“So if the US Navy didn’t build it, who did?”
“Not who. We know it was built by us. That’s not in dispute. The door even has our logo.”
Sam persisted. “But you’re saying the US Navy didn’t build it?”
Major Marazzato sighed heavily. “No. I’m saying the US Navy hasn’t built it yet.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“You seriously think it’s come from the future?” Sam asked, without even trying to suppress his skepticism.
Major Marazzato shrugged. “You got a better explanation?”
“Yeah, I do,” Dr. Smyth said.
Sam grinned. “Well, don’t keep us all waiting in suspense, Dr. Smyth.”
“All right,” Dr. Smyth said. “I think it’s some sort of secret weapon being developed by DARPA.”
Sam considered that for a moment. DARPA stood for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the United States Department of Defense. They specialized in high tech defense research projects, many of them highly clandestine.
“It’s a possibility. Unlikely, but always possible.”
Marazzato shook his head, defiantly. “There’s no way they could build a structure of that magnitude to survive the crushing pressure of the sea at this depth. No way!”
“Maybe it wasn’t supposed to end up down here at all?” Dr. Smyth suggested. “Think about this for a moment. What if they were towing it somewhere and somewhere in the process, they lost control of the sphere. Or maybe it was on the surface and then sunk.”
Marazzato said, “That still doesn’t explain how it could survive the crushing pressure at this depth.”
“Sure, but what if these doors lead all the way through the sphere, meaning that by now it’s filled with water, equalizing the pressure inside and outside of the sphere?”
Sam gave that some thought. “In that case, the sphere would have no pressure difference to withstand. Yeah, it’s physically possible. Certainly, a more likely scenario than a time traveling weapon built by us from the future.”
“I’m not buying it,” Marazzato said, emphatically.
Sam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We won’t be guessing much longer.”
“Why?” Marazzato asked.
But nobody answered him.
Because, a door opened from within the massive lockout trunk inside the sphere. A giant truck drove out the door on stainless steel caterpillar tracks. A single borosilicate dome covered the machine’s single occupant. The machine had two glowing headlights at the front, that looked like giant bug eyes. Positioned at the front of the machine was a large suction dredge cutter head, and a large storage container at the back.
“Holy shit!” Sam whispered. “Someone’s worked out how to mine at 36,000 feet.”
The driver met Sam’s eyes.
And a moment later, the deep-sea mining machine turned sharply, heading straight toward them.
Chapter Forty-Four
Elise opened the encrypted email.
It was from the Secretary of Defense, and had passed through a series of proxy-servers, designed to wheedle out any signs of tampering or eavesdropping viruses. She went through a series of standard checks to ascertain that the email was in fact legitimate and then clicked open.
A single page of words appeared.
The words were little more than gibberish. In addition to its array of digitally secure communication systems, the email retained a unique unbreakable code to be used for open communication. This one relied on a secret key cryptography to obscure its meaning. This type of code was a variation of the one-time pad — the only truly unbreakable code in theory. To decode the message, a listener had to have both the book and the key. Only in this case, it wasn’t just a book, but a complete works of books.
Elise opened a second document on her laptop.
This one contained digital copy of all of the classic works of Charles Dickens. Elise had very little direct communications with the Secretary of Defense, but when they did communicate it was as vitally important as it needed to be secure.
Traditionally, secret key cryptography employs a single key for both encryption and decryption. In this case, a message was sent by the Secretary of Defense using the key to encrypt the plaintext and send the ciphertext to the receiver. The receiver applies the same key to decrypt the message and recover the plaintext.
Because a single key is used for both functions, secret key cryptography is also called symmetric encryption. When using a cipher, the original information is known as plaintext and the encrypted form as ciphertext. The ciphertext message contains all the information of the plaintext message — yet isn’t in a format readable by human or computer without the proper mechanism to decrypt it.
Elise opened both the email document and the digital copy of Charles Dickens’s complete, unabridged, works.
She scanned the email, ignoring all letters, and searching for individual numbers only. They were scattered throughout the document.
She collected them and placed them together to form a date — 1854.
Elise then opened the table of contents, listing release dates of all of Charles Dickens’s books. Her eyes stopped on the only one released that year.
Hard Times, by Charles Dickens — 1854
The book focused on an unsympathetic look upon utilitarianism — an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism. Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number
Elise smiled, and wondered if the Secretary of Defense was hinting at something else to her.
She made a note, and then continued to decipher the code, by opening the document containing the book, Hard Times. She withdrew the key to the code from her pocket. Today was December 3 — thus she had to add the year, ignoring the first two digits, to the day’s date. So, 3 and 18 made 21. She then opened the book to page twenty-one. December was the 12th month, so every 12th letter on the page would be discounted.
Using the key, she then went through the painfully slow process of deciphering the code until the series of individual letters made a recognizable series of words.
In this case, those words provided a link to G-mail account and a password to access it. The account would have been set up just before the Secretary of Defense had sent the original message.
Elise opened up the email address and downloaded the single email sitting in the draft box.
Inside were a series of photographs taken from old Ivy League University graduation ceremonies dated 1961.
There are several black and white photographs. Each one depicting the graduating class from various Ivy League Universities. She ran her eyes across the university names — Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, they were all there. The best educations that old money could buy. Each photo had somewhere between twenty to fifty people, all with their matching names at the bottom in an index. A few faces, as many as five or six per photograph had been circled with a red pen. There was just one photograph that didn’t depict a graduating class. This one, appeared to be of an ocean. The photo itself was of poor quality, but seemed to delineate some sort of dark sphere floating on the surface.
Elise put the photos in a document and then read the email.
The truth needs to come out. Search the names, and pull the strings. Only you can put this all together.
And break the code to Habitat Zero.