“Hey. This Martin’s a ‘runner’. Man, I guess you couldn’t ask for a better mule. But then, I don’t understand how this works. You just didn’t pull this guy out of a hat. You knew in advance.”
“Yes. Most of the runners gravitate into occupations that are weak on background checks. They’re fugitives, or farm workers, construction, or service workers; Temporary employees. Guys like that.”
“But, doesn’t this job require a security check of some sort?”
“It does. But in this case he may have had all the security work completed earlier. Then, as long as he stays current, no one questions his current implant status. Besides his job is one level above a lab rat, pretty expendable. The computer came up with a list of possibles a mile long. But it wasn’t difficult zeroing in on this guy, since he’s already in the program.”
“Yah but this guy was supposed to be dead; two and a half years dead.”
“Go figure? The computer tracks implants but it’s not much good at tracking ghosts; as long as he can stay fed, and out of the mainstream, he can live another day. Surveillance is catching up. It’s getting a lot more difficult to stay in the shadows. Facial-scan works on a database of knowns. The next generation of facial recognition will tag the unknowns as well. But still it’s limited to points of entry. Not too hard to dodge for someone with the right resources and savvy.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“The Department wants this Martin guy kept alive. They’ve got a job for him. This mule is going to deliver a package for the Department. Apparently the director has managed to get inside the SAAAD program and is going to take advantage of his influence.”
“Anything you can talk about?”
“No. In fact I’m only guessing myself. They are into particle physics. Your job will be to keep this guy alive. At this point he is too valuable to the Department to let UNIS have their way with him.”
“So, who is this guy who’s so valuable?”
“His name is Martin C Trask. Currently, he goes by Trask. Previously he went by Marty, as a nickname. There are some historical discrepancies but that’s almost typical in these searches.”
“Was he a contractor?”
“Yeah, that all checked out.”
“I just don’t understand how he could have dodged the implant and stayed below the radar for all this time. He must be getting hungry. This guy sounds like he would fit the bill. The covert boys have been hoping for this kind of guy. He’s perfect as a mule.”
“Maybe he’s the ticket. You figure he has been dodging us for a long time? He must be a smart cookie.
“I can’t imagine he even knows who we are.”
“Let’s hope not. You’re starting with an empty folder. It’ll be your next assignment. I want you to stay on this guy like a stink. Don’t let him out of your sight, and don’t let anything happen to him. The UNIS has a termination order active on him and there is no reason for them not to execute that order.”
“But you want me to keep him alive?”
“We want him alive for the present. We have a job for this guy but he can’t know anything about it, at least not yet. And the UNIS has to be kept in the dark along with him. They get a little uppity when the get preempted”
“Where will I pick him up?”
“If you can’t find him right off, then you’ll have to wait until he goes through the Sky Terminal in New York. He’s due to board a flight on or near the fifth of February, heading for London. You can intercept him in London; that’s were we’ll be sure to see him. He’ll have to come through the Viro-scan in the London terminal.”
“Viro-scan? Is that thing up and running?”
“Yeah, there is a Beta unit in the London terminal. Here is a picture.”
“Really; it looks like a fashion statement gone bad.”
“It must be quit the thing. They tried to hide it in plain sight. I’m sure it is anti-feng shui. I think it looks like a giant hologram, or Christmas wrap.”
“How does it work?”
“Basically, it’s a video camera. They spray it on the wall, just like paint. It’s a cocktail of bad stuff. They have to close the area for a week or so while it sets up or should I say, grows.”
“Grows; sounds spooky?”
“They cycle through a number of phases of chemistry and it requires several coats of paint and vapor depositions. There are phases that require a UV seed mesh to be projected on the wall. That mesh initiates the growth of crystal whiskers that eventually cover the entire wall like a mold. The last few layers consist of nano-tubes that are the image gathering element of the camera. The mixture is a soup of randomly tuned nano-tubes. Each tube is highly directional and resonates with a narrow wavelength of radiation. The wall acts like a giant retina. An AI module requires a day or so to generate the initial images, a little crude at first. The image improves over a period of about a month to the point where it ultimately generates a 3D High Def image.
The tubes are randomly oriented. Each tube has a very unique focus along a line of view through the image set. When white radiation is painted on the viewing site, the tubes resonate, a signal is generated and sent to the main computer module via the crystalline mats and fed into a processor to be sorted out. It takes time for the AI module to sort out the confusion of signals but eventually it learns how to generate a very HD holographic like picture. The difference is that this hologram can be made to interact with its view.”
“How is that?”
“To begin with, it will be used for facial recognition but with the speed of the data processing it will ultimately become a facial un-recognition device.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When you enter a room full of people, for the first time, you may look for someone you know. When you become familiar with the group, you will eventually enter looking for someone you don’t know.”
“Gotcha.”
“It’s a statistical thing. At this point there are only a few of these walls in existence, but as the number grows the database will grow exponentially.”
“That’s a whole lot of data.”
“Yeah it is but again, it’s like your brain. Your sense of a view in a familiar setting is constructed out of what they call brain fodder. Only about one half of one percent of what is in your field of vision is actually processed by your brain in specific detail; the rest is just assumed. It’s like your blind spot.”
“What blind spot?”
“Bingo! That’s my point. You have a blind spot that lays several degrees off the center of your visual axis. The fact is that even though it is there, your brain fills it in with assumptions based on past experience. The difference between the AI image and your brain’s image is that your brain fills in the image from memory. With the AI processed image it excludes the entire repetitive portion and only saves and processes the variable data. If a person is motionless in the view long enough the AI processor losses track of him. It would take several hours before that would happen. As soon as movement occurs that person is back under surveillance.
The wall operates off of ‘T’ waves; their frequency is between UV and microwave. The ‘T’ waves can be tuned to penetrate just about anything and can be selectively used to see whatever it is that needs to be seen. The monitor can display just about anything you want but generally it displays four levels of imagery. The static background like furniture and walls show in nearly solid gray, vital tissue like humans and green plants show up in yellow, non-vital tissue like wood and stuffed animals show up in gray-blue and last are the moving non-vital elements like plastics and metals, they show up in orange. This differentiation minimizes the storage requirement and speeds up the processing.”
“Microwave; isn’t that dangerous? Sounds like my oven at home?”
“Some of that is classified. The thing that I can tell you is that they can bathe any spot within fifty feet with a signal that
resonates with RNA molecules so that they can get a return that allows for an RNA signature to be formed and identified. That’s the plan. If I tell you more I’ll have to shoot you.”
“Why do they analyze the RNA rather then the DNA?”
“If you want to know the name of an unfamiliar piece of orchestral music, you don’t find it by listening to the music or by listening to any particular instrument. You learn the name by checking the only member of the team that isn’t making any music; the conductor. Not only does he have the overall score, he has control over the timing and quality of the music. They found the same is true for DNA identifications. Though RNA was thought originally to be an inactive piece of baggage in the genetic structure, they now know that it is a key to the character, implementation and interpretation of the DNA. It has the ability to generate a unique signature signal when properly excited. Just how that is done is the cloak and dagger part, but I don’t think I have to shoot you . . . this time.”
“So, London is the place, huh?”
“Yeah, London. We can easily pick him out of the crowd. He’ll be the one without an embedded chip, and with the RNA signature. By then we’ll also know the identity of the hit-man sent out by the UNIS. That will also be an ideal place to deal with him.”
“Deal?”
“I guess that’s a bit harsh; we just need to keep him corralled and occupied so that he doesn’t screw things up.”
“Check with the secretary on the way out. She has all the paperwork lined up for you. Call me if you have any questions.”
“I’m out ‘a here.”
* * * * *
Chapter 9 – The Bot
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein