Chapter 17

                Benson watched Melman as he left the office and walked hurriedly to the employee lift.  As the doors to the lift closed, Benson was already in his cubicle entering revised search parameters into his newly created brain child.  Although elated that one of his ideas had paid off for a change, Benson had some misgivings about what he would eventually find now that he was on the right track.  He hadn’t let Melman know that he would have to bring one or two others into his confidence to deal with the multifaceted search he just initiated into the Probe’s last files.  The only way to identify and keep narrowing in on the information he sought was to watch four variants of his program, all running at the same time and then compare similarities as more and more of the raw data was analyzed. The search would automatically be self reducing after the initial data sift through but until then, there plainly wasn’t enough of him to go around.  Without even thinking, he immediately knew who he could trust for the job, the Andel brothers.  He often had lunch with them in the open courtyard arboretum on sunny days.  It had become a ritual before returning to work, to bounce ideas off one another.  It stimulated the creative juices when any of the three of them were stuck on some programming issue and after a dozen or so sessions like this, he believed he had the brothers pegged as honest friends.

                Benson keyed the interoffice com. “Karl, Benson here, are you and your brother going to be able to make it to lunch today?  I know it’s short notice but I have a favor to ask.” Benson was looking at the time icon in the corner of the com’s screen and knew he could break any time now and no one would care.

                “Benson,” Karl answered with genuine warmth, “Dean and I were just talking about you.  We happen to have a problem of our own and would welcome your opinion on a programming glitch that’s evaded our numerous attempts to solve.  How about meeting at the usual location in say, twenty minutes?”

                “Works for me, bring your tablet comp with the details and I can look at what you have while we talk.” Benson could be there in five minutes but was glad for the other fifteen.  He needed the time to download his new program with the revised search parameters to share with the Andel’s.

                The arboretum was unoccupied when Benson arrived.  It was still early in the lunch rotation and most of the Center’s employees preferred to take their lunch later in the schedule, making the remainder of their work day seem to pass more quickly.  The sun would be high in the open sky soon and Benson was thankful that the table he and the Andel brothers usually shared was shaded at this time of the day.  By the time he reached his destination the brothers were just stepping out of the lift.  Dean waived as he walked with Karl following close behind carrying both of their comps as well as what looked like a bundle of data chips.  Dean and Karl were always wagering.  On what it never mattered, Benson assumed Karl was carrying all the gear because he lost the most recent bet between them, and he couldn’t help but smile.

                “You two have been at it again haven’t you?” Benson said as he leaned back in his chair. “What was it this time?  I’m thinking it has something to do with the program issue you’ve brought me.”

                Dean looked at his brother as he sat down adjacent to Benson and said, “I win again.  I told you Benson would guess we were up to our usual games.” Dean then turned toward Benson and continued, “You spoke of a favor, so we brought our programming disaster with us as you asked, in the hopes  we could help each other with our mutual problems.”

                Benson looked over the information on Karl’s comp first and asked if they had access to the revised code compiler that was available to them from the master data base.  Karl looked unsure, as if he was speaking a foreign language.  As he picked up Dean’s comp he waited to scan the rest of the code before speaking again.

                “The tweaking this program needs to run error free, is a simple mater for the new compiler to handle.  From your silence I’m guessing you know this already and really wanted something else, what is it.  I still have my issue to discuss with you and it’s time sensitive.” Benson wondered if he was correct in his judgment of these two after all.

                Karl spoke first. “It was Dean who didn’t want to tell you straight out.”

                “Tell me what?” Benson said.

                “We stumbled on a privileged communication Benson.  It seems that you have an enemy that wishes you harm.  You know that our section’s staff is required to download requests for service from the Center Complex at large.  All the programmers in our section then sift through these requests and condense them down into solutions that can be solved by creating new programs.  Programs are then created and the reverse is true, we upload our work for use by any employee with access to the Center’s grid.  Somehow when we received our program assignment it also contained a file mislabeled as a request for service.  In reality it was actually an eyes only communiqué meant for someone in administration.  We are your friends Benson and we knew that it was not safe to talk to you about this over the Center’s internal communications.  This whole need to talk thing was a ruse to give you a heads up.”

                “What was in this message?  It might have something to do with the favor I need from you in return.  My personal comp has a program I developed to solve a problem that has occurred with one of our research Probes.  There is someone in this company with a secret agenda.  Actions have been taken with total disregard for our personnel and the very technology that supports our normal operations.  This program needs to analyze huge amounts of raw data and must be monitored.  To keep it a secret it must not run on any of the Center’s networked computers.  Therefore the task requires at least four personal comp systems running in parallel and must be monitored by myself and someone else I can trust until the analysis has reduced the data to a manageable level.  The balance of the analysis can then be done on my system.  It’ll be safer if only I finish and pass my findings to my boss.”

                “The message was a request to stop an investigation for information about P4.” Karl said while watching Benson’s reaction. “Someone with the initials KL, wants all relevant information destroyed at any cost.  We don’t know who it was supposed to be sent to but you were mentioned by name as expendable.  Whatever you need we got your back.”

                Benson heard the word expendable and realized how serious this was becoming.  He had mentioned the Probe but not that it was Probe 4 and KL had to be Kyle Loomis……….