“Sorry Grace, but that’s just how it is,” Pham said. “I wish I had a better answer to give you but I can’t. Sometimes the customer, in this case NASA, does things that make absolutely no sense, or in other cases are directly harmful to their own mission. All we can do is point out the flaws in their plan and hope for the best.” He took a breath. “I’ve polled the other operators and no one else has seen a dragon or any other abnormal graphical anomalies. It’s only happened to you, unfortunately, but I’m confident that everything has been resolved.”
Parkowski nodded. She had one more question for him. “Have you ever heard of the term ‘Bronze Knot’ in the context of the ILIAD mission?”
Unlike her question about the logs, Parkowski could have sworn she saw a hint of recognition on Dr. Pham’s usually inscrutable face when she said the words “Bronze Knot,” but it was gone as fast as it had appeared.
He gave her an odd look. “No, I don’t think so,” he told Parkowski. “Where did you see that?”
She decided to give him part of the truth.
Parkowski felt a little guilty about lying, probably a result of her Polish Catholic upbringing, but some part of her decided that she needed to protect herself. “My last mission, when we lost connection after I released the quadcopter, there was an error message in the VR environment.” She didn’t tell him about the mention of Bronze Knot in the logs.
“What did it say?”
It was burned into her memory by now. “ERROR: SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM — BRONZE KNOT — SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED,” Parkowski told him, including the punctuation marks.
Pham frowned. “I’ve worked in that world before, the same one your boyfriend works in, and there’s absolutely no link to the ILIAD program. I’m sure of it. I wouldn’t have taken this job otherwise. I got very tired of the classified world.”
He was lying. Pham wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Then, he looked right at her. “Are you sure that’s what you saw?”
All of the men in my life are questioning me, Parkowski thought as a hint of a smile came to her face. Everyone thought she was crazy. “Yes.” She paused. “And I clearly remember the words 'Bronze' and 'Knot.' They seem so random, so weird and out-of-context, that I committed them to memory.”
The older engineer laughed. “Special access program names tend to be like that, but I’ve never heard of a Bronze Knot.” He took a breath. “I’ve been read into some SAPs in the past and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the company with regards to our special programs. It sounds like we have another weird error, much like the dragon you saw, probably bringing together some unrelated elements to unfortunately give you some weird visuals in the VR environment. I’ll bring it up — quietly — with our developer Panspermia.”
“Thank you,” Parkowski said. “You’ve made me feel a little better.”
That last part was a lie. If anything, she felt worse.
“No problem,” Pham said. “Anything else?”
She shook her head.
“See you at the three o’clock.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next morning, she went for a quick run to clear her head.
As Parkowski ran through the streets of Marina Del Rey, she started to think of a two-pronged approach to figuring out what Bronze Knot was.
First, she had to use the resources at her disposal.
Her boyfriend, by his own admission, was read into plenty of SAPs for his job at Los Angeles Space Force Base. He had to have access to at least one classified network at his office. It shouldn’t be too much effort for him to look around to see if he could find any references to a “Bronze Knot.”
Second, she had to up her game at work.
Pham had told her that the logs were moved to the NASA room. Parkowski knew where it was — just down the hall from her boss’ office.
Parkowski did not have access to that room. She had been told it was “government-only,” meaning for the USSF and NASA factory representatives, but more than once she had seen Rosen or another high-ranking employee enter it.
Parkowski had to get into that room.
But first, she was going to convince her boyfriend to do some snooping for her.
She and DePresti had planned months in advance to do some scuba diving, a recently acquired pastime, off of Catalina Island on the Saturday during the long weekend. They had gone through the extensive certification process and done some practice dives in an indoor facility, but this would be their first time with the scuba gear out in the open ocean.
Thankfully, they were going with a group, which was definitely preferable to going alone.
She sprung her request on him while they were sitting in his car as they rode the ferry to Catalina.
“I need to ask a favor from you,” she said as they ate In-N-Out burgers in the front seat.
“Sure,” DePresti said, his voice muffled as he bit into his hamburger. “What do you need?”
“I need you to go look around at work to try and figure out what Bronze Knot is.”
DePresti looked at her, half-chew, in disbelief. “What?”
She took a breath. “I’m not entirely sure how your networks are structured, but is there any way that you can do some kind of SharePoint search or shared folder search in Windows for the term ‘Bronze Knot’ or any variation of that phrase?”
Her boyfriend pursed his lips. “You just don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because those networks — of which there are more than one — are continuously logged and monitored,” DePresti explained. “Specifically for that reason.”
“They don’t want you looking around?” Parkowski asked, finishing her burger and starting on her fries and milkshake.
“No,” DePresti said. “These systems, they’re accredited for a certain security level but sometimes data spills over, usually unintentionally. You’re supposed to only use them for official purposes at the security level you are briefed to.”
“And you’re not briefed to Bronze Knot?”
DePresti laughed. “No, Grace, I’m not. Even if it was an unacknowledged SAP that I’m authorized to lie to Congress and the media about its existence, I’d tell you, just to alleviate whatever concern you have about your mission.”
“So what are you briefed to?” Parkowski asked. This was the first time she had ever asked him a sensitive question about his work.
He took a breath. “Don’t tell any of this to anyone else.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m briefed to about fifty or sixty SAPs,” DePresti explained. “That’s in addition to all four ‘buckets’ of SCI, the big intelligence community quasi-SAP that they put a lot of their information in.”
“And you’ve never heard of Bronze Knot?”
“Nope. Grace, I have just about every space-related SAP there is and I’ve never heard it mentioned or seen those two words together anywhere.”
Parkowski paused. “What if it’s not space-related?”
“I think it has to be. Just think about it. If NASA and Aering Space Systems are involved, it has to touch the space environment.”
She thought for a moment. “Mike, what exactly do you do?”
He laughed. “Don’t worry about it.”
The motion of the ferry slowed. They were nearing their destination.
Parkowski tried one last time. “Can you please poke around a little, as much as you can without getting in trouble, and see if you can find something about it?”
“It’s really eating you up inside, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Parkowski agreed. “Mike, imagine if you had a really big mission at work, a big event like your launch, and it went sideways for reasons beyond your control. Twice.”