Chapter 49 Summary
Robert Jackson receives a call from Janet Faber, the lead technician on the current Quest operations team. She explains that after initially functioning normally, Quest’s knowledge base has begun inexplicably shrinking, returning to its original size. Even more baffling, Quest has flagged authors like the Brothers Grimm, Lewis Carroll, and others as potential national security threats. Jackson finds this both humorous and troubling. He advises Janet to immediately disable Quest’s auto-update function to prevent further anomalies and to begin reviewing the system’s algorithms to trace the origin of the issue. Janet worries about the massive scope of the task. She asks if Jackson would help, but he hedges, wary of putting himself back under scrutiny. He advises her to check with Dr. Conner and get back to him.
Meanwhile, Mark Peltier is growing frustrated as a Defense Courier Service (DCS) parcel—containing a notarized document from Colonel Weaver—still hasn’t arrived at his hotel. When he contacts Weaver, the colonel informs him that DCS records show the parcel was delivered that morning. Mark informs him the hotel has no record of it. The two argue, each planning to confront their respective sides—Weaver with DCS, and Mark with the hotel staff. Fueled by irritation, Mark storms out of his room to get to the bottom of the situation himself.
