Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

C.23

General Brewster moved en masse with Tony Flickinger and several of his senior engineers down the tech country corridor to the Computer Center.

It was business as usual here, except on the global net where, according to his people, everything was falling apart like a house of cards. Nothing they tried seemed to work.

"There has to be a mistake," Brewster said, his stomach sour. He couldn't remember if he'd eaten lunch. "As of fifteen hundred hours, all primary military systems were secure."

The hallway went through the Research & Development wing; glassed-in tech areas and clean rooms where some of their cutting-edge work was being done. Scientists and engineers in white suits, paper caps and booties, and respirators operated a wide range of remote manipulators, electronic test equipment, and biohazard glove boxes. The latest cybernetic prototypes were being put together here.

The people behind the glass walls, enclosed in their hermetic spaces, seemed oblivious to the mounting chaos outside. But they were the purists, Brewster thought. They were the creators of the individual bits and pieces, so they did not have to worry about the whole.

The environment was comfortable for them. CRS made sure of it.

"They were secure," one of the senior engineers said. Brewster couldn't recall his name. "Only the civilian sector was affected — the Internet, air traffic, power plants, that sort of thing."

"But then?" Brewster prompted.

"But then a few minutes ago we got word that guidance computers at Vandenburg crashed."

"We thought it was a communications error," one of the other senior engineers said. Brewster thought his name might be Tobias.

"But?" Brewster asked. There were always buts in this business.

"Now it looks like the virus," Tobias admitted.

Flickinger wore a headset that connected him to the mainframe. He pressed the earpiece a little tighter. They were even starting to have trouble with internal communications. "Early warning in Alaska is down," he said.

Brewster stopped in midstride. "Why?" This wasn't happening.

"Signals from half our satellites are scrambled beyond recognition," another of the engineers said.

"What about our missile silos, our submarines?" Brewster demanded.

"We've lost contact," Tobias said.

To the engineers this was merely a problem in systems integration; a technical glitch, a problem that in the aircraft industry was called an unk-unk. An unknown-unknown. Troubles were certain to pop up in the start-up of any complicated system. And most of them were expected. But there were always the few problems that no one could predict. Except to predict that they would occur.

They were the unk-unks, which were happening this moment with the worldwide network of communications systems; what the military called Technical Means.

"Dear God. You're saying that the country is completely open to attack?" Brewster demanded.

His chief engineer glanced at the others, and nodded. "Theoretically we could be under attack already, and we wouldn't know it."

"Who's doing this? A foreign power? Or is it some teenage hacker in his garage?"

Flickinger shook his head. He was at a loss. "We can't trace the virus. We can't pin it down."

"It's like nothing we've ever seen," Tobias added. "It keeps growing. Changing. Like it's got a mind of its own." Brewster moved to the glass wall of the Power Lab. A humanoid torso, its chest open to reveal a pair of power units and a maze of electronic circuitry and servos, was set up on a test stand. A white-coated lab tech was taking a reading on a frequency spectrum analyzer. Wires snaked from several pieces of test equipment to the cybernetic device.

To the technician doing his work this afternoon everything was crystal clear. They all were on overtime, but sooner or later he would go home, perhaps to a wife and children. A cold beer, a shower, dinner, and afterward lovemaking. Brewster felt far removed from that sort of a simple existence. With each star that had been pinned on his shoulders, he'd taken a giant step away from any kind of a normal life.

"I don't understand," he said to his engineers. "This can't be happening."

Watching the lab tech work, Brewster wondered if he would trade with the man right now; even up, life-for-life. But he didn't have the answer. It wasn't that simple.

"Sir, the Pentagon's on the secure line," Flickinger said. "It's the chairman."

Brewster tore his eyes away from the lab tech, and nodded. "All right."

At the end of the corridor they went through double doors into the two-story open Computer Center that took up the entire end of the R&D wing. Dozens of technicians and operators, some of them military, some of them civilian, worked at computer consoles scattered throughout the big room. Many of them worked in open quad cubicles, while others worked in the Mainframe Control Center behind glass partitions. There were no windows in the room, only the louvers of large air-conditioning vents.

There was a hum of feverish activity here this afternoon that wasn't normal. Blinking warning lights, hurried telephone conversations as operators tried to reestablish communications, flashing computer screens, error messages all warning that the global net was in the process of totally collapsing.

Brewster strode directly over to one of the duty officer's positions, snatched the red secure phone, and punched the bunking encrypt light.

"Brewster," he barked. His engineers and several of the techs gathered around him to find out what was going on.

Admiral James F. Morrison, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was on the line. "We're hoping to hell you've got some kind of solution for us," he shouted. He was angrier than Brewster had ever heard him. And the admiral was well known for his short fuse.

"I know what you're looking for, sir, but Skynet is not ready for a system-wide connection," Brewster said.

Washington had been pressuring him to at least bring Skynet on-line. All the high-tech weapons and other toys could wait. But Skynet was ready now, at least it was in the estimation of a lot of congressional and Beltway insiders. And that included Admiral Morrison. Brewster was damned if he didn't and damned by a different but no less powerful contingent if he did.

"That's not what your civilian counterparts over there just told me," Morrison railed. "They're telling me that whiz-bang project I just spent fifteen billion dollars on can stop this damn virus."

"Sir, there are other steps that we should consider first—"

"Bob, I don't have time for that," Morrison countered.

"I've got nuke boats and silos, and I don't know what the hell messages this virus is sending them."

Brewster glanced at his people and shook his head. He was on the losing side of this argument.

"I understand there's a certain amount of performance anxiety over there, but your boys are saying that if we plug Skynet into all our systems, it'll squash this thing like a bug and give me back control of my military."

It had to be Shelby talking to the admiral. But Shelby was only a bean counter.

"Mr. Chairman, I need to be real clear about this," Brewster started. He would try one last time to get Morrison to slow down and think it out "If we uplink now, Skynet will be in control of the military."

"But you'll be in control of Skynet, right?" the admiral shot back.

"That's correct," Brewster answered cautiously.

"Then do it," Morrison ordered. "And, Bob? This thing works, you got all the funding you ever need."

"Yes, sir," Brewster said. He slowly replaced the red phone on its cradle.

He stood for a moment, thinking it out. The nets were all crashing, so uplinking to Skynet could in itself be problematic.

But, and this was a very large but in his mind, if they could uplink with Skynet, and the system took out the virus, could they just as easily shut it down?

Skynet was nothing short of tenacious, and ingenious. It had been designed to think for itself; to adapt to any and all threats against it.

Brewster wondered when all was said and done if Skynet would consider them a threat

He turned to his people. "Okay. Set it up," he ordered.

"Yes, General," Patricia Talbot replied. She was a CRS systems chief tech. A sharp woman.

She strode across the room to the Mainframe Control Center, issuing orders like a destroyer captain taking her ship into battle.