Dead silence hung heavy in the air after Julia made her pronouncement that they would fail to fully prepare their civilian populations for what would come. “So, we must prepare ourselves, as well, to do every thing we are able. We must spare no effort, push as hard as we can… and make sure that we gird ourselves for the inevitable fact that it will never be all we need it to be… but it will have to be enough. And, we will have to take solace within our souls that we did all we could.”
She had, barely, kept her voice level. Not raising it into a rant had been hard, but she’d done it. She held them for a few moments, then shook her head. A sound, almost like a collective exhale – even though she was fairly sure no one had been holding their breath – went through the room. “Some of you are familiar with the training regimens that have been adopted for soldiers across the League, some of you aren’t. If you aren’t, please fix that soon. I mention this because there is one thing, above all, that is instilled by those trainings; discipline. The discipline needed to keep pushing forward after you have already taken enough damage that every nerve in your body is screaming and you know you will not see another sunrise. To obey an order that will lead to suffering for yourself in order to save others…
“This you are familiar with, but it is only half the story. It is also the discipline to sit for days on end waiting for the fight and not lose that razor’s edge that is necessary to prevail in battle. The mettle needed to slog through months and months of a campaign, yet still have the mental and emotional fortitude to stand and shoulder your arms when the time comes.
“That is the part of the training that I want you to focus on, for that is how we need to prepare our populations… and we won’t have psychoanalytic specialists watching every move of each individual to do it.”
She stopped, stood straighter, and turned to get herself a drink in order to let them know she’d finished with the topic. They all see the sense in what I’ve said. Hell, all of them knew it was true already. To one extent or another it has been the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the room for months. Now, no one can ignore it.
She walked over to her cousin and bent to put a hand on his. “You are right to bring up what you did, and to ask the question. Please understand,” She swept the room with her gaze. “Nothing I have said here is meant to be a reproof. It is meant to be a plan, and a plea. You all, now, have some idea of what we have to do. I hate that I had to push this so hard right on the tail of our first good news in such a long time, but maybe it is for the best.
“Now, most of you have some homework to do, but let’s put that aside for the moment. Remember that our own morale is going to be important. So, in that spirit, I think now is a good time to look at the results from some of the movies we recently funded.”
Tensions eased as she turned the floor over to the Rooksa Ambassador, and she looked across the crowd. Her message had been driven home, hard enough but not too hard. Hitting that sweet spot without any prep wasn’t easy. She let herself feel a moment of pride at a job well done; after all, she had her own morale to look after, too.
***
Julia checked the condition of the room she’d started to call her ‘Longue.’ The Ambassadors and other officials who had formed her advisory crew had assembled, and sat talking easily in small groups. She watched the feed for a little bit, getting a feel for their mood. It has been just over twenty years since Jake was last forced to address them directly, and it was good news that time. Despite the rising issues with some nations and those blasted anti-war idiots, they seem hopeful now. Maybe that hope can translate into a little action, particularly after they hear what Jake has for them this time.
The thought of what Jake intended to share gave her some pause. He is being unusually cagey, and I don’t like it. Maybe I should have made him tell me the details after all. She smiled at herself and shook her head. You know better. Genius always has its idiosyncrasies, and it is better to let them play out when you can.
She stood, and couldn’t help but look at the ‘countdown’ clock. Sixty-nine years until it happens. A Human lifetime by Dad’s standards, but now it seems like such a short time.
She opened the side door to her office and stepped through. Conversation continued unabated, though everyone took note of her presence. How long did it take me to get this crew to stop that silly ‘all rise’ stuff when I entered this room? The moment of amusement lifted her spirits a bit, and she stepped over to the small stage at the side of the room. Conversation died quickly.
With a smile and a nod she sat, and hit the buttons to bring up the connection to Jake, still out at The Cache. He sat, life sized, in his own chair, and looked around the room.
She checked a display to make sure everyone else who had been invited had come on-line, then spoke. “Now that we have everyone here we can begin. There are a handful of items to go through today, but we all know how our dear genius here loves these gatherings, so we will cover his items first.” A small chuckle floated through the room as Jake gave her a look that was equal parts eyeroll and gratitude. “To answer the top question on all of your minds, yes, what Jake has to share with us is good news. Specifically, he and his team have cracked the source code of the Old Machines.”
This drew a sharp intake of breath that seemed so profound as to lower the air pressure in the room. Many sat straighter, and some nearly leapt to their feet. Jake smiled and nodded at them.
She held up a hand to forestall conversation and continued. “They have decompiled it, decoded it, and completed their study. Some of you are aware that this has been a primary focus for them for the last twenty-three years, ever since they cracked the secrets of multi-function nanites. Now, they have worked another miracle, and given us another peg in our hopes to win this coming war.” She turned to the hologram stage. “Ok, Jake, you said that there is something crazy and profound in what you discovered, far more than we expected, so it is time to share with the class.”
Jake nodded and gave her a half grin. “What we found turned out to be the key to unlocking the code. Once we realized what we were looking at, de-compiling the source code bases went fairly smoothly. Well, as smooth as it can when the code was written by two very alien species and probably centuries apart.”
Julia’s mind locked up a little bit as Jake’s words refused to parse properly. Two different species? Why is that a big deal? I mean they… She nearly jumped out of her seat as she looked around the room. Jake had paused to let everyone consider his words. All of the more technically inclined people in the room sat much like her, wide eyed and surprised. Some others did as well, while the rest seemed very confused. Everyone has figured out that Jake is playing his little dramatic games again, but not everyone has seen what he means…
She shot him a dirty look that shouted get on with it. He gave her a lopsided grin and continued. “Some of you see what I mean, at least in part. It is more than it seems, though. There are two entirely separate sets of code, written by different aliens for different purposes running the Old Machines. The details for all of this are in the report I will be forwarding later today, the details get very extensive. Here is the short version: What we thought was a normal mulit-layered programming approach; one programming language used for the ‘lower’ hardware-interface coding and another ‘higher’ language used of executive functions and processing was not what it seemed.
“The ‘higher’ level code is actually truncating and over-riding the ‘lower’ level code, cutting it off and preventing a lot of functions, as well as keeping that code from trying to access references that just… aren’t there.” He gave them a broad smile as several hands went up and others started to ask questions. “If I try to go into any more detail with that, the explanation is going to start with the words ‘You see…’ and will then have us here for days before I can explain the first dozen sentences.
“Suffice it to say that whoever programmed the Old Machines into what they are now is NOT the same as the ones who originally engineered the nanites, nor the ones who wrote their base operating system. In fact, that base operating system has, mostly, been eliminated as far we can tell, with kludged-together work-arounds in place to do all kinds of tasks.”
A silence descended on all of them as they tried to digest the news. Omsarch managed to speak first. “Ok, I will go with the obvious question, then. What does all this mean? The part about two separate codes, anyway?”
Jake shrugged. “In terms of what the Old Machines are, where they came from, or why they do what they do? I have no idea. In terms of the war effort, quite a lot, potentially.
“We have already identified three possible vulnerabilities in the interface between the lower OS code and the bolted-on control code. We thought we’d found a fourth, but realized that it was already exploited by a virus several cycles ago.”
Tisthal, the Bitha Ambassador, waved her lower arms in surprise. “You mean someone else figured this out before? I thought you said…”
Jake shook his head. “They found the exploit by looking at the boundary between machine-level code and control code in the normal fashion, not by knowing that the higher-level control code is constantly having to over-ride and leash what is beneath it. It was a bit of effort to trace back and figure out which virus had caused the Old Machines to realize the vulnerability and patch it.
“Of course, that, in itself proved a useful exercise.” Julia moved just so in order to get him to glance over, and gave him a sharp look. He waved a hand and continued. “But, once again I digress. It is all in the report, and I’d be willing to sit and talk with you after you’ve read it.
“The important thing that virus does teach us, though, is that we haven't found a doomsday weapons for defeating the enemy… which is what we thought we had at first. We will get once chance, two at the most, to exploit any of these vulnerabilities, then they will get protected and won’t do us any good. We’ll keep looking for more, of course, but don’t have high hopes.
“We might – and I stress might – be able to turn the discovery into a final weapon at some point, but it is a long shot at best. One we will work on until the war is over, one way or the other, but… don’t pin our hopes on it.”