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Screens around them that had been filled with complex graphics and other forms of data presentation now showed the progress of the decoupling process. Spiky lines on various graphs oscillated, dropped sharply toward the bottom of the screen, and then flatlined. Displays showing input and output speeds ramped up for a brief moment and then spun down to zero. On one wall a line of LED indicators went from green to yellow and then finally to a deep blue, which indicated a standby mode.
“I’m now disengaged from the outside world,” Max said. “Consider me on vacation.”
“Not so fast,” Rudi said. “We still need you to analyze something for us. But taking a page out of Kurt’s book, we’re going to do this the old-fashioned way.” He turned to Hiram. “You and I will get the data we need on hard copies and then punch it in by hand. When Max comes up with an answer, I’ll find a way to get it over to Kurt without using our communications network.”
“Are you sure we have to do that?” Yaeger asked. “Max has a vastinternal database. Including satellite scans and historical oceanic data.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t store mundane records such as weather reports or wave heights or anything of that nature,” Max said. “I prefer to follow the example of Albert Einstein, who insisted he didn’t memorize anything that could be easily looked up by his assistants.”
“That would be us at this point,” Yaeger suggested, in case Rudi somehow missed the jibe.
Rudi had started the meeting concerned that they were becoming too dependent on machines. Now they were working for one. He wasn’t sure things were moving in the right direction. “Let’s get to it.”
Working by hand, and scanning printed records, it took an hour to input the weather reports, wind advisories, and information on the currents. As the effort dragged on, Yaeger recalled one of the original reasons he’d gotten into computer design in the first place: as a way to delegate tedious and mundane tasks like collating data. After one last wave-propagation chart was placed on a scanner and added to the data file, he turned to Rudi. “Anything else?”
“That’s it. That’s all the information we have.”
Yaeger was glad to hear that. “All right, Max, your turn to shine. Put this all together and give us a report on Kurt’s drifting beacon.”
After a minute of studying the data, Max was able to create an ad hoc weather model. Ten seconds later she’d determined the most likely drift pattern of the small boat as it wallowed in the current before its occupants were picked up by the freighter. Kurt had mentioned the presence of a rudimentary sail, but no one knew how often it was used or what its efficiency was. Max modeled a range of possibilities and quickly determined the most likely starting point for the small boat. It had taken an hour to enter the data and less than two minutes for Max to do the rest.
“The probable origination point for the small boat’s journey is anisland in the Seychelles known as Île de l’Est,” Max announced. “East Island. Now mostly referred to as l’Est. It’s one of only two partially volcanic islands in the Seychelles chain.”
Scanning her own proprietary records, Max pulled up a recent satellite photo and placed it on a screen.
Rudi and Hiram studied the image. From high above, they saw a volcanic island with a beautiful bay of milky green water. Zooming in revealed a split personality, with the northern side of the island sporting plentiful signs of civilization, including small buildings, paved roads, manicured lawns, and a network of wind turbines sprouting along the hillside.
Jutting from the shoreline into the bay was a long concrete dock. It pointed like a finger to the northwest, aligning with a channel that ran between matching flower-shaped islands in the lagoon.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Rudi asked. “It looks more like a five-star resort than a secret medical facility where people are grown in vats and then tortured in gruesome experiments.”
“Based on the available data,” Max said. “There’s an eighty-six percent chance that the small craft in question started its journey here. No other island has a greater than four percent probability.”
“Close enough to be a certainty for me,” Rudi said. “What are these reflective shapes in the bay? Decorations of some kind?”
“Floating solar arrays,” Max replied. “Each one can claim to be the largest in the world, as they are identical in size. For comparison, they generate eighty percent more power than the Three Gorges energy farm built by the Chinese.”
“That’s impressive,” Rudi said. Though he wasn’t familiar with the details of the Chinese energy farm, China didn’t do anything on a small scale these days.
“Between wind, solar, wave, and geothermal power, Île de l’Est generates as much electricity as the state of Colorado.”
This astounded Rudi. “Five million people live in Colorado.”
“And it’s cold there,” Yaeger added. “Why would this little tropical island need that much power?”
“According to official sources, Île de l’Est is envisioned as a power plant for the islands of the Indian Ocean. It’s already connected to the four most populous islands of the Seychelles by underwater cables. By the end of the decade it’s expected to be linked to both Madagascar and the African mainland.”
The end of the decade was a long way off for an island generating massive amounts of power right now. Something didn’t add up. “You better give us the rundown.”
“Until six years ago,” Max began, “Île de l’Est was uninhabited. The government of the Seychelles then contracted with the Pallos Corporation of Australia to build a geothermal plant that would generate all the electricity needed on the various populated islands of the Seychelles. The project went over budget and fell into bankruptcy prior to completion. It was sold lock, stock, and barrel to Ezra Vaughn. Vaughn abandoned the geothermal project in favor of solar farms, wind turbines, and a ring of wave-power generators that are not visible on this satellite image.”
Rudi leaned back, sensing little to be concerned about, but across from him Yaeger wore a troubled look. “Something wrong?”
Yaeger spoke slowly. “Ezra Vaughn could be a problem,” he said. “He’s a fanatical technologist and futurist. He’s also one of the few people on earth who might be able to hack our system and get away with it.”
Chapter 38
Hiram Yaeger had been designing advanced computer systems since he was a teenager. He’d developed several new coding languages and held more design patents for chips and software than any single individual in the world. He was also extremely confident, to the point that Rudi couldn’t recall him sizing up a rival as being particularly dangerous.