The war council started mid morning on Tracy Island.
FAB 1 soared in to land just before ten, just as Scott was getting a second coffee for Virgil to make sure he would be lucid and speaking in full sentences. Gordon had already left for Thunderbird Five and would be beaming in to join them and John's photophobia had thankfully waned into light sensitivity so he didn't need the blindfold, just a pair of sunglasses.
They gathered in the lounge and started with a full recounting of the events of yesterday from the moment John received the message from Arecibo 2 to when they landed at the abandoned airfield, stitched together from radio calls, scans, memories and suit camera footage. John got some gentle ribbing over his 'hidden combat skills' while Alan blushed bashfully at the praise of his rescue of John from the control room and ducked his head in embarrassment when the internal camera footage from Two showed his explosion of violence, only for Kayo to point out that he'd knocked both her and Scott down with single hits and made the three of them sweat to keep him contained, that was a good thing as far as she was concerned.
"Rigby sent me a message last night to say they were able to get to the observatory before the Pandora people could escape and they rounded up all six of them." Kayo continued. "He wants our statements and whatever recordings and records we can send him for the court case. He's pretty sure he can get them on assault and the illegal cloaking tech at least. They're not saying anything about Pandora, but he'll keep at it."
"Well that's something." Scott nodded, heartened that that at least had gone as well as it could.
Lady Penelope stood and took the floor. "I'm afraid we have little else to add from our information from yesterday." She began. "The inner circle of The Pandora's Alliance have a wide ranging network of people that are working together to shield them from investigation by outsiders. They have their website and public facing forums that they recruit from, but the only way to become a fully fledged member is through a personal invitation. All new recruits to the inner circle are carefully vetted and are met in person before being given an electronic one time cipher pad to access the member's boards. Quite frankly, the public boards are tame in comparison to the snippets I've seen of the forums that fully fledged members use. Given more time I'm sure that we could launch an undercover operation, but that will take months of careful work, not days."
"While their real-time communications rely on some very clever encryptions and are sporadically active there is a weakness that we've been able to exploit- their encryptions are controlled by human operators who change the encryption multiple times during a session. Humans are notoriously fallible when it comes to security. Every now and again they've reused an encryption algorithm enough times it's been cracked and we've been able to capture parts of a conversation, but unfortunately not a conversation in its entirety."
"You'd think for a group of tech-phobes hunting out higher tech they'd have better op-sec." Kayo remarked dryly.
"They have decent operational security, but I'm better." Was EOS' matter of fact response. "The one time ciphers for their message boards are practically unbreakable, unfortunately." Her tone morphed into one of embarrassed frustration. "Even for me. There simply isn't enough data to break the code."
"Any more information on their founder?" Scott asked, looking between Kayo, EOS and Penelope.
"We found a name, Gregory Butterhill, but he died four years ago of a heart attack." Kayo brought up the obituary for everyone to see. "Elaenor was one of his first recruits when he left the Luddites, she's a dyed-in-the-wool believer in their cause. We know she's got someone behind her, she's made reference to them in some webinars for the inner circle that we found, but nothing more than that."
"Any chance she's pulling some sort of switcheroo? Pretending to be just the spokesperson when someone else is pulling her strings? Or that Gregory faked his death?" Gordon asked, chin in his hand as he pondered the new information.
"Potentially yes to the former but it requires more investigation. Unfortunately not to the latter, Gregory's death was quite well documented and as he died owing a vast amount of unpaid taxes the IRS were quite careful to confirm that he was actually dead and not simply trying to dodge his dues." A touch of humour coloured Penelope's voice as she moved to sit. "I daresay there must be several someones behind her, it takes money and resources to set up the kind of operation they have and Gregory died a pauper."
"So the question now is how did they find out about EOS and John?" Scott frowned. "We've been so careful."
"I believe I may have the answer to that." EOS began. "Eleanor refers to me as the 'Black Swan Event' in one of her online meetings with her inner circle where they discussed how to 'find the dawn and the dawn's author'. They accidentally re-used a previous encryption and I was able to view part of it before they cycled to a new encryption."
"It seems one of their people happened across my trail a month before the train in Japan, while I was still looking for a safe haven." She went on. "No matter how careful you are, every action online still leaves a trace somewhere and I was…clumsy… in my infancy. They found those traces of me, followed them, told the others and collectively they put together enough other information to trace me back to John's original code and thus to John."
"Why do they call you a 'Black Swan Event'?" Gordon frowned at the terminology, arms crossed.
"In the Northern Hemisphere it was thought that swans could only be white until explorers from Europe reported seeing black swans in Australia. It became a metaphor for an unpredictable event with major consequences that subsequently occurs. They had thought that true AIs like myself, self aware and capable of independent thought outside of their original code, could not exist." EOS explained.
Kayo shifted her weight, eyes narrowed. "So they panicked when they found out about you?" She ventured, reading between the lines and parsing out information from the terminology. This was bad. Panicking people did desperate things, and desperate meant messy.
"That is what I have concluded, yes." EOS agreed. "With the partial success of their first attempt, the probability of their making a second attempt is currently at 97.38%"
"I'm afraid I'm only going to increase that probability." Lady Penelope spoke up, opening her compact and sending across a file to join the rest on the central projector. "A group chat of the inner circle was live just this morning. After their attempt to get to EOS via John failed, they've decided to come after International Rescue as a whole. They've deemed International Rescue's technology is just too powerful and should be destroyed."
"But what about all the people we help?" Virgil was baffled, unable to follow their logic. "Can't they see the good we do?"
"That question was asked and Eleanor responded with: 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.'" Penelope snapped her compact closed. "It appears she and her inner circle are quite set on this course of action."
"Star Trek?" John spluttered, incensed. "She's quoting Spock's dying words after he sacrificed himself to save the Enterprise to justify attacking us?!"
"Apparently so." Lady Penelope nodded solemnly. "These are not rational people, we cannot expect rational actions from them."
"W-we've already seen they can lay a cunning t-trap." Brains stood up and started pacing. "I'm w-working on a way around their cloaking tech, b-but it's taking longer than I anticipated."
Grandma shook her head. "They don't need their cloaking tech if they want to lure us out. All it'll take is causing a disaster and we'll come waltzing right in. We'd have to shut down International Rescue to be safe."
"We can't do that!" Scott's scowl was ferocious, hands clenching on the edge of the couch. "People out there need us, we can't hide away and turn Tracy Island into a fortress!"
"No one's saying we're going to hide." Grandma told him firmly. "We just need to be more careful for a while."
"Can the GDF do anything with all this information?" Virgil asked. "We have names and you've got them literally on the record saying they want to hurt us, surely that's got to be worth them digging into this."
"Unfortunately," Penny glanced at Parker, who nodded in confirmation and looked resigned about it, "because of the… techniques… used to gather the information from the inner circle, most of it is inadmissible and can only be taken under caveat, at the same level as rumours and hearsay. They're very happy to have it, but they can only take action on a small portion of it."
"Well that's a fat load of…"
"Watch it!" Grandma warned before Gordon could finish that sentence.
"I'm just saying if they're not going to do anything, we should!" Gordon fired back, looking around at the group. "I don't see how this is any different to us going after The Hood. The GDF have no problem with us doing that, why should they have any problem with us going after Pandora?"
"But it is different, Gordon." Virgil told him. "The Hood is a known criminal with warrants out for his arrest, but Pandora are just people who've been duped into thinking they're doing the right thing. I don't like it any more than you, but there's no laws against someone writing 'International Rescue is dangerous' on an internet forum and people agreeing with them. And we're talking about hundreds of people, not just The Hood and his dozen cronies. We can't just swoop in and attack people just because we disagree with them. It's Eleanor and her inner circle we want, but we can't get at them without going through a whole lot of people covering for them who don't know any better."
The aquanaut grumbled under his breath, but nodded.
Silence reigned for a long moment as everyone pondered the challenge facing them, then Alan raised his hand.
"Hey guys, I have an idea." He ventured. "It's a bit out there but I think it might work. I know we can't go after them directly, but what about indirectly? They can hide because people help hide them, right? Let's take away their cover. They can't all hate us, and I bet if the outer circle finds out Pandora's inner circle wants to hurt us, it might just change their minds."
Scott looked over at him, interested. "Go on Alan."
Alan outlined his idea, Penelope chimed in with her agreement and a few suggestions and EOS calculated the probabilities. When everyone had agreed, Alan went for his phone- he had a call to make.
0o0o0
The vlog hit the internet at 2100 hours Pacific time.
By 2200 it had cracked 50 million views.
Brandon sprawled in an office chair in his artistically messy apartment, one leg draped over the armrest. "Hey Bearheads!" He greeted his audience, tossing off a lazy salute. "Brandon here, and have I got something ab-so-lute-ly crazy but true for you." He announced. "There's this group out there, calling themselves The Pandora Alliance, right? And they're saying International Rescue should be shut down because they're 'too advanced' or something. Their boss lady Eleanor Grace literally said, when someone asked what about all the lives IR save, that 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one' and IR's tech is too dangerous, that it threatens the future of humanity or some rubbish like that, and it doesn't matter if 'a few' people get hurt or dead because it's more important to shut down International Rescue to protect 'the many'."
He shifted to sit up straight, dropping the laid back routine and letting some anger bleed into his tone. "And you know what I say to that? I'm one of 'the many' that International Rescue has saved, and I say we need them. Seriously, these Pandora people have already attacked and hurt International Rescue's people just a couple of days ago, and we need to help the GDF stop them from trying again."
"Bearheads, my challenge to you is if you've been saved by International Rescue post a video below with the hashtag 'we the many'. Pandora's Alliance claims they're doing it for the good of the many when they attack International Rescue, so let's show them what 'the many' actually have to say about that. If you're one of those people hiding and protecting them, maybe watch some of the videos and think twice about what you're doing, it's not helping people like you think it is."
Brandon sprawled back in his armchair again, grinning broadly. "I'm The Bear, and I've been saved by International Rescue."
Videos started rolling into the comments within minutes.
"We're from the Grand Sequoia Dam and we've been saved by International Rescue."
"This is Tycho Reeves and I've been saved by International Rescue."
"Kat Cavanaugh here and I'm glad to say that I've been saved by International Rescue. My report on The Pandora Alliance is next week, on the Kat Cavanaugh Show."
"We are Messers Reece and Dobbs."
"I'm Dobbs."
"And we've been saved by International Rescue!"
"This is Captain O'Bannon on the Global One Space Station and I have been saved by International Rescue."
"I'm Doctor Peck, International Rescue saved me and my colleagues and helped me find the cure for Cheevers disease, which has saved over 348 lives and counting, including that of my daughter."
"We're Bee and Henry from Rescue Scout Troop 216."
"And we've been saved by International Rescue!"
"Hi! I'm Scraps and I've been saved by International Rescue."
"Hello, Ned Tedford and Gladys here, we've been saved by International Rescue too!"
"We're all from Air Terrainean and we've been saved by International Rescue."
"G'day, it's Buddy and Ellie, and we've been saved by International Rescue."
But out of all the comments, the one with the most likes was a clip of a giant panda, munching on bamboo, while two zookeepers held up a hand-lettered sign that read 'I've been saved by International Rescue!'
0o0o0o0
Two days later in an apartment in Soho, Eleanor Grace was quickly stuffing things into a bag with one hand and frantically dialling saved contact after contact on a burner phone with another. "Come on, come on, someone, pick up!" She urged, flinching and looking up at every loud noise from outside.
How had everything gone so wrong so quickly? Their mission was good, their intentions noble and they were planning on making their (carefully managed and curated) mainstream social media debut next month with the eventual aim of building up a following to boost their odds of getting their people into politics to cut off dangerous tech at the source with policies and laws. She'd known that going after International Rescue wouldn't be popular with the masses, but she had calculated that since they wouldn't be around to complain no one could trace it back to them, the GDF would pick up the slack and life would go on.
Then that video hit the internet, the newsreels picked it up and everything she'd spent years carefully building had collapsed like a house of cards. Her people were either being scooped by the GDF or deserting in droves. Their bank accounts had been found and locked down and their public forums hacked by bands of spotty teenagers on computers scouring the internet for them, called to arms by a social media personality. The more dangerous threat was the GDF, tearing through their security after some of her inner circle caught a case of guilty conscience and handed over their one time ciphers to them.
Eleanor swore softly, tossed away that phone, all its contacts expended with no answer, and picked up a second.
Her followers scattered to the winds, now the GDF were coming for her and all she could do was desperately dial her backers- media moguls, politicians, industry giants- Gregory's friends that he'd introduced her to, people who promised to have her back and use their influence in her favour if the authorities moved against her. After Gregory died the Alliance needed a new leader, someone to fire imaginations and stoke emotions and they'd selected her.
While she took the limelight they'd provided money and information, operating in the background and seeking no glory for themselves until the time was right and their place in humanity's utopian state could be recognised.
She'd enjoyed being in charge, having the adulation of her faithful who saw her as a font of wisdom and direction, who like her revelled in their self appointed role of the guardians of humanity's future, knowing they and their efforts would be recognised and praised by their children and grandchildren.
But now her world was crumbling like a sandcastle before a tsunami and the powers behind her throne were no longer answering.
Suddenly her front door shuddered under a series of heavy knocks. "This is Captain Rigby of the GDF, Eleanor Grace, you are under arrest!" Someone shouted. "Open up!"
Eleanor dropped the phone as the door burst in, frozen like a deer in the headlights and a sickening realisation set in as the GDF officers swarmed her apartment.
Her backers were never going to answer her phone calls.