The Thar Incident - 9

Continued from Part 8.

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The young assistant professor of Computer Science at IIT Bombay walked towards his office in the bizarre building that houses the Computer Science Department in Powai. Having completed a PhD at MIT and he had returned like so many others to the place he graduated from. Part of the desire to return to India had been due to the poor health of his father, but also no one in the US had any real interest in his branch of Chaos theory and barring a few mathematicians most considered his sub-field too arcane.

Dodging the undergraduates rushing about the halls, he turned the corner past the wooden divider, and he saw his office door ajar. Stepping through it an odd sight greeted him. Seated in his office was his father, and his father's old friend from college. The assistant professor was taken aback. His father occasionally would come down to his office unannounced but his father's friend was an academic celebrity, the country's most respected sociologist, the head of a very influential think tank in Bangalore, his visit usually drew a parade comprising the Director of IIT and the various Deans and atleast a dozen heads of departments, and yet today no one was in sight.

Extremely odd thought... the young assistant professor. Upon sensing the son's entry, the father leaned back to face him and then motioned him to sit in the chair before them. The assistant professor greeted them and began to sit his chair when he realized that he had nothing to offer his guests, he stopped short of sitting and blurted out his mind, "I'm sorry perhaps I should get some coffee from the shack!"

But his father chimed in "no no, I'll get it... this is Professor ..."

The son replied before his father could finish the sentence,"Yes yes, I know.. I am honoured and surprised to see him.."

The father continued "You sit, I'll get the coffee".

The Assistant professor was now even more uncertain, this was incredibly odd, his father never got coffee, he always insisted that the son get it for him. It was part of an old game, they played, the father lording it over the son.

The father shuffled out of the room and his friend, the Sociologist began, " So how is your work going here."

The Assistant professor was confused, why was the sociologist paying any attention to him, their fields and paths had never crossed, but to avoid looking rude, the assistant professor began enthusiastically rattling off details of his more recent work, his graduate students and grants. Very soon he ran out of generalities and began to talk about the specifics of his work, his interest in developing algorithms that predicted specific forms of organizational chaos and the extention of the modelling work done earlier in the US by various corporate groups.

The Sociologist showed no sign of the customary boredom that crept into the demeanour of non-specialists by this point in most conversations, to the contrary the sociologist began to ask pointed questions about the nature of the work and the specifics of the research, curiouser and curiouser, thought the assistant professor. For almost twenty minutes, the assistant professor felt himself being probed by pointed questions from the sociologist. With each passing minute the assistant professor realised that this was not a casual visit, the sociologist simply knew too much about his work.

His father entered precariously carrying three cups of coffee on a small carboard tray. The assistant professor looked up at his father for an instant before he got up to help him with the tray. As he laid out the plastic cups on the table, his mind pondered was this related to something in the government? the assistant professor's father had once been in government, but he never talked about what he did there, some little known department attached to the Department of Cabinet Affairs. The thought appealed to the assistant professor but then why would the government be interested in organizational chaos theory?

The meeting eventually lasted a full hour and half, by the end of the meeting the assistant professor was exhausted. It was only a combination of respect and amazement that kept the assistant professor from asking the sociologist why he was so interested in this work. It was time for the assistant professor to go teach a class and so he requested his guests to excuse him.

The Sociologist suddenly looked at the clock and exclaimed that it had been almost two hours, the assistant professor's father seemed ambivalent but softly told his son to go back to the class and that they would let themselves out. With a few prefunctory goodbyes and a promise of another meeting, the assistant professor left the office.

The father got up to pick up the coffee cups and clear the table, slowly after that he sank into his son's chair and stared at his old friend across the table,

"Well what do you think?" he asked.

"It looks workable, what do you think?", said the sociologist.

The father now replied, "It is much more sophisticated than anything we used in pattern analysis or prediction, but to our defence we never had such computational power before. Before we had access to the Met department's Cray, we had very small statistical models for anything."

Many decades ago, the father had been a bright eyed officer of the Cabinet Secretariat, heading one of the most sensitive and secret teams that attempted to develop advanced computational tools to solve the secretariat's myriad problems. The work was still classified and the small team was now a behemoth, employing dozens of scientists. The father had technically retired almost ten years ago, but does one really retire from "service"?

The sociologist looked on,"So do you think that this is computationally tractable? in present resources"

The father replied, "perhaps, but we need to spur the development of more advanced computational tools any way, so the investment will be worthwhile."

The sociologist's doubts were eased,"in that case we'd better tell him when he gets back.."

They met again later that day at tea at the assistant professor's house, and the sociologist but into his marie biscuit and said " we have a job for you..."

"We want you to give us a way of simulating the spread of information, the flow of an idea across a population. The transit of thoughts and ideas in the minds of a billion, and their reactions. We suspect that this process will be chaotic and prone to all manner of complex phenomenologies and need a clear framework to base our understanding of it on. Would you be interested?"

The assistant professor looked carefully at his father and realised that it was not a question.

He nodded and was about to ask about possible funding commitments,

The sociologist anticipated the question and simply said "Don't worry about anything else just keep your eye on the core problem. Let me worry about the rest."

Now the assistant professor was impressed.

The Thar Incident - 8

Continued from Part 7.

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Matthew Wheeler seemed very ordinary. Those that knew him would probably find little to tell you about him because he really had few distinguishing features. To most he was just another of those fake academics that loiter the halls of various foundations that line the beltway in Washington D.C. Most people in the US Internal Revenue Service would be hard placed where these mysterious foundations got their money from, or how they managed to build such enormous buildings and pull together millions of dollars worth of media and information management equipment. A few people in Washington might be able to tell exactly how much money each foundation recieved and a handful of left leaning academics in US universities might be willing to swear on their mothers, that these foundations are the front for the CIA. Conspiracy theorists on the internet might even opine that the foundations are the footfall of the "real CIA", the one which does not answer to Congress and operates solely out of private slush funds created by trade in underworld economies.

All this ofcourse had no relevance to Matthew, a descendant of the second wave of immigrants from England, Matthew was all things American, a wide mixture of ethnicities constituted his ancestry and his forefathers had fought on both sides of American Civil War. The Wheeler family was reputedly invovled in rum running and sugar plantations in the south, but at the turn of the century the Wheelers had moved to Boston and settled into the legal profession. The geneology was cumerbsome but Matthew was a product of a long line of fake academics.

Matthew had served as a correspondent in Nicaragua and Honduras in the 80s when the Sandanista regime was challenged by the Contra rebels. Rumor has it that the Contras were actually growing coca leaves and were processing it into cocaine anhydride for sale on the US market. It was such rumors that had sparked the Iran-Contra investigation that paralysed the Reagan adminstration. Matthew however was simply a reporter in Tegucigalpa at the time, he was called the investigative commission to testify but they quickly found out that he had nothing to say. Years later he had turned up in Bosnia, as a researcher and then later in Kurdish Iraq as an advisor to the Kurdish forces. How a particular Indian consular official came to know of Matthew's connections to the innards of the US government is not well known, but somehow the two had become friends. It was this official who arranged Matthew's visit to India and set up a meeting with the NSA.

Matthew was upset at the NSA's response. The NSA had pretended he had no clue what Matthew was talking about, a fact Matthew knew was not true. So angry with the NSA's response, Matthew had requested an audience with the PM herself. She was quite busy and could only spare a few minutes for him but Matthew's friend the consular official had insisted and managed to get an actual audience. The NSA only heard about the development after the meeting was actually scheduled. The PM had suggested that the NSA continue to feign ignorance and allow her to handle it. With that said, there was little the NSA could do.

The PM met Matthew at the official residence on 7 Race Course Road. Matthew was ushered into the room by helpful Special Protection Group officers who disappeared almost as soon as they appeared.

Matthew now found himself seated before the PM who appeared to be reading a piece of paper before her and somewhat impatiently tapping her right foot.

"Hello" she said raising her eyes towards him and peering above her glasses.

"Hello Ma'am" responded Matthew,

"It seems you have something to say to me", she said quietly.

Matthew was a little unsure but then decided that he would get to the point. Unfortunately for Matthew, the PM was expecting that, having read the NSCS's file on Matthew.

Matthew began without preamble," I believe that your people have come upon an object of great value and significance. The object is not from earth and there is considerable history here that perhaps your people are not aware of."

The PM cut him off "And how does this concern you?"

Matthew was now on the back foot, "The issues are too wide in implication for us to ignore."

The PM replied in a more conciliatory fashion "What do you propose?"

That was Matthew's cue, "I would like to arrange the visit of a briefing delegation, they will inform..."

The PM cut him off again, "Sounds perfectly reasonable, please proceed with due speed."

Matthew suddenly realized that the meeting was over.

As Matthew was escorted out of the 7 RCR building, he realized that the Indians were being very cagey.

The NSA had been watching the whole meeting on the internal video surveillance system on the PPS' office. The two men trooped into the PM's office right after Matthew left. The PM read their minds and said, "we will wait and see what he brings us."

Matthew was on the earliest flight out of Delhi, and when he landed at Muscat's airport, a US military flight was awaiting his arrival. He landed in Washington D.C. some 10 hours later and a waiting car drove him to the White House.