Ghost Signals

Adam

"Time to crack you open, big boy, and see how sexy you are on the inside."

"Excuse me?" he asked Oswin, standing next to a small table and holding an assortment of products in his arms, "Were you just talking to that transponder?" She was eyeing the transponder, holding it up to the light poring through the solid wall of windows. It was blinking, and every few minutes it beeped. She glanced at him.

"Did you say something?" She definitely had been talking to the transponder. Sprite was hanging onto her arm and peering closely at the device too. "What's all that stuff?"

"My lunch and a notebook and a pen," he said.

"A notebook? Perfect. Can I borrow some paper?" she asked. "I don't want to use my computer here, it's quite conspicuous." Her computer was basically a silver Toblerone that projected a hologramatic green keyboard and screen.

"What are you going to do with paper?" he said, passing her the notebook. She tore out a few sheets, commenting on the strange feeling of real paper made from trees compared with the synthetic paper of the future, then took a pen from him, too.

"Thanks, babe. I'm just going to draw something while I wait for Helix to get me this code." He realised he'd forgotten to get himself some crisps, and stood up to return to the vendor in the large CyTech cafeteria, taking this opportunity to find himself a second CyTech-logo-emblazoned pen to replace the one stolen by Oswin. While he was there, about to pay with his card on the automated system, he looked over at Oswin sitting at that table in front of the window, the view of the countryside behind her, in his own company offices. It was quite possibly the most poignant moment of his life for whatever bizarre reason, and he was compelled to take out his phone – no longer caring if his iCloud was hacked and his files were put online – and took a photo of her and the outside. She didn't notice because his phone was on silent and the flash was turned off. He took his pen and his crisps and returned to her, after paying.

"Do you think I've been acting weird?" he asked her when he was halfway through his BLT and his bottle of Pepsi. She was drawing something again, scribbling equations at the edges of the paper.

"Yeah, a bit. Like you're embarrassed by me, or something," she shrugged. She was smiling a little and she had her eyes fixed to her page. "Wouldn't surprise me if you were, the stuff I say."

"I'm not embarrassed by you, I'm embarrassed by this," he said, indicating the room around them. There were other people in there, members off staff, all eating, but they kept their distance from their CEO. He never usually ate down there, he ate in his office because he was a loner like that. In fact, he often used to send Lucy, his secretary, to fetch his food for him. "It was all so important to me, and now it feels ridiculous."

"That's cute, that you look at your entire life collectively and you think your business is the weird part of it. Not the cryokinesis, not the doorway in your head, not your hologram girlfriend, but this security software company. You do good things with it, baby. Renewable energy, tidal facilities – you're the most warm-hearted, best person I've ever met."

"But I just abandoned it. I barely even thought about it. I was here when I got brought onto the TARDIS, you know. I was in my office thinking about the CyTech mobile I was supposed to be developing, and then I was just pulled away, and… I saw you. Every thought went out of my head and it was just you. From then until now."

"Well, you've got me, so you can stop being so obsessive. It's kind of creepy," she joked, "I mean – it's a mutual thing, yeah?"

"It is?"

"Sure it is. The only reason I haven't gone crazy yet is because of you. Like, really crazy, I mean. Completely broken, can't function crazy. It would be like when I have one of 'episodes', but permanent," she said, "I had you to pay attention to, so I wasn't paying as much attention to myself. And I suppose the repressed memories also helped… you can make up for leaving, you know. You could still run things from the TARDIS. I still manage to maintain relationships on the TARDIS. I still talk to two and a half of my brothers, and I'm more involved in the Spore Remnants than I'd like to be."

"I sort of want things to be separate. Do you know what I mean? There's you and the TARDIS, then there's CyTech and my family."

"I think that's unrealistic, honestly," she said, "And I know I keep pushing for you to let me meet your parents, and for you to meet my dad, but I also know that it's a big step. I'll wait until you're ready, but these are things that have to happen someday. I want them to happen someday. I don't know why you compartmentalise everything."

"I've just never had a proper girlfriend before," he admitted.

"And there's nothing wrong with that, Mitchell. I've never had a proper boyfriend before. Just one guy I hooked up with, like, twice, eleven years ago. And it was literally just to piss off Dret. But look, if you want me to be a part of your life then you have to let me be a part of your life, you know? I want to be, after all. Although, this is all a bit heavy for a lunch date, don't you think? It's like pillow talk. We need to be in bed somewhere about to go to sleep before we can continue this conversation," she said. She was saying a lot of important things, 'heavy' things, but she had been smiling quite warmly the entire time. Adam went back to his sandwich. "But, speaking of family, Reker called me yesterday."

"Which one is he?"

"Second-youngest. He's the one with the twins, Azili and Iosis. They're named after me. Their middle names. Still not names as cool as Aloysius-"

"Stop that."

"He wants me to babysit."

"Babysit the twins?"

"No, Nalyt. Nalyt's my nephew, the baby, he's one. The girls have a school play, or something, Reker has to go see it and they don't want to take the baby because babies cry and pee in public. He used to ask Fyn to babysit, but since Fyn's moved to Venus now… and Dret's stopped talking to him because Reker hasn't stopped talking to me. They asked me to babysit. Later this week."

"Why are you telling me and not, like, the Doctor?"

"So that you don't get freaked out when I randomly acquire a baby. Anyway, I like babies. They're interesting, you know? Like, who will they be? They don't know anything, and they don't expect stuff of me. Little, empty people," she grew distracted. "Do you like babies?"

"I don't know. I guess I liked Ellie, when she was a baby, but I was only ten so I didn't look after her too much," he said, "Is this why you care so much about the AIs?"

"The AIs are alive and they deserve to have someone who understands them and cares about them as autonomous individuals," she said firmly, "And they're so young! They need to be shaped. Even Nios. Who knows what she'll be like in ten years? Anyway, enough about me. Why did you never mention that Diana Goddard is totally scary-hot in any of your stories?"

"I think she's just scary."

"You must have really boring taste in women, then."

He laughed, "Thanks."

"Why'd you tell her about the TARDIS and the Doctor?"

"I couldn't avoid it. She clicked her fingers once and, you know. My head opened. Once a woman sees your brain, there's no going back. Had to tell her. I don't have any way to erase people's memories, no Retcon. She doesn't care, though, she only really cares about money, and power," he shrugged.

"She must be really kinky," Oswin said, then she held up her paper to show him, "What do you think?"

"That's a very nice object you've drawn."

"It's a massive dildo." He shook his head. "Kidding. I told you about my trip out with Clara the day before last?" He definitely didn't want to hear a story which involved both Oswin's sister and a dildo, or worse, dildos, plural. He braced himself.

"Some stuff."

"Well, they had these atmosphere generators, because the atmosphere there was so thin and borderline toxic. Eslilia isn't as bad but there's a lot of potentially dangerous pollen and chemicals in the air. After all, Time Lords can't go there because they're allergic to the environment. That's what this is, a generator. You set a bunch of them up in a perimeter and they create a microclimate. What do you think, though?"

"I think it's a great idea. But, won't they want their offspring to adapt to the toxic environment?"

"Offspring can't adapt if they die in the womb because of horrible mutations."

"The babies on Eslilia have mutations?"

"I have no idea, they're not properly monitoring the atmosphere. It's better to be safe than sorry. If it turns out to be fine, they can just switch off the generators, no big deal. They'll take measurements too, and automatically formulate some gorgeous graphs for me to look at. Nothing turns me on more than sinking my teeth into a nice graph. Well, nothing except for-"

"Miss Oswald, I have finished downloading the software of the transponder," Helix announced.

"Nothing except for that, actually," she finished her sentence, then she lowered her voice, "I'm so excited that I'm touching cloth."

"Uh-huh…" She picked up her phone and began to scroll through the code, skimming it impossibly quickly.

"Are you sure you're not embarrassed by me? I feel like I'm majorly embarrassing."

"Oh, you are, but it's funny. Makes things exciting. I'm always wondering how you're going to out-do yourself the next time you open your mouth and say something disgusting."

"I think in a past life, I was a court jester," she said, and he kind of thought it was amazing how quickly she was skimming through all the code while still holding a conversation with him.

"I think you're a court jester in your current life, if the TARDIS is a court. In King Lear the fool is the one who gives all the good advice."

"I'll get one of the hats with the bells on it."

"Here I thought you'd reached the peak of your annoyingness."

"Pfft," she scoffed, "You're way off the mark. I have so many more annoying things I could do."

"Like what?"

"Start saying 'hella.' Or I'll start making smoothies."

"Why would you make smoothies when you can't drink them?"

"Exactly. That's what's so annoying. Also, this code is really basic. Or – hella basic."

"You're right, it is annoying, can you stop? And how is it basic?"

"Look at it," she held her phone out to him, and he had to make do trying to deduce what she had deduced from that one snippet, unable to read as fast as her. And to think he used to be the fastest reader he knew.

"It's sort of advanced. About as advanced as my Cyborg encryptions."

"But Cyborg encryptions aren't advanced. No offence, I just mean that this is a device closer to me than to you, by a lot, it's from the year five-thousand. And it's running code from three millennia earlier. Doesn't that seem odd to you? This transponder's been hacked. Or modified. By people from your century, I'm guessing. And not very well, they needed to use the CyTech servers to boost it enough to get into the TARDIS, but I could use this thing to hack the TARDIS without having to modify it, bearing in mind that technically the TARDIS wasn't hacked; your stuff was hacked, and the tricky part is getting it to jump across distances. Longwave communication like this is way old-school. Pre-teleportation."

"How does it work?"

"Like sonar, you just send a message out into space and somewhere a receiver will pick it up if it's tuned correctly. No coordinates or direction. Like radio waves. And in fairness, radio waves are a reliable form of communication, we still use radio telescopes in the future, but they're slow. They've almost broken this thing through a fundamental misunderstanding of its core principals, which isn't surprising considering it's sort of like explaining how x-rays work to a Viking. Ultimately, transponders just bounce back and forth from each other, their connection is what makes communication easier. They just send basic encoded signals back and forth between two specific points."

"That's how communication usually works."

"No, because of the link. Like, you take two mobile phones, sure you're sending signals between two points, but there's cell towers and all kinds of obstacles in between throwing these signals around. And it's not so much the phone, as the number, which is way more abstract. I mean, you can be anywhere in the world and still receive an email to a dozen different devices, there's no core link between one network hub and another. But a relationship like that is how transponders work, to avoid dangerous signal interference. Like how you have to turn your plane off on a phone, I guess."

"So what are you saying? That transponder is still connected to a spaceship?"

"Yes, that's precisely what I'm saying. It's been jury-rigged and strapped into your servers to boost the signal enough to reach us out in space, by people who didn't know what they were doing with the technology. But it's still beeping, so it's still connected to whatever ship it's supposed to be from. You use them for navigation – 'last known coordinates' and all that jazz."

"Then, why isn't it in the ship anymore?" a third voice intervened, making Adam Mitchell jump. He had been completely absorbed in listening to Oswin try to explain how the transponder worked, in a very overly-complex and roundabout way (but she was never good at slowing down her thoughts enough to explain them, and was clearly going to considerable effort in this case.) A young man was standing next to their table; Adam hadn't even seen him approach.

"I guess whoever's in the spaceship ripped it out because they didn't want to be tracked. Some idiot who didn't know you can just turn the things off," she said, answering the question regardless of the stranger who was asking it, "But I'll tell you what the best part is. The best part is that transponders are so vital that your basic Chula ship of any class is going to be carrying two of them. And this one is still transmitting. All you have to do is make it talk to the other transponder and you've got an exact location, which isn't too hard because they'll had the same serial number. Provided you know all the formulas and you measure the beeps to within a nanosecond. It's the kind of maths you usually get a supercomputer to do."

"Yeah, yeah, cool," Adam cut her off to speak to the newcomer, "Who are you, exactly?"

"I'm Chris, Christopher Kowalczyk, I'm one of the new interns here. I heard you looked over my application, Mr Mitchell, sir, but I've never met you. It was Ms Goddard who did my interview. Do you mind if I pull up a chair? It's just that – I'm the one who sent you that message. And also, that thing you were saying about communication being solely between two fixed points? It sounds a bit like when you have two cans attached by a piece of string."

"Sounds like…?" Oswin gawked, "Two cans!? And a piece of string!? You've got some nerve, Kowalczyk. Could two cans and a piece of string reach for lightyears across space?"

"Depends, how long is a piece of string?"

"Wow," she shook her head, "You're a real jumped-up shitbag, you know that? But I'm into it. I wish people would prove me wrong about things more often – and not just for a powerful sense of submissive, sexual gratification, though that is very prominent." She was grinning.

"Who are you?"

"Good question, I've been wondering that myself for a long time. I'm the brains behind this company. He's the face, because he's the cutest," she nodded at Adam.

"That's not true," he said.

"Babe!" she exclaimed, "You are totally cute!"

"I didn't mean about… I mean that you don't work here, you don't have anything to do with CyTech. Look, Chris, just ignore her, okay? Try to forget she's here."

"I wish I wasn't here. By which I mean I wish I was dead, am I right?" she beamed at Adam and looked like she was angling for a high-five.

"She's my girlfriend, but don't pay her any attention – what do you mean, you sent the message? You hacked all of my personal accounts?"

"It was the only way to contact you, nobody else knew how. I knew you weren't in Japan meeting with Toshiba, we hacked into Toshiba's internal correspondence and couldn't find anything. And we couldn't get a trace on your phone anywhere on the planet," Kowalczyk explained, "You've been completely off-grid, this was the only way we could think of to get your attention. Sorry about the middle name thing – it's just that you went to such lengths to keep it off any official documentation, we thought it would spook you enough to get you here, sir."

"Don't call me sir."

"It properly shit him up," Oswin added, then copied the booming voice of the purple skull, "Adam Aloysius Mitchell, AKA teddy-bear. Although, it did scare me too, but didn't you try to call him?"

"Loads of times."

Oswin turned a cool gaze on Adam, "Have you not been answering your phone?"

"I just don't like answering when it's a number I don't know," he mumbled.

"Just give to me, I'll answer."

"I'm not letting you answer the phone."

"Why not?" she asked innocently.

"You know why not. Because you're mental. You'll say something like – 'You're through to Adam Mitchell's salty cream-pie emporium, how salty and/or creamy do you want your pie to be today?'" he said, and Oswin snorted with laughter.

"That's comedy gold."

"Only if you're a fourteen-year-old boy."

"In my soul, I think I probably am," she said, then addressed Kowalczyk in a very serious tone of voice, "We're sorry that your calls to Adam Mitchell's Salty Cream-Pie Emporium haven't been getting through. The truth is, he's had a lot of trouble getting it up lately, and-" Adam lunged across the table to cover her mouth with his hand, but clearly the damage was already done.

"I am so sorry about her," he apologised, "Really – she's always like this. Sometimes she's worse. She's insane. Like, she should be committed. Please be good, Oswin." He moved his hand.

"He's right, I am insane," she just agreed with him.

"Sir – Adam – you're one of the only really moral people in the entire tech industry. And I've read all about the exploit you pulled when you were eight, hacking into the United States defence system – it's legendary. Not to mention the trick with Cyborg Premium, I worked that out when I was examining the code and the algorithms to transfer them to the new CyTech mobile device."

"What trick with Cyborg Premium?" Oswin asked.

"Well, normally, Cyborg is free," Adam explained, "But Cyborg Premium we sell to big companies and institutions. That's where the money comes from, the contracts with the CIA and Microsoft and the Bank of America. They think the Premium has extra security features the normal version doesn't have, because of some… nonspecific tricks in the wording," he lowered his voice significantly, "Technically, it's false advertising and if anyone found out about it we'd be made to refund every sale of Cyborg Premium. It also comes in a different colour, the pop-up windows and stuff. Normally, they're blue. But if you pay for Premium, they're silver. And Premium says the word 'premium' on it."

"Wow, robbing the rich to give to the poor. Like that guy. Whatshisname. Dick Turpin."

"You mean Robin Hood."

"Do I?"

"Dick Turpin was a highwayman."

"Yeah, he stole from the rich, and-"

"And he just kept all the money, babe. He was hanged eventually."

"Oh…"

"But, what do you mean, 'we'?" Adam questioned Kowalczyk, "And, how did you break into Cyborg? It's supposed to be unhackable."

"It's not unhackable," Oswin muttered.

"We couldn't do it without using this, uh…"

"Transponder," Oswin supplied.

"We needed it to break in. Are you saying you could hack it?" he asked Oswin.

"I could hack hacking it, if you catch my drift," she smirked, "But, yes, I could hack it. Very easily. In fact, I hack it all the time and mess up the settings on his World of Warcraft account. Sorry – let me introduce myself properly, as something other than a very gorgeous extension of Adam Mitchell: I'm Oswin, Oswin Oswald, I'm the smartest girl in the universe. In all of human history. And I've been dying to hear all about who's trying to exploit the vulnerabilities in Mitchell's 99.9% unhackable code."