Chapter 24: The Helix And The Pentegram

Right now a thousand different things were cascading across his mind’s eye. He had so many things he could or should be focusing on but for some reason following through on Tarja’s hunch was the only one that seemed tangible at the moment. Maybe that was for the better. Maybe descending into the Lambda archives was a better use of his time then idling around waiting to be debriefed by his superiors.

Cade rode an elevator down into the bowels of Lambda HQ. The Lambda Helix - Node was deep underground, even deeper than the lowest parts of the Under City. It took the elevator some time to descend into Earth, lunging away toward the planet’s core. When the lift finally came to a stop Cade stepped out into a remarkably unremarkable beige hallway. It was dimly lit by thin lines of light-emitting wire running along the edge of the ceiling. The entire structure down here looked vacuum molded, as if a hot wax was poured into a crucible and when it dried these featureless, edgeless hallways remained. He didn’t pass anyone as he walked down the twisting corridors looking for a door labeled “Node”. He knew no one worked down on this level, and very few people ever had need to come here. This was only his third trip down to these levels. Lambda kept all sorts of little secrets down here. Maybe that was the most ominous part. As he passed sealed door after sealed door he began to wonder how many other lambda… how many other people knew what went on behind these archways.

The Helix-Node was in its own climate-controlled room at the end of the hall, and Cade felt a slight chill as he entered, much like the one in the Magdalenes’ server room. The Node itself was not very big but still impressive. It was kept in a clear acrylic tube maybe twice the height of a man and just wide enough to get your arms around. Inside was a hexagonal metallic sphere about the size of a soccer ball. It was suspended in a green tinted liquid and had a single cable plugged into the bottom that ran out into a type of hub that had at least a dozen cables running out from it. Each of these cables were plugged into different jacks along the walls of the room. That was all but one cable, which plugged into an old style terminal with a keyboard and a screen just in front of the tube that housed the apparatus. This node, or data-hub, was a top-of-the-line unit and had theoretically infinite storage and transmission capacity. Cade walked up to it and removed a cold chrome device about the size of a deck of cards from his coat. He ran a wire from the device to a jack on the node. He didn’t actually need this device to interface with the machine. His own neural implants were more than capable of doing the job, but this device would allow him to make an external copy of any information he found. The keyboard and screen in front of him were really more of an obstacle than an interface for Cade. Rather than typing in a string of commands he simply connected to the node wirelessly.
A holographic interface wrapped itself around his field of view. A network of branches interconnected together with clusters and nodes stretched out into the distance in all directions. It always disoriented him at first. It was a floating sensation, like being plunged into warm water.

After the sensation passed Cade found himself looking down at a holographic projection of the Solar System. Each of the planets in the Sol system were represented by an icon with a series of statistics floating beneath them. These numbers and variables gave information about how many connections each of these worlds currently had and how the data was being sent through the Helix network as a whole. Anyone of these planetary ions was expendable but Cade shifted his focus to Earth’s. As he zoomed the little Icon for the plant slowly grew into something akin to an atomic lattice structure. It was a highly organized shape with hundreds of smaller spheres arranged as a hexagonal prism. These represented the world Nodes that made up the backbone of the Helix Network for the Planet. As Cade zoomed further and further into the massive network, little wispy light blue lines started to appear.

The deeper he went into the structure the more and more these wisps dominated his field of view until they were everywhere like billions of tiny fireflies swarming around in a massive hurricane. These were the individual user of the Helix, everyone one of these tiny specks of dust was a man, woman or child wearing a Helix earing and their motion through the space Cade was observing represented not only where the were on the world but what they were accessing. Anyone one of these tiny points of light could be expanded and Cade could see every thought, feeling, hope and fear of the person it represented. Each one of these ticks was, in a very real sense, a world onto their own that could be expanded just like Cade was doing with the node’s themselves. The whirlwind was almost overwhelming so Cade focused hard on only the hubs, which now were the size of the moon in his field of view. Eventually the cyclones of users faded away and what cade was left with was a single yellow sphere that represented the Node he was physically standing in front of under Lambda Headquarters.

From here a list of commands popped out from the side of the globe he was viewing. Cade had options to do almost anything, but the one he wanted was “upload”.

The Helix itself interfaced with memories, thoughts and feeling from each user. Only a Lambda with Cade’s level of clearance had control over what he was uploading. This was done for security reasons but this also allowed Cade to be very judicious about what he put into the system.

Cade considered for a moment, he had to put out the right bait if he was going to catch Tarja’s Data purger in the act, and he needed to catch it in the act if it really was out there wiping information.

Eventually he settled on something from the information Tarja told him about; a text account of some old protest in the city, the overall goals of this protest were something of a mystery, but it seems they thought by blocking streets and shutting down trains they could achieve it. He thought about the report he read, and mentally uploaded it back into the network.

He wanted to see if anyone or anything would grab it. He saw the packet’s icon move through the network to the next node. It copied itself, then sent the copies out to all of its possible connections, where it repeated the process.

It wasn’t long before the packets, represented by little envelop icons, filled his entire view, having stretched out far and deep into the Helix Network.

Cade was waiting for something. Something that never happened. Nothing came to find or purge these random packets. Was Priestess Tarja mistaken? If someone connected to the Helix, or the Helix itself, was trying to delete or suppress information, surely it would have found the report he had released. Maybe Tarja had her facts wrong. Maybe he needed something less random. Something more specific…

Cade created another packet, this time a section of the history book the priestess had presented to him entitled “The American Revolution”.

He cast the packet out into the network. Nearly immediately, the nodes lit up in response. As the packet copied and replicated itself, a symbol he had never seen before emerged deep in the distance. A Helix with an upside-down star around it began to search through the structure. What the hell was this? It started to attach itself to the nodes his packet had “infected.” It purged the data. Maybe Tarja wasn’t nuts. Maybe there was someone or something inside the network. Clearly it was intent on purging information on this revolution.

This gave Cade the opportunity he needed. Only members of Lambda had access to Helix log files. The hope was that if something should ever offline the Helix, Lambda would be able to recover it and piece it back together.

After the little Helix star scanned Cade’s packet in the current node, it moved on to another.

Cade mentally pulled up another interface, but this time the list of commands and options that floated in his view wasn’t for the Helix node, these were his own personal lines of code. In amongst the commands for data creation, scanning, and movement was one, a personal addition to his software that Lambda was unaware of. The command was labeled “mask”, and it’s intent was simple. As cade triggered it he felt a slight tingling sensation all over his body and he knew that now, as far as the Helix was concerned, he was no longer there. It would still respond to any commands he gave it, but it wouldn’t know it was doing so. As far as the Helix was concerned, any command it received would be coming from some random remote location, and even then only as long as it was performing the action, afterwards any action it took would conveniently fail to be logged in it’s history.

Now that Cade was effectively invisible, he allowed himself to slowly drift down to where the pentagram-like icon was busy scanning through another node. He needed to be careful with this, because while the Helix itself couldn’t see him, he didn’t want to take any chances that whatever this program was wouldn’t have special security measures above and beyond the usual.

Cade studied the program for a moment, it didn’t appear to take any notice of him, but the real test of that was coming. He concentrated on it for a moment, willing it’s terminal access to manifest for him.

Again the icon seemed to take no notice of him as the list swam into view for Cade. He browsed through the options for a moment, before instructing it to display its internal file structure for him. Cade’s hope is that it would have records of everything it had purged from this node, but what he found was far more extensive.

There were pectabytes of data imprisoned inside. Most of the purged information was indeed historical, Tarja was right. According to this program’s log there were deleted entries from virtually every time period, stretching as far back as the records for the Sumerians.

“But why?” Cade thought to himself, “Out of fear it would give people ideas?” He considered for an idle moment.

The prospect shocked him to the core like a bolt of lightning. This couldn’t have been something recent. No, it would have taken decades, maybe longer, to have removed this much history from public knowledge with no one noticing. He had to grab a record of the log, he had to grab as much of it as he could before unplugging. He began downloading the files;


c. 2380 BC (short chronology): A popular revolt in the Sumerian city of Lagash deposes King Lugalanda and puts the reformer Urukagina on the throne.

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• 570 BC: A revolt breaks out among native Egyptian soldiers, giving Amasis II opportunity to seize the throne.

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• 508/7 BC: The Athenian Revolution establishing democracy in Athens.

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• 73–71 BC: The failed Roman slave rebellion, led by the gladiator Spartacus.

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• 49–45 BC: Julius Caesar crossed the river Rubicon heading part of the Roman army and marched on Rome. After overthrowing and assuming control of Pompeian government, he was proclaimed "dictator.

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• 1642–1660: The English Revolution, commencing as a civil war between Parliament and the King, and culminating in the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a republican Commonwealth, which was succeeded several years later by the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell.

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• 1775–1783: The American Revolution establishes independence of the thirteen North American colonies from Great Britain, creating the republic of the United States of America.

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• 1979–2046: Mid twenty first centuries occupation of the Middle east. A series of wars by the western nations for control over the regions of central and western Asia.

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• 2067–2067 / 2076-2081: Both lunar rebellions. lead by Carol Walton, and later by her son Richard attempted to establish the Lunar colonies as independent entities from the united nations of Earth.

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• 2104–2116: The war of Martian Aggression; invasion and occupation of Earth by Martian independent conglomerate, eventually leading to the united planets of Sol.

The list went on and on. The progress bar on his download slowly crept forward, and Cade watched it intently. Each percentage represented thousands of files, pictures, video and text associated with their historical entry and for some reason someone wanted it hidden.

Cade was so transfixed by what he was seeing, that he almost didn’t notice the slight pressure building in his head. It wasn’t quite like a headache, it was more like someone or something was gently but firmly trying to press something through his skull.

Cade knew what it had to be, he had never come under attack like this in the field before, but he knew all the same, something was trying to break through his firewalls, but that shouldn’t be possible, in order to be attacking him something would have to know he was there.

Cade looked around, both with his eyes, and with those subtle senses that being directly interfaced with the Helix gave him, but he found nothing. The only other thing here with him was the icon with the pentagram and it was still busy scanning files… except hadn’t it already scanned those? Cade was almost sure now that he was paying more direct attention that the icon was going over items it had already “cleaned”.

Cade turned back to the progress bar, it currently read thirteen percent, and was starting to slow down. The files he was downloading now were from only about a hundred years ago, and contained far more data than the simple scans of books and ancient Vid files from earlier eras.

As Cade considered the situation, the pressure in his head multiplied. Whoever was attacking him, had clearly grown tired of subtlety and wanted to get through as soon as possible.

Cade focused on reinforcing his blocks and turned back to the progress bar, it was at eighteen percent now, but where it had been moving slowly before, it now seemed to have stopped. He looked at the file it was trying to move, it wasn’t all that large, just a few hundred gigs, nothing that should be slowing down like this. Cade could only assume whatever was attacking him was also now trying to stop his dowload. It’s what he would do, figure out that your adversary has an objective and force them to focus on that while you attack.

The worst part was it might work, Cade could force the download to resume, and keep going, but to do that he would have to divert attention and energy away from his own defences and he was very reluctant to do that.

Still maybe he had another option, something, who ever this was wouldn’t see coming. He looked around again, finding the Icon, it was definitely moving closer to him, that’s what he expected. Cade pulled up his own command list again and selected one of the options. To his eyes his left hand seemed to be glowing white and with his glowing hand stretched out in front of him, Cade drifted down to the icon.

Cade watched as the icon stopped what seemed like inches from him and just held there, not scanning that, Cade could tell but instead seeming to be at a loss for what to do next.

Cade wasn’t going to give it much time to work it out though. He reached out, grasping the icon with his glowing left hand and watched as it seemed to shudder.

The pain in Cade’s head seemed to become an explosion, and he almost lost it, his walls almost came down and he didn’t even know what to think about what that would mean for him. On the other hand his progress bar jumped eighteen percent to nineteen and he knew it had worked. What ever was attacking him was doing so through the icon and he had forced it to react. Cade had hurt it, probably not very much, but he didn’t have too, he only had to hurt it enough that defence was as much on its mind as his. Cade continued driving his fingers into the icon, the sensation was not unlike forcing your hand through hard clay but ever so slowly his hand sank in. It was now his will against its. The only difference between him and it was that he didn’t care about winning, only lasting long enough to download as much of the data as he could.

Cade watched has his hand sank deeper and deeper, almost up to the wrist, and watched the icon’s shuddering grow more and more violent. For a moment Cade thought he could actually win this fight, win the battle of wills against whatever was striking through this icon. The pain in his head was lessening, and his download had reached twenty percent, and then he felt it, only for a moment his mind came into contact with something enormous, a will beyond his ability to measure, and somehow he knew that until this moment it had only been aware of him in the way you are of an itch, or an ant climbing up your arm, but now it’s complete attention was on him, the entire measure of that awesome will now beat down on him. The Pain was worse than anything Cade had ever experienced before and he recoiled before that awareness could destroy him.

This thing, whatever it was, was tearing through his defenses like a medieval ballista through rice paper and once it got through it would have no problem finding him. The download bar had only made it to 21 percent. He had no choice, he yanked the cord from the Node. The hologram around him collapsed and faded away suddenly tossing him back into the real world. He found himself standing in front of the Helix-Node in the basement of Lambda Headquarters, trying to catch his breath. That was close, too close…

He was pretty sure he hadn’t been detected, so he took a couple of seconds to compose himself. He couldn’t believe what he had witnessed. Tarja was absolutely right, right about all of it. Someone was suppressing a staggering large historical library. Someone was pushing an agenda here that made this information dangerous. Something intelligent… something malevolent.

Cade picked up the little card-deck sized chrome block he had copied the log too. Whatever was now on his device needed to be brought back to the public. But how? If it touched the Helix, it would be purged as fast as it was uploaded. He needed to get back to Tarja and the church.

He felt a sensation go off. It was like a tiny vibration just above his right ear. It was the same sensation someone wearing a Helix earring would feel when they got a new message. A moment later he saw a little envelope looking icon pop up in the bottom right portion of his point of view. He focused on it, giving it the command to be opened. It was an order from Lambda HQ to report to Briefing Room 1. Could they know he had jacked into the system? No. It was impossible. They had probably just reached consensus on the events of his mission. They would probably be addressing his next one. If Cade had been only a man, he may have been afraid, but instead he felt only cold...

Next Chapter: Chapter 25: Escape from Lambda HQ