A Gem Among Weeds

A Gem Among Weeds The klaxon-like alarm sounded once again. General Ratinger appears unperturbed. All around him unfolds what must surely be the final stages of a war. Stages that directly precede complete annihilation. But Ratinger’s face is the carved bedrock of a war veteran; a man of few words.

Lt. Leroy appears beside him at the consoles of the Central Command. After giving a cursory salute, he says, “Sir, we have lost 92% of all our communication systems. The EMPs were detonated just 10km about the ground, and spread across the country. Preliminary reports suggest that the explosions and placements of the missiles were timed to create constructive interference. Thereby extending the range and amplitude of the damage caused. We are yet to hear back from our field units. Oh, and we have the coordinates of the target. Here they are.”

LeRoy places a slip of paper on the table. Scribbled in a scrawny, hurried handwriting, were the following numbers: 78.2349895, 15.4911107.

Ratinger nods curtly, and the Lt. salutes, walks backwards and marches away. Ratinger looks at the coordinates closely. He recognizes them. He had studied the site during a tour of duty when he was still a Private. They belong to a bunker deep within an ice shelf. He had scouted out the location. Faux foliage intertwined with barbed metal wires were laid over the canopies above the bunker. A shrewd Faraday cage, blocking out signals, as well as providing visual shielding from satellites.

So that’s where the target is, he thought. If only we could broadcast a firing solution, this war would be over. But with all the radio, satellite and ground communication channels being wiped clean with the sudden electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks, they relied on smoke signals and line-of-sight communication methods. Imagine going to the top of the tallest mountain in the area and spurting out messages with a laser, in dots and dashes to the furthest outpost that can see it. And doing it again. And again, and again, until it spans the entire length of a country and beyond. “Impossible!”, he shook his head.

To be fair, the army knew this was coming. Since World War 1, military communication technologies had gone from strength to strength. From the advent of the Global Positioning System, to the invention of the Internet, the world’s militaries had always been at the forefront of every impactful communication technology. In the heat of battle, communication (or the lack of it) often becomes the single cause of success of failure. The Cold War could have easily become the third World War, due to a tiny communication glitch, if it weren’t for a stroke of sheer luck and prescience on the part of an operator.

With such heavy reliance, especially on real time connection, counter-communication weaponry also developed in stride. One such lethal technology was electromagnetic pulse cannon missiles. An EMP cannon, when fired, produces a powerful burst of electromagnetic waves that can induce powerful currents in any metals nearby. If this metal is a wire, then the sudden spike of powerful current can literally fry the connected electronics, thus rendering the system useless instantly. Thereby, with one fell swoop, the entirety of a nation’s electronic communication can be sent back to the Stone Ages.

Repairing the damage caused by such an attack usually requires replacing the entire communication array, and hence takes several months to years to restore full communication capability. But EMPs have existed since the 1950s. Of course, the Military and Political heads were familiar with this technology. Many spent sleepless nights, dreading waking up one day

to find that an imperceptible detonation had rendered all their phones and radios silent. How would orders flow down the chain of command? What would they use to mobilize their troops?

Whistles?

So, with this foresight, nearly 10 years ago, the military had floated out an invitation to all the country’s scientists. “A tender to develop a robust, novel, non-electronic communication system”. And they accepted invitations over a span of a whole year, on a rolling basis.

The physicists couldn’t get past their quantum obsession, until someone pointed out that even the development of such a process would require extremely sophisticated, and delicate electronics. The only other proposal involved digging up the entire country and relaying it with acoustic pipes, and using a gong at Central Command to ‘ding’ out messages. Self-service for an order of crap on some rustic Eastern mountain top. A gong, what madness.

The chemists were still better off. One wanted to release volatile mixtures from a chimney atop the HQ, and have it diffuse a message to the outposts downwind. While sensible, it had the unfortunate side effect of being immensely toxic to birds, insects and other flying species.

And then there was the fact that we’d be dependent on unpredictable wind patterns, and we’d smell like an Irish pub at dawn each time we went to war. This was not an act that would induce confidence in the general public.

But the biologists! What absolute garbage these white coats came up with. “A genetically induced psychosis in mated felines to convey messages in fur coat mosaics over tractable distances”. Really? Let loose a bunch of crazy, pregnant cats, hope they run to the borders, and give birth to kittens there who would have our messages as barcodes on their fur? The Program Director had personally booted the proposal into the dumpster, and ordered a State enquiry into what the scientist did in her lab.

And then there was Team TICS from New BEL Labs, the only real hope from the program.

“Terrestrial Immobile Communication System” they had shabbily jotted down on the application form. No military background, no service experience, no notion of which ranks to stand up for, and which ranks to salute to.

Almost insultingly under-equipped with knowledge of the program, Team TICS was only there because their funding came from a secretly quasi-military industrial innovation organization.

The funding body kept a close eye on new grants, and forwarded the interesting ones to the head honchos, and the Technological Officers of the military. If something was to be weaponized, the military might as well have it first, was the rationale.

Some under officers had uniquely found Team TICS to be well placed for this challenge, and pushed them to the higher ups, with hope of better funding and a more secure career for each of them. The under officer couldn’t have made a more fatefully pertinent decision.

Team TICS was a terrestrial biology unit. They essentially studied plants. During their course of study, they had installed patches that sensed electrical changes in the tissues surrounding the xylem and phloem – tubes that plants use to transport food and nutrients across from their roots to their leaves. The patch could sense changes right before the plant absorbed water from the soil. In its essence, they had found a rudimentary way of telling when a plant was appetized, right before a meal. The plant equivalent of ‘mouth-watering’ right before a delicious meal.

And that alone was sufficient for these oddball section of scientists. The curiosity and wonder of knowing that a plant anticipated its meal would have surely won some a PhD, and others an award or two. But interestingly, they observed that with a certain kind of tree – the Obb laymer species, the plants seemed to be able tell each other when they were being watered. So, if one sapling was being watered, the patches of the several other neighbouring saplings lit up -- like a litter of excited puppies, circling their watering bowls in anticipation. And that was the one simple observation that won them a spot on the presentation table of the tender’s committee.

“Theoretically” Berty said, “we are capable of transmitting simple on/off messages through simple manipulation of the patch on the Master Node plant. In the future, we can support encrypted traffic as well. The latency is about 60 milliseconds, and then there is the drop off for each cubic meter of about 3 milliseconds. Over large distances, this can accumulate to several minutes, but the message is unfailingly always transmitted”.

Berty was always been a good presenter. He had joined the project on chance, more interested initially at joining the famous quizzing circles within New BEL Labs. But he turned out to be a storm of talent, equally good with a pen and paper, pipette and gloves, or guitar and a plectrum.

General Ratinger would have to keep an eye on him.

But what he was saying did turn out to be true. The fact that the Obb laymer species were so ubiquitous was an immense advantage too. In the age where 5G required new towers to be built every other square mile, having a vast green plumage around the country was contingent on having pre-existing infrastructure for an all new communication system in place.

When the board was still screening applicants for the tender, a simple confirmatory test was performed. A couple of tissue patches that Team TICS had made, were borrowed and planted into Obb. spp. trees at several distances from the Central Command. Then simple binary messages were tested. Just as advertised, these trees were able to communicate as if they were a part of some communal consciousness. The patches on the several trees flickered as the message played out in zeroes and ones on the faded white patch affixed to the trunk. There was a predicted delay, but the message had got through.

It was immaterial that Team TICS were least interested in seeing through the militarized application of the patch they later christened: G23-PAX. They were quite satisfied in using the potential funding to study whether plants were ticklish, or whatever. But it didn’t matter.

The bloodhounds of the military had sniffed out an interesting possibility, and the Tender Committee was out to ascertain just that.

A shriller, wider sounding alarm interrupted his thoughts. Gen. Ratinger looked up from his terminal. It was the FLEXCON 2 Alarm. Their Flag carrying base had been discovered.

“Sir, sir!”, an officer came running, panting. “Enemy troops found the Flag. They are approximately 7 miles north of the Flag Base, and we’re in hot pursuit.”

The General knew what this meant.

“If they get out of the EMP zone, and broadcast the location, then all is lost”, he murmured.

He snapped back to the terminal and pulled up the map. He pointed at a ridge line Northeast of the Flag Base.

“Here, we have troops stationed all around this ridge. It’s the closest exit from the EMP Zone.

Use smokes to signal high alert, and pursue the incursors all the way through here” he traces a line from the base to the outer zone of the EMP. “With some luck, they’ll be picked up by the flanking parties before they can leave the territory”.

The officer salutes and runs back, while the General gets off his chair and moves towards the Communications Office.

He brushes past the oddly silent terminals, generally buzzing with activity. He pushes open the glass door and demands, “Any luck?”.

All the scientists perk up in attention, and one voice answers, “Sir, the electronics, ground wires, and hand-to-hand radios are completely gone. The grid on the west is functional, but we withdrew our troops from the Tower outside the zone, and we had redeployed them closer to base, before the EMP. We’re working on having them back in the Tower so we can communicate with the external world”.

“That’ll take too long!” the General snapped. “What about TICS?” “Sir we sent out the ID message”, he pauses to glance at his watch, “22 minutes ago sir. We’re awaiting response on the receive”.

General Ratinger doesn’t speak. He stares impassively at the officer who spoke, a look that froze over the young duty officer’s soul. But truly he wasn’t paying attention to the Officer or his afterlife fate. He was thinking, weighing out his options.

At last, he said, “Send this, and tell the receivers to radio broadcast this, unencrypted, and on all channels”. He hands over a chit, with a string of coordinates and launch authorization codes. The firing solution.

A message that says unequivocally to the external world, this is where your secrets lie. And this is how we will blast it to hell. The General’s team had the coordinates early enough, but the sneaky EMP attack had undone their ability to act on the coordinate information.

Now there were enemy troops on home turf, and they were racing against time. If the enemy got out of the communications embargo zone first, then General Ratinger and his team were done for.

Berty casually strolls into the conference room where the General was instructing his crew.

No salute, no sense of importance in what was going on here! The General’s impassive face was the embodiment of the silent fury he felt. And just as he was about to let loose some of that fury, Berty said, “Hey, that ID message came back. North Tower reads clearly. I think that phytocompound M3 probably works! The turnaround time . . . “ The Communications Office had erupted with activity! A new hope was presented to them. The message read, “NT – AC. Comm OK. Receive” (North Tower – All Clear. Communications are functional. Ready to receive message). All it took was a look from the General, and the Firing Solution was being fed into the Master Node patch, in binary. As each dot and dash changed into the spiking of color on the monochrome patch, the General’s heart rate went up.

His mind was already calculating. If the turnaround time was 22 mins and 38 seconds, then it would take roughly half that for the message to be received and read at North Tower. Since their communications were intact, they could broadcast the firing solution out to the world, for everyone to hear. Hopefully, that would take care of that. In another 11 minutes or so, the fate of General Ratinger’s army would be decided.

Berty hung around with a tuna sub in his hand. Gen. Ratinger had no time for him. He paces out of the room, and orders to be updated on the pursuit of the enemy troops. Lt. LeRoy pitches in, “We have visual confirmation. It’s a trio of forward scouts, one of them carrying an Infrared Laser Strobe indicator”.

‘Damn! He could’ve painted out our Flag Base for an aerial bombardment if the EMP hadn’t gone off at the right time’, the General thought.

“They attempted to lose our pursing battalion in the Norwegian Woods, but our team is in hot pursuit”. Comms are still offline, so the Team is using flares to point location. Here look”. A map shows 6 red highlighter points moving from the Flag Base to the woods. The ridge line wasn’t far. If the enemy troops get out of the EMP zone less than 4 miles away, then their radios would be functional again.

As General and LeRoy brainstormed further on how they could efficiently cut off the enemy’s beeline for exit, Berty slumped into his revolving chair. Tuna sub still in hand, he did not understand this fervent excitement. The army, the war, the missiles hidden in some deep silo, the Flag Base, meh. It seemed to captivate everything and everyone around him in almost sanctimonious, real time action. Like in some movie.

But Berty was simple.

As he chewed into his tuna, his mind wandered into the phytocompounds he tried, the various encodings he suggested, and eventually came to rest on the Quiz he had to conduct next month via New BEL Labs. It was a big event, year after year bringing in the best debaters and quizzers across the country. Would they know? he thought. Would they know what an important role he has played in this surely historical event? Right? Surely.

The seconds ticked away into minutes, and every minute saw an increase in imperceptible zeal around the room. The General was tip tapping every surface he found, and anxiously glancing up at the large wall mounted analogue clock. Compulsively now.

Clockwork pounded away the minutes, and a red highlighter scrubbed away at the physical maps on the General’s terminal. The enemies were close to the EMP border. But did they know?

Certainly! They would be checking their radios regularly. But with our troops hot on their trail, the enemy scouts would have to keep up a punishing pace to escape capture. Through the deep, impenetrable woods, a natural defense that weighed in on the choice of the Flag Base. But second after second, three enemy scouts inched closer to undermining the entire country’s defences. If this failed, Lord alone knew what was in store for General Ratinger. His service record had been flawless, so far. It took only one mistake though.

10 long minutes had passed since the Firing Solution had been dot dashed away on the TICS network. The red highlighter showed that the enemy was now within shooting distance of the

EMP border. A static must be sounding on their LRC radios, indicating the proximity of success.

And in the wake of this powerful equalizer that is the EMP, the General felt hopeless, with his hands uselessly limp, unable to communicate, unable to demand reports from the front lines.

Ratinger could be certain his counterpart too sat similarly disdainful. It was a race against time, and no one knew the outcome.

Berty slurped on his Diet Coke, and aimlessly walked around to the Communications Office.

There was no point waiting on a receive message, he thought. It would take another 11 mins before they heard back any response. He bent down and gently examined the leaf of the Obb laymer. The dark green, serrated edges of the leaf smoothly slid down his palm. “This simple, strong plant held many secrets”, he thought. “Many truths about the fundamental workings of the universe. Many . . .”

A digital quip-quip-quip tone sounded. Some lights came on. The room was no longer bathed in the green emergency lights. The grid was restoring. The EMP seemed to have been lifted.

Ratinger walked to the helm of the Central Command. His impassive face lifted to gaze at the large monitor in the center that had been dead following the EMP. The LED indicators were glowing red – ON. Over the next minute, power and communications started flooding back into the room. West Tower reported first, on radio, that the grid was fully restored on their end, and they were standing by for orders. Then came in the A-OK from South Tower. The Flag Base was next, and they in turn reported on the status of the chase going on in the woods. The Response Unit had captured the invaders, just as they were broadcasting out the coordinates of our Flag Base.

Yet, the FLEXCON 1 never sounded. An alarm that would indicate doom. An alarm that would only be triggered by detection of an aerial threat to the Flag Base. Instead, just as North Base radioed in, saying they had received the TICS order, the FLEXCON 2 lifted. The lights moved up on the Threat Assessment board. The lights steadily moved from FLEXCON 2 to FLEXCON 6, the lowest readiness state. Meaning that there was no longer any threat.

A curt smile betrayed the General’s face, and he turned to an Operator. “Get me NATO on the big screen”. The Operator momentarily glanced at his computer, and reverted, “Sir, they’re already on the incoming. Shall I put them up?”

The General turns to the big monitor, still lighting up. The images on the screen staccato-ed and then started moving. The sounds boomed in, static first and then decipherable to a voice. It was Commander Rener Gracie from NATO High Command. “ . . . UTC 1743 hours, we received an unencrypted message from the 43rd Battalion of General Ratinger’s Army. The message read: CIRCAUTH 152xD-TSARB. Tgt: 78.2349895, 15.4911107.

Upon verification, we find that these are indeed the authentication codes for a precision aerial strike on the Flag Base of the contending Gen. Xavier’s army. Therefore, a Firing Solution has been reached, and the War Game has been won. We congratulate General Ratinger and his Team for successfully defending their base, as well as capturing the Flag of the contending army.

This concludes the Final Exercise of the 72nd NATO War Games, 2020. We’d like to give special thanks to . . . . “ Berty stepped out, hearing all the cheering and commotion. Caps flew in the hair, and back

patting hugs went around. He spotted General Ratinger standing very still in this eruption of activity all around him. General Ratinger surveyed the room. From the big screen, to the Threat Assessment Board, to the maps on his desk. Then he glanced up at the Comms Office, where Berty stood at the glass railings. General Ratinger and Berty locked eyes. And just for a second, Berty saw a sight that held him still in his tracks. Even till date.

General Ratinger, eyes still locked dead, face as impassive as ever. He pivoted his torso ever so slightly to face Berty. Still unblinking, with one sudden, almost ephemeral motion, jerked his head into a curt nod at Berty. ***End***