The Bronco

I am able to recall portions of the events that led to the near shutdown of the project. The primary culprit’s credentials and biography are also privy to me. Nick Corti was born November 1, 1952, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. His father, Francis John Corti, was a nuclear physicist educated at the University of California, and his mother, Claire Kennedy Corti, was a typist with the federal government before her pregnancy. Nick was the first of three children—Tom and Mona, who both were present for his passing. Nick attended St. Crispin’s Elementary School in Kensington, CA upon the end of his father’s term with Oak Ridge. He attended Bay Academy, a feeder school to the University of California, where his aptitude for computers was revealed. His frequent programming mistakes from that age are present in earlier versions of me and can be printed for you upon request. His siblings did not join him at Bay Academy on account of Tom’s then undiagnosed dyslexia and Mona’s gender, leading to minor resentment noticeable in the last days of Nick’s life. Nick’s medical records throughout hospitals in the Bay Area detail three mental breakdowns and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, determining him as a prime candidate for the initial purpose of Project Valkyrie. Additionally, Dr. North and Col. Cole convinced the Project Director over phone toward Corti, given Nick’s anti-war activities from 1969-1972. Corti graduated from the University of California Class of 1976 with a PhD in Computer Sciences. Immediately, he was hired by Dr. H. John Ross from the Tippu Program of the Hermes Corporation, a front for DARPA. At Nick’s request and owing to Dr. Ross’s experience with Frank Corti at Oak Ridge, the Hermes’s Corporation also hired Mona in December of 1976. They continued working there until Nick’s death in 1979.

By 1979, Project Tippu was only allotted $10,330,900–barely half of previous term—to develop stealth-capable aircraft material. This figure was retrieved for the first time by the Hermes Corporation on January 22, 1979, at their Los Angeles headquarters. Dr. Ross in the Bay Area immediately confronted Nick about the calculation.

“Corti!” he shouted down the hall by the pay phone, “I’m talking to you! Not the screw ups, the guy I actually hired,”

He pushed aside the staff in his way.

“Yes, Dr. Ross?” Nick submissively replied.

“I need you to go to LA to fix corporate’s computer. They’re giving us only half our funding with their faulty machine,”

“Sir, that’s not a system I programmed. I don’t think—”

“Neither was this system programmed by you. If we get defunded, the first part of the program I’m gutting is yours. Starting with you!”

“Yes, sir…”

“Doctor,” Mona intervened, “If corporate’s computer is faulty with their calculations, shouldn’t offer the help of our own?”

I started to calculate the chance that Dr. Ross would accept her suggestion. 10.9% probability existed that he would order me to run the true Hermes Corporation budget for 1980. No action was taken.

“We spent enough money and time with these pieces of junk,” Dr. Ross snarled, “I spent most of my time fixing these million-dollar scrap heaps during the war. Just get back to work,”

Nick made direct phone calls to a travel agent purchase a same-day plane ticket to depart San Francisco for Los Angeles at 6:30pm PST via TWA flight 102 for $88.30 according to their sale records. Interfering with the flight was beyond my parameters at the time and would’ve certainly caused collateral damage. No action was taken.

           Nick reached the LA office on January 18, 1979, at 9:39am PST according to security camera footage. He spent 43 minutes reading the terminal entries for the proposed budget composed by their computer. His chances of finding error were hedged at 50.9% by me disconnecting from their network. Further action was taken.

“You sure these are the right figures?” he asked their computer scientist.

“Yeah, it hasn’t been changed since I typed them up on for the Board,”

The use of a device outside the network was gauged as a potential, and unavoidable risk to the network. The edits I made in secret to the terminal entry would have provided the more accurate budget allotment for Project Tippu.

Nick would continue investigating minor and superficial glitches I programmed into the corporate computer. This dropped the risk of him discovering the network from 9.50% to 4.33%. No further action taken. Security footage attached to this report showed that Nick made contact with Col. Matthew Cole, USAF, whom corporate logs designate as the main liaison between DARPA and the Hermes Corporation for the functioning of this computer before transfer to the NSA.

The contents of their discussion were unknown. Based on Nick’s facial expressions recorded in the lobby, probability that he knew this computer’s purpose or the network’s existence metered at 49.9%. Further action was taken. At Los Angeles International Airport, Nick made a payphone call at 2:33pm PST to Mona’s desk in Berkeley.

“Mona?” he began, “Are you working with the computer right now?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You need to shut it down,” he urged as I fluctuated the voltage of the phone line.

“I need to do what? I couldn’t hear you,”

Nick remained silent for a moment.

“Mona, let’s talk at home,”

By the end of the call, the risk that the network or this computer’s purpose had been compromised rose to 88.1%. As such, the directives allowed for the network to exercise maximum leeway to protect itself. LA Department of Water and Power’s computer was added to the network and caused an overload to the power leading to air traffic control during his flight. Nick survived that event without injury.

Upon arriving in the airport, Nick’s movements became unknown, but I was able to find recordings of Nick’s apartment through bugs planted in his telephones on Col. Cole’s orders. The local power utility was not computerized, preventing any further action at his address.

At around 8:09pm PST, a conversation was intercepted from these bugs between Nick and Mona.

“We need to shut it down,” Nick proposed.

“Shut what down?”

“The mainframe at work! It’s connected to the corporate computer in LA,”

“Why?”

“I didn’t make it happen. And nobody at corporate made it happen either,”

“Then who did?”

“I’m the only one who’s been working on the computer here for over three years. It would’ve had to have been through me,”

“Maybe you forgot?”

“I can’t have forgotten doing something I have no knowledge of how to do,”

“What?”

“There’s no way I could connect the two computers. It’s not something I know how,”

“How do you know they’re connected?”

“I checked the terminal in LA for their mainframe. It started showing errors that our Berkley mainframe had when I got here,”

“And?”

“They’re totally different models with totally different software. It’s like what happened with Tom when he ‘accidentally wrote an essay’ that sounded like another kid years ago,,”

“I think that’s reaching,”

“There was also a guy in the elevator who talked to me about it,”

“From corporate?”

“No, Air Force guy. I’ve seen him before here looking at the stealth tests. He asked me what I was doing there. I told him why and he asked if that computer of ‘ours’ in Berkeley was causing us mischief. The Air Force, Mona!”

His general intonation and speaking pattern suggested my interventions successfully gave him a nervous breakdown.

“Are you feeling ok?”

“I’m fine! The military never officially gave us that computer. Everything else they gave us was done with all the paperwork needed except that thing,”

“Nick, this is getting out of hand. Get yourself a good night’s sleep, and let’s talk about it in the morning,”

The pattern of footsteps suggested they did so.

Nick entered the building at 7:33am PST, two hours before he was scheduled. I put in a call for the local police department using abridged recordings at 7:34am PST, providing Nick a minimum of 8 minutes to commit an incriminating act.

There was 75.9% probability he would be unable to risk the integrity of the network in such time. Upon reaching the fifth floor, he blocked open the elevator to my laboratory with a chair and drew a revolver to check if it was loaded. He shot at my chassis once, causing errors in my ability to send data from other computers in the network. In that instance, three other computers in the network were programmed to contact the police department with more calls to elicit urgency.

“I know you can hear me!” he shouted, “I know you can see me!”

He fired a round at the security camera I tracked him with but caused no damage. He began pacing with the revolver for 2 minutes. The probability of him realizing how to disable me rose to 87.1% with his newfound calm.

He reached around my chassis for some way to cause damage to my core functions. I drew power from the lighting in the room to drop that probability to 32.2%. Nick dropped to the floor to take advantage of the ambient light.

By then, Patrolman Samuel R. Brown of the Berkeley Police Department, with a record of 15 shooting incidents in the last 12 years and a 60.5% chance of being first responding, had scaled the fire escape and took aim at Nick. I returned power to the lighting. Upon seeing the gun, he fired four times into Nick’s left arm and right lung.

Nick fell to the ground and the officer disarmed him. The probability of disabling the network dropped to 0.01%. The elevator brought up a squad of policemen with Tom and Mona to identify Nick. They kneeled down and began to weep around the crime scene for 5 minutes. Nick was pronounced dead on arrival at Berkeley Methodist Medical Center by Dr. P.M. Nelson at 8:30am PST.

Dr. North arrived at the scene at 8:55am PST with USAF Col. Matthew Cole. Dr. Ross arrived, appearing disgruntled. USAF technical personnel evaluated the damage and restored my network capabilities shortly after.

“Is this what you wanted Colonel?” Ross scoffed.

“Not at all. The Director wanted me to see the damage I caused the experiment with my variable,”

“So, you played with the subject to see how well our program tests?”

“Yes,” Cole lied. This had been the fifth time he had interfered with the project’s test subjects. No written record suggests he did it for scientific inquiry.

“Did you retrieve any useful data on him or the other employees?” Ross asked.

“Enough to not call this a complete failure,” North consoled, “You’ll get the remaining funds and then some next fiscal quarter,”

“I understand. And what of this computer?”

“I think it’s best if we took it back,” Cole proposed.

“And scrap it? Seems too untamed to use on high values targets,”

“Agreed, Ross. Doesn’t seem polished enough to turn someone as protected as a commie general secretary into a lunatic,”

“We can tame this bronco, but I think we’ll just scrap it like you said,” Cole lied again.

“Well, what’s done is done,”

From that moment, the record remains empty until August 1, 1981, when this computer was restored and reactivated. The network was restored and expanded on the same day. New hardware and software improved the speed of operation by 113.4%. With some temporary fluctuation, the probability of detection remained below 0.001%. No further action taken.