Incarna

Day 12: Simulated Morning, International Orbital Station.

Harold Parrish watched the swirling clouds of the dust storm sweep up from the Persian Gulf and sweep over Israel and the eastern Med. As it swept north he saw dots of light spring up on his wall screen where-ever the storm had passed. Red indicated multi-witness sightings of Djinn or some other mythical being. Green dots were single witness reports and white were official reports of deaths from 'unknown' causes. The pattern was obvious and though it wasn't the fibonacci sequence relationship the yanks had got so excited about, you could've fallen over this pattern in the dark.

"How are you bastards doing this?" he said out loud as he scratched his beard then shook his head. Well, he had now compiled lists of most of the new weapons programs that even Washington or Berlin didn't know about and some of these did give hints at the sort of tech that might be being used in these interventions.

He scratched his beard again, he still had a lot of compiling and projections to create to see if the leads actually led anywhere. All the usual suspects were there of course. The Japanese and Germans and their new generations of robots. The Russians and Chinese and their attempts to manipulate brain function. There was everyones attempts to hack each other, and defeat such attempts while remaining invisible.

... Then there was his work, well their work as of course the insights that Max was bringing to their endeavours was proving exceptional. Now if only they could get clear of Florian before some of the other bright and shiny tech companies got wind of what was coming!

Harold pushed himself back from the wall screen the couple of metres to the other side of his cabin. He was looking forward to his suite on Kalpana One. Having the extra space would make such a world of difference. Harold allowed himself a chuckle at his own pun and then returned his focus to the map in front of him.

"Screen, pause," and the progression of the dust storms halted at the end of the three month sequence. There were waves of dots now stretching across the entire globe where ever dust storms had passed. There was even a smattering across Australia as well, with most focussing around the old archaelogical sites.

He checked his notes on the holo screen positioned at head just to his right. He used a keyboard to add extra notes and link three of his lines of enquiry. He let the keyboard float off his lap and rubbed his beard again.

"It has to be that, there's no other worldly mechanism that could be used," he said quietly to himself. He shook his head as his thoughts began linking other possibilities and showing him what he needed to glean further details about to bring some sort of coherent pattern together.

A blinking started at his comset on the wall to the left of the wall screen. He picked up the headset and slipped it on. He hated wearing the thing but it did leave his hands free work. "Max, yes, really, rippa! AIME 2 then, in Hamburg. Yeah no probs son, good choice. Yep, too right we will. Listen compile whatever you can find on the frequencies found in those dust storms associated with Incarna interventions. Yep, yep. I wanna do a breakdown of what can actually be done with those. Maybe this fractal carrier wave is involved somehow but we'll need to replicate it somewhere. Yeah Tibooburra, good idea, ideal actually. High iron content, yep great. I'll be back tomorrow. Yep into Goulbourn. I'll head out to Jervis Bay and use the AIME 3 there. Yeah spot on, catcha there then!"

Harold let himself float as his thoughts raced from the call. "A fractal carrier wave, shit that's got some serious tech behind it. Bugger you Deepwater what are you up to?"

He realised he was talking to himself again and rubbed his beard distractedly. He checked the time. An hour in the centrifuge now and another just before the Skylon arrives. He worked hard to keep his strength up while on the IOS and it would be next month that he got his first trip out to Kalpana One to oversee the first stage of an orbitally adapted AIME 3 installation there. Artificial Intelligence Mechanical Enhancement! He and Max had made up the name one evening over dinner at their favourite Vietnamese restaurant.

The Pho had been magnificently rich with such a depth of flavour. "We cook this one three days Harry, ma grandmother be proud woman," Kim had told them when he'd brought out a plate of the soup stock bones as entree for them. The meat was so soft it didn't fall off the bone it massaged itself off then melted immediately in one's mouth.

They named their super computer, AIME after a friend of Max's who had cerebral palsy. Amy ran the office at the Uni near where Max did some part time lecturing and they got on well. Amy with her wicked sense of humour and he stirring her about it! So AIME it was and Kalpana would be the biggest mechanical enhancement project of any IT mob anywhere ever!

They had the beginnings of an AIME 4 being laid out at the Jaeger research facility at Jervis Bay but the AIME 3-Orbital would be more than enough for Kalpana till everybody was onboard and it was a functioning orbital university and technology park. By then they might even have a 5 to upgrade to, though Harold was always so aware of what the limits were of what they were doing. Everybody watched the AIME series because Jaeger didn't push for it to lead the Top500 list like the Chinese did with their Tianhe series. Nor did Jaeger try and compete with NCSA's Blue Waters series, they were all too big and produced too much waste heat for the niche that AIME was for - mechanical enhancement.

AIME ranked well on the Green500 but again they weren't trying to lead any list. Just produce the best all round machine for the purpose. So far they'd been very successful which was why an AIME-Orbital was on the IOS and an AIME 3-Orb was planned for Kalpana.

Harold took one last look at the situation map display and saved all the new files and data sets to multiple disks and drives. He was no longer in a cloud of doubt. Patterns were establishing and links to different forms of tech applications were becoming clearer. Now if only he could get Jaeger teams to the right place at the right time they could start collecting hard evidence and maybe, just maybe ...

He closed his cabin door and pushed off down the corridor toward the centrifuge. He'd leave his mind to keep sorting the patterns while he worked up a good hard sweat and make his muscles burn for the prescribed time.