Relations between Ron and Harry were difficult, not just difficult, disastrous. Ron had arrested Draco Malfoy the instant he caught sight of him at Imperial College. The Minister himself had ordered the aurors to release Draco and return him to Imperial College. Draco was back at work in less than an hour.
“You had no evidence. Malfoy has not committed any crime. He has not performed any magic for more than five years. He does not have a wand. There is a full trace on him. He is a former Death Eater. The trace is a condition of his release. He knows that any magic he performs will be reported instantly and it will be on his record, even if he uses a wand to tie his shoelaces. To send Malfoy to Azkaban, we need to have evidence we can present at a trial. Even Malfoy will get a trial if we find anything on him.” Harry was facing a wildly angry Ron Weasley.
“The situation at this muggle college stinks. What is happening there must be dark magic. The fact that he is there must be enough to put him away. He must have found a way to do this and hid what he is doing from the Ministry. Harry, you’re being too soft on him. People are saying that openly now. You’re bringing muggles in the wizarding world, and you’re letting Malfoy run around and do whatever he wants.” Ron wasn’t just angry, he was red faced, screaming, and spitting out everything in a stream of anger.
“Ron, I have asked the Minister to put Draco under protective custody. That means house arrest in a safe place. He won’t be able to leave or do any magic. The Minister won’t do it. There is no evidence to prove anything against Malfoy and until there is, we can’t just arrest him. These rules were put in place when we first started work as aurors. You know that. I can’t defy the Minister, if I try, he will just stand me down and wait until I resign.”
“There is nothing you can say to change my mind about this, Harry. You’re wrong and I know it. Maybe you should leave the Ministry, if you don’t, I can’t help you.” Ron turned and left the room. Hermione turned away from Harry. “I’m sorry Harry. We won’t be coming back until you fix this.”
She followed Ron out of the room and was gone.
The office and laboratory at Imperial College were thoroughly searched by aurors and muggle police. When Dr Zaitseva was reported missing, her son Peter was taken to his father’s flat. The aurors found traces of portkey activity which couldn’t be traced. There were no other signs of magical crime, and after a separate search, the muggle police found nothing suspicious.
The lack of any indication about what happened to Leo and Anastasia was very unsettling. The disappearances were obviously the result of magic, but no wizards were present who could have been involved. The wands belonging to the security guards were examined, nothing was found. The portkeys were illegal and of course unregistered, there was no hint of where they had gone. Harry visited the office and the laboratory for one more search. Jonathan was still at work on the computer.
“What are you doing here Jonathan?”
“I’m working on the assignment that Dr Zaitseva gave me.”
“Can you tell me what it is? Remember I didn’t finish high school science.”
“That’s OK. It isn’t that complex. Dr Zaitseva wrote a logging system into the package which she developed for her last paper. Any system in the world that runs her package will generate a string of emails which show the exact state of the system including where it is.”
“A bunch of emails keep arriving from the USA. It looks like Professor Fischer is trying to get the package to run on his system in California.”
“Who is this Professor Fischer?” Harry realised that this where the unregulated magic happening in California was coming from.
“He was the professor at UC Berkley who was supposed to be reviewing Dr. Zaitsevas work. She had to send him a copy of everything she was doing and get his comments on it before she could publish. He just copied the whole paper and published it himself. It’s academic credit fraud. It happens all the time. This guy is shameless.”
“So, what can this show us?”
“The emails have the time and date and the location that the system has set in it when the package is run. That can be changed of course but it doesn’t look like they are aware of what it is doing, and they aren’t changing those settings. The package compares any changes made in the programme with the original. The emails have a list of these changes. These are quite interesting.”
“Are they improving the programme?”
“Not at all. The don’t understand what the system is doing. The changes are mainly in one line of comments.”
“What are comments? I know what comments are, usually it’s something talking across you when you are trying to explain something. Doh!”
“OK. Comments are notes programmers write to themselves explaining what they are doing in the programme. No one can remember every detail of what a big system does, so we all need reminders of what it is we are doing. Comments are plain text and are not included in the programme at run time.”
“Why are they interesting then?”
“It looks like the computers we are using have acquired a connection to an artificial intelligence. Dr Zaitseva has changed her assumptions to include the possibility of parallel universes with different physical rules intersecting so that in our universe another set of rules can be invoked. That is what makes magic. She is still working on how the detailed control happens. The system doesn’t do this away from this building. I have tried it other places and it doesn’t happen. Something in this locality is reading the programme when it runs, it sees a request to do something in the programme and does it. Computers themselves can’t do this. It is an external, massively powerful energy field which is just waiting to perform tasks assigned to it. Somehow the computer is being recognized as something authorized to give orders.”
“What orders are they giving in California?”
“That’s where it gets interesting. They asked for a full-sized crusader castle. Then they asked for a map showing all magical people within a fifty-mile radius. Then they asked for a mobile phone to be made into a magic wand.”
“What happened?”
“We can’t see what happened from here, but the programmes all finished and sent the logging emails.”
“Have you tried that here?” Harry was getting hopeful.
“I didn’t think making a kilometre-long stone building in the middle of Imperial College was a great idea, so I tried the map and the phone requests. These are the results.”
A folded map and a mobile phone were on the table next to the computer.
Harry unfolded the map and found his name at the centre, there were bunches of names where the Ministry, St Mungo’s and Diagon Alley should be. Jonathan picked up the phone and clicked on the Spells menu and handed it to Harry. Harry selected ‘Lumos’. The phone lit up thus like a wand would have.
“Nox!”
The light switched off. The phone was responding to verbal commands just like a wand. Harry felt quite sick. These muggles were breaking into his magical world with little effort. They were doing this in California where there was no contact with wizards at all.
“The emails show you the location of the computer in California. How accurate is it?”
“I’ve got the email relay servers and the system location there. I also have a dialogue running with the computer in California. They never switched it off and it is still responding to remote connections from the system I am running here. Dr Zaitseva was very suspicious about what Professor Fischer was going to do, so she put a back door in to snoop on what was actually going on. I am still working on this. I think I can take their system over, as long as they don’t switch it off.”
“Have you got all this on a portable computer?”
“Yes, I took it all home on the laptop.”
“Get a bag packed. You're coming with me to the USA.”
179Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPErbGODktP
