies that he had been given and turned it into the accoutrements for an outside sitting room, with all the important amenities. As his mind approached this, it threw up the wonder of where his toilet was, and Marcus sniffed, his nose giving him the pleasant knowledge that there was little need to worry that it might be close by. As he wondered silently, Theodore had finished his current occupation for the moment, and had put away the tablet and was in the process of unwrapping himself and leaving the tent. As he stood, Marcus was glad to see that Theodore had taken the time to remove the stubble of his madman's beard, and must have even washed his hair, as well as changing his clothes. On the whole, it was clear that Theodore had begun to look after himself again, and if Marcus had not been sat in the middle of Theodore's current abode, he would never have thought that Theodore was homeless let alone that he was living in a forest.
Marcus attempted to open the conversation, "You've done wonderfully with those supplies, this is a real cosy little setup you have going now!"
"Yes, it is. I am indebted to you. That bag has allowed me to achieve a little bit of a safe haven, and a place i can think. Now that i have control of myself again, i have managed to find myself a little bit of progress. So far, i have managed to decipher the intentions of a few of their projects, and whilst some seem mundane and harmless, others are downright diabolical, and still others seem outright murderous. But, it is not clear until i can understand what the science numbers mean exactly whether they actually completed the projects, or if they were cancelled, or failed. As far as i can see, it is the general procedure to keep the conclusions for each project separate, and as such, we have access to the working notes only. So, it seems we have the suggestions of what they were trying to do, but no access to records of what things they succeeded with."
"So how many projects are you sure of the intent for?"
"Completely sure, Five at the moment. There is one which involves a self modifying virus that can enter computers and retrieve data, and can also cause the computer to combust. The conclusion is missing however, so there is no record of if the virus is effective. Then, there is the rat, it was subject to genetic engineering, an attempt to directly and intentionally affect the growth of certain features, and the elimination of others. It would appear the picture I saw was an effort to examine the internal structure to see if anything unintended was changed. Again, the conclusion was missing, but from what little biological knowledge i have i can see the internal organs are all present, so it would seem they succeeded with what they intended, but that is just my best guess," here Theodore paused a moment to pull out the tablet, and after a moment fiddling with the screen he passed it to Marcus, who recoiled in disgust at the image of a mutated two headed rat on the dissecting table.
"Next, there is an attempt to communicate with the brain and to transmit data back and forth, essentially allowing the brain to work alongside a computer and allow them to exchange data. This was a very large project with huge amounts of data alongside, and whilst the number of files seems only slightly larger than the others, the files themselves are much, much larger. In general terms, those files take up nearly half of the total space used by the whole collection of files. However, whilst i have partially decoded the smaller files, and gained a little worded explanation, the larger files appear to be some kind of data scanned from a machine or something connected to a brain, and i am pretty sure that without access to the machine that gave the results, i will never make head nor tails of it. Again, i am unsure if they succeeded."
"The fourth is a very mundane project, which appears to be an attempt to make the external surfaces of a plant exude corrosive poisonous substances. It involves genetic modifications, and they used the formations of THC on Cannabis leaves as an injected piece of DNA, causing a strain of wheat to become impervious to all kinds of pests, big and small. This one was kinda funny actually, as it seems at first they failed, they ended up with a plant that did exactly what they wanted, but also the wheat itself, the seeds they intended to harvest, contained the same substances as the surfaces, causing the plant to become highly poisonous. They continued research, and appeared to achieve a strain which simply produced a THC derivative, and it would appear the THC was used originally in the evolution of cannabis as a plant to discourage grazing animals. The final strain that was mentioned was a plant that was not poisonous, but the surface was covered in a strongly smelling and bad tasting chemical similar to thc, whilst the seeds themselves were almost identical to a usual wheat plant. Again, no definitive conclusion however."
"The final one is actually something a little more advanced than what is openly proclaimed, but is otherwise actually what they say they are doing. It is basically a prosthetic limb with a neural interface, call it a bionic arm. This one appears to have been started as a side-project to the brain interface, and of them all has the most complete records of progress. this particular project appeared so much more finely recorded, that i believe they were intentionally keeping things a little ambiguous, in other cases, in case they were ever found out. In particular there was this picture," Again he passed the tablet to Marcus, showing a picture of three amputees, the man on the left possessed a robotic leg, the woman on the left had a robotic arm, and the woman in the middle had simply a hand. All three were standing naturally and their false limbs seemed positioned naturally, the woman on the right was waving fluidly with her prosthetic arm.
Theodore continued, "So, there you go, five projects that each could be considered noble, except that of the rat, but all of which appear to have dark undertones of intent."
Marcus was quiet, slowly absorbing this information. Then, he started to speak slowly, as if he was thinking very carefully, "how many project codes did you find?"
"This is the mind boggling part, in total i found over two hundred codes so far. I have now finished sorting each code, and all the files are arranged separately, as per the main project code, then the code of the author, then the date codes. So now, i can search easily and find what i need, but the data is immense, that USB stick was a hundred and thirty gigabytes of condensed data. If i assume, based on file types, what is likely to be readable, there is likely ten gigabytes of continuous text, which if you remember your basic computer facts amounts to approximately ten billion characters of text. Added to that is the fact that so far i have no idea how to access the remaining hundred gigabytes of raw unknown data, and also the simple fact that amongst the ten gigs of readable data there is easily ninety percent that is written in biological jargon and extreme science terms. Absorbing data written by these scientists is like giving a degree level physics book to a junior school science class." He paused and took a long puff on his cigarette.
"However, my computer skills have afforded some effective shortcuts, and so far, it has taken me about a day or so per project to get an idea of what they were up to."
"Hmmm." Marcus was thinking aloud, "It would appear that their experiments are very much wide ranging. And whilst there are no clearly dangerous intentions apparent at first, there are multiple points in this small handful alone that seem to break the laws of morality that scientists are lawfully supposed to abide."
"It does seem there is a distinct lack of consideration as to whether they are allowed to do what they are doing," Agreed Theodore.
"Yes, So what do we do? We have enough information here to bring the company down. But i am sure that there are many more things to be found in this data, and if we report it now... We will be surveyed and searched and all the data taken, even if we succeed in bringing down the company, and saving ourselves, the data will still disappear. I am actually quite worried about the real world effects of this data, is there anything in the way of directions to reproduce the effects?"
"I think so. All the recipes, for want of a better word, say things like 'take compound 342b and add x amount to y amount of compound 521x' and although it is hard to connect the dots, i do think the dots are all there. i think a portion of the ambiguity, in regards to chemical compounds at least, arises from the simple fact they are using previously unknown compounds. The designations are simply the 'in-house' names. i tracked one down, and found a full illustration of the molecule's formulation, clear enough i imagine that an average chemist could recognise the formation and possibly recreate it, and some further poking around led me to an explanation of the component elements. These particular points are mostly supposition tho, i am not a chemist by any stretch."
"Ok. What about the electronics and mechanical projects, are there any schematics?"
"Some. Mostly the individual circuits, but with patience i imagine you could pull a full schematic. I suppose it's possible some of the unknown data contains schematics in a form of encryption."
"This is majorly interesting. I think it is time to decide where we go from here."
Theodore looked like he was bothered by this comment. "I have been so busy assimilating data that i have managed to forget the dangers. I have had the most relaxed week since I found that damned picture and went on the run. I almost forgot that i would have to do something with it. Well, i suppose that we should. What do you suggest?"
"I think that we should consider a few possibilities." As he said this, Marcus raised a finger and touched it with the tip of another from the other hand, counting off the points, "One, we give the data to a news crew. They will publicise it, and we will be safe, and the company will go down, but this all will result in the loss of the data. Two, we keep it. This possibility will give us the least possibility of safety, with the maximum chance to make sense of the data. Three, we copy the data, and send the copy to the news crew." He left the possibilities hanging in the air, the topic so palpable the concepts were almost visible in the minds of the pair of conspirators.
After consideration, Theodore spoke first, "I think option three is best, but with a little twist."
"oh yeah? What twist?"
"Well, we cannot expect the news people to bother trying to understand the data, so we have to have enough of an interpretation ready for them to take and run with. This means i must continue my study. So, i think we should wait until one of two things happens, one, if i find a single project which is so clearly illegal that it will make the company fall alone, or two, if we perceive an immediate danger to either of ourselves."
"That sounds sensible. Maybe it would be good to try and see if there is anything useful there too. I cant see how we might use any of the information, but that doesn't make it impossible."
"Good point," Agreed Theodore.
"So, we are agree that we should copy the data, but do you have another stick big enough? The USB stick i had was far too small."
"No," Answered Theodore.
"Ok, Ill get one for when i return. In the meantime, i guess you ought to get back to work."
"Yes. Will you stay?"
"Yes, i have little else to do."
So it was that with ever widening eyes, the pair Theodore and Marcus, began to absorb the data that had been acquired. This first evening was spent with Theodore bringing Marcus up to speed on the things he had seen so far, and by the time Marcus had yawned and noticed his tiredness there was a full and bright blanket of stars high above their heads, indifferent to both their cause, and their cares.
On the friday of the same week, Marcus woke to find his phone had a notification for him from Theodore. He had texted to say that Marcus should go to the same place i had met him before to find the address of the place Theodore was now staying. Marcus went to the hill, and found a small scrap of paper pinned to one of the trees, which held a post code, and stated that he should walk in the direction of increasing numbers, and turn right when there are no more houses. By the time Marcus had followed the directions, the light in the sky was failing and he had some difficulty spotting Theodore's position, he had walked down a fairly normal suburban road, and near the end was a gravel path leading off to the right into a large expanse of natural land, dominated by a forest on each side, and a huge area of grass in the middle. Marcus had walked up the path until he had met the end, and then turned back, expecting that Theodore had chosen somewhere along the path. As he approached the halfway point on the return, he spotted a shape on one of the posts, the flashing of something shiny had caught his eye. So, he investigated, only to find the glint came from a glass eye on the face of a small teddy bear that had been nailed to the post. Marcus achieved a broad grin considering this, and promptly turned directly towards the adjacent forest, and walked straight. Almost as soon as Marcus had penetrated deep enough the path had begun to disappear, he spotted a distant fire casting shadows ahead of him. He continued forth, and found Theodore had found a clearing and made it into a cosy little spot. At the left most edge, from Marcus' perspective, there was a large tree trunk offering the comfort of a rudimentary sofa, in front of which was a modest but effective bonfire. On the opposite side from the tree trunk was the tent Marcus had given him, which was currently occupied by Theodore himself, wrapped in the sleeping bag also. As Marcus neared him, Theodore was intent on the screen of the tablet. He did not appear to see Marcus approach, and so Marcus chose not to immediately interrupt him, as he looked busily lost in thought. Marcus stood for a moment, when Theodore spoke, almost making Marcus jump, "Hey there Marcus, take a seat man, ill be with you in a moment."
Marcus felt a smile creep onto his face as he sat on the tree trunk, and looked around. Theodore had managed to take the bag of goodies that he had been given and turned it into the accoutrements for an outside sitting room, with all the important amenities. As his mind approached this, it threw up the wonder of where his toilet was, and Marcus sniffed, his nose giving him the pleasant knowledge that there was little need to worry that it might be close by. As he wondered silently, Theodore had finished his current occupation for the moment, and had put away the tablet and was in the process of unwrapping himself and leaving the tent. As he stood, Marcus was glad to see that Theodore had taken the time to remove the stubble of his madman's beard, and must have even washed his hair, as well as changing his clothes. On the whole, it was clear that Theodore had begun to look after himself again, and if Marcus had not been sat in the middle of Theodore's current abode, he would never have thought that Theodore was homeless let alone that he was living in a forest.
Marcus attempted to open the conversation, "You've done wonderfully with those supplies, this is a real cosy little setup you have going now!"
"Yes, it is. I am indebted to you. That bag has allowed me to achieve a little bit of a safe haven, and a place i can think. Now that i have control of myself again, i have managed to find myself a little bit of progress. So far, i have managed to decipher the intentions of a few of their projects, and whilst some seem mundane and harmless, others are downright diabolical, and still others seem outright murderous. But, it is not clear until i can understand what the science numbers mean exactly whether they actually completed the projects, or if they were cancelled, or failed. As far as i can see, it is the general procedure to keep the conclusions for each project separate, and as such, we have access to the working notes only. So, it seems we have the suggestions of what they were trying to do, but no access to records of what things they succeeded with."
"So how many projects are you sure of the intent for?"
"Completely sure, Five at the moment. There is one which involves a self modifying virus that can enter computers and retrieve data, and can also cause the computer to combust. The conclusion is missing however, so there is no record of if the virus is effective. Then, there is the rat, it was subject to genetic engineering, an attempt to directly and intentionally affect the growth of certain features, and the elimination of others. It would appear the picture I saw was an effort to examine the internal structure to see if anything unintended was changed. Again, the conclusion was missing, but from what little biological knowledge i have i can see the internal organs are all present, so it would seem they succeeded with what they intended, but that is just my best guess," here Theodore paused a moment to pull out the tablet, and after a moment fiddling with the screen he passed it to Marcus, who recoiled in disgust at the image of a mutated two headed rat on the dissecting table.
"Next, there is an attempt to communicate with the brain and to transmit data back and forth, essentially allowing the brain to work alongside a computer and allow them to exchange data. This was a very large project with huge amounts of data alongside, and whilst the number of files seems only slightly larger than the others, the files themselves are much, much larger. In general terms, those files take up nearly half of the total space used by the whole collection of files. However, whilst i have partially decoded the smaller files, and gained a little worded explanation, the larger files appear to be some kind of data scanned from a machine or something connected to a brain, and i am pretty sure that without access to the machine that gave the results, i will never make head nor tails of it. Again, i am unsure if they succeeded."
"The fourth is a very mundane project, which appears to be an attempt to make the external surfaces of a plant exude corrosive poisonous substances. It involves genetic modifications, and they used the formations of THC on Cannabis leaves as an injected piece of DNA, causing a strain of wheat to become impervious to all kinds of pests, big and small. This one was kinda funny actually, as it seems at first they failed, they ended up with a plant that did exactly what they wanted, but also the wheat itself, the seeds they intended to harvest, contained the same substances as the surfaces, causing the plant to become highly poisonous. They continued research, and appeared to achieve a strain which simply produced a THC derivative, and it would appear the THC was used originally in the evolution of cannabis as a plant to discourage grazing animals. The final strain that was mentioned was a plant that was not poisonous, but the surface was covered in a strongly smelling and bad tasting chemical similar to thc, whilst the seeds themselves were almost identical to a usual wheat plant. Again, no definitive conclusion however."
"The final one is actually something a little more advanced than what is openly proclaimed, but is otherwise actually what they say they are doing. It is basically a prosthetic limb with a neural interface, call it a bionic arm. This one appears to have been started as a side-project to the brain interface, and of them all has the most complete records of progress. this particular project appeared so much more finely recorded, that i believe they were intentionally keeping things a little ambiguous, in other cases, in case they were ever found out. In particular there was this picture," Again he passed the tablet to Marcus, showing a picture of three amputees, the man on the left possessed a robotic leg, the woman on the left had a robotic arm, and the woman in the middle had simply a hand. All three were standing naturally and their false limbs seemed positioned naturally, the woman on the right was waving fluidly with her prosthetic arm.
Theodore continued, "So, there you go, five projects that each could be considered noble, except that of the rat, but all of which appear to have dark undertones of intent."
Marcus was quiet, slowly absorbing this information. Then, he started to speak slowly, as if he was thinking very carefully, "how many project codes did you find?"
"This is the mind boggling part, in total i found over two hundred codes so far. I have now finished sorting each code, and all the files are arranged separately, as per the main project code, then the code of the author, then the date codes. So now, i can search easily and find what i need, but the data is immense, that USB stick was a hundred and thirty gigabytes of condensed data. If i assume, based on file types, what is likely to be readable, there is likely ten gigabytes of continuous text, which if you remember your basic computer facts amounts to approximately ten billion characters of text. Added to that is the fact that so far i have no idea how to access the remaining hundred gigabytes of raw unknown data, and also the simple fact that amongst the ten gigs of readable data there is easily ninety percent that is written in biological jargon and extreme science terms. Absorbing data written by these scientists is like giving a degree level physics book to a junior school science class." He paused and took a long puff on his cigarette.
"However, my computer skills have afforded some effective shortcuts, and so far, it has taken me about a day or so per project to get an idea of what they were up to."
"Hmmm." Marcus was thinking aloud, "It would appear that their experiments are very much wide ranging. And whilst there are no clearly dangerous intentions apparent at first, there are multiple points in this small handful alone that seem to break the laws of morality that scientists are lawfully supposed to abide."
"It does seem there is a distinct lack of consideration as to whether they are allowed to do what they are doing," Agreed Theodore.
"Yes, So what do we do? We have enough information here to bring the company down. But i am sure that there are many more things to be found in this data, and if we report it now... We will be surveyed and searched and all the data taken, even if we succeed in bringing down the company, and saving ourselves, the data will still disappear. I am actually quite worried about the real world effects of this data, is there anything in the way of directions to reproduce the effects?"
"I think so. All the recipes, for want of a better word, say things like 'take compound 342b and add x amount to y amount of compound 521x' and although it is hard to connect the dots, i do think the dots are all there. i think a portion of the ambiguity, in regards to chemical compounds at least, arises from the simple fact they are using previously unknown compounds. The designations are simply the 'in-house' names. i tracked one down, and found a full illustration of the molecule's formulation, clear enough i imagine that an average chemist could recognise the formation and possibly recreate it, and some further poking around led me to an explanation of the component elements. These particular points are mostly supposition tho, i am not a chemist by any stretch."
"Ok. What about the electronics and mechanical projects, are there any schematics?"
"Some. Mostly the individual circuits, but with patience i imagine you could pull a full schematic. I suppose it's possible some of the unknown data contains schematics in a form of encryption."
"This is majorly interesting. I think it is time to decide where we go from here."
Theodore looked like he was bothered by this comment. "I have been so busy assimilating data that i have managed to forget the dangers. I have had the most relaxed week since I found that damned picture and went on the run. I almost forgot that i would have to do something with it. Well, i suppose that we should. What do you suggest?"
"I think that we should consider a few possibilities." As he said this, Marcus raised a finger and touched it with the tip of another from the other hand, counting off the points, "One, we give the data to a news crew. They will publicise it, and we will be safe, and the company will go down, but this all will result in the loss of the data. Two, we keep it. This possibility will give us the least possibility of safety, with the maximum chance to make sense of the data. Three, we copy the data, and send the copy to the news crew." He left the possibilities hanging in the air, the topic so palpable the concepts were almost visible in the minds of the pair of conspirators.
After consideration, Theodore spoke first, "I think option three is best, but with a little twist."
"oh yeah? What twist?"
"Well, we cannot expect the news people to bother trying to understand the data, so we have to have enough of an interpretation ready for them to take and run with. This means i must continue my study. So, i think we should wait until one of two things happens, one, if i find a single project which is so clearly illegal that it will make the company fall alone, or two, if we perceive an immediate danger to either of ourselves."
"That sounds sensible. Maybe it would be good to try and see if there is anything useful there too. I cant see how we might use any of the information, but that doesn't make it impossible."
"Good point," Agreed Theodore.
"So, we are agree that we should copy the data, but do you have another stick big enough? The USB stick i had was far too small."
"No," Answered Theodore.
"Ok, Ill get one for when i return. In the meantime, i guess you ought to get back to work."
"Yes. Will you stay?"
"Yes, i have little else to do."
So it was that with ever widening eyes, the pair Theodore and Marcus, began to absorb the data that had been acquired. This first evening was spent with Theodore bringing Marcus up to speed on the things he had seen so far, and by the time Marcus had yawned and noticed his tiredness there was a full and bright blanket of stars high above their heads, indifferent to both their cause, and their cares.