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Dr. Evans nodded slowly. “Of course. Damocles has a communications interface that monitors for signals from all sources, including itself. If a shutdown command is sent and successfully authenticated then the command spreads to all other instances of Damocles the next time they monitor an affected version of Damocles.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Rick flipped through the pages on the table and Dr. Evans shrugged.
“It’s a bulletproof system. It didn’t seem important to bring up, sorry.”
“Everything’s important, Dr. Evans. You know that. And that’s a very clever way to propagate commands. Why has no one issued a shutdown command to it yet?”
Dr. Evans shrugged. “I don’t know. Once I figured out that the weapon had this capability built in to it I started asking people why we couldn’t send a shutdown signal but nobody seemed to know why. One of the President’s aides sounded like he was going to help but that was right before the crash. Then I was brought here and I’ve spent days trying to get these idiots to help but nobody seemed like they thought it was a viable solution because nobody even knows where to start with getting the encryption key or the proper interface protocols to give it a shutdown command. I sort of gave up on that solution myself, to be frank.” Dr. Evans’ voice was hollow and he had the look of a man who had been utterly defeated.
Rick shook his head. “No. No way. A propagating shutdown command is the only way this would work. Otherwise, like you said, even if you could destroy or maybe even clean this stuff off of systems all it would take is one infected system touching them and everything would go down again.”
“Of course. But without the key—”
“Michael.” Rick put his mug down on the table and locked eyes with Dr. Evans. “I flew from Virginia to California on a business trip right before this all started. I was barely on the ground before planes and cars started exploding around me. I’ve faced down the military, bloodthirsty gangs and mother nature herself. I’ve watched people die in front of me, some of them by my own hand. I’ve made it this far to get back home to my family and I’m not about to stop.” Rick’s voice shook slightly as it increased in volume and intensity. “If I can do all of that then I’m pretty sure you and I can figure out a way to stop this damned thing before it gets any worse. If this is the only surefire way to stop this weapon then I promise you we’re going to figure out how to make it happen.”
Dr. Evans closed his eyes and shook his head. “That’s a good speech, Rick. But it doesn’t change the fact that we don’t have what we need to even talk to Damocles much less authenticate a conversation.”
Rick began pacing across the room, talking as he walked. “I have to imagine the key would be stored on a secured system. Maybe even an air-gapped one, right?”
Dr. Evans shrugged. “I suppose so. That would make sense, given who developed it.”
“You said the communications protocol is bulletproof, right?”
“Absolutely.” Dr. Evans nodded.
“How can you be sure?”
Dr. Evans hesitated for a second, glancing between Rick and Jane. “Because they used software I wrote for it. I know it inside and out. It’s completely foolproof. No holes, no gaps, no tricks. Nothing you can exploit.”
“Damn.” Rick scratched his chin and tilted his head back and forth, letting out a contented sigh as he heard and felt his neck and back crack. “Okay, so if we want to stop this then we have to get the private key somehow.”
“But no one knows where it is!”
“Irrelevant.” Rick shook his head. “We can’t wipe it out and we can’t bypass its security. The only option available is to obtain the private key so we can encrypt a shutdown message.” Dr. Evans tried to argue again and Rick shut him down. “I understand the challenges involved here, Dr. Evans, but we have to come to grips with reality. If there are no other possible paths forward then we must take the only one available to us. Now come on, work with me here. Let’s say we figure out the key. What then?”
Dr. Evans sat back in his chair, working through the scenario in his mind. “We… we would need to know the precise communication protocols. Exactly how to tell it to shut down and propagate that command to all other instances of the virus that are seen. We couldn’t tell it to erase itself because that wouldn’t further the spread of the shutdown command.”
“Okay, so that kind of information is probably going to be found somewhere close to the key. We’ll deal with that later, too. Let’s say we have the key and we have the commands. What comes after that?”
“We’d need a system that Damocles hasn’t totally trashed. We’ll give the command to that system and the system will talk to other systems that are affected and it’ll spread outward from there.”
“And it won’t reinfect those systems?”
“No.” Dr. Evans shook his head firmly. “Damocles will still be on the clean systems, but it’ll be in a shutdown state. If any live versions of the virus try to reach out and infect a clean system they’ll receive the shutdown command from the clean system instead.”
“Okay, great. Again, it shouldn’t be hard to find something like that close to where we find the key and command instructions. Now we know what we need to do.”
Jane smiled and nodded, having been listening intently the whole time. “That’s great, Rick. But how do we do it?”
Rick looked at her. “We?”
Jane nodded. “What, do you think I’m going to sit around here?”
“I, uh… well no.” Rick stammered. “I guess I didn’t peg you as the adventuring type.
“Oh come on, now.” Jane gave Rick a wry smile. “After Las Vegas you’d have to strap me down to keep me from tagging along with you again.”
“You had… fun?” Rick raised an eyebrow.
