===INTERLUDE DETERMINISTIC STATE===

… (b)ecause DFAs can be reduced to a canonical form there are also efficient algorithms to determine:
[[Emptiness Problem]] whether a DFA accepts any strings
[[Universality Problem]] whether a DFA accepts all strings
[[Equality Problem]] whether two DFAs recognize the same language
[[Inclusion Problem]] whether the language recognized by a DFA is included in the language recognized by a second DFA
[[Minimization Problem]] the DFA with a minimum number of states for a particular regular language

===RESET:===

O(1) time

The windowless meeting room sat 10 but felt stuffed with less than half that number. Some of it was certainly the boxes of paper records, dusty with age, heavy with history, that sat stacked on the table. But an air of twitchy anxiety was what truly brought out the claustrophobia.

The woman let out a long breath through her nose. Her eyes stung from lack of sleep, she felt gamey and sore, and the muscles of her neck throbbed.

As AD Outcome, she would have it no other way. She had spent half of her life getting here, to be the one who knew things, the one who saw it all, the one who would not shy away from the dirty work at the crossroads, the hard calls that no one would know about.

She took in the room, her ice blue eyes flicking around in a flash, like she was able to take in every detail with a Sherlockian glance. It was a tiny bit of theatre she had developed, to give the impression to others she wanted them to have. By now, she flattered herself that she was occasionally perceptive enough to catch the tiny threads of a scene and weave a cogent picture.

There were two of the old hands at the other end of the table, grey men who looked rumpled and dull even when they hadn’t been working overnight for reasons they couldn’t even guess at. Just as Outcome knew her outward persona was to some degree a deliberate choice, she knew that neither man was anything but extremely clever, dedicated, and ambitious - they had simply adopted the mien of any of the thousands of faceless mid-level federal bureaucrats you’d see slouching around Ottawa.

Malik was unlikely to ever get that degree of deliberate anonymity. He was a tiny bit too glib, too casual, to adopt that kind of public face. So instead he steered into an archetype closer to his reality, that of a young-ish man of Middle Eastern descent who looked like the guy who would show up to fix your computer.

As Senior Evaluator, Malik was her second on this potential disaster, and she felt he was if not categorically the brightest analyst in her small department at least he was one of the very smartest, in addition to being the most creative, and probably the hungriest.

No one knew precisely what they were looking for, of course. Her instructions had been laughably vague even for this line of work, but no one had wasted time asking for clarification. The two sub-analysts were going through ancient records from Camp X and Station, collating them against the existing notes and cross-referencing for anything involving Toronto. Sadly, Toronto had been the biggest city in the province during the War too, so there would inevitably be a lot of connections.

Malik had some additional data from the Dead Letter Office. His expression had gone from confused, to scared, to open disbelief, then back to scared as he read in to the confusing, impossible, deliberately incomplete records of what became Project Eros.

The Assistant Director let herself close her eyes for a moment, listening to a keyboard tapping and paper rustling. A knock interrupted, and she gave the team a few seconds to casually cover what they were looking at before she pressed the button that unlocked the door and turned off the red light that hung in the hallway.

Jeanine, one of the long-time office admins, walked in holding a sheet of paper. Without a glance at anything or anyone else, she placed it in front of the AD and bent low to whisper, “Your schedule is cleared through the week, and these are the messages I felt you’d want to see.”

With the door closed and locked behind her Outcome unfolded the page. Typical stuff… but the annoyance at least reminded her that they all needed a break.

“Supports, clear the room.” The other two men quickly stowed whatever they had into box or pouch and stood, presumably quite happy to go get a coffee. Malik rubbed at his eyes and then waited for her to speak once the door closed behind them.

“What do you have so far, Malik?”

If he was thrown off by her sudden question he didn’t show it. “Ma’am, I have, obviously… a lot of questions. I’m just going through the Project files. It all sounds, literally, unbelievable. And yet, the thing that jumped out first was the gaps.”

She smiled thinly, pleased to have her high regard for him justified. “Yes indeed. Entire years were, somehow, lost. The initial project, the thing that gave birth to Project Eros and then the rest, was not under our umbrella. It was half military, half intelligence, half industry, half academic. So, 10 pounds of horseshit in a 5-pound bag, as my gramps would say. The stakeholders all tried to use the others to get their results, but no one wanted to share the goodies. So, the gaps are partly a result of the process.”

He nodded, his gaze intent despite his fatigue. “And the other gaps? There is a two-year window where it says that the project was on hiatus, but the dates don’t make sense. It was all systems go, then a quick memo about a pause, then no mention of the missing time. But, uh, some new names in the docs.”

Almost too perceptive, this one. The AD paused, then gave an almost imperceptible shrug. Better he knows.

“You read the output from Dead Letter? There was a serious break of some kind. 'Full bleed,' according to the one-pager summary - don't bother looking, it's not in those files. Seven men died one weekend, from a variety of seemingly unrelated but very painful accidents. The project team was indeed turned over, and it took them almost two years to get it going again.”

He gulped and said, “So, what that bizarre Code Form said was literally true?”

“Yes Malik, I am sure that we are now considered the current ‘Project Team’, however LOGOS chooses to define that now. We are responsible for security of the housing, the output interface here in Dead Letter, and we get the reports and action items. So, if we fail to plug this leak, I’m pretty confident we will also meet some absurd Looney-Tunes inspired ****.” Malik looked away, and suddenly Outcome felt exhausted. “Sorry Malik, I know you do not need extra motivation to do your job, but two of those men, both coders on the project, fell down elevator shafts on the same day. One here, one in Calgary. What would be the odds, I wonder?”

“A message.”

“Oh yes! We might imagine LOGOS to be a machine, a useful beast of burden, but make no mistake about who holds the crop. If it decides that the sacred duty it follows requires it, we will be replaced without hesitation. No matter where we go or what we do.”

His voice was soft, and she could hear a tiny tremor. “How much time? What do we do? We don’t even know where Eros is? Can’t it just tell us that much at least?”

“I don’t know, we have until it decides we’ve failed. It is very unsure about much, which makes our job seem impossible but also gives us time since LOGOS would be instantly aware if the security failed completely. As to where? Somewhere in Toronto, certainly. The previous project team was all living there, so we can make some educated guesses. Why that is so hidden I do not know, but I can tell you one thing - try very hard to not wonder why. If you have any random thoughts as to why LOGOS either does not know or will not say where Eros is, keep them to yourself. We worship a paranoid god.”

“Paranoid, and capricious,” he sounded bitter and fair enough.

“Perhaps, but that may be the price we pay for actual, real knowledge. We receive wisdom, bits and pieces of prophecy that save lives. It comes in fits and starts, and we don’t wonder why or ask questions. This is a one-way street from its mouth to our ears, and God help us if we try to peek behind the curtain.”

She tossed the piece of paper on her desk and gestured at it. “My messages from today. Mostly, just the AD’s of Collection and Requirements, those pricks, asking me subtle questions about my schedule. Prying, poking, trying to figure out what has come up and why Outcomes sits outside the oversight. Outside all oversight. They know we sit a shadowed throne, that almost no one knows exists even within the Service, and it drives them nuts. They will jockey for power, trying to replace Director Vigneault, or some other office at the Ministry of Public Safety. But none of them will know what we know, here. They will never have the authority to create real change anywhere in the world with no one to second guess us. And they envy us for it.”

Malik was giving her his thoughtful agreement look, but to be fair she had told him this before. Several times. But he also must know that she emphatically did not confide like this with the others, so he was effectively her second in command and likely being groomed for the AD chair. Ideally in the distant future.

“We know that Eros was - is - housed in a location that existed more or less as it currently is for about 50 years and was capable of holding a significant volume of high-tech gear, which when the project began would have been at least a few room-sized mainframes. It is in Toronto, likely close to the city centre, and must accommodate the project team coming and going. I have a list of suitable buildings, and luckily in the past couple of decades a lot of the older buildings have been replaced or completely renovated, especially all the tech buildings on university campuses and in government facilities.”

She gave Malik a nod and he continued, “There are 29 likely and about twice as many possible building locations, I can task some resources from the province to collate data on them, say it’s for an inventory of available office space, and the request will come from a suitably anonymous department. I can start getting answers in a couple of days, and that will help me narrow it down. We can start with the sites that are actually in use for something but that have old empty space that is still accessible.”

“Yes, that’s a good step,” the AD felt her tiredness fade a little, “we know that Eros can not be moved or decommed, and we don’t dare ask LOGOS for help, so the location is key. Once we know where to best focus our gaze, we can look at the people. I rather suspect something odd will be going on in that location, so keep watch on socials for any weird behaviour, cross-referenced to your list. Not just violent or criminal, but titillating and faintly scandalous. We know very little about Eros, but I doubt they named it that because it was good at math.”

Even as he jotted down notes Malik’s mouth tightened slightly, and he said, “And when we find… whoever it is? The ‘minimum 2, maximum 5’ unsubs?”

“We do what is demanded of us.” Outcome let a bit of feeling creep into her voice as she continued, “It probably won’t feel fair, or right, but it will be for the best.” She knew he would do his duty, unpleasant thought it must be, but an effective leader knows when her subordinates need a bit of reassurance.

“Like any good surgeon, we will cut only as deep as we must to excise the tumour, but cut we will. LOGOS said there was an intrusion, which means all responses are on the table. But it specifically called for sanction, so we’ll sanction.”

“Whatever happened, however it happened, we stop it, completely. And we wear the blood that comes with that because we make the hard call.”

“Yes Ma’am.”