The alarm on his smart speaker sounded, making him aware of the time. He opened the bathroom cabinet and removed a tub of Vaseline. As a recent employee of online retailer 1-STOPSHOP, he was low down the pecking order of his warehouse depot job. And it meant that he was only permitted to wear the basic exoskeleton models used to lift heavy pallets. They were engineered to reduce joint pain and aching backs and had not been built with comfort in mind. Even covering his shoulders and wrists with Vaseline wasn’t enough to stop the metal frame from leaving him chafed most days.
Suddenly his watch vibrated: it was an email alert congratulating him on solving a puzzle and urging him torespond as soon as possible. It was the third he’d received that week, along with several missed calls. He drew a blank when he tried to recall entering a competition, then remembered the game Louie had played on his phone. Louie must have completed it. Bruno wondered if there was a cash prize involved that might go towards paying for a seventh month at the care facility. It was worth a look, he decided, and opened it.
What would you say if we offered you the opportunity to start your life again?
Once more he glanced around his bedsit. And without giving it any more thought, he pressed the ‘read more’ button.
** CONFIDENTIAL **
TOP SECRET: UK EYES ONLY, CLASSIFIED ‘A’
THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT
MINUTES OF JOINT CYBER-ESPIONAGE / INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE ASSESSMENT MEETING 11.6
‘THE ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO STORAGE OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS’
** Please note this is an account of the minutes taken from the above meeting. Portions of text and certain participants have been redacted to prevent threats to security. **
LOCATION:
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Edward Karczewski, Operations Director,
Dr Sadie Mann, Director of Psychiatric Evaluations
Dr M.J. Porter, Head of Neuroscience
Ministry of Defence (MoD), Porton Down
MI5
William Harris, HM Government’s Minister for Central Intelligence
NON-MEMBERS PRESENT:
Prime Minister Diane Cline
PRIME MINISTER: Have you all lost your bloody minds?
EDWARD KARCZEWSKI: I appreciate that on face value, yes, it might appear that way. And I accept this is a very radical, revolutionary solution.
PRIME MINISTER: Might? Itmightappear that way? First you send our classified information off on its travels in the backs of lorries and boats and God knows what else and now you’re trying to convince me that the fate of our country lies in the hands of people whose only qualification is solving a bloody puzzle? please tell me I’m misunderstanding something.
MI5: My initial reaction was similar to yours, Diane. But please hear them out.
EDWARD KARCZEWSKI: It’s much more complex than that, Prime Minister. I’d like to introduce Dr Porter, Head of Neuroscience at Dunston Laboratories. She is the leading scientist behind this procedure and can explain it in more detail.
DR PORTER: Prime Minister, what you’re watching on the screen in front of you isn’t just a puzzle. It’s a complex configuration made up of three-dimensional images and letters, colours, shapes and numbers, all hurtling around at pace and in random directions. It’s designed to test certain aspects of the brain’s functions, such as recall, problem solving, identification and separation ofinformation using the parts that interpret vision and hearing. To people with a condition called synaesthesia, this all makes perfect sense. What can take us hours or even days for our brains to interpret – if we can do it at all – they can locate in seconds.
PRIME MINISTER: My university flatmate had synaesthesia. It’s where people see colours when they hear musical notes or time can have specific shape, isn’t it? She swore blind she could taste flavours based on a photograph or a sound.
DR PORTER: That’s correct. Approximately one in 280,000 people are born with a form of it. We believe it’s a cross-wiring in the brain that leads to the blurring of senses. Our brains are split into four separate sections. Some synaesthetes are born with all four sections’ connections uniquely overlapping. And it’s that abnormality which will enable them to solve our puzzle that as yet, no computer algorithm can decipher.
PRIME MINISTER: Your use of the wordabnormalityconcerns me.
DR PORTER: I assure you, the term is used in a positive way. Their abilities demonstrate how receptive their brains are to storing massive amounts of data, specifically when it’s broken down into code. As you are aware, DNA is a single molecule that stores all the data that makes us who we are as individuals. But we can now turn anything into code, even voices and images. A limitless amount can be stored onto a single strand of DNA, the equivalent of seventy billion floppy disks. For four years, I’ve been leading a team of scientists turning everything hidden from public view in our nation’s archives into binary code. It’s now ready to be stored in microscopic DNA and injected into the part of the brain critical for memory and learning.
