Book 3: Chapter 57: Detection
Riker
April 2257
Sol
Eighty thousand observation drones generated a lot of false positives. Even with the filtering algorithms I’d worked out, I still had to check a significant number of flagged items every day. After all, false positives were tedious. Skipping a real positive would be disastrous.
Just the same, the process had become a humdrum routine, to the point where I almost went right past the first significant signal in twenty-seven years of monitoring.
I jerked in my seat as the details registered. Far too regular to be background noise, too persistent to be an instrumentation glitch. The readings were barely detectable, but they still screamed danger. I skipped forward through several hours of log entries, and finally had to accept that I wasn’t going to be able to explain this away.
With a feeling of dread, I sent a text to Bill. Positive detection.
Within moments, Bill popped in. “Way to ruin my day, Will. Okay, let’s see it.”
Wordlessly, I gestured to the monitor window. Bill sat down, pulled the window around so it faced him squarely, and began to scan. I could see his eyes moving as he went over the readings, his expression turning into a frown.