BTBD Challenge 18 - Virus protection

[m_findlow]

Title: Virus protection
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,529 words
Content notes: Written for Challenge 18 - Floppy at beattheblackdog
Summary: Torchwood's servers are under attack and Jack must seek outside assistance.

His footsteps echoed between the narrow vaulted ceiling of the long, open air sandstone corridors. Or at least they would have, if not for the other noises that surrounded him. Everywhere he looked, he saw the fresh, youthful faces of students, some vociferously arguing the relative merits of Voltaire or Chaucer, Austen or Bronte. Others were sat on the lush green lawns, oblivious to the debate, lost in their own studies, heads stuck firmly in books. Another group of theatre students were energetically playing out a mock sword fight, clearly rehearsing for a play, whilst another sat cross legged nearby and sketched the striking Gothic architecture that was background to their makeshift stage.

Everywhere a sea of dull colour, tweed and plaid, were the modern seventies fashion, never ranging too far from traditional greens and browns, occasionally a deep russet or mustard yellow, with sprinklings of navy. His own of attire muted greys and blues blended in well.  

Despite the aging architecture, everything else was modern and new, yet to Jack's senses, even the fresh leather and unweathered parchment and books smelled musty and old. It was like stepping back in time, even though he was living out this planet's timeline in the same way as everyone else, second by second, day by day. It should have felt like progress, but the age and the dust instead felt thick and cloying around him.  

Cambridge University was a place where the best and brightest of every field came to study and excel, or aspire to achieve new academic heights. Not at all Jack's cup of tea, but often good people to know if you were in a jam, and where simple brute force wasn't the solution. Today was just one example of that particular predicament.

As he entered the room, the enormous chalk board that covered the length of the wall caught his attention, or more to the point, the man stood in front of it, arms folded in deep thought, as he studied the white scrawl. He was dressed in a well fitted tweed vest over his pale beige shirt, thick black glasses framing his face and contrasting with the long, full blond hair. Nerd or not, Jack though the young man looked dreamy. He couldn't have been more than twenty six.

'Does that actually make sense to you?' he asked, cocking his head as he tried to understand the condensed lines of formulae. Futuristic as he was, he could pull apart a Sontaran ship and put it back together, but the technical science behind the mechanics left him for dead.

The man considered him with a brief smile and went back to adding a few more numbers and symbols.

'Funny how inspiration strikes sometimes,' he muttered. 'Seeing you dressed like that reminded me of a research paper I read from the forties. You must be Jack. They said you were coming. Terrence Reid,' the man introduced himself, shaking Jack's hand firmly.

'I thought computing was the future. What's math got to do with it?'

'Computing is math,' Terrence replied. 'Every process and instruction is nothing more than an equation for the computer to solve. The more complex the operation, the more complex the code that needs to solve it. This,' he said, pointing to the board, 'is the beginnings of a graphical interface that will allow users to input instructions without having to enter them as base code.'

'Cool,' Jack said, trying to sound interested.

'Very,' he confirmed. 'Since they decommissioned Titan two months ago, it's freed up time to begin working on this. Plus, with the doubling of our storage from one megabyte to two, we now have more storage than we'll ever need.'

'You'd be surprised how quickly that will go,' Jack mused.

'Unlikely, then again you may be right. The modern world is a strange place. Yesterday if you'd told me we'd be getting a visit from a Yank working for the British Empire, I'd have said there was something in the tea I was drinking.'

'I have a sample here of some code that's causing us problems,' he said, pulling the floppy disk from his pocket. It was ridiculously large, five and a quarter inches, and didn't fit easily into any of his large pockets. It was still a few years before the three and a half inch version would come along, much more pocket sized, and more resilient as well.

Jack yearned for modern technology more than ever. Even the relatively rudimentary flash drives of the 21st century held hundreds of thousands more megabytes of storage than the enormous mainframe towering over him here. By the time he'd be born, many implantable chips would store millions of terabytes of data and be no larger than a grain of rice. Then again, it would be two thousand years before quantum computing and crystal light mechanics were discovered.

He held it out disdainfully. 'Sorry about the format,' he apologised.

'Whyever should you apologise? These are the latest development, 110 kilobytes. Some chap in the states is planning to develop and market a version that stores 256 kilobytes of data. He must be mad, but good luck to him.' He paused for a moment. 'Jobs I think his name is.'

He looked down at the disk, thoughts churning over in his head like gears in a well oiled machine.

'How big did you say your mainframe was?'

'I didn't,' Jack confirmed. 'It's classified.'

'Right,' Terrence said, unperturbed. 'Well, let's see if we can't troubleshoot your problem. Obviously we won't be loading it onto our live mainframe, but the old EDSAC system should give us a bit of insight.'

He tinkered with a few plugs and circuits, pulling dust overs off other bits of machinery which were obviously connected to the archaic system.

'I'll have to re-jig our data converter. We've just manged to transfer some of our eight inch disks to these smaller ones, but never the other way around. Who'd have ever thought it?' he laughed. 'There we go,' he said, transferring the data from one large disk to an even larger disk, handing the original back to Jack.

'I can see why they call them floppies,' he said, waving it uselessly between his fingers.

'You'll damage it, doing that,' Terrence scolded him.

'Sorry,' Jack apologised, feeling chastised like a little boy. Young as he was, there was a firm authority in his voice, and the gaze from behind the heavy frames made him want to stand to attention. Despite that, he carried on, snapping it cleanly in two, and Terrence twisted his head around at the sound of the thin plastic cracking, damaging the magnetic film inside.

'What did you do that for?'

'You've got a copy on that now,' he said, pointing at the large disc. 'More than one copy of this hanging around could be dangerous.'

'Fine,' Terrence replied, narrowing his eyes at Jack. 'A matter of security I suppose.'

'Something like that.'

Even at Torchwood, computers were still something of a novelty, and when they broke, it was up to Jack to sort them out, on the basis that they claimed he should know more about them than the rest of them did. It wasn't always true, and he did what he could, but when it came down to the nuts and bolts of computer code, he was as much in the dark as the next person. If it were up to him Torchwood would have its own technical genius. Maybe he could convince them to take this handsome young man on board.

Any thoughts of recruitment had to take a back seat for the moment. His priority right now was to get answers to a computer virus that had crippled every system in the hub. Their systems were at least thirty years ahead of anything in even the most modern scientific labs across the planet. Without them though, they had no way of monitoring the rift, accessing their data files, and no way of knowing what security protocols were being tampered with, or overridden, and what data might be being leaked out of their servers to God only knew who.

Their leader had placed the team on a twenty four hour rotation, fully armed in case of any attempts to access the hub using the own security codes. Every entrance was being patrolled hourly since they could no longer rely on the accuracy of the images being fed to them from security cameras covering the main areas of the hub. That, and there were plenty of access points that weren't covered by cameras, which an infiltration team could have discovered from their databases. No one knew anything at the moment because they couldn't access any of their own systems thanks to the virus. It made Jack's mission critical, even if he seemed calm on the outside, he knew how vital it was to fix it, and prevent any potential alien intervention.

Jack studied the code as it ran across the black screen, devilish green lettering flowing up and down, left to right, looking no more logical than the white on black gibberish from the chalkboard.

'This is some very complex code, Jack. Russian I'm assuming? Maybe some influence from the Chinese?'

The Cold War seemed as good an answer as any, he thought. That it was alien seemed irirrelevant at this stage. A computer virus was the same no matter where you went. Its only aim was to cause damage, steal information and corrupt data.

'Also classified,' he responded.

Terrence was not fazed or annoyed by the lack of information, too interested in what he was seeing.

'It's going to take me a while to run some routines and understand how this programming works,' he replied.

'Whatever it takes,' Jack instructed him. 'Until we can figure it out, and how to put a stop to it, our whole operations server is out of action.'

In his mind Terrence had no doubt that Jack was military intelligence. The way he held himself, dressed, his language. But there was something open about him as well, only a step away from a joke or a smile. That wasn't military at all. Perhaps it was just the American in him. Either way, it intrigued him. And the man was very attractive.

It seemed silly. He'd never had time for girlfriends whilst he'd been studying, something that had annoyed his family even more once he'd graduated. They'd expected him to return home and settle down, raise a family, not stay on at the university as a permanent bachelor and recluse. It wasn't that such things didn't interest him, they just didn't interested him as much as the work he was doing. Certainly thoughts of being attracted to other men had never factored into the equation until now.

'It might take a while to analyse this code. Do you have somewhere else you need to be?'

'Nope.'

'Oh,' he replied, surprised. He wasn't really counting on the man wanting to hang around while he performed tasks that most people found enormously tedious. He nervously pushed his glasses further back onto his nose, trying to focus on the display and keyboard in front of him. To be honest, the tall man being in the room with him was terribly distracting, and not because he was worried about what other military skills he might possess.

'Anything I can help with?' Jack asked, leaning over his shoulder, terribly close to his face. The man smelled incredible and it made his head spin. He tried to shake the distraction and the perfume that was clouding his head. He needed to take back control of the situation.

'Would you be here if you could do it yourself?'

'I'm no expert, but I have a rudimentary knowledge,' Jack insisted. It wasn't entirely truthful, but it was an excuse to stay. Terrence turned around in his chair to face Jack head on.

'Okay, well let me put this code into perspective for you then. When you can tell me what that means,' he said, referring to the wall of chalkboard equations, 'then you'll be qualified to help with this.'

'Well, that's me told then,' Jack chuckled, and Terrence was relieved that the man wasn't angry with him for his derogatory treatment. 'Should I leave you alone for a while?'

'Please. I assure you I'll let you know of any developments. Where should I find you?'

'Oh, I'll be around,' Jack affirmed. Cambridge was a big place but not so big that Jack couldn't find his way back. 

 

After several hours of walking around the campus and the township itself, treating himself to hot chocolate and raisin scones in a tiny little cafe that seemed to house the entire population of poetry students, Jack grew bored. As assignments went, this one was important, but the logistics of it left his body feeling unused and redundant. He was much better placed in tasks that required physical activity on his part, not idling away the hours in mindless research. Though he wouldn't have minded idling away a few hours in a secluded computer lab with a sexy young computer genius, running some personal hardware diagnostics.

As the weather clouded over outside and began to grow dark into the late afternoon, Jack made his way back to the computer lab, hoping for some news.

The lab was quiet when he reentered. He called out, but there was no response. He traced his way through the the labyrinthine passages, headed back to where the mainframe was. Perhaps his handsome nerd was engrossed in what he was doing and couldn't hear him.

Terrence lay on the floor, in a narrow gap between two of the mainframes hulking stacks. Jack rushed over and checked for a pulse, finding none. His heart dropped. He'd only known the man for a few hours and now he was gone. He ran a hand through the soft blond hair, something he'd wanted to do since they'd met, but hadn't yet had the opportunity to ask the man out for a drink, hoping to do so once this was all over.

Reluctantly he picked himself up off the floor and sighed, hands on hips. What the hell had happened? He didn't look hurt. Perhaps he'd had a stroke or an aneurysm, or something.

Putting aside his feelings for a moment, he walked over to the display console, intending to study the code on the screen. Instead what he saw was his name, repeated over and over again, covering the screen in glowing green.

Confused, he hit a key on the keyboard. He supposed it didn't matter which one, he just needed to know if he could input commands. The screen went blank before a single line of text appeared.

"Are you there?"

Was the virus trying to communicate with him all of a sudden? He pressed the Y key, curious to know what came next.

"I'm in the computer."

Jack furrowed his brow. It seemed like an odd thing for a virus to say, assuming alien viruses could talk as this one seemed to be able to. When he didn't reply, another message appeared.

"It's not Russian. Or Chinese."

Suddenly Jack realised who he was talking to. Terrence was in the computer.

He didn't know the command code for the machine so he just typed what he meant.

"What happened?"

"The virus corrupted the entire mainframe. I tried to shut off the power, and it surged. When I woke up I was in the machine."

"It'll be okay. We can figure out a way to get you back in your body," Jack promised.

"No, I figured out the virus. The only way to stop it is for me to hold back the code from in here. If you remove me, the virus takes over again. Load me onto a disk and onto your servers. I can fight the virus from within."

Jack shook his head, even though no one but him could see it.

"But you'll be stuck there forever," he protested.

"I understand what the virus was trying to do to your systems. I know all about Torchwood and what you do. You cannot let this virus take over. It will broadcast to every malicious species in the universe everything it's discovered about earth and about Torchwood. I can't let that happen. Load me inside and I can re-index all of your secure files, so that the virus can't access them."

"I can't ask you to give up your life."

"We both know that my body has been dead too long for you to fix this, Jack. Let me help you."

Jack spared a glance at Terrence's body, lying prone on the ground a few yards away.

"I'm so sorry, I never meant for this to happen."

"I know. But I studied all my life to work at the edge of computing technology. Now I get to do just that. And help save the planet. That seems like a pretty good trade off."

Jack thieved a spare disk from the adjoining office and began downloading the virus, and Terrence's consciousness, onto the disk. Unlike the first one, this one was carefully tucked away in his breast pocket to ensure no damage would come to it. Before he left, he knelt down beside Terrence's body one final time, stroking that beautiful blond hair and readjusting the glasses so that they sat straight on his face.

 

Two weeks later the University received a letter from Her Majesty's office stating that the death of Mr Reid was an unfortunate accident and a great loss to the university and the emerging field of computer science. It went on to say that he had been engaged to perform some very important work for the government's intelligence agencies, and that as such, he would be posthumously awarded for his duties to the Crown. Furthermore, the EDSAC system that had resulted in this tragic death now contained classified information, and that the university should expect persons from the government to dismantle the mainframe and dispose of any sensitive data in the coming days.

 

Tosh knocked quietly on Jack's door before entering his office. He lifted his head at the sound.

'Toshiko, what can I do for you?'

'I was doing some upgrades to the hub's security protocols and computer systems. When I ran a scan with the new software it detected a very nasty virus and purged it immediately. I ran some diagnostics to try and determine what it was.'

'And what did you find?' he asked, interested in what his new recruit had discovered.

'Well, it's peculiar. It seems to have been capable of a lot of damage and the ability to transfer data outside of our secure network, before corrupting our systems entirely,  but that's not the strange part. The virus had been sitting on our servers for over thirty years. I can't figure out why it didn't do anything in all that time. Anyway, it's gone now.'

'Good work, Toshiko,' Jack praised.

'Oh, there was one other thing,' she added. 'The scans picked up a secondary worm attached to the original virus. It doesn't seem malicious but I've run it through every database I can think of and no one has ever heard of the Terrence Worm, or what it does. Did you want me to get rid of it? I could partition it off to one of our idle servers, if you like?'

Jack nearly fell out of his chair at the name. Terrence. Had he really been keeping the virus at bay all this time? Jack had just assumed that when their system came back online all those years ago that he'd simply fixed it,  killed it off.

'Jack?' Tosh asked, trying to regain his attention.

'Leave it,' he said distractedly, before turning his full attention back to her, forcing a smile. 'Like you said, it's not malicious.'

'Okay,' she said, getting up and leaving him to his thoughts.

 

Jack sat there for a long time, thinking about it, and the sacrifice that young man had made for an organisation he knew nothing about and owed nothing to.

As silly as it seemed, he opened up a blank document on his computer and typed the words, "Thank you, Terrence". He sat there as if expecting a reply, but the cursor blinked idly at him. After ten minutes, and feeling a right fool, he went to close the application only to discover three more words below his own. "You're welcome, Jack". He furiously typed out a question.

"Is that really you?"

"Yes, it's me. The virus is gone now. Your brilliant Toshiko used some new algorithms to purge the virus."

"I can't believe you've been here all this time."

"It wasn't always easy, but now that the virus is gone, I can finally relax. What do computer viruses do when they retire?"

"I don't know. You could always help Tosh build new security protocols. Or you could just watch me on the security cameras parade around the hub with no clothes on."

"I already have several terabytes of that stored away, but both suggestions sound excellent."

Comments

[jo02]

Oh, this was great! And very moving in the last part. Thank you.

[bk_forever]

So sad whenTerrence died, but I love that he's still rattling around Torchwood's mainframe. Jack had thought to recruit him,and inadvertently he did just that, without even knowing. I think Terrence Reid will be working for Torchwood for a very long time. Jack should make time to chat with him, and maybe tell Tosh about him. I'm sure she'd have lot to talk to Terrence about.

Wonderful story!

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I enjoyed writing it. For some reason, the ones that require the most research end up being my favourites. I can't abide by just making up stuff, for me, I have to make sure it's something historically and technically correct.
Wikipedia must be so confused by my collective searches!

[bk_forever]

I know what you mean - I do some pretty weird searches myself!