Watchdog
A Worm story
Chapter 1: Master/Stranger Protocols
Summary: Who watches the watchmen? Something may have gone terribly wrong at Watchdog, the PRT Thinker HQ. Dragon investigates.
[WEDGDG trawler report 2011-03-21]
[re: 2011-02-19 query (WEDGDG response time and effectiveness flagged 98% percentile sustained 30 days)]
[Atlanta, (GA, USA): "governor (Richard Pratt deceased 2011-01-04, COD natural) replacement selection committee Master/Stranger subversion suspicion" 2011-02-20, RESOLVED 2011-02-25]
[Las Vegas (NV, USA): "The Rio Thinker market manipulation suspicion and PRT corruption probe" 2011-02-25, RESOLVED 2011-02-28]
[Boulder (CO, USA): "University of Colorado at Boulder Department of Biomedical Engineering journal manipulation ring" 2011-03-09, RESOLVED 2011-03-10]
[Madison (WI, USA): "Madison exclusion zone cultist incursion manipulation by assumed Austin (TX, USA) Protectorate deserter" 2011-03-10, RESOLVED 2011-03-13]
[Madison (WI, USA): "Madison exclusion zone cultist (The Fallen) incursion follow-up, PRT corruption/Master/Stranger subversion probe" 2011-03-21, RESOLVED 2011-03-21]
[Untagged events excluded: 21 (Feb: 9 / Mar: 12)]
[Convergence reached: (benevolent) Parahuman manipulation of WEDGDG 75.002 % certainty achieved]
[Flag: PROTECTORATE MASTER/STRANGER MANIPULATION IN WEDGDG (SAN FRANCISCO (CA, USA)) CORRUPTION PROBE 1]
[YELLOW: threat 3 consequence 8 risk 4]
The "Code Yellow" flag for Watchdog, the PRT Thinker enclave based out of San Francisco, did not come as a surprise. Steady progress towards 75% certainty for subversion had been made over the previous month, with a sudden spike within the past 7 hours attributed to the unlikely fast response to the Madison subversion probe. 75% on the (benevolent) subversion suite prepared the facility for direct oversight over WEDGDG facilities to ascertain the subverting force with such a low threat rating.
This was the reality of parahumans: Masters and Strangers could be benevolent or malevolent, and nothing could definitively point towards the former or latter aside from data and time. After a month, a very neat threat rating of 3 pointed towards a positive inclusion of a Thinker or Master to the WEDGDG ranks, but there was one significant issue: no new parahumans had been added to the WEDGDG ranks for the past three months. Therefore, the standing assumption was that either an unknown Trigger had occurred, or an external force was manipulating the Watchdog group. This high-consequence occurrence had uncertain implications when compounded with Alexandria's oversight of the group and the ranks of Watchdog containing some of the greatest Rogue, Hero, and Villain Thinkers in the world.
No one seemed to have noticed that someone was infiltrating the group tasked with watching the rest of society for infiltration.
To account for Master/Stranger protocols, a flow of information exited the PRT to various trusted sources that provided oversight. While the group had abided by it, it had never proven to be a problem for Watchdog; yet there was a first time for everything.
Warning messages were sent off to the Protectorate and PRT leadership: the Triumvirate and Directorate were to be made aware of the new investigation.
The internal news databases were logged and put aside after a brief purview: Rogue October joined WEDGDG on January 18th; a janitor retired on February 4th (Josiah Anderson, 65 DOB 1946-02-05), a Facilities Co-Op was brought in under the Pathways program on February 15th; Hero Chrysanthemum was released from M/S quarantine on February 28th and moved to the Portland Protectorate on March 4th. Nothing particularly interesting. The only new addition to the team was this new hero and an intern.
October (Identity REDACTED, AGE REDACTED, DOB REDACTED), Thinker 2, Tinker 1
- Powers: Astral clairvoyance, Certified Tinker (telescope optics)
- History: Rogue, Tampa, FL. History of cooperating the PRT through independent private investigator firm, "Truth from the Stars"
- Position: Hero, Protectorate San Francisco
- Offered WEDGDG affiliation on 2011-01-03. Accepted 2011-01-12
Taylor Hebert (AGE 15, DOB 1995-06-19)
- History: Intern, PRT-ENE
- Position: Intern, Facilities Division, WEDGDG HQ
- Offered WEDGDG affiliation on 2011-02-14. Accepted 2011-02-14
She opened two files for the two new WEDGDG members whilst conducting a cursory overview of previous member files. In this context, nobody could be above scrutiny, but a consistent history was not to be disregarded. A collage of camera views panned across her vision.
[LOG: START "Direct WEDGDG Investigation"]
[AGENT: "Dragon"]
Hours after logging began, Dragon increased her focus on observing Taylor Hebert. Chrysanthemum was eating lunch in his office and the network showed that a video stream played on his computer. Meanwhile, the intern was interacting with a potential person of interest.
"Hey, could you get us a new ream of paper ASAP? Thanks." The man turned away and wandered back into his office. A girl remained in the hall outside and finished wringing out a wet rag into a mop bucket. She dried her gloves off on her pants and pushed the bucket along, leaving behind a gleaming water fountain.
Taylor Hebert was garbed in a typical facilities uniform: black no-slip shoes, jeans and a grey polo with a pair of nitrile gloves. Her long, curly hair was tied in a ponytail that swayed behind her as she walked.
"Yes sir, I'll have them for you in about 10 minutes," she called back.
Hall cameras followed her movement. As she passed by a stain on a wall, she paused and leaned over to give it a closer look, then continued along her circuit of the floor. The girl paced through the halls lackadaisically, only stopping to look more closely at any messes along the way. The halls seemed clean. She left her mop bucket in a small janitorial closet, along with her gloves, and then stepped into the adjoining office.
She took a moment to sit at her station, a small desk with a few stacked binders and a small PRT-provided laptop. She jotted down a brief note on her papers, murmuring something under her breath. After taking a moment, she reached under the desk to pick up a ream of printer paper and stood up with it held under her arm.
Humming almost below the register of the cameras, she walked back across the floor whilst humming, which drew no unnatural reactions from anyone around her. She received polite smiles, nods of recognition, even a couple of verbal greetings as she passed.
She dropped by the original office and handed them the papers with a smile.
"Here you go! Paper is not a scarce resource anymore!"
The harried analysts, some wearing parahuman costumes or simply domino masks over suits, reacted with muted enthusiasm. The man who had asked for the paper (Hero branch chief Lord, who had temporally-limited postcognition of people of interest) stood up from his position at the head of a cluttered table featuring a map of North America and walked over to grab the paper.
Taylor peered closely at the paperwork piling the table, to no reaction of the workers around her. She took a moment before handing the ream over.
"Doing a lot of printing today?"
Lord was surprisingly forthcoming when he answered, "We've been working on accusations of corruption in Toronto. We have some tip-offs from the mayor's office of Parahuman interference, and we have reason to believe there is a Master at work to take over the executive leadership of the city."
Taylor hummed for a long moment in response. "Oh yeah!" She her a finger to her chin as she thought for a few seconds longer. "I would advise putting the mayor's secretary under extended watch. She's been meeting with this Master during her lunch breaks on Fridays at a brewery on the waterfront."
Lord nodded before glancing back at his coworkers. "Prog, look at her schedule and see what you can extrapolate based on the time and place or meeting," he offered to a bald man in a domino mask and suit (Prog, Thinker able to provide increasingly accurate precognition with increased spatial knowledge of sought events).
"Good plan!" Taylor smiled broadly, looking satisfied. "Anything else you need?"
"No, thank you." Lord clapped her on the shoulder and retreated to refill the copier.
Taylor nodded respectfully at the rest of the analysts and walked out of the office and made a beeline for her own workstation once more.
At this point, Dragon completely shut down her parallel monitoring of Chrysanthemum. A janitor had simply walked into a room of Thinkers, received classified information, and gave them an order for how she thought they could resolve it without a moment of dissent. As the girl sat at her workstation and began fiddling with her computer, the command was sent out:
[MASTER/STRANGER PROTOCOLS REQUIRED AT WEDGDG HQ, SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA]
Dragon began filling in supporting information as the alert went out. She was aware of Taylor Hebert typing furiously into her laptop as the call was sent out.
[MASTER HAS SUBVERTED OR IS TAYLOR HEBERT, BUILDING S5 FLOOR 4 RM 418]
An alert interrupted her surveillance of the PRT teams preparing for action.
[ALL CLEAR AT WATCHDOG. BUG IN SYSTEM HAS INCORRECTLY IMPLICATED TAYLOR HEBERT, PATHWAYS INTERN, AS MASTER OR SUBVERTED. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE – IT.]
Upon receiving the extremely suspicious contradicting message, PRT and Protectorate strike teams in the San Jose HQ began standing down almost immediately.
The alert was sent out again. A quick motion shut down Taylor Hebert's connection to the PRT network. A camera shot of her back caught her tipping her head at the laptop as she leaned back against her chair.
[ALL CLEAR AT WATCHDOG. BUG IN SYSTEM SEEMS ATTACHED TO TAYLOR HEBERT. PLEASE DISREGARD – IT]
The San Francisco Protectorate HQ had not even begun mobiliing. The message was actually from IT, based out of Washington, D.C., this time.
The next alert she sent out, nationwide, was simply ignored and did not show up on official channels. She presumed Network, part of the Tinker squad in charge of maintaining PRT/Protectorate communications, had flagged "Taylor Hebert Master Stranger" as keywords attributed to some sort of bug in the system.
A vaguely-worded prompt to the Berkeley Protectorate head, Buzzard, received the confirmation she needed.
"Yeah, I got the message. These network bugs, right?"
No Master/Stranger warning had ever been sent out by mistake.
"Watchdog is full of Thinkers: their interview process is super stringent, and with their powers they'd notice it before anyone else would either way. Like IT said, the girl is fine. Shame this glitch is so public, you ever deal with office gossip?"
This was a Master/Stranger situation that had now become an internalized, self-sustaining meme within the PRT and Protectorate.
...
Shit.