Klaus Schwamborn: Dreamland

Nathan instantly had James’s attention.

“How long did the decipher take?” James asked.

“That’s the problem,” Nathan said with concern. “It’s still running.”

“After how long?”

“Almost an hour,” Nathan responded.

That’s unheard of , James thought. “It’s not in some sort of loop?” he asked.

Program loops resulted when the same set of instructions repeated from beginning to end, over and over. Without change in the status quo, either with the data or program logic, the process continued indefinitely until someone, or something, manually intervened. Programs known as watchdogs were the guardians against such events. Personal computer users familiar with the ‘Program not responding’ pop up message were, in fact, being notified by the operating system that their program was likely in an infinite loop.

“No, definitely not a loop,” Nathan said. “I got the alert from the decoding process itself, not one of my watchdogs.”

“Suggestions?” James asked.

“I’m going to let it run its course and see what happens,” Nathan said. “But I think the NSA should be informed as soon as possible that we’re working with an unknown encryption.”

The contractual agreement with the NSA wasn’t based on a fixed cost, but rather on how much effort SkyTech’s IBM put in to storing and decrypting data; computing resources for which the government regularly received monthly invoices amounting to a few million dollars. The IBM could comfortably decode scrambled messages in a few milliseconds, even those of seemingly incomprehensible foreign languages and dialects. Decryptions that took longer than a few seconds were highlighted on James’s weekly resource usage report. Anything longer than a minute was unheard of◦– until now.

In the last hour, most of the IBM’s processing power was consumed deciphering a single data stream of a few megabytes in size. That was not considered large when compared with today’s file sizes typically in the gigabyte range, but so far, the computer had not succeeded in its task. Only an unknown or extremely complex encryption algorithm would craft such demand on computing resources.

What the government would usually pay SkyTech on a monthly basis had already been exceeded in an hour.

James opened the same monitor program that Sven had been looking at. He turned his screen so that Nathan could also see. Both sets of eyes were instantly drawn to the top of the process list.

“And this is just in what, an hour or so?” James said, not expecting an answer.

Super-computers capable of processing trillions of instructions every second would register astronomically high numbers after an hour. James could only guess at how high this would be if decoding continued for much longer. It would have to be represented in exponential notation.

I’ll have Monica set up an appointment with the NSA as soon as possible,” James said. “They’re not going to be very happy with this month’s invoice.”

There was no doubt that the government would pay whatever SkyTech invoiced, regardless of whether or not their snooped data was deciphered. They did, after all, have unlimited financial reserves for national security, but James figured that a personal call was a matter of professional courtesy.

An hour later, James called Nathan back into his office. “I have a meeting with national security this afternoon,” he said. “When Monica phoned to set up the appointment, they wanted to know what it was about. She didn’t know, so transferred the call to me. I briefly explained the situation with the indecipherable data but was more interested to know if they wanted us to continue running with it. Costs were mounting up rapidly.”

“That must have caught their attention,” Nathan said.

“They immediately put me through to Yvonne Baird, the NSA’s new deputy director,” James said. “I gave her the unique file identifier which she then matched up with the NSA’s own database records. Miss Baird apparently knew all about it.”

“How would one communication, insignificant in its size, possibly stand out among the billions their systems intercept every day?” Nathan asked.

“My thoughts exactly,” James said. “But what the deputy director told me was very interesting. Initially, she was a little cagey and didn’t want to discuss it in too much detail over an open phone line.”

“They do lean towards paranoia,” Nathan uttered.

“She found it somewhat distressing that we hadn’t managed to unscramble the data yet,” James continued. “But agreed that we let the process continue running. I thought it fair to tell her the astronomical costs, even if the decipher failed. That was after all the purpose of my call and the reason to have this discussion.”

“What was her response?”

“Cost was the least of her concern,” James said.

Nathan wasn’t surprised.

“She obviously thought it important enough to speak with me in private, and as soon as possible,” James said. “She’s flying in from Maryland as we speak. We’ll meet at the NSA’s local Manhattan office.”

“I didn’t know they had an office here,” Nathan said.

“It’s the NSA,” James said mockingly. “They have an office wherever they want.”

“So, what did she say that was so interesting?”

“What caught their attention was the fact that it was broadcast from somewhere in the Mojave Wastelands just west of Nevada,” James said.

“Somewhere…” Nathan pondered. “We saw that in the extra info the NSA provided with the transmission but assumed that they wanted to keep the exact location to themselves. Surely with their sophisticated satellite technology, they can pinpoint it to within a few yards?”

“No,” James said, shaking his head. “She told me something that I found intriguing.”

“That the communication was transmitted on a wavelength that hasn’t been used commercially in years,” Nathan said, finishing James’s sentence. “So, what’s so special about long-wave?”

James explained.

Back at Info Tech, Nathan grabbed what was left of the cold coffee off his desk and approached Sven who was still mulling over the elusive data.

“No change in the decoding status,” Sven said, anticipating what Nathan was about to ask. “It’s still taking up most of the IBM’s resources.”

“Don’t tell me that’s still your cup from this morning?” Emily asked, looking up from her computer screen. She was busy concealing copyrights in the graphic images of SkyTech’s latest commercial application.

Much of the technology and communications software sold by SkyTech came with logos and graphics unique to the companies to which it was being sold. Anyone falsely claiming the artwork was their design came to a rude awakening in a court of law when SkyTech revealed their encrypted digital signature.

As with everything else, too many people out there were trying to cash in on the labours of others, and the internet made it easy. Amateur musicians had this problem regularly when they posted a song they were performing on social media. Multitudes of unknown music labels were fast in their responses about revenue sharing, claiming copyright to that particular tune. Pay up or remove it. Legally, it was an extremely grey area.

Nathan glanced briefly at the cup he was holding, then at Emily. “My coffee from this morning? Probably,” he said, without further concern.

Minor irritations and inconveniences never seemed to bother Nathan, Emily thought. It was one of the many personality quirks that she loved about him. “What did James have to say?” she asked.

“Interesting thing is that the NSA already knew all about this particular transmission,” Nathan responded. “The deputy director is already on her way here to see JW.”