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The message from 333 took everyone by surprise. Warwick explained that message re-directors had been set up for mission command simulations. Most were strategically placed in various sectors of the Internet. Other listening posts were set-up on commercial data networks and one or two were being tested inside foreign governments. It didn't feel right to Roger, but he didn't push the point. Warwick's explanation was enough about how the message was received for everyone else. Now they wanted to know what the message said.
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| Dunn: | Warwick, let's get the message up on the screen.
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| Warwick: | It's going through decryption now. Should be up in a couple seconds.
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The message read:
![]() 333 >> MCON >> 14:13:30 GMT
DIAGNOSTICS: NON-INTEGRAL
TARGETING: PRIMARY WAITING
BIO-DYNAMICS: RESOURCE IDENTIFIED 333 <> 02:00:00 |
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| Roger: | Hope no one was planning on any good luck today.
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| Warwick: | The message translates something like this: 333 re-direction message to Mission Control sent at 14:13:30 Greenwich Mean Time. His diagnostic program results are inconsistent. That means he is not stable. 333's on-board diagnostics can't tell what's wrong. Because of that diagnostic status, he's assuming battle damage has occurred and that he is in unfriendly space. He's reporting targeting information blank for primary, but he thinks he has a secondary target profile assignment. That means he's armed. When he gives up on us for a primary assignment, he'll go after a secondary. The Bio-dynamics status shows that he's not trying to drop any weight. He had identified a feeding location and initiated engagement as of this message time. That means he's been chewing on somebody for about 15 minutes now. The last line means he's going to be out of contact for at least two hours.
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| Spike: | As I look at the message file, there seems to be more data than shows on screen. It looks like an internal file format.
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| Boreskovich: | Extended diagnostics! He's accidentally transmitting internal data.
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| Warwick: | He's in a sort of "long form" reporting mode. We should be able to get more information out of that. We'll have to load it back into the model design program though. It's going to take a little while to get setup.
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| Roger: | Let's get on it, Pete. Spike, are you in?
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| Spike: | I'm with you.
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Meanwhile, at the Louisville hub of Air Fleet Express, a major overnight delivery corporation, problems were becoming obvious. In a 24-hour-a-day operation that functions at full capacity around the clock, a momentary glitch can back up the workload for hours. At about 9:15 a.m., local time, the day shift was going full speed ahead. Delivery confirmation transactions were beginning to hit the mainframe package tracking files. Two-day delivery packages were being sorted and the early round of incoming international transports was just landing on the airfield. Weather charts were being cross-matched with the air fleet equipment roster to work up the afternoon routing of 185 planes and 700 trucks. Scheduling was the difference between and profit and loss in this multi-million dollar business.
Within a few minutes, the information systems help desk received another call. This one from the route scheduling department. They reported losing access to their system while they were using it! They said they watched as whole screens filled with equipment status data were blanked out. The electronic version of files holding each plane's validated ground report were no longer there. The operations director had been notified to expect delays in air fleet routing. As much as two hours for the entire grid, more if the system wasn't repaired within the hour. A full restore would take six hours. They spent almost two trying to find out what happened before giving up and starting the complete recovery procedure. They would be lucky to get thirty percent of the fleet up in the next twenty-four hours. But the low volume of traffic to the hub that night would turn out to be a godsend for the sorting departments. The bar-code reading system they used to direct each individual package was the third major application failure in an hour. Without it, sorting continued at about ten percent capacity. Workers from other shifts were called in to double the manpower. Still, the mountains of packages were growing faster than they could be sorted. The company's overtime labor cost made this the most expensive shift it had ever run. AFX later estimated it's loss at 4.5 million dollars. MEMOREX 333 had satisfied its appetite, at least temporarily.
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