Chapter 7 - Intruder
Brains shook his head at the data in front of him. It made no sense. John's brain tissue, while not exactly perfect, certainly wasn't badly damaged or dying. Yet his instruments were detecting weaker electrical activity than they had the previous night. John seemed to be literally loosing his mind. At least, at the few points with leads attached. Suddenly, the scientist had an idea: perhaps the young man's brainwaves had somehow spread out over a greater area than usual, basically stretching them thinner and reducing the detected level. A wild guess, but one that could be tested.
Twenty minutes later, Brains stared at a map of John's brain utilisation. It didn't match anything he'd seen before. Why hadn't he seen this last night? A quick look at last night's scan showed that the same smearing effect was visible, but only slightly. It looked close enough to a normal state. The latest scan, however, was very worrying. Instead of high brain activity in a small percentage of John's brain, the image showed rather low activity over most of his brain. What this meant for John's health, Brains had no idea.
On the beach…
"Don't you have paperwork that requires your attention?" Penny asked as she watched a wave crash onto the golden sand.
"Yes," Jeff answered simply.
Penny listened to the multitude of island sounds for a minute before noting, "Yet you're here."
Jeff nodded. "The recent… situation with Alan reminded me that I need to give more time to the people around me. The ones who actually matter."
Penny looked thoughtful. "I see what you mean. Tea and crumpets with lords and ladies and dukes and countesses and such is all very nice, but a lot of it is based on mutual envy, not friendship. I don't know how long I could put up it if I wasn't an undercover spy. That makes it meaningful."
"Too much of my work was meaningless. I wasted a lot of time I could have spent with my family, for money I didn't need. That's one of the reasons I began International Rescue, and why I'm proud to have my family and many old friends – and young ones – closely involved."
"It helps you trust people too, correct?"
"Yes." Jeff stayed silent for a while and just enjoyed the view of the ocean. Paperwork could wait a little longer. John, however, could not, which is why Jeff was startled out of his contemplation of the horizon by the harsh tones of his communicator.
Stuck in the same clothing store, but not bored anymore…
Kylie flashed Gordon another wide grin. "I was healed."
Gordon almost rolled his eyes. "I can see that. The doctors were wrong, eh?"
She shook her head. "No, they were absolutely right. God did it."
The swimmer stared. "Run that by me again?"
"God miraculously healed my eyes. See? Pun intended."
"But… I thought you'd given up on that whole 'God' thing."
Kylie nodded sheepishly. "Yeah… but He hadn't."
Gordon was a little annoyed. "I heard you prayed for a whole year! If 'God' really healed you, why didn't He do it then rather than… torture you for… how long?"
"Six years," she admitted, even more sheepishly. "I had to…" she stared at the floor. "I had to forgive you first."
"Oh." That wasn't an answer Gordon could have anticipated. "Actually, I think that may have been the bigger miracle, from what I remember."
Kylie actually smiled. "Forgiveness is one of the biggest miracles there is. You see…"
"Gordon! Bags! Move!" Tin-tin ordered, holding a new shopping bag in what Gordon interpreted as a threatening manner. "You're not delaying the most important shopping trip of my life, okay?"
Her unwilling slave snatched up the bags under his charge and stood up to follow. "Kylie, do you mind talking on the move?"
Another grin was aimed at him. "My pleasure."
In what-made-do-as-Penny's-room-due-to-the-presence-of-the-president…
Penny, having returned to check on Parker's progress when Jeff was called to the infirmary, found the butler somewhat concerned, and having made less progress than expected. "Whatever have you done now, Parker?"
"Well, Milady, hit was a rather hunfortunate haccident…"
"Out with it, Parker."
"I'm afraid it hinvolves the 'ood, Milady."
"Oh dear."
Meanwhile, in another lab…
Fermat enjoyed how his day had turned out. In front of him sat a computer loaded with a huge chunk of encrypted data, copied off the hard drive of a damaged PDA overnight. A huge chunk of data which probably contained all sorts of secrets. Brains had chosen to let his son take a crack at this job, since he was occupied with more pressing life-or-death matters.
Having figured out the file system being used (which was easy, since there were only a handful to choose between), Fermat picked the largest file – a rather massive file which provided the most material for deciphering – and set to work. After a couple of hours, he'd found a key that transformed the beginning of the file into what matched a simple executable self extraction program, and the rest of the file to what seemed like nonsense but must have been the result of an advanced compression algorithm.
After brief consideration, Fermat fired up an emulator for the correct processor architecture to run the decompression program. Maybe a smaller file would have been readable sooner, but this one was looking like pay-dirt.
The boy soon discovered that he was both right… and wrong.
In the infirmary, as you probably expected…
Mr. Tracy and Brains had been discussing John's deterioration for long enough that Jeff became seriously concerned. "We need to get him to a neurologist."
"I'm afraid that m-moving him would be d-d-det…"
"Then we need a neurologist here, right away."
"I agree. Perhaps one from S-Sydney?"
"Yes, Gordon can bring back an extra passenger, saving considerable time. Can you suggest anyone?"
"I can th-think of two off the to-t-t-to…"
"Give me names and numbers; I'll make some calls," Jeff demanded efficiently. Behind him, an array of monitor screens instantaneously cut to black. Silence replaced regular beeping. "I take it that's not good?"
Every screen became busy with a spectrum of scrolling symbols, heralded by hums and whistles. "I'd say n-no-n-neg…" Brains shook his head emphatically.
Jeff cursed loudly.
The thousandth clothing store…
Gordon suffered through a few minutes of Kylie's forgiveness chatter before changing the topic to something he felt more comfortable. "What have you been doing with yourself since we, uh, last saw… no, I mean, well… all these years?" Maybe not so comfortable as expected.
"After the six years of moping, feeling sorry for myself, and generally being useless, I decided I should make some good out of my experience. So I started telling people my story, to help people through similar situations, at churches and pretty much anywhere people would listen."
"Such as shopping malls," Gordon interjected wryly.
"Yes. Also I've been collecting stories from other people, so I've started writing a book. At the moment I'm taking a break from it, to visit relatives. What about you?"
"Today, I'm designated pilot and bag-carrier. For Tin-tin."
"Tin-tin?" Kylie looked again at the girl they had been following. "Wow. The last time I saw her, she was… small." She looked again to make sure she was out of earshot. "Do she and Alan still hate each other passionately?" The young woman's eyes twinkled.
Gordon gave a short laugh. "They're usually civil, but they have their moments. I give them a couple more years before they reach the other side of the spectrum."
"At which point, you'll owe me twenty bucks," she smirked.
Gordon let out a fake groan. "I was hoping you would forget that bet. So, been collecting anything lately? As I remember, you've exhausted Earth's supply of shells, buttons, and bottle tops."
"News clippings," Kylie responded guardedly.
"Of?"
"News."
"About?"
"Just something I'm interested in."
Gordon shook his head. "You can't fool me. It's a guy."
"Maybe," came the noncommittal reply.
"A cute guy."
"Possible."
"Rich celebrity?"
"Could be."
"Athletic?"
"Olympic gold," she admitted.
"Some things never change. I bet he's an idiot though."
"Yeah, how did you figure that?"
"If he was smart, he'd be here talking to you."
Kylie giggled. "What a sweet thing to say, Gordon. But you're wrong. If he was smart, he wouldn't have been on a hydrofoil when it crashed."
"Hey, how was I supposed to know it would…" Gordon began indignantly. "Wait, you collect news clippings of me?"
"How many other cute gold medalists do you know?"
"Oh, lots."
"Perhaps you could introduce me?" she teased.
"Of course. If you really want me to. Some of those girls can get really jealous," Gordon responded in kind.
Kylie laughed, and pinched Gordon for good measure.
In Penny's irregular room…
Lady Penelope was not happy. First her car had collected a nasty dent, and now her favourite coat had a nasty crease and a loose thread. It would be alright if she wore it without the hood on, but that was no good in a chilly London fog or if she wanted to hide her face. "Parker, how many times do I need to remind you to check before shutting suitcases?"
"Never again, Milady."
Meanwhile, in the computer lab…
Fermat scrambled under the desk and yanked out a power cord. The computer finally fell silent and dark. He knew he was going to be in sooo much trouble.
Everything had been going so well, too. But then, the emulator threw up a number of strange error messages and warnings. How a simple decompression program could do this, he did not know. To determine the problem, he took a snapshot of the current state of the program in memory. It was vastly different to what he expected. The strangest thing was that it was bigger.
Fermat had then looked back at the original program, and suddenly realised that what had looked like a simple decompression algorithm was actually a simple decompression algorithm, except that the resulting extracted data was being added to the program, modifying it. It was a good thing it was running in an emulator, not a real live system, or else…
In retrospect, Fermat realised he should have cut the power when the emulator crashed with a memory corruption error. He definitely should have done so when the hard drive access light continued to flash. Instead, he opened the process table to see what program was running. A bunch of names appeared, all familiar. The system locked up trying to display the last item in the list, as if it couldn't access the final program's name. He tapped the screen impatiently, and was rewarded with a full system crash.
Writing down the details of the error seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, Fermat was interrupted when the screen was overrun by garbage. Random data began to fill the screen and scroll down, constantly changing colour. Fermat's common sense finally defeated his curiosity and he hit the reset button. The familiar boot screens appeared. Followed by… uh oh. Fermat didn't think that scrolling symbols were the new OS splash screen, so he slipped a boot disk into the floppy drive (good to keep one of those for emergencies) (the floppy drive, that is) and hit reboot again.
Relieved to have regained control of the machine, and knowing that there was no data on it besides a copy of the PDA contents, Fermat chose to format the hard drive and reinstall everything. A setback, but at least he knew what he was up against. Or so he thought. A minute into the reformat, an error message appeared. Promptly followed by the all too familiar psychedelic barrage.
That was when Fermat reached for the power cord. Then he remembered that the computer had been connected to the network. Oops.
Finally back to the infirmary…
Brains ran to John and checked his pulse and breathing. They were as weak as they had been, but definitely present. "It's, uh, n-not John. So-something's wrong with th-the computers!"
"You don't say! What could have caused…"
"Fermat! If there was a v-vi-v-v-malware on the PDA, it may…"
"It has! Fix it!" Jeff demanded.
"Uh…"
"Whoop-whoop-whoop! Intruder alert. Intruder alert," a female voice stated much too calmly.
"It never rains: it always pours!" Jeff declared, with a few choice curses. He and Brains looked at one another hopelessly and dashed for the control room.
The infirmary door shut and locked itself behind them. The wild screens began to calm as electricity started to arc from the contacts attached to John's skull.
Elsewhere…
Hearing the warning message in the shooting range, Scott and Virgil immediately asked their father where they were needed. Since their communicators had suddenly decided to stop working, he didn't respond. Glad that they were already armed, the brothers decided to scout the perimeter of the house.
Inside, Kyrano took refuge in the kitchen. His wife passed him a large steak knife after arming herself with a rolling pin. Penny and Parker chose to patrol the hallways for signs of anything suspicious, and Fermat ran around franticly unplugging everything in sight. Haze was extremely alarmed, afraid that someone had already found her. Seeing that her room had an exit with dense jungle not far away, she chose to make a run for it.
In the control room…
"Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert…"
"Can you shut that off, Brains?"
"I'm t-trying," the scientist replied, frustrated.
Jeff knew what that really meant. "Neither can I. I can't getanything to work."
"At l-least it's not…"
"Looking like the fourth of July all over the screen? That's a small comfort if it won't show us where the intruders are." The screen finally changed to show a map of the island. "Finally! Let's see what…" Jeff's voice trailed off, leaving him with his mouth hanging open. Several hundred red dots peppered the island, with a few dozen larger ones moving swiftly toward the island. "This can't be right! How could so many hostiles get on this island before triggering an alarm?"
"There s-seems to be as many in the j-ju-j-jungle as…"
"You're right, there's something very wrong about this. Especially since none of the security cameras are working. Why disable the cameras yet allow themselves to be detected? They seem to have arrived undetected, then suddenly allowed themselves to be seen, but not on camera, as if they want us to know they are here, but not know who they are."
Alan burst into the room breathlessly. "Dad! -huff- What's going -huff- on?"
"We don't know, Alan. But the motion detectors show hostiles all over the island."
"I was -huff- reading beside the -huff- pool. Didn't see anyone. -huff- Except Penny and -huff- Parker, but I didn't let them see -huff- me. Didn't want to distract them or draw -huff- attention," Alan explained
Brains considered what could be wrong with the sensors. "The v-virus, perha-per-maybe?"
"Virus?" Alan wondered.
"Something was messing with the infirmary computers," Jeff explained. "Fermat might have released it from Yarworth's PDA. It might have set off a false alarm and spoofed data to make us think we were in danger."
"Maybe it's trying to distract us from something," Alan suggested.
"Alan, a computer virus isn't capable…"
"Actually, with v-very specific coding, and in-infor-in-data about all our s-systems, a virus could…"
"Data about all our systems?"
"The virus would n-need to be ta-tailored to our ex-exact systems in order to fu-fun-work. Unless it co-c-com-talked to a human op-operator in realtime. Or…"
"Or?"
"Or h-h-ha-possessed some level of ar-arti…"
"Artificial intelligence! Cool!" Alan exclaimed. "How do we stop it?"
Abruptly, the 'Intruder alert' message stopped.
"Did I do that?"
Author's Note: I'm glad to see I'm picking up more readers. This is my longest chapter yet! Hmm, it's nearly 12:30 AM. I've been up rewatching episodes of Stargate SG-1 :D Anyhow (and at risk of rambling) I hope you've all enjoyed this edition (or addition) and either way, reviews are great!
