The Kraken Project

13

The limo brought Ford to where the service drive was blocked by police barriers and patrolled by FBI agents. Ford got out. It was a glorious fall day, the maple leaves blushing red, the sky full of puffy clouds. The walls of the Goddard testing facility building were still standing, but much of the roof seemed to be lying in pieces on the surrounding lawns. Investigators wearing hazmat suits moved slowly through the wreckage, collecting evidence in blue containers and planting small numbered flags.

Ford walked toward a tent and staging area set up on the service drive. As he pulled aside the flap and entered, he had to negotiate racks of hazmat suits and communications equipment, emergency decontamination showers — and dozens of investigators milling about, writing up notes, speaking on walkie-talkies, and handling evidence. He finally found the waiting area, where he was to meet the director of the Kraken Project.

He recognized Anthony Groves from the dossier Lockwood had supplied him with. Groves saw him and came over, his right forearm in a bandage. They shook left hands. Groves’s hand was clammy and weak.

“Dr. Groves? I’m Wyman Ford.”

“Please call me Tony.”

Groves looked like hell — as well he might, Ford thought, his face pale and beaded with sweat despite the fall air. More than anything, he looked like a man undone, on the verge of a breakdown but gamely keeping up.

When Groves spoke, there was a quaver in his voice. “So how … would you like to do this?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like a tour of the disaster area.”

“Of course. We have to put on hazmats. And we’ll need an escort.”

A security officer found them suits, and they followed him through the blown-out entrance doors into the ruined space. Groves began to talk, almost babble, as they trailed behind the escort.

“All these heavy machines and equipment directed most of the explosion upward.” His voice was muffled behind the plastic face mask. “It blew off the roof but saved many, many lives.”

The security officer, also in a hazmat, led them along a pathway cleared of debris, and soon they came to a gigantic steel container, petaled like a flower.

“The accident occurred in that testing tank, which we called the Bottle.”

“Where were you standing?”

“Right over there, where the remains of the control platform are.” Groves indicated a spot next to a bank of shattered computer equipment, a horseshoe-shaped series of screens, dials, keyboards, and gauges. Now it lay ripped open, its masses of colored wires twisted in huge ropes and snarls amid scattered circuit boards, racks, and dangling hard drives.

“And Jack Stein, one of the victims, was standing there?” Ford pointed to an area, still stained with blood, festooned with little flags and markers.

“Yes. Jack … was right next to me. He refused to abandon his station. Six others were killed over in that area, all together, where they took the full force of the blast.”

As Groves described what had happened, Ford tried to picture how things had looked before the explosion.

“Where was Shepherd standing?”

“There, next to Jack.”

“Why didn’t Stein run?”

“He remained to the end,” said Groves. His voice was shaking now. “He was trying to shut down the Explorer. He stayed because … he had the most courage.” Groves swallowed. “I … somehow I feel wrong about having run. I’m the captain of the ship, I can’t help but feel I should have gone down with it, and not Stein. Or the others.”

“You sounded the alarm?”

“Shepherd, Stein, and I were the first to realize what was happening. It took a moment to understand that the probe was actually drilling through the Bottle — and what would happen when it broke through.”

Ford peered around, trying to visualize what had happened. “Tell me about Shepherd. What was her reaction before the accident, when the probe went haywire?”

“Total disbelief. Shock. Denial.”

“No sign she was expecting it?”

“Absolutely none. And any suggestion that this was other than a freak accident is ridiculous. She was one of the best members of my team.”

Ford nodded. “Mind if I look around?”

“Please.”

Ford made a long, slow walk around the burst Bottle, with Groves following behind. “How was the Kraken Project structured?”

“The project was divided into working groups. Each group was responsible for a particular technology or science experiment. Each drew up what they wanted the Explorer to be able to do. That determined what the software needed to accomplish. Shepherd’s team drew up a plan for the Dorothy software based on all those requirements.”

“Dorothy? That was the name of the software?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s a tradition here at Goddard — spacecraft and major software programs often get nicknames.”

“But why Dorothy?”

“I have no idea where Shepherd got the name.”

“Another question: could Shepherd, from her hospital bed, access the Goddard network and steal or erase the software?”

“I would say that was impossible, but computer programming is not my forte.”

“Anyone else have that kind of access?”

“I don’t think so. I just don’t understand it. The Goddard network’s totally firewalled.”

“You don’t believe Shepherd was involved in stealing or erasing the software?”

“I’m almost positive she wasn’t.”

“Tell me about this AI breakthrough.”

“Frankly, it’s over my head. She created a new way of thinking about programming. It involved something called scruffy logic.”

“Scruffy logic?”

“Loose and fast logic. A way to attack intractable problems. The Dorothy software was able to learn from its mistakes and rewrite its own code. Shepherd pushed it through a bunch of simulations, and the Dorothy program modified itself so extensively that in the end no one understood how it operated, not even Shepherd. That, in hindsight, was the source of the problem.”

“And this software works on any platform?”

“Shepherd wanted it to be hardware agnostic. All the AI needs is a minimum processor speed, RAM, and storage.”

“Why would you put a program that no one understood into a hundred-million-dollar space probe and then drop the probe into a tank full of liquid methane?”

A long silence. Ford waited for the answer, and it finally came: “It was a colossal mistake. I see that now.”

“Tell me about Shepherd — as a person.”

Groves hesitated. “Ambitious. Focused. Obsessive. Totally dedicated. There are a lot of smart people in the world, but she wasn’t just smart. She was one of those actual geniuses. Look, I know that word is thrown around a lot, but there are very few true geniuses in this world. She was one. They don’t think like the rest of us. It’s as simple as that. And she was a difficult person. Prickly. Awkward. As smart as she was, in other ways she acted like a complete idiot. She compartmentalized her team. None of them had the complete picture. She kept stuff back. It almost seemed like she wanted to keep them in the dark.”

“Habits?”

“Fitness freak, a runner, skier, and mountain climber.” He paused.

“Now tell me the bad things.”

“That’s not my style.”

“This is an investigation, not a cocktail party.”

“Well … she had a foul mouth. Didn’t like to follow rules. A rebel. She was socially awkward. Offended people without meaning to.”

“Keep going.”

“Well, she didn’t really fit into the culture here. I understand there was some trouble in her background. We had difficulty getting her a security clearance. And…” He paused. “She had several relationships with people here.”

Ford raised his eyebrows. “Sexual relationships?”

“Yes. She cut a rather wide swath through here when she first arrived, before she settled down. I don’t care about my team’s personal lives as long as they get their work done, but she threatened the cohesiveness of the team with her … dating. She was also super dedicated, here almost all the time, seven days a week for the most part. But she slept with several people, and that’s always worrisome, especially on a tightly knit team like the Titan Explorer project. I think some of that activity might have taken place on the premises.”

“Were you surprised when she disappeared?”

“No. The only predictable thing about her was her unpredictability.”

“Family?”

“None. Mother died when she was fourteen, and I understand she never knew her father. After that, she was raised by an aunt and uncle in Texas, religious people, very strict. I guess she fell in with the wrong crowd and ran away from home. It’s amazing she turned her life around. You have her CV, no doubt. Her graduate study at Cornell was nothing short of spectacular.”

“Music?”

“Heavy metal. She listened while she was coding. There were some complaints about it from her coworkers.”

“Money troubles?”

“None that I know of. Nobody works at NASA for the money. She could have quadrupled her salary by going into private industry.”

“Is there any possibility at all that she might be thinking of selling the program to a foreign government?”

Groves stared at him. “Good God, don’t tell me that’s some crazy theory floating around the investigation.”

“Yes.”

“Absolute horseshit. I know Melissa. She’s a loyal American. I think the reason she took off is because she’s horrified about what happened. She feels responsible. Seven people died. She and Jack Stein had a thing going for a while. She’s grieving. And with a concussion … God knows, she might even be a little confused.”

Ford nodded, then gave one last look around the room. “All right, I think we’re done here. Thank you.”

As they walked back out across the debris-littered lawn to the staging area, Ford thought about the name Dorothy. It would be interesting to know just where that name came from.