Tales of Three Worlds - 12. Fragment Twelve: Parallels

“What can I tell him?”

Jakob looked up over the rim of his cup of tea at his husband. When the two came back to the store-room and read the completed analysis of Harman’s genome, they had to admit they weren’t as surprised as they could have been. Vague hints had been in the hidden files on the Mini-Colossus, but to have concrete numbers and code sequences was another matter. In some ways it hadn’t been a revelation at all because most humans’ DNA contained traces from earlier species as a matter of routine, but Harman’s percentage was nearly twice that of what others genetic profiles contained…and the mix of these two particular strains ratios were not random; further, the ovum used was not one from the stocks Ernst had used in his own labs.

The Daedalus Foundation was still at work researching and apparently tinkering with the human genome in new ways, but how far they had gone since Ernst’s day and the present was unknown. Was it just a way for otherwise sterile parents to insure their family’s survival into the future? Simple protocols existed for procreation, and off Earth repairs could be made to damaged gene sequences, but this went beyond that into the realm of actually creating something new. As the ‘Father’ of the Neo-Neanderthal species, Ernst-Karl couldn’t claim any moral high ground without being hypocritical, but he hadn’t altered the basic human genetic structure to do what he’d done.

Harman Halveg had been designed from the start for certain ends, at present unknown, but he was still human…so why did Ernst feel uneasy about the whole situation? In the end he had to admit that it wasn’t the boy himself, but what else might have been done by the Foundation that concerned him. Perhaps another reason was that this involved his own brother’s lineage; if Hartmann’s children had been the usual mixing of random genes with a minor amount of repairs, would he have been so worried? He didn’t think so.

And why hadn’t Hartmann come to him for help?

No, there were still a lot of unanswered questions about what his brother had been planning before his untimely death, and Ernst-Karl was beginning to think that the mystery surrounding Harman’s genome might be the least of them. He thought back to the message he’d found in the file Two-Sapphire had sent from Luna that began this adventure. Hartmann had stated his wish for a family to carry on his name, but was that all? He decided to call up that file again.

‘…Genetic Authority would not sanction my plans for a family…have begun research that will combine both my dreams: one for a family, and the other to go to the stars…’

“I don’t understand,” Jakob said while looking over his mate’s shoulder at the file playing on the computer’s holo-screen. “Why should his descendants going to the stars involve any genetic engineering? It’s all technical development into propulsion and materials now…”

“And that, dear Jake, is the $64,000 question,” Ernst said using an ancient line from a pre-holo television game show popular more than a century before their birth. Among other things than movies, Hartmann had had an interest in those early programs that purported to test the knowledge of the contestants to obtain prizes or monetary compensation. All of them had been astounded at how much some of these people contained in their heads without the aid of artificial aids like commlinks or even basic internet. Neither man could remember the number of times they’d had to do a search for information on the answers, particularly on cultural questions, and some of the scientific answers left them laughing at that era’s limited grasp of what were today even basic principles.

Jakob frowned, not at the use of the phrase, but at the reminder that there was still a mystery to be solved that seemed to defy their attempts to unravel it. The discovery of the hidden files meant the task had become infinitely more difficult. “I think we ought to move to another angle of this, and leave the specifics of your nephew’s lineage to one of the ‘bots for now.”

“How so?”

“Well, all these files could be searched and summarized far quicker by proxy than doing it ourselves…and we could delve into the other clue—the mysteriously defunct yet seemingly still active Daedalus Foundation. It might take a bit longer on this machine than a modern one, but not by much….”

Ernst spun his chair around and pulled his husband down into a quick kiss, then back to face the workbench. “I’ll set up the parameters now, then we’ll go to our office and start tracing the history of our elusive Foundation.” The redhead’s fingers made small, quick movements in the air in front of him that were converted to symbols on the 3-D screen of the Mini-Colossus. He could have opted for vocal commands but found this method more accurate since he didn’t have to name any unusual characters for the database to interpret. Ten minutes later, he rose from the chair and followed his partner out to the more welcoming area of their apartment.

“One thing, E…where was that last vid of Harman’s parents sent from? That could give us a place to start looking for our quarry.”

Ernst shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. It was sent from the family’s private cabin in Karelia, and then to the Compound in Finland. There had been a Foundation branch there when I was doing my work on the ‘thals, but it closed down when I left Earth for Luna…and ultimately here to join you when you began the terraforming project.”

“And it couldn’t have re-opened once you were gone…?”

Ernst paused when his brain registered that thought, but then he shook his head sadly. “With the Genetic Authority becoming increasingly strident and breathing down their necks? I doubt it—especially if they’d already banned my brother’s plans for becoming a father.”

The men took seats at the flat-topped desk in their joint office, but hadn’t yet queried the built-in display. “That leaves us with other branches, then, E…I’m fairly certain that none of the Martian settlements had any, so that just leaves Luna.”

“Or perhaps a secret base in the Belt where Hartmann could have easy access from Ceres,” Ernst suggested.

Jakob shook his head. “I don’t think so; three centuries ago there were only a few scattered research stations beyond the Asteroid Belt: one orbiting Europa in the Jupiter system, an automated one orbiting Titan, and the shipyard Hartmann built near Neptune for propulsion research…”

“…that we know of…” Ernst said with a grin. “Who knows what some of the old corporate syndicates did once space flight became cheaper and easier? And don’t forget that we’re still finding things that were reported destroyed, such as the robot that climbed Sky-Hook to get me.”

“My money’s still on Luna—there’s a lot of it we haven’t actually explored on the ground,” Jakob shot back, giving his husband a similarly provocative smile. “Remember all those early photos that ‘experts’ swore showed alien constructions there? Didn’t one of the early settlers claim to find a site with signs of rock cutting in some cavern or tunnel?”

Ernst-Karl snorted. “Aliens—we’ve been searching for signals since the mid-Twentieth, and found nothing that couldn’t be covered by natural phenomena. And of the early probes we sent out to the nearest likely stars, not one has found a planet that supports our type of life at any sort of technological level.”

“We’ve only gotten reports back from a quarter of those…some are still not due, and others that should have reported back are silent. What if they found, or were found by someone who wanted to be left alone?

“And as for the old SETI programs, don’t get me started! As big, and as old as the universe is, maybe another civilization isn’t close enough for us to get a signal yet? And it’s absolute arrogance to think that an older culture would even still use radio as a system of communication. I’m sure they’ve found faster ways we can’t begin to understand, let alone detect….”

“I’ll grant you those points, Jake, but no one has found any definitively artificial proof that aliens have ever been to Earth—or Luna. Those ‘cuttings’ you spoke of were likely natural faults in the rock faces. Cydonia’s ‘Face’ was just weathering and shadows, and if there had been something on Luna, then it’d still be there as there’s no weathering without an atmosphere.”

Jakob was going to say something more, but Ernst cut him off. “And don’t go on about ‘lost civilizations’ on Earth! We know much more now about early migrations than they did in the Twentieth, and yes, many traces were lost when the glaciers retreated…but no one has found any technological finds from pre-Ice Age cultures that could have gone off-planet—so that ends arguments about your lunar hypothesis and the ‘henge’ on Mars. It was a natural rock formation similar to the Externsteine in the Teutoburg Forest in Germany before our current organizational lines were drawn.”

Jakob waved a hand in dismissal, which he knew irritated his mate intensely. Both shared a romantic outlook in many things, but Jakob’s was tied to flights of imagination, while Ernst’s was bound more to his feelings for his husband. They’d long ago agreed to disagree on certain topics, and this was one of them. “This is all beside the point—we need to find our secretive Daedalus foundation, not while away the hours with idle speculation….”

Ernst growled under his breath. “I hate you, Jakob Sommers.”

“I hate you more, Ernst-Karl Hallbach…” They pulled their chairs closer and bent over the display which now showed a stylized logo of the Three Worlds, Earth on the left, a terraformed Mars on the right, with a smaller Luna between and slightly above the two larger worlds. “Let’s start with the last date you used the Foundation in Finland, then trace the records forward from there…”

“Don’t forget subsidiary companies, suppliers and delivery to the branches…maybe even tax and employee records for the major scientists—they might have been moved to associated firms doing similar work,” Ernst pointed out helpfully.

“This will take hours, you know…serious data-mining across at least two of the Three Worlds’ systems. It’s fairly straight-forward so we can use one of the pre-built avatars now that we’re on a modern network.”

“Make it so,” Ernst quipped in a decent simulation of one of their favorite pre-holo programs about space exploration. His commlink supplied the name ‘Patrick Stewart: Capt. Jean-Luc Picard: Star Trek Next Generation’.

The gesture Jakob made with a free hand needed no data search to interpret.

* * * * * * * * * *

Given the sheer amount of data flowing through the byways of any network on a large scale, searches can take quite a long time in computer terms, but still only minutes in human-time. Add to that fact a near infinite multiple when those systems are scaled up to a planetary, or interplanetary complexity, and it’s not surprising that some events can go unnoticed unless very specific searches are done. Such was the case involving the genomic events concerning one Harman Halveg. Little or nothing is ever truly lost on data systems unless deliberately erased, but not setting parameters properly can amount to the same thing.

In a similar fashion, acquiring information that is intended to be kept secret is also a matter of luck or uncommon exactness in establishing keywords that will trigger such data to be sent to an anonymous eavesdropper. Automated searches are often done quite innocently, but results vary based on the algorithms used in conducting the search—better ones produce better data, and the best designed ones are meant to do this work quickly and unobtrusively. Since computer networks first existed, there were those whose sole aim was to access areas and information that was meant to be kept secret from all but a very few individuals.

Those who broke into these areas for profit were called spies; those who did it for the thrill of it called themselves hackers. Hartmann Hallbach had been a gifted hacker as well as an intellectual prodigy, and he’d developed ways to hide those things he wished to be kept secret, and other ways to crack the systems others used to keep their own files hidden. One of his most basic achievements had been a passive ‘listener’, a bot which blended into the data-stream around it, doing nothing unless activated by certain cues, and then taking note of that information which would be sent at irregular intervals to the people who had deployed it. Another linked action would be to trace the source of the query for this data so that too, could be sent to the proper controllers.

The efficiency of these hidden listeners depended on what was done with the results; with the complexity of the Three Worlds networks, a human overseer would be quickly swamped, so only the highest priority alerts reached the eyes of an actual person, the vast majority were analyzed by other computers and filed away or handled routinely in the background. Casual searches involving Hartmann Hallbach or his family were common enough to draw no attention unless they went beyond the scholastic inquiry level—there was no cause for alarm if a kid was looking up data for a school report, after all. Even inquiries into genetics was no real problem with Ernst’s involvement in creating the neo-Neanderthal species.

Add the different spelling of Harman Halveg into this mix, and you begin to understand why the initial reports about him went unnoticed…nothing of importance to note until the Triad Board’s computer system in Tycho Deep went down unexpectedly, apparently triggered by a simple genomic profile analysis. That event, closely followed by another request by a private geneticist in Tycho, brought the matter to a top-level analyst, who sent it up the chain of command until it crossed the desk of the one man who could put it all together.

Even then, a picture could be incomplete if that person lacked all of the pertinent details…as was the case in this instance. Assumptions were made using the information at hand, and some of them were, quite frankly, wrong. Being such an important part of some of the late scientist’s plans, he’d assumed he was privy to all of them.

Hartmann Hallbach, being an addict of antique culture, had subscribed to the old axiom ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket...’ Why limit yourself to a single scheme to secure a result when two might double the chances of success? No reason at all, he’d decided, and begun the Finland Option as a less-likely, but still viable way to achieve his goal of becoming a father.

Matthias Joossens had never heard that phrase, and thus knew nothing of Harman Halveg’s existence until he read the alert on his vidscreen.

Who was this kid?