Inside the main building was exactly like you see in the movies. There was a big Central Intelligence Agency symbol in the middle of the floor under a huge skylight. Larry showed me the memorial with no names on it. It was all like I had seen it before; I guess I had, on television. There was even a gift shop. I started to buy a CIA shot glass, but Larry told me that I couldn't acknowledge that I had been there.
Then we went through the metal detectors and swiped our badges. The guard there informed Larry that he or another cleared individual would have to escort me wherever I went. Larry affirmed that he knew that.
Larry left me with an "examiner" and said he would be back later. The rest of the morning was me answering a bunch of questions—questions I'm not supposed to repeat—both written and verbally, inside a special room. Then I took a polygraph exam and that seemed to last forever. A few hours of that and Larry returned. We then reversed the process we had been through that morning and left CIA for the day.
"What'd you think about that?" he grinned.
"That was pretty neat. We're coming back here tomorrow, right?"
"Yep. We'll eat lunch there at the cafeteria. That is always a hoot. Tomorrow we will be here all day. Hey, we got the rest of the afternoon off; you want to see Robert E. Lee's house and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?"
"Got nothing else to do," I replied.
The next day was the same process. We went up the G.W. to McLean and so on. Again I was given a different color badge than Larry was.
"Clearance takes time, Steve. Don't fret it." Larry assured me. Unfortunately, the weather was not as good as it had been the day before and the long walk from the parking lot was more of a trot. We did maximize our path through the parking garage to stay out of the rain as much as possible.
The same guard told Larry the same thing about having to escort me. So Larry told him the same thing in response, "I know."
This time we didn't go to the same place Larry took me the day before. Today we went down several different hallways and I was completely lost. We finally got to a room just down the hall from a big sign saying Directorate of Science and Technology and there was a person waiting for us at the door.
We were told where the restrooms were and shown the vending machines. Larry got a cup of coffee so I followed suit. A few moments passed and the young lady at the door told us we could go in. Larry paused to speak with her.
"The package we sent up here, is it in there already?" Larry shrugged his shoulders, then straightened his tie.
"Yes, Mr. Waterford, the papers and slides you sent are here and are already in there." She pointed her pen behind her at the door.
"Thanks." He turned to me, "Okay, Steve, jump in whenever, but don't make a nuisance of yourself. If we ask you to step out for a bit, don't be upset; it will just be necessary. Got it?" He pointed to my tie and motioned to fix it.
"Okay. I got it." I fixed my tie and my shirttail.
Then we entered the SCIF.
CHAPTER 8
"So that is how we got the QCCPUs to teleport data back and forth between each other," I summarized. The Air Force general, General Clemons, seemed very intrigued throughout my presentation. I could've sworn that I'd seen her somewhere before. She looked to be in her mid to late forties, was very athletic looking, and had bright strawberry-red hair. She spoke in a Southern accent of some sort. I didn't know that they made attractive generals.
"Jim, what do you think of this?" General Clemons asked.
"Well, if you ask me, and you did," Dr. Daniels replied, "it's a damned shame that we only were told about all this a short time ago or we would have been at least this far already! I can even perceive us having prevented the war with knowledge of a larger threat to force us to act together instead of against each other." Dr. Jim Daniels oozed confidence in himself, probably because he was handsome and, from the looks of it, extremely physically fit, with a chiseled jaw and short crop of sandy brown hair. I wouldn't have pegged him for some kind of super genius.
Then one of the other suits in the room interrupted. "Harumph, uh, Dr. Daniels please let me remind you that this conversation is at Top Secret only!"
"Hunh?" Dr. Daniels then turned back to me and nodded at the other fellow. "Oh, yeah right. Sorry Phillip." He turned his attention back to the general, "Well, Tabitha, I would say this is it. I'm not exactly sure how the SuperAgents will apply, but now that we know how to do it, we can figure out how to undo it. I still would like to get 'Becca and Anson's opinions on it, though."
"We'll brief them when they return next week," the general assured him, and scribbled something in her notepad.
The fellow Phillip turned to me. "Mr. Montana, do you think you could show Dr. Daniels here how to recreate and modify, if needs be, your so-called SuperAgent code?"
"Uh, well I don't see why not. But if you're trying to reverse engineer something, I think I would be able to help more by, well, uh, helping." I was hoping to make my point. I wasn't sure who any of these folks were and I sure wasn't about to just give over my SuperAgent code without a fight of some type.
The general laughed. "Jim, I don't think he believes you have the wherewithal to undo his code." There were chuckles from the rest of the room.
"No ma'am," I replied. "I didn't mean to imply that at all. I just—"
"Relax son, I'm just trying to get Jim's goat." She smiled and adjusted the lock of red hair on her forehead. I could tell she was covering a very faint scar with her bangs. She turned to another Air Force officer; she, I assumed, was her aide although I did notice that both she and the general had wings on their lapels and they each wore an insignia patch displaying a missile inside a blue and red sphere with a big blue W2 embroidered on it. Not to mention that they looked a lot alike. "Lieutenant Ames," she said.
"Ma'am." The young redheaded lieutenant snapped to.
"I think we can show the abridged presentation now." General Clemons nodded and then turned to look across the table. "Wouldn't you agree, Phillip?" That last sounded more like an order rather than a question. It was my understanding that the Phillip fellow was in charge, but this female general seemed to be getting her way when she wanted it.
"Uh, okay Tabitha. Only the 'abridged' version though." Phillip overemphasized the word abridged.
"Roger that," Clemons said. "Okay, Lieutenant. It's all yours."
"Yes, ma'am. Jim, could you back me up when I get stumped please." Lieutenant Ames sounded humble as she approached the front of the room and tugged on her uniform jacket.
"Annie, I think you will be just fine," Dr. Daniels replied and chuckled. I found it very interesting that all of these people acted as though they had known each other for years. It was almost as if they were family. Our group wasn't like that, it seemed to me.
Lieutenant Annie Ames pointed to the screen. "Okay, here on the first slide is the device." Ames pointed to a photo of an emerald-colored cube-shaped chunk of glass with several orange smaller cubes within it. "We believe these smaller orange cubes might be the intelligent processor components and these dark bands just beneath each of them are the RAM register input interference patterns. Until today, we had no idea how the device managed the data and the problem devolution. I would have to say that I am very impressed by Mr. Montana's effort thus far. The power inputs for the entangled witness beams, or as Mr. Montana had called them, quantum connected beams, come from here." She changed slides to a cutaway diagram of the device. "This is a scanning electron microscope image of the device. Note the false coloring we used to signify different density levels. It is possible there is something erroneous about the density measurements. Dr. Daniels will discuss this later. This bright spot here in the heart of the main cube is the connected light source and it appears the data information falls through here." She paused for that to sink in.