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Network Integrity Solutions
Operations Central
In many ways, Network Integrity Solutions was an old-fashioned company. Physical offices, off line file storage, biometric authorizations, arcane and convoluted contingency procedures.
But the most ancient habit of the old school hackers who still ran NIS was their insistence on conducting serious business matters in person, "in the flesh," with the slightly obscene connotations of same.
NIS Operations Central was accordingly a terraced pyramid set in a bowl, much like an primitive "IMAX" projection theater. Each level contained an array of workstations. Most were empty on a normal day, with only a handful of staff monitoring NIS operations and contracts throughout the world.
Today was not a normal day. Not only was every workstation staffed - absolutely - but a 'second' or backup was seated immediately behind, ready to step forward and take over instantly.
The workstations were not labeled in meatspace. However, anyone working in VR (and that was almost everyone in the room) could see the labels over each.
The lowest level was spatial. Seven continents, three major orbits, five L points and Luna. A liasion desk with MarsCorp. Venus, Mercury, Belt and Outer System.
The middle level was industrial. Transportation, finance, agriculture, security, biodiversity, gengineering, manufacturing.
The next to highest level was informational. Protocol had three desks. Science had two. But most of the desks were devoted to real time information flows in a diverse world. The busiest was Threat Trackers, which crowded the desks on each side.
The top of the pyramid was a mere four desks, one facing in each cardinal direction. Operations (looking out) to the North, Internal Affairs (looking in), to the South, Corporate (resource management) to the West, and Ethics (decision making) firmly rooted in the East.
Standing in the center was the Duty Director for NIS. It was the pinnacle of a career to be one of the dozen or so qualified Directors. It meant substantial time in the Pyramid and qualification to work each of the major desks.
It also meant virtuoso mastery of VR, despite the very real dangers of VR addiction, brain lock and stress psychosis.
Jerai was by far the youngest man to ever hold a Duty Director position, at the age of thirty-six. He had been drafted - the fastest reaction times NIS had ever logged - and part of his immunity to VR addiction was rooted in primitive psychology. He hated his job. He could do it, and he would. But he longed to clock out, step downstairs and grab a beer and watch sports.
Not right now. Especially not today, with the Mastermind on the loose and the Integrity of not just NIS but what people light heartedly called Civilization on the line.
Jerai could see the status of the major boards just by looking at them. Internal Integrity was at an all time low of 99.9945% Normal was 99.999999% Operations was at Condition Yellow, with over three hundred active incidents crowding its capabilities. Corporate was strangely quiet - a policy decision had been made. Resource allocations would be tracked, favors noted and debts paid - but there was no "budget" for taking out the Mastermind. Whatever it took was whatever it took. Whatever it cost, they would pay.
Ethics was busy. Another policy decision had been made. NIS disaster protocols included what previous generations had called the rule of the dictator, triage, emergency conditions and "save what you can." These Draconian protocols were being held in reserve. NIS would fight this one clean, for now.
Unless large chunks of people started dying - unless the Mastermind's biobombs and induced brain weapons and (continued!) misuse of the orbital laser systems reached a certain, fairly low, death toll.
Or it appeared that they were about to lose the planet. NIS was an Earth organization but smaller versions of the Pyramid existed on Luna, Mercury and even Mars. They would be hindered by lag time, but they would survive the destruction of Terra long enough to... retaliate.
Had there still been governments, the secrets that NIS guarded would have terrified them into swift action or fearful compliance. That was the true purpose of Ethics - to leash the greater weapons in the NIS arsenal, while recognizing that it might actually become necessary to nuke the village to save it.
Even though Jerai did not like his job, he would do it. His social conscience was too highly developed to do anything else. He had done his time in the Ethics hot seat.
An alert at the Spatial level blossomed upward through Security and into Threat Trackers. Key players were in motion. Captain Amy Tsai (Mass Destruction Desk, California Highway Patrol) was moving Alan Anderson off the UC Stanford campus and into the Linear Accelerator research complex.
That was interesting. Threat Trackers had a huge pile of threads running just on Anderson. One was titled: "Alan: Threat or Menace?" NIS had its own conclusion. He was firmly tagged as a White Hat.
UC Stanford contracted with NIS mostly for minor matters, on competitive bid. They were also old fashioned, and preferred to keep their crown jewels in house.
One of the first NIS contracts had been with the defunct US Department of Energy. DoE had gone the way of all governments, but the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center had not. Big Science was still interesting and new discoveries still happened. And NIS had the contract for SLAC.
Jerai would eat his hat - if he had a hat - if the Mastermind had managed to corrupt anything at SLAC. There was enough institutional paranoia and outside auditing of a priceless research asset to prevent that at least.
But SLAC was not really designed to be protected against external threats, not like Livermore or Sandia or Vandenburg. Sure, it was underground, but not by much. The physical security was OK. Better than UC Stanford, but only because fewer people had legitimate need for access.
However, the network security was - in the humble opinion of its provider, NIS - really, really good. No one wanted to take the hit for losing a particle accelerator because some juvker in North Fargone, Nowhere wanted to play Doom 17 with its supercomputer.
Jerai could feel the shift in the room as NIS adapted to the new threats - and potentials - of the move.
The dome turned off. The room went dark.
That should not have been possible, was Jerai's first thought. His second - which he could not explain then or later - was to leap from the top of the Pyramid and hop down two levels of desks. Neither his VR nor his augmented night vision worked. He was in perfect darkness.
The screaming began.
The Standard Operating Procedure forbade two people to be in VR. Their normal station was by either entry door, like statue displays of ancient (but modern) arms and armor. But Jerai somehow sensed that they - a leftover remnant of an age of horror now decades past - had been the first to die.
Emergency lights came on. A black clad figure with a long knife had just finished disembowling Corporate, whose intestines now stretched across her desk.
Just the one assassin - but the one had been enough. A trail of bodies, starting with the two door guards (on opposite sides of the room!), through North America, up through Threat Trackers (and leaving a knot of blood and death), then to the four minds that could take Jerai's place.
Ethics brained the ninja with her chair. She kept slamming the chair into the ninja's head over and over again until they stopped moving.
Jerai stood up where he had landed, between Energy and Prenatal Health, and ignoring the long slice where the blade had scored across his ribs, forced his VR to reboot through physical contact with the desks.
It worked.
But it was far too late.
Operations Central
In many ways, Network Integrity Solutions was an old-fashioned company. Physical offices, off line file storage, biometric authorizations, arcane and convoluted contingency procedures.
But the most ancient habit of the old school hackers who still ran NIS was their insistence on conducting serious business matters in person, "in the flesh," with the slightly obscene connotations of same.
NIS Operations Central was accordingly a terraced pyramid set in a bowl, much like an primitive "IMAX" projection theater. Each level contained an array of workstations. Most were empty on a normal day, with only a handful of staff monitoring NIS operations and contracts throughout the world.
Today was not a normal day. Not only was every workstation staffed - absolutely - but a 'second' or backup was seated immediately behind, ready to step forward and take over instantly.
The workstations were not labeled in meatspace. However, anyone working in VR (and that was almost everyone in the room) could see the labels over each.
The lowest level was spatial. Seven continents, three major orbits, five L points and Luna. A liasion desk with MarsCorp. Venus, Mercury, Belt and Outer System.
The middle level was industrial. Transportation, finance, agriculture, security, biodiversity, gengineering, manufacturing.
The next to highest level was informational. Protocol had three desks. Science had two. But most of the desks were devoted to real time information flows in a diverse world. The busiest was Threat Trackers, which crowded the desks on each side.
The top of the pyramid was a mere four desks, one facing in each cardinal direction. Operations (looking out) to the North, Internal Affairs (looking in), to the South, Corporate (resource management) to the West, and Ethics (decision making) firmly rooted in the East.
Standing in the center was the Duty Director for NIS. It was the pinnacle of a career to be one of the dozen or so qualified Directors. It meant substantial time in the Pyramid and qualification to work each of the major desks.
It also meant virtuoso mastery of VR, despite the very real dangers of VR addiction, brain lock and stress psychosis.
Jerai was by far the youngest man to ever hold a Duty Director position, at the age of thirty-six. He had been drafted - the fastest reaction times NIS had ever logged - and part of his immunity to VR addiction was rooted in primitive psychology. He hated his job. He could do it, and he would. But he longed to clock out, step downstairs and grab a beer and watch sports.
Not right now. Especially not today, with the Mastermind on the loose and the Integrity of not just NIS but what people light heartedly called Civilization on the line.
Jerai could see the status of the major boards just by looking at them. Internal Integrity was at an all time low of 99.9945% Normal was 99.999999% Operations was at Condition Yellow, with over three hundred active incidents crowding its capabilities. Corporate was strangely quiet - a policy decision had been made. Resource allocations would be tracked, favors noted and debts paid - but there was no "budget" for taking out the Mastermind. Whatever it took was whatever it took. Whatever it cost, they would pay.
Ethics was busy. Another policy decision had been made. NIS disaster protocols included what previous generations had called the rule of the dictator, triage, emergency conditions and "save what you can." These Draconian protocols were being held in reserve. NIS would fight this one clean, for now.
Unless large chunks of people started dying - unless the Mastermind's biobombs and induced brain weapons and (continued!) misuse of the orbital laser systems reached a certain, fairly low, death toll.
Or it appeared that they were about to lose the planet. NIS was an Earth organization but smaller versions of the Pyramid existed on Luna, Mercury and even Mars. They would be hindered by lag time, but they would survive the destruction of Terra long enough to... retaliate.
Had there still been governments, the secrets that NIS guarded would have terrified them into swift action or fearful compliance. That was the true purpose of Ethics - to leash the greater weapons in the NIS arsenal, while recognizing that it might actually become necessary to nuke the village to save it.
Even though Jerai did not like his job, he would do it. His social conscience was too highly developed to do anything else. He had done his time in the Ethics hot seat.
An alert at the Spatial level blossomed upward through Security and into Threat Trackers. Key players were in motion. Captain Amy Tsai (Mass Destruction Desk, California Highway Patrol) was moving Alan Anderson off the UC Stanford campus and into the Linear Accelerator research complex.
That was interesting. Threat Trackers had a huge pile of threads running just on Anderson. One was titled: "Alan: Threat or Menace?" NIS had its own conclusion. He was firmly tagged as a White Hat.
UC Stanford contracted with NIS mostly for minor matters, on competitive bid. They were also old fashioned, and preferred to keep their crown jewels in house.
One of the first NIS contracts had been with the defunct US Department of Energy. DoE had gone the way of all governments, but the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center had not. Big Science was still interesting and new discoveries still happened. And NIS had the contract for SLAC.
Jerai would eat his hat - if he had a hat - if the Mastermind had managed to corrupt anything at SLAC. There was enough institutional paranoia and outside auditing of a priceless research asset to prevent that at least.
But SLAC was not really designed to be protected against external threats, not like Livermore or Sandia or Vandenburg. Sure, it was underground, but not by much. The physical security was OK. Better than UC Stanford, but only because fewer people had legitimate need for access.
However, the network security was - in the humble opinion of its provider, NIS - really, really good. No one wanted to take the hit for losing a particle accelerator because some juvker in North Fargone, Nowhere wanted to play Doom 17 with its supercomputer.
Jerai could feel the shift in the room as NIS adapted to the new threats - and potentials - of the move.
The dome turned off. The room went dark.
That should not have been possible, was Jerai's first thought. His second - which he could not explain then or later - was to leap from the top of the Pyramid and hop down two levels of desks. Neither his VR nor his augmented night vision worked. He was in perfect darkness.
The screaming began.
The Standard Operating Procedure forbade two people to be in VR. Their normal station was by either entry door, like statue displays of ancient (but modern) arms and armor. But Jerai somehow sensed that they - a leftover remnant of an age of horror now decades past - had been the first to die.
Emergency lights came on. A black clad figure with a long knife had just finished disembowling Corporate, whose intestines now stretched across her desk.
Just the one assassin - but the one had been enough. A trail of bodies, starting with the two door guards (on opposite sides of the room!), through North America, up through Threat Trackers (and leaving a knot of blood and death), then to the four minds that could take Jerai's place.
Ethics brained the ninja with her chair. She kept slamming the chair into the ninja's head over and over again until they stopped moving.
Jerai stood up where he had landed, between Energy and Prenatal Health, and ignoring the long slice where the blade had scored across his ribs, forced his VR to reboot through physical contact with the desks.
It worked.
But it was far too late.
