Steemit Challenge s26wk1 : The Office Project

The sound of the rain was tapping against the office windows. It was the only thing which was breaking the silence of the night. In the slow light of the computer screens 5 employees were sitting on the research floor of the Nexora Technologies. It was supposed to be a routine deadline. No one could shake the strange tension in the air.

Image by Ronald Carreño from Pixabay

The lead data analyst Amira leaned back from her screen. She said guys have you seen this? She asked this by pointing at a series of cryptic code. These lines were buried deep inside the mainframe of the project.

She asked from Daniel who is the project coordinator that what am I looking for? She moved with her laptop. The project coordinator replied this is not ours. It is a sub routine that does not belong to any of our modules. She said look here it was modified nine years ago according to the timestamp.

That was impossible. The Atlas Project which was their current assignment was just six months old.

It ignited curiosity. They began to dig. The office turned into a digital crime scene. The monitors were filled with the encrypted files and long forgotten diagrams. There were blueprints that showed an earlier version of the project. This was a far more ambitious and dangerous version than they would told.

The cyber security expert Javed cracked a hidden directory after hours of deciding. Inside that hidden directory they found documents which were labeled as NeuroLink Phase Zero. It was not just a software. They had stumbled you. The blueprints of a mind interface device which was capable of linking thoughts of humans to artificial intelligence in the real world.

It was not cancelled because of the technical reasons. It was buried. Javed said.

The investigation of the team became a game of cat and mouse. The file disappeared from their shared storage drive without any explanation or notification. The printer unprompted. It spat out pages of unfinished schematics. The security cameras of the office glitches every time. They noticed it when they stayed past midnight.

At one point the project planner Lila discovered an old metal cabinet in the discussed storage room. Inside there was a yellow folder of the meeting notes. These were handwritten and signed by the founder of the company. The notes hinted a catastrophic failure during the early trials. There was a secret directive to shut down the project before it's exposure to public.

Still along with the warnings there were plans which suggested the technology could work if the original errors were corrected.

Five people from them made a pact. They would finish the device but it required strict safeguards and protective layers. In the next four weeks they all worked in secrecy. They used decoy spreadsheets, encrypted USB drives and even hand drawn schematics to avoid the detection.

Tensions raised as Daniel whispered one night we are done. Amira replied they would not. She said not until it is ready.

Finally on a rainy slick Friday evening it was the same weather as the night they began. At that evening the NeuroLink II prototype went live. Their solution was simple but genius. It was a layered safety protocol that ensured no AI could override human autonomy.

When the device was displayed at the annual innovation summit it did not just impress. But it revolutionised human computer interaction. Nexora Technologies became a household name. The stock of the company tripled. Those five of them were celebrated as the Team Who Brought the Future.

No one outside their circle would ever know the truth that the greatest breakthrough of the decade was born from a dusty forgotten project. There was a little courage and a lot of secrets.

And somewhere deep in the archives the original Phase Zero folder remained untouched but it was not erased. In this way the office team completed the forgotten project and played a role in the interaction between the computers and humans in the real world.

I invite @mvchacin, @crismenia, and @lirvic to join this contest.