He looked up from the sheet.
“Shall I go on?”
In unison, we answered, “Please.”
“The dome has four decks. The larger first deck with five-thousand-plus square feet provides room for the main living and working areas, a galley and a mess hall, research workstations for fourteen scientists and air locks for the docking bays below on the tractor’s mechanical floor. A second smaller deck with thirty-five-hundred square feet sleeps fourteen in ship’s style quarters including two for visitors, has restrooms with showers and a rec hall with a sixty-inch DVD based entertainment center. Unfortunately there is no cable-TV down there it’s BYODVDs. The third deck bunks eight support crew with a small rec hall and two heads and the forth one nearing the top of the dome is smaller and is used mainly for storage.”
“So we’ll be using the two visitor bunks right?” I asked thinking ahead; I was already drowsy from the boring briefing. I was ready to dive down and start Operation Deep Force whatever that was but he had neglected to mention it.
“That’s coming up, Mr. Cross,” he said placing the spec sheet back into the folder.
Briscoe reached out and put his hand on the folder preventing its closure.
“Wait. What about diving equipment? Do we have DSVs? Suits?”
“Oh, of course. I neglected to mention that you’ll be spending much of your time away from the dome either in one of eight self-contained ADS Exosuits or one of four BenthiCraft three-person DSVs. There are also a few propeller-driven tugs for use with the Exosuits. Anything you’ll need we’ve got you covered.”
The Admiral glanced at his watch.
“Moving along it’s time to get to your new mission Operation Deep Force. That’s why you’re here. You’re it.”
Sighing, he stared at us and went on.
“Some very suspicious and frightening activity occurred recently aboard Discovery One. The Ivy guardian network in the station just like the one we have here recently reported some strange almost inexplicable situations down there. Now you’ve already seen that she tracks the number of people on station using biometrics. In the sea station, we always expect that number to be twenty or less depending on the divers away from the dome. Everything has been hunky-dory until recently.”
Stopping his story, he motioned to a nearby crewman.
“Can you please get me a coffee? My throat is parched.”
“Yes sir,” the young officer answered, leaving his workstation for the nearby coffee center.
“Black, sir?
“That’ll be fine.”
Rushing back, he placed a steaming cup by the Admiral and returned to his console. Couldn’t have taken more than fifteen seconds. This is a really tight ship I thought.
Blowing over his cup the Admiral continued.
“Two weeks ago she alarmed an intruder alert after finding twenty-one souls in the dome including the support crew of eight but there were supposed to be only twenty; an impossible situation since there were no visitors registered or intrusion alerts noted. The staffers searched through the station on her alarm and found no extra person. That in itself was not too unusual but the fly in the ointment was on the next day she reported only nineteen persons in the station. One staff member plus the intruder had vanished. In addition following a mandatory roll call and station inspection, her dire news was verified: There were only seven Exosuits in the airlock bay where there had been eight.
“The staff took time out from their tasks in teams of two, some in Exosuits some in DSVs, searching the surrounding ocean floor for anything suspicious. After hours of searching, they found the missing Exosuit lying lifeless but powered on, ten meters out in a narrow crevasse. The interior of the suit’s clear face shield was smeared with blood and a black substance so they couldn’t tell who it was until they got it back inside. It also had strange hieroglyphic characters scrawled in red over the aluminum exostructure.
“Now these men are scientists, interpreters, and nuclear specialists but when they returned the suit to the airlock and opened it, they freaked out. It was nearly empty; nothing inside but a handful of moist black sand, a watch, and a pair of diving boots.”
The Chief and I looked at each other. I was caught up in the mystery but when he shook his head no and frowned I felt nauseous remembering the station was our new destination; we were about to enter a chamber of manmade horrors and live there for a month. What could possibly go wrong? I thought. It sounded to me like one of those stories told by old divers about Davy Jones Locker but I knew better. That was just a legend.
“So what happened next,” I asked.
“Nothing. But later they identified the missing crewman as Lieutenant Commander Dan Li, USN, access level Umbra-ZX. The X codeword appended to the Z is a compartmented access code meaning that he not only knows of the Z mission but can also see the intercepted data from the cables and knows its source. Interpreters all have the X appendage. Sadly, it was his first tour of duty on the station; worked there only five months. He specialized in decrypting and translating messages from the undersea cable but of course, he was thought to be a radiation encroachment specialist. We suspect that he decoded a message that someone didn’t want known. His body and workbook have yet to be found.”
“So what are we supposed to do down there, Admiral?” the Chief asked glancing at me as if I knew. I expected him to know; he had been here longer.
“The crew aboard Discovery One does not have time for sleuthing. They have assigned tasks that can’t be interrupted by incidental happenings… unless it’s a full stop emergency of course. Then we lose tons of crucial data that cannot be reconstructed. They are screaming for help with Li’s unexplained disappearance. A thousand feet down is not a place to jump ship. Someone or something did that to him, and it’s still down there. The crew is afraid there will be more victims but none of them have the expertise or time to become investigators.”
Briscoe scoffed.
“And that’s what we’ll be doing? A missing person’s bureau?”
“Hmm. Yes, in a way. But, you will have an expert witness to work with so I expect you both to become tech-savvy with Ivy’s operation and methodologies. She sees everything and is aware of all activities aboard the station. That capability has to be of crucial assistance.”
Being somewhat of a computer expert, I was still mystified by Ivy. She was not just about computers; she was AI.
Then wondering how we could possibly become overnight Ivy gurus I asked, “Is there an operation manual for Ivy?”
“Yes. Four-hundred-plus pages of fine print. Designed by the artificial intelligence geniuses at Google AI she is version four or Roman numeral IV: thus her name. We’ve yet to find fault with her intelligence or logic. The manual is unclassified but the accumulated knowledge in her memory is Umbra-Z of course. We have a copy here and you’ll find another in the Discovery One. They’re identical so you’ll have a reference manual when you get there.”
“That brings up another question,” I asked trying to fill gaps in my knowledge. “Obviously you have a Z facility here and another one thousands of feet underwater. Do they communicate… and if so how?” I caught myself sounding like a College Bowl host and laughed self-consciously as I finished the question.
He must have seen it too because he chuckled and answered, “The answer is yes. The method: there are several ultra-high-speed laser links beamed from a floating laser buoy tethered over the station to one of our stationary KL satellites then relayed back to us here in Point Mugu. That explains all the antennas around the building.”