Chapter 21
“We found something in Stewart’s PC”, Pendleton said. “It took a long time
to find because in fact it wasn’t encrypted; the cryptographic guys had been
all over every file, searching for patterns. They finally got around to looking
at the unused, extra space in each file; Stewart had stored an equation in one
of those files about how a positive feedback situation could run out of
control.”
Gillian blinked. “So Stewart was thinking about feedback. Our UFC forensics
people found a picture on Stewart’s laptop in Nepal of video feedback. Let me
quickly email our forensics guy and tell him to search for more possible hidden
data in those pictures or elsewhere on the laptop or in Stewart’s digital
camera. Rosenberg told me he had already done a Steganography scan, but he
probably didn’t think to look for additional data in the unused parts of the
files.”
Gillian went over to the desk and fired off an email to Phil Rosenberg, the
forensics expert:
From: Gillian@pr.net
To: pr@ufc.net
Subject: Re: Stewart’s Camera
Phil,
PMTC Security has found feedback equations in the unused file space on
Stewart’s PC. Please check for a similar trick in the files on Stewart’s camera
or laptop.
-- Gillian
Pendleton talked to Gillian while she typed. “I’ve asked one of Smythe’s
apprentices to set up a little experiment for us in one of the product rooms.
We’ve done a test that shows what happens when two feedback systems start to
interact. We can reproduce the buzzing sound now. It’s not much, but it’s a
start.”
Gillian finished typing and then replied, “That’s terrific actually. A
reproducible test case for the buzzing sound was what Smythe was working
on. I hope you guys have been careful –
we don’t want another fatality from all this.”
Pendleton replied, “We’ve been careful. But it isn’t that big a deal – it
just makes a small buzzing sound. Still, as you’ve said before, you never know
where something like this might lead.”
Pendleton and Gillian left her room and headed to the central hub. They
turned down the purple hall to the product demonstration rooms.
Pendleton stopped off in Room A and picked up the fancy extruding mirror.
First he slipped his hand between the wall and the mirror and turned it off –
there was no point in having it extrude all over the place while they walked.
Then he lifted it off the wall and they proceeded together down to Room E,
which contained the more industrial nano-tech equipment.
They entered the room. There was no one else there.
“Langsford was supposed to meet us here. Well, like I said, it’s not really
that big of a deal. I can demo it pretty easily.”
Gillian frowned. She wasn’t familiar enough with nano-tech to feel very
comfortable with this kind of fooling around. Still, Pendleton had been around
nano-tech for years and he seemed comfortable enough. She watched him approach
the duplicating machine.
Pendleton turned on the scanning machine and the replicating machine and
then pushed them a little closer together. “This is perfectly safe, but, as
always, keep a few steps back just in case,” he said. Then he turned on the two
machines.
He stepped back a bit, and then turned on the mirror. He waved his hand in
front of the mirror and verified it was mimicking his movements. Then he slowly
approached the duplicating machine.
“Check this out. The interactions here are more complicated because there
are two interacting systems. I’m going to bring the mirror close to the
scanning machine – but notice the mirror itself will be trying to make a shape
like the scanning machine. We don’t normally put a nano-tech machine into one
of these copiers. Normally it would just be a static shape. Putting the mirror
in is going to drive the circuitry a bit bonkers and you’ll hear the buzzing
sound as the two machines interact. The construction machine, which takes the
data from the scanning machine, is also going to get confused, because the
mirror will be moving around as the scanning machine scans it and the two
interact.”
Pendleton slowly approached the scanning machine. He pointed the mirror at
the scanning machine and the mirror extruded to make a shape somewhat like the
shape of the scanner. Then he slid it into the scanner, mirror side up, and the
mirror extruded upward. A swarm of nano-machines came out of the scanner and
started to move across the mirror. This in turn caused the mirror to start to
undulate as it responded to the motion of the other nano-machines. A slight
buzzing sound could be heard.
Pendleton continued, “The replicating machine gets really confused now.
Normally we store the scan and then turn on the replicator, but to save some
time, I’ll just let the two things run in parallel. This should be pretty funny
looking.”
So far Gillian didn’t see anything funny about it at all, but engineers had
strange ideas about what constituted “funny.”
Pendleton pressed a red button on the replicator. A swarm of nano-machines
came in from the sides and tried to make a shape like the mirror – but the
mirror was undulating – vibrating really – and the nano-machines didn’t really
have any solid data to lock onto and replicate. So the nano-machines in the
replicator started vibrating too. And the buzzing sound increased.
“Check this out. The machines really hate this.” Pendleton stuck his hand
in the scanning machine between the mirror and some of the electronics. The
mirror tried to make a shape like his hand but with all of the other
nano-machines swarming over it the result was fairly distorted.
“Anyway, that’s the demonstration. As you can see, we now have a
reproducible test case for the buzzing sound, so some of our better engineers
can start analyzing this and fooling with some formulas and system analysis on
how the machines interact. This doesn’t really explain what happened to Smythe,
though, because he didn’t have two kinds of machines interacting. He just had
one kind of machine. I think someone reprogrammed them somehow, even though, as
I said, the whole thing is impossible, except it happened. Because as you can
see this is fairly benign.”
Pendleton reached into the scanner to take out the mirror. As he picked up
the mirror, the swarm of nano-machines started to move from the mirror and to
cover his arm.
“Hey, I’m being scanned,” he said.
With his free hand he reached up to turn off the scanner. He flipped the
switch and most of the nano-machines stopped moving. But the ones on his hand
kept crawling around.
“Hmm,” he said.
He used his free hand again to turn off the replicating machine. The
particles continued to swarm on his arm, even though the machine had been
turned off.
“Weird”, he said.
Suddenly Pendleton frowned. “Ouch”, he said. He dropped the mirror, which
clattered to the floor.
Pendleton screamed. “Fuck this!” He was staring at his arm. There was an
increase in the buzzing sound.
Gillian had no idea what to do. The machines were doing something to
Pendleton’s arm and whatever it was it wasn’t good. Gillian looked around the
lab. She saw an emergency button and ran over and hit it. An alarm sounded and
a light in the hallway started flashing.
“Pendleton… what should I do?”
But Pendleton wasn’t listening. He had dropped to the floor and his face
was contorted in agony. Gillian bit her lip to make sure she wasn’t dreaming
again. She wasn’t.
As she watched, the nano-machines started to leave Pendleton’s arm. Gillian
looked in horror to see that the entire top level of skin on Pendleton’s arm
had been stripped away. The nano-machines swarmed onto the floor and then
seemed to melt into the ground. There was only one thing left behind: a copy of
Pendleton’s skin, reconstructed as if a taxidermist had somehow surgically
removed it.
Gillian doubled over and threw up.
Two engineers ran into the room and saw Pendleton. One spoke into a phone
and ordered emergency medical care.
Pendleton continued to scream.
All three of them stared. They had no idea what to do.
It seemed like hours but just a few minutes later a paramedic entered the
room and shot some morphine into Pendleton.
“What the fuck…” the paramedic said as he looked around. But then he
composed himself, and said, “I’ll treat this like a burn.” He placed a
cast-like wrapping on Pendleton’s arm to immobilize it. He placed a mitten-like
wrapping on Pendleton’s hand. The morphine affected Pendleton quickly and he
stopped screaming.
Pendleton looked at Gillian. “This is not my idea of positive feedback,” he
whispered, and then passed out.
(C) Copyright 2013 Stephen Clarke-Willson
