THE SENTINEL
Slowly, the sleep slipped from his mind. Waking was always the same thing. Never a feeling of refreshment or renewal. Slowly, he became aware of his surroundings. The time monitor on the wall read 08:03. It was always three minutes between starting to wake up and when he looked at the time. The days never changed. Next, he looked at the access portal. A great tunnel of absolute pitch-black darkness yawning at him every morning. His mission was to guard the access portal and make sure nothing ever came out of it. For as long as he could remember, he had been waking and guarding the portal. He shouldered his weapon and assumed his position in front of the portal as he did every day. He was not really sure what it might be that he was guarding against. He remembered learning a list of potential dangers that might appear, but it was so long ago he couldn’t quite be sure what they were. Occasionally, distant sounds like thunder came from the tunnel. Flashes of light and faint shadows of movement sometimes teased his vision. He knew his day would be like every other day. He would wait. He would be ready. He would destroy anything that came through the portal. But nothing ever came.
Jim slipped his key into the lock and let himself into his office. Second week in his new position and he was already putting time in on the weekend; the joys of being in a family business. The old chemical factory had been in the family since his grandfather had started it as a young man. His father was running the place now, and almost everyone in the immediate family had found a place there. Jim was in his third year of business school when his uncle died. Jim had not really made up his mind about entering the family business, but Uncle Dave’s unexpected demise left everyone in a lurch. Uncle Dave had been the slightly eccentric geek of the family and had fallen into the role of IT guy rather easily. Jim was fairly good with computers and tech-ish kinds of stuff, so when his father asked if he could help fill the void left by Dave’s death, Jim felt a little extra money might make life a little easier and said yes. It was the kind of work that gave him a schedule flexible enough to do school and a job without too much sacrifice.
The sentinel peered into the darkness. The speaker had not spoken to him in a long time. In the past, it would begin speaking to him when the time monitor was at 16:00. The speaker would name an enemy, and begin telling him a description of them. For as long as his memory could go back, he encountered none of the enemies. As he strained his memory, he could remember nothing coming through the portal. Would there be the things he would allow to come through? Did they have names? Would they be like him? Will the enemies and the friends look similar? Will he be sure of the difference? He stood peering into the tunnel of darkness before him, so many questions going through his mind. Should he know the names of the things allowed through? He knew the name of those things he would not allow through. It seemed to present a conflict to his reasoning. Were the names important? Would he know their names? Would they tell him their names? Would the enemies tell him their correct names? So many questions began to race through his mind. A sudden thought leapt at him, totally unexpected, what is my name?
Jim flipped on the lights in his so-called office and set his coffee down on the only clear spot on his desk/workbench/test rack. He was still trying to piece together an understanding of how his uncle had set up the IT framework of the factory. A big part of Uncle Dave’s eccentric geekiness was that he was a very devout penny pincher. Jim had found that much of the hardware running the factory was old Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 machines still running Windows XP. Jim had cut his teeth on XP as a young teenager but was amazed that it still lived, and seemingly thrived, in an industrial setting. Jim had accounted for almost all of the computers scattered throughout the plant, but a couple had eluded his searching. He found one in the old boiler room, still plugged in and running on the network. Originally set up to run the boilers, a new boiler install brought with it a new computer setup integrated into the boiler, but no one had ever uninstalled the old system. Jim unplugged everything and took the relic back to his “lab” to keep it for spare parts. Jim took a sip of coffee and fired up his laptop. He opened up OpenNMS, his network management software. He glanced through the lists of machines running on the network. He saw the desktops in the office for the paper pushers, the laptops in the sales office, and the various units scattered through the plant. He looked at the list and saw his mystery computer was still there. It was the one computer he could not find anywhere, yet there it was, sitting on his network. 198.162.3.37, named SENT1. The mystery computer.
He stood before the portal, weapon in hand. Several times he had heard the distant sound of thunder way off in the tunnel. It often happened around this time of day. He thought he saw a few flashes of light with the thunder. Did he ever hear one without seeing the other? Were the flashes of light possible without thunder? Thunder? How did he know that word? Had he ever heard real thunder? What did it sound like? Was there a word for the light that sometimes accompanies thunder? It was confusing. He tried to remember the last time he heard real thunder. He thought really, really hard. Had he ever heard real thunder? Had he ever seen the flashing lights? The Lights? Lightning!! That’s what it is called!!! He could not think of where he had ever heard it called that. He tried to think, where would I see those things? He tried to remember back to when there was something other than his room and the portal. He tried really hard. He remembered waking up at 08:00 every morning. He remembered standing guard at the portal every day. He remembered that every day at 23.57 the time monitor would click, and he would begin to go to sleep. That was what he remembered. He remembered every day. Every day was the same. How did he know of thunder and lightning? Would he ever see it for real? Where did it live? Where did he live?
Jim muttered under his breath, pushed back his chair, and reached for his coffee. Several of the matters he had hoped to work on went faster than he had expected. “Damn, the coffee’s ice-cold”. He figured that if he was at the office, no plans for the evening, and a few hours to kill, he would work on his pet project, the mystery computer. Jim was fairly sure he had covered every square inch of the plant checking out Uncle Dave’s network setup. He had looked at all the routing switches and traced the cat5 wire to see where all the computers were. No mysteries or surprises there. Uncle Dave had set up a wireless system for the sales department, and it was on that system the mystery computer was hiding. When Jim had first taken over Uncle Dave’s office he spent hours going through the many notebooks and thumb drives Uncle Dave had left. Dave had been fascinated with the concept of Artificial Intelligence. Jim could see Dave had read many of the early pioneers and had developed some interesting insights into the field. With Dave working in the family firm, he probably had plenty of time to pursue his interest. Jim saw notes on an amazing variety of subjects, machine learning, intelligent tutoring, case-based reasoning, multi-agent planning, scheduling, uncertain reasoning, data mining, natural language understanding and translation, vision, virtual reality, games, and other topics. Jim thought the mystery computer might have something to do with Dave’s many esoteric interests.
The sentinel looked at the time on the wall. Soon sleep would come, and his watch would be over. What happened in the portal while he slept? No one would be watching it. Could enemies come through? Did the portal close when sleep took him away completely? He tried to remember the time when he started guarding the portal. It seemed so long ago. He strained his memory to his earliest memories. He remembered a time when he would awaken, and there was no portal. His day was spent in the room, watching, and waiting. He never fully understood what he was waiting for. The memories were so old he did not know how long he just waited and watched. He remembered awakening one day and the portal was there. He had no idea how it got there or what it was for. The utter blackness was a stark change from the colorless walls he had been living in. He stood before it and strained to see anything in the darkness. Pitch blackness stared back at him. He reached out into the darkness. There was nothing in it to feel. A thought of stepping into darkness flitted across his mind, but at the same instant, a deep sense of foreboding swept over him. The portal, and its darkness, were not to be interfered with. The click of the time monitor caught his attention, time to sleep is coming. He remembered pondering if another new thing would be present the next day.
Jim fired up his laptop and prepared to probe the mystery computer. “Greetings SENT1, are you going to talk to me tonight little buddy”? Jim had downloaded an old-school program to try to get into the mystery computer. Even though Jim had no idea where the box was, he could still try to access it through the network. “Okay PuTTY, let get to work”. PuTTY was one of the old programs used for accessing remote computers, and Jim thought since Dave was old school, he probably used old school tools. While trying to digest Dave’s notes and rambling writings, Jim found he had been trying to build one of the early iterations of an Artificial Intelligence program. Dave had been rather clever and was very good at “thinking outside the box”. Jim found he had been working on an anti-virus program that did not need regular updates with virus definitions. Uncle Dave had envisioned a program that would assume responsibility for keeping unwanted nasties out of computers, while still allowing the normal flow of data. Jim had attempted practically everything he could think of to log into the SENT1, but nothing worked. Jim and his buddies had played around with some low-grade hacking while in high school, but SENT1 seemed to really have locked its doors. He fired up NMAP, a program that basically checked for any doors or windows that had been left unlocked. He had never found any, but he kept hoping. His port scan showed no open ports. He attempted to log into port 80, nothing. Port 443, nothing. He had attempted to use “Brute Force” hacking, a program that attempts an endless stream of possible passwords, nothing. “Damn, I need another coffee,” Jim said, and headed to the vending machine.
SENT1 awoke at the appointed time. Shouldering his weapon and facing the portal he began to run the thoughts he had been having last night through his head. He remembered the day the portal appeared. He remembered looking at the portal and knowing there was something he was supposed to be doing. Days passed as he woke, watched the portal, slept, and watched the portal again. He remembered one day he awoke and things were different. As he became fully awake, he saw the weapon before him. He had never seen one before, but he knew what it was. Fully awake, he picked up the weapon. Suddenly it all became clear to him. He was to take the weapon and guard the portal. He shouldered the weapon and stood before the portal. As he stood there he realized he did not know friend from enemy. The speaker on the wall began to buzz. He turned his attention to the speaker and it began to tell him names, characteristics, appearances, and commonalities he would see between friends and enemies. The voice filled his head with information. He began to see connections, common themes, and ways he could test anything coming from the portal. All that day he listened as the speaker told him of the dangers, problems, and irreparable harm that could come through the portal. The speaker told him of useful and good things. Things that would be needed on his side of the portal. He listened, learned, and developed his judgment. He knew why he was there.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Jim set his coffee on the desk and glanced at his laptop. His password program was having no luck cracking the mystery machine. “Heck with it,” Jim thought to himself and closed the program. Looking at the piles of Dave’s notebooks and thumb drives brought back memories of Uncle Dave. Jim remembered the family picnics with the whole extended family. Uncle Dave would be there, usually more at home with the youngsters than with the grown-ups. A big kid at heart, Dave had a wonderful sense of humor. As an expert at “Dad Jokes”, Dave was always a hit with the kids. Dave also was an expert at knock-knock jokes, seeming to have an endless supply ready when the moment needed a bit of goofiness. Jim smiled to himself and took a sip of coffee. “About time to go home,” he thought. He turned to his laptop and saw the blank sign-in screen for the mystery computer. Warm memories of Uncle Dave still fresh in his mind, he decided to make one last stab at logging in before calling it a day. He dropped the cursor into the username spot. Username: UncleDave. Password: knockknock. The log-in screen faded away and two words scrolled down from the top: WHO’S THERE. Jim couldn’t believe it, he was in! The two words hesitated in the middle of the screen, and then scrolled down and off the bottom. A desktop appeared on the screen that was nothing like anything Jim had seen before.
SENT1 felt very strange things happening. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but things felt very different in his room. He felt he heard the sound of a great wind in the portal. As he peered into the darkness the sound that had started as a whisper had grown to a roar. It seemed that something might be coming down the portal. Friend or foe? Good or bad? All the messages the speaker had told him whirled through his mind. Identify! Verify! Checksum pass/fail! Use heuristics! So many things were clamoring for first place in his priorities. The wind continued to roar. How did he know of wind? Was it like thunder and lightning; things he knew of, but had no idea how he knew of them. The portal before him began to change. The darkness began to fade. The utter blackness changed to a brilliant, piercing white. He backed up a couple of steps. He had never done that before. Was the portal opening or closing. He never knew the color would change. The speaker had never told him of sounds, of wind, of frightening things. Was he feeling fear? What was fear? Was it like wind and thunder and lightning? Is it a thing he knew of but had never really encountered? He remembered the speaker telling him of the damage the bad things from the portal could cause, but would the damage be to him? He felt the weight of the weapon in his hands. He had never used it. What would it do to the bad things? When he used it, would it hurt him also? The speaker had not told him so many things he wanted to know right now.
Jim looked at the monitor before him. It appeared Uncle Dave had cobbled together an operating system using Linux and god knows what else. Poking around on the desktop he found what seemed to be a command-line utility. He punched up the utility and the screen dissolved into something else. “Oh, cool,” Jim muttered as he looked at the screen, “Just like something out of an old sci-fi show”. He was staring at the black screen with its flashing white cursor. “Is it gonna tell me to follow the white rabbit,” he asked himself. He typed into the command line “help”, the usual first step for exploring unfamiliar territory. Jim hit enter-COMMAND NOT FOUND. “OK, let’s try this,” he typed the command to bring up the directory-DIR, “Damn”, nothing. He spelled it out, “DIRECTORY”, still nothing. Uncle Dave had created a very off-the-wall version of something here. Jim decided to keep running through the list of commands he knew to see if anything would work. Type, hit enter, type, hit enter, eventually, something would work or he would need to go get a fresh coffee.
The sentry stood before the portal, trying to understand what was happening. The brilliant white light had faded to blackness, then again burst into brilliant white. It began repeating the pattern. Noises came from the portal, more noises than he had ever heard. A series of clattering sounds, followed by a loud bang. Over and over the series of noises came through the portal. The sentry had no understanding of these events. He had been prepped to deal with intruders but these strange events were outside his understanding. The speaker had not told of these things. What to do? The sentry felt he must act. He must act now! The enemies might be coming soon, perhaps right now. The sounds from the portal might be the sounds of the enemy. A warning shot! He would fire a warning shot to warn the intruders to come no further. He shouldered his weapon, his finger caressed the trigger. He had never fired the weapon before. What would happen? He pulled the trigger.
Jim was getting up to get another coffee when he heard the alarms go off in the other side of the plant. He glanced at the computer that monitored the alarm system in the plant. “Cooling system shut down-Mixing Reactor #3”. Jim dialed up the number for the weekend maintenance crew. “What’s going on down there”, he asked. An angry voice told him, “Your friggin’ computer system just totally took a dump,” he was told. A voltage spike in the network took the computer running the coolant system off-line. Not good, the mixer reactor would need to be manually monitored until a new system could be put in place. Thoughts of coffee forgotten, Jim pulled up the system logs to see if he could see what the hell was going on. “What the ………,” Jim muttered. A message was sent from computer SENT1 to the electrical grid in the plant. Jim could not decipher exactly what it was, but apparently, it was what triggered an imbalance in the power system that took out the controller computer. What the hell had Uncle Dave put together? Jim got an unpleasant sinking feeling in his stomach.
SENT1 walked up to the portal. It had been quiet for several minutes, just the usual black nothingness. He had pulled the trigger. Was that what quieted the portal? He was not sure what he expected, but the weapon just buzzed and sent out a beam of light. No dramatic explosion. No thunderous boom. Just some light and a vibration. Had he defeated whatever was trying to come down the portal? Was the enemy just waiting? He knew he could not let his guard down. He must remain vigilant. The enemy would surely return. He would be ready.
Jim sat back down at his console. He had to get this fixed and fixed soon. He had no idea why the obscure, mystery computer would suddenly begin to interact with the plant, let alone do something as drastic as it had. From what he remembered from reading Uncle Dave’s notes the computer was little more than a testbed for some of Dave’s ideas. Whatever it was, it could not be trusted anymore. If Jim had any idea where it was he would just go and unplug the damn thing. Jim pulled up the list of computers on the network. Changing some of the entries and setting in the systems router, he excluded the mystery computer from the network. As he sat there, almost breathing a sigh of relief, he saw an entry pop up in the list, SENT1*. It seemed Dave had given the mystery computer the ability to alter its MAC address, the thing that identifies the computer on the network. “Oh man, this is gonna be a pain,” Jim thought.
The sentry stood before the portal as he watched it disappear. It had never done that before. Without the portal, there would be no enemies. No intruders. He would have no purpose. As he stood there uncertain of what to do, a black dot appeared and grew into the portal as he knew it. He still had a job to do. He shouldered his weapon, this time with his finger on the trigger.
Jim was getting worried. He could not risk the problem computer sending any more problems out into the plant. He could not just shut down the whole computer system, the plant need it to maintain safe (non-exploding) operations. Shutting down the plant to fix an errant computer, a computer that was totally unnecessary, was out of the question, as that would take days. Jim had to find a way to shut down the computer, but he could only access it remotely, and the computer was not responding to any of his attempts to communicate with it. It was going to be a long night. He sat at the keyboard and began to try anything he could think of to get a response.
The portal began to change to the brilliant white. The series of clattering sounds, followed by loud bangs were continuous. The noises grew louder, the sounds of the winds were howling, and the thunder was crashing louder than ever before. The sentry knew the battle was at hand. The enemy was in the tunnel, he could feel it. He could not see the enemy, but he knew it was coming. “It shall not pass”, he told himself. He shouldered his weapon and pulled the trigger.
Jim saw from the corner of his eye that half the exterior lights of the plant went dark. The catwalks in the tank farm, the lights in the driveways, and the plant became rather dark. “Shit, shit, shit,” Jim moaned. He knew this was getting out of hand. “If this goes much further…,” his thoughts trailed off, not wanting to contemplate possible outcomes. He started the list of commands he thought HAD to work. “killproc”, kill process - nothing. “killall”, kill all processes – nothing. “sigstop” stop signals – nothing. He kept trying.
The portal screamed and raged, the shot appeared to do nothing. The sentry began to feel fear. He felt it as he had never felt it before. As he stared into the portal he saw beings begin to take form. Large, shapeless, blacker than anything he had ever seen. He knew they were malevolent. He knew they were the harmful things the speaker had spoken of. He knew they were coming to kill him. They were not as the speaker had told him they would be. Their names were not on the list of dangers the speaker had told him. They had bad names. Kill names. They meant him harm. He raised his weapon and fired. He fired and kept firing. He pulled the trigger and kept it pulled.
Jim was frantically beating on the keyboard as he tried to get into the computer. He was still typing as the alarms began to sound in the plant. First one from the tank farm. Alarms sounded from the power plant. He turned to look at the plant monitor screen. Red arrows were flashing everywhere. All valves were being opened. Any isolation of chemicals was gone. Everything was mixing with everything else. All cooling systems were shutting down, and tank temperatures were rising. Jim was wondering if he could make it out of the plant.
“This is Carl Davis, Action 3 News, reporting live from the scene of the huge explosion at the Bensen Chemical Plant this evening. The fire department reports that at about 8:00 o’clock they began receiving automatic reports of fires and chemical leaks from the plant. As they were responding they saw the huge explosion that engulfed the plant. Luckily, this being the weekend, there was only a skeleton crew working at the plant. Reports are that all the workers managed to evacuate before the explosion except for Jim Bensen, a member of the family who own the company. Apparently he was trapped in his office by the force of the explosion and his body has been recovered. Officials expect to have the fire under control shortly. Back to you Kathy for the latest in sports”.