[SAINT] Infection

ON>

A chime sounded, alerting Wolf to an incoming communication request. SAINT-level encryptions and anti-tracing were active upon reception.

Wolf, already sitting at his desk, accepted the incoming communicate after a second's confusion. It had been a long time since he had been contacted on this channel and he'd nearly forgotten the correct combination of keys to put it through. When he finally did so, he spoke out with a gruff voice. "Hello, this is Wolf."

A Yamataian man appeared on the screen. "Hello, sir. This is the Lab. We have complete preliminary examination of the Rei; I was told you wished an update as soon as it was available." The man was standing before a wall-mounted console, straight and facing the comm camera.

Wolf nodded. The Sakura-class vessel Rei had been disabled with circumstances curious enough to warrant the involvement of SAINT. While Karl and Wolf had collected enough evidence to deem the Iori Star Fortress mission complete, the initial alert concerning the Rei had piqued Wolf's interest: there was likely no connection, and certainly no SAINT conspiracy this time around, but as he had nothing better to do than drill the next generation of field agents, he had put in a request to be updated. "Yes, what did you turn up?"

The man on the screen coughed into his fist glancing down at a datapad before replying. "The crew was DOA, dead on arrival. The first ship to reply to the Rei's distress call was unable to board but we assume the last of the crew were the ones who rigged the call, so their demise was likely recorded. The causes were varied, from asphyxiation from decompression to environmental damage from a presumably malfunctioning control system, and even firearms damage. Except for the last one...I'm sending you the picture for this one." The man tapped a command into his pad and a file transfer notice appeared on Wolf's screen. "The ship's MEGAMI is unresponsive, possibly non-functional, but we can't find a reason why.

"We are beginning to suspect that this was caused by the MEGAMI -- called 'Nami', I'm told -- mainly because of the picture I just sent you." The holographic photo showed a wide shot of the bridge of the vessel, untouched at first glance. The consoles were shiney under the bridge's lighting while the photo seemed to have been taken with a red lens filter, but closer examination proved this assumption wrong. The bridge really was covered in red. A body lay seated on the captain's chair, the limbs properly set with only the limp head signaling the death of the chair's occupant.

Wolf's eyes narrowed at the sight of the bridge. He had truthfully expected the results of the analysis to be rather mundane; he figured he was overreacting to a complicated ship malfunction, but the source of the trouble seemed to be more sinister in nature. "Firearms damage? Star Army in origin, or foreign? Is this blood on the bridge? What was the cause of death for the person in the captain's chair?"

"That is still a bit of a mystery." The man looked up from his pad at the camera. "The ship itself is also damaged, mostly to the computer core and power relay systems, but they appear mostly due to overload rather than external damage. The main engine also seems to have experienced an attempted overload. And the decompression damage is from a hull breach. There are no signs of external damage aside from the hull breach which is clearly from the inside-out. So whatever did this was on board at the time. We have already taken the first-response ship into quarantine and searched it, but neither ship has turned up anything out of the ordinary." Taking a breath, he continued. "As I said, the prevailing theory is that the MEGAMI malfunctioned or a virus. And, before you say anything, I know, it's supposed to be impossible. But that's what it looks like, and our lab AIs have reported system anomalies since they probed the Yamato's systems. We've since deactivated them and quarantined their cores until we can figure out what's going on.

"The cause of death for the commander was blood loss. If you look closer..." He magnified a portion of the photo, zooming in on the face of the officer. "...you can see multiple -- and I do mean 'multiple', looks like deli-sliced ham -- incisions running vertically over the body. These incisions are just deep enough to break the skin. The blood was drained and used to perform the new paint-job on the bridge and the starboard corridor before it ran out." The man shook his head. "Sir, there were no firearms discharged inside the ship aside from the crew. All scarring matches the weapons found on the crew, nothing else is present. And the crew, aside from the commander, died of environmental factors. That's all."

Wolf listened attentively as the intelligence officer elaborated, checking to ensure that the conversation was being recorded. He looked up as the photograph was magnified and arched an eyebrow at the deli-sliced ham comment: it was truly fitting, and reminded Wolf of the Mishhu encounters on the Iori. He prayed that there were no hybrids behind this disaster. "All right, I misunderstood, I thought some of our personnel died by Star Army weapons." As SAINT so often dealt with internal affairs, it did not seem like a farfetched conclusion. The most pressing matter then was the seeming infection of the MEGAMI. The KAMI unit of the Iori had malfunctioned with similar results, but SAINT itself had played a part in that. He wouldn't have thought it possible for some unknown force to pull off what SAINT had, but he figured that all tech had its drawbacks. "How will the investigation proceed? Would it be possible to activate the lab AIs in quarantine and see if they show signs of alteration?"

"The scene reconstructions put those deaths as by friendly fire, assumed to be sprites," interjected the man when Wolf commented on the deaths by SA weapons. "We have been deepening our physical evidence analysis, mostly in attempts to confirm our initial timeline. The systems are being repaired and prepped for reactivation, should it become necessary. I would recommend not doing so, however. As for the AIs, I give the same recommendation. If, indeed, we are facing a virus and the AIs have contracted it, it would be unwise..." his voice trailed off as his eyes moved off to one side, looking away from the camera as he thought over an idea. "We could reactivate the AIs within their cores, without physical interaction options and isolated from the main networks. It wouldn't be a perfect recreation of the conditions found on the Rei, but if the symptoms are the same, it may give us an idea of what we're up against." The smile of someone with a clue to an impossible puzzle showed itself on the man's face as he returned his gaze to the camera.

"I see." Wolf nodded as he explained the likely next step. "Sounds good. I'd like to be notified immediately if the AIs exhibit any of the same behaviors as the rogue KAMI unit encountered on the Iori mission." Wolf doubted he'd be involved in the investigation if there were no parallels drawn to the Iori, but he wanted to know what was going on regardless. SAINT training was beginning to get stale, and he wished to remain in the know about what was going on intelligence-wise to hold him over until he introduced a chosen pupil or two to actual field work. "If there's no connection, just send me a report when you get around to it."

"Will do." The man nodded and saluted Wolf, leaving the connection open until his superior closed it, as per protocol when one was speaking over comm lines to ranking officers.

"Thanks for the information. Good luck." Wolf nodded in return and closed the channel.

END>

ON>

A communications alert sought Wolf out and let him know that the techie from the Lab. The standard notices that personal encryptions were active, as well as identification code requests, appeared when he was able to answer it.

"Eh?" Wolf was standing with Ghi in the DIAS of the police station outside of the room where Doctor Tazaar was being held. They were about to enter and begin the interrogation when a datapad in Wolf's pocket beeped to alert him of an incoming communication. At first glance, the standard SAINT encryption protocols were in place which would make it a priority call, but the origin was unfamiliar to him. Wolf prepared to mute the beeping before realizing that the call was from the Lab working on the Rei case. Wolf hesitated: he was in the middle of something to be sure, but as he had specially requested to be updated as to the progress, he didn't think it fitting to ignore the communicate.

"Excuse me," he addressed to Ghi, "Have to take this, important SAINT business, you know." He winked before walking down the hall and towards the nearest computer. Hmm, taking the call through the datapad will be bad if I need to see something in detail, but I doubt I can record on one of these if they even have the necessary comms software. Shrugging, he accepted the communicate through the pad and checked for recording as he greeted the Tech. "Hello, this is Wolf, what've you got?"

The Lab tech was frowning, looking off to one side of the video camera, probably at another screen on the terminal he was using. His attention quickly turned to Wolf when the agent answered the comm request. "Sir, this is the Lab. I have a report concerning the Rei computer problem." He glanced to the side screen before continuing. "It's not exactly good news."

Wolf hadn't thought much about the Rei incident after figuring that it wasn't related to the Iori Star Fortress mission, but the serious look of the tech reminded him of the potential gravity of the situation. He recalled the image of the bridge drenched in blood, the knowledge of an entire crew dead. The Star Army dealt with conflicts daily, but it wasn't often that a MEGAMI malfunctioned in such a disastrous way. "Wouldn't have thought so. Give me one minute to get some privacy." Wolf wandered down a hallway or two before coming across an empty break room. It wasn't necessarily going to be classified information, but Wolf still looked to both sides of the hall and ensured the room was empty so as not to be overheard. "Go on. These results came from activating the AI in quarantine?"

"Well, we reactivated a core, as suggested. It was decided that we should only use one of the two laboratory MEGAMIs that reported problems for tracking the progress of the anomaly, and save the other for testing cures...and, frankly, I haven't seen anything like this in a computer before." The techie sighed, then continued. "It's a rather long list of symptoms. I'll try to be brief.

"We fed it a simulation program from an isolated computer that didn't have an AI attached, faking a ship for the affected MEGAMI to interact with. Of course, the MEGAMI was aware of the simulation, but she went with it to help us out after we explained the situation. And, at first, it was just simple anomalies...though, you know, MEGAMIs aren't supposed to have any programming errors at all, which made it rather odd from the start. PANTHEON usually fixes them on the fly, which could explain why the lab MEGAMI that we observed went down so quickly.

"Nothing but random anomalies appeared at first. Then, thirty minutes into the simulation, she lost internal sensors. The routines running the sensors were scrambled beyond recognition, it was incredible to watch. System code was being rearranged like tiles in a mosaic, which made it impossible to see what new code might be causing it. Ten minutes after that, the scrambling spread to several other areas. Though they were mostly auxiliary and nonessential subroutines, the scrambling also caused the user interfaces -- terminal screens and the holographic avatars mostly -- to be garbled, then those crashed completely.

"After that, external sensors went on alert, activating weapons and shields, but not firing. Internal sensors began to flood with random security alerts, several tagged the simulated crew as threats. About this time, the AI seemed to think that the simulation was real and began creating sprites to deal with the perceived threats. Someone got the idea to feed the reconstructed crew movements and reactions based on what we gathered from the Rei incident into the simulation to see what happened. After all, the lab AI is basically the same system, so if given the same stimulus...anyway, what the lab AI did to them was not quite what we expected." The techie paused, seeing how Wolf reacted before continuing.

It was a lot to take in, but Wolf was thankful that Star Army had basically personified their computers, as it made the whole thing a bit easier to follow. He made his way to the table in the center of the room as the tech explained, sitting down and propping the datapad against a box. As the tech paused momentarily, Wolf rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes as he began, "All right, I think I follow so far. What happened...just a second please." Wolf had reopened his eyes and realized that the box was actually home to donuts, which he requisitioned and immediately began scarfing down. How stereotypical he thought as he sat back down and explained, "I'm sorry, I was in the field not too long ago." He smiled before realizing it might not be terribly appropriate, and so resumed his gruff tone and serious facade as he prompted the tech to continue: "How did the AI react when the 'crew' was introduced?"

The techie was almost surprised to see Wolf start on the donuts, but he didn't show it. Typical agent...never understanding the critical nature of a find like this. And there had never been a find like this before, he thought. Or was it that Wolf had already seen this sort of thing, and worse, so he was still confidant of the team's eventual success? The techie hadn't eaten for a day, at least, he had been working almost non-stop on the problem...but having a superior's confidence loosened the worry-knot in his stomach.

"Um...well, the reaction was almost random, but we pinned it down to mixed-up protocols. When it targeted the crew as intruders and threats, the sprites and MEGAMI followed standard protocol reactions but combined some and switched others around. For example, crew labeled as a boarding party got hammered with fire-suppression and then flushed out to space through the nearest airlock. And other protocols were followed, but their targets were wrong. Somehow other crew were tagged as computer viruses and...well...'disassembled' would put it accurately and be the cleanest terminology I could use. On a personal note, it was at that point several of us switched to watching the code instead of the simulation video.

"Finally, the last symptoms appeared nearly all at once. The simulated power systems and circuits ship-wide overloaded and, as with the Rei, the MEGAMI attempted an overload of the main drive core. Meanwhile, her personality construct turned off, leaving her in a pure computation mode and the hemosynth conduit systems and all fluid pumps shut down followed by the reservoirs for all liquid-based systems opening and flushing either to space or flooding the ship. Oh, we also found that the amount of blood used in the Rei's new internal paint job was more than could come from the captain, a large quantity of the blood was from the hemosynth system, probably as a result of this malfunction.

"For the finale, the simulated ship blew up. Several real processors blew out and quantum state collapsed, dropping the MEGAMI to STL processing. The core has since locked itself in a programming loop...strangely enough, that seems to be a result of the scrambling. It's like the anomaly set itself up to reduce the AI's ability to process information until she could only process one thing over and over. We're trying to figure out what that thing is, but it'll take some time since she's incapable of the superluminal processing and still trying to deal with a lot of data." The techie looked back at the side screen, double-checking something, then looked back at Wolf and nodded. "That's all we have. We are quite uneasy working with this; it's nothing we've ever seen before. Well, everyone except for Soryu. And she's making the others more nervous because, frankly, I've never seen her so excited."

"Hmm, quite a list." Every time Wolf figured the tech was about finished, he came up with another debilitating effect. A few questions sprung to mind easily, as Wolf's chief interest in the case was still the similarities to the Iori Star Fortress. "So we know what it does, but do we know what caused it? Simple--well, not really simple, I guess the word is "honest"--ship malfunction, or planned attack? And if it were malicious, do we know what it was intended to do?"

"Seeing that the lab MEGAMI showed similar results to what we think happened with Nami -- the Rei's MEGAMI -- I'd say virus...except there were no signs of a virus in what we found on the Rei's core, nor was one detected during the lab test. It's like the system had a spontaneous increase in entropy...right now we're focusing on containment, but Miss Soryu is already working on vaccines. There is one piece of good news, and that is that it doesn't seem to have spread to PANTHEON. But at the same time, that seems impossible since the lab AIs appear to have been infected...it doesn't make sense that one system would fall and the network would remain unaffected...I'm sorry, I'm side-tracking again." He shrugged. "Going with the assumption that these are attacks, it may be that someone may be testing a new virus, or, gods forbid, has developed a way to successfully hack PANTHEON. Which leads me to ask: Should we request the aid of PANTHEON or would that be tempting an infection of the entire system?"

Wolf leaned back and stared at the table, absently rubbing his chin while speaking in a voice that suggested he was thinking aloud more than he was trying to elicit a response. "Well, if there were a trace I think that would have been the most important piece of information. So we don't know it's an attack as opposed to a random error. Of course, MEGAMI aren't supposed to be susceptible to 'random errors.' But it'd be a risk to expose PANTHEON to possible infection considering it could be an isolated incident, since not all the evidence points to virus.

"The alternative is to step back, forget it ever happened, and just be ready to look for a trace if it happens again. Neither choice is too appealing, but I suppose all we can really do is stay alert and keep an eye out...And keep analyzing data." Wolf looked back at the tech. "I don't suppose I can be of much help, but I'd still like to be updated if your analysis turns up anything new. You gone over everything you meant to with me?"

"Everything I have at this time, sir," said the tech, nodding to Wolf. "I'm sorry I can't answer any of the really important questions. But we'll do our best to find those answers."

"Don't worry. You're doing good work so far. If the answers are there, you'll find them. Thanks for the continuing reports. Out." With a nod, Wolf closed the communication channel. He stood up, pocketed the datapad, and grabbed the box of donuts before leaving to return to Ghi and the mission at hand.

END>