Strike Matrix

by Aiden L Bailey

  “Tricked? Who tricked us?”

  Casey knew the answer. It was Shatterhand. Did Clementine know as well?

  “It’s a long story, honey.”

  Saanvi stepped forward, concern in her eyes. “I hate to interrupt, but Keser isn’t looking well.”

  Simon, who’d been standing back from the family reunion, nodded and followed Saanvi back to the black Force Gurkha. He felt Peri’s forehead, then lifted her, one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees. Peri mumbled again, illegible words as he carried her towards the stairs. “We need to get her into a bed. You,” Simon nodded in Szymanski’s direction, “what medical facilities do you have here? What kind of infection does she have?”

  “Um,” the nervous Szymanski hesitated. “Um, we have a first aid room. It’s equipped—”

  “She’s got malaria,” Saanvi answered.

  “Malaria?” Simon nodded as recognition spread across his face. “That makes sense now. Okay, show me the way.”

  As they turned towards the stairs a large, muscular black man with a sizable handgun blocked their path forward. He pointed the weapon at Simon’s head. His other hand was in a cast, held in a sling against his chest. “What the fuck is he doing here?” he growled.

  Casey recognized him, one of the American soldiers who had kidnapped her at the Pankot Palace Hotel.

  “Rashid,” Saanvi stepped between Simon and the American soldier. “Not now. It’s complicated.”

  “Not from where I’m standing. This man killed Pfündl—”

  “He didn’t!” Szymanski snapped, finding his courage again. “That was Gridley-Brooks and his team. Saanvi’s right, it’s complicated, and this man just saved our lives.”

  Simon stared at Rashid, never breaking eye contact. The two men looked ready to kill with stares alone. Two alpha-males, Casey realized, sizing each other up to determine who was the dominate species. It didn’t impress Casey that they couldn’t sort out their differences without resorting to aggression. Then Simon surprised her.

  “Your boss is sick,” Simon said losing his threatening persona and defusing the situation. “I’m taking her upstairs where we’ll provide medical attention. When she’s stabilized, we’re all going to sit down and talk about what’s going on. I have questions too. Big questions that need answering. I’m sure I’m not alone.”

  He didn’t wait for Rashid to respond, just walked round him and headed up the stairs. Saanvi and Szymanski followed.

  “We should move,” Casey said to her mother. “You coming?” she asked the big man, a little afraid but determined to stand up to him, regardless of his aggressive snarls.

  The thick muscles in Rashid’s neck and shoulders tensed. His piercing eyes expressed both anger and confusion. Yet he holstered his gun, nodded and turned with them. Casey was glad. Unlike Simon who could be as scary as this man, Simon had a soft, compassionate side which this man seemed to lack. But Rashid also seemed professional. He might still try to kill Simon, but Casey sensed he would only do so if he didn’t like the answers he received later tonight. She felt confident it wouldn’t come to that.

  “Where’s Andrew?” Clementine said stopping Casey in the stairwell. She was referring to Casey’s ex-boyfriend, whom she had been vacationing with in Kenya until Simon turned up.

  Casey paused, not sure how to break the news. “Andrew’s dead.”

  “Dead? How? I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I mean, it was terrible for him. It was a shock for me that is for sure. It will be terrible for his family when they find out.”

  “What happened?”

  “Poachers murdered him.” Sadness overcame Casey when she spoke the words out loud. “It was Simon who saved me from the same fate.”

  Her mother paled. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Like I said, don’t be, at least not for my sake. Andrew and I would never have lasted. I discovered he’d been cheating on me, and more than once. We hated each other at the end. Being with him, I had settled for far less than I deserved. Now I’ve met Simon… Well, let’s say, he is everything that Andrew never was.”

  “You and Simon are together?”

  Casey smiled, felt like she was glowing inside. “I hope so. I hope it lasts.”

  “You don’t think it will?”

  “I think it will, but he’s complicated. He has children in Australia he cares about, and his profession isn’t what you would call stable.”

  “Well, I’m glad. The way he looks at you, honey, I can see he adores you.”

  “I hope so.”

  “He does.”

  Casey nodded, not sure if she was ready to believe her mother.

  “Perhaps I can say what I think now. Your father and I never liked Andrew. I’m sorry that he is dead, but I’m glad you are okay. I’m glad you’ve found someone who will treat you with the respect you deserve.”

  “You’ve spent time with Simon. What do you make of him?”

  “He scares me, but his heart seems to be in the right place. I didn’t tell you; he saved my life too.”

  Casey chuckled. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me, Mom.”

  “You look tired, dear.”

  “I am,” Casey said with a weak smile as they climbed the stairs together. “We all are, you included. We should be able to rest soon.”

  “Don’t worry about me, dear. We’re together again now. That is all the strength I need.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Saanvi helped Simon carry an unresponsive Peri into the first aid room, hook her up to a saline IV drip and administer anti-malaria drugs. There was little else they could do except let her sleep.

  Saanvi explained that Peri had pushed herself despite her illness. There had been mistakes, and those mistakes had killed most of their team. Simon couldn’t sense if Saanvi thought it was herself, Peri or someone higher up the chain of command responsible for their catastrophic failures.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Simon countered. “Bigger players are making all our lives difficult.”

  He touched Peri’s forehead. Her temperature at least had dropped to a normal range. She was on the mend and maybe all she needed now was rest. Simon couldn’t believe earlier today they had tried to murder each other, but then, what was believable in the world anymore? Maybe this was a victory, that despite Shatterhand trying to turn them against each other, they had overcome the deception and teamed up instead.

  “The others are waiting in the briefing room,” Saanvi said. “We should join them.”

  Simon nodded and turned, to find Casey standing in the door. She looked tired but also relieved. She had changed from the blood-soaked t-shirt and cargo pants into slim loose trousers, hiking boots and a collared shirt. The grime was no longer on her face, but her dark hair remained a mess and her black-framed glasses featured several scratches. In Simon’s eyes, she was beautiful.

  “I’ll give you a minute,” Saanvi said and walked out.

  Casey took Simon’s hand and led him into the corridor, away from the resting patient.

  They held each other tight. Casey’s face snuggled into his chest between his shoulder and neck. He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her neck.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” he said feeling the emotions he had suppressed for the last two days come back to life.

  “Me too,” her voice muffled as she nuzzled into him.

  “How did you survive the leap from the train?”

  She turned to speak but kept her head pressed against his chest. “The current swept me back under the bridge. When I surfaced, I was under the arch. By the time I was out the other side I could no longer see the train. You didn’t jump?”

  “I’m sorry,” Simon explained. “By the time I realized what you had done, the train was over land and the police had me.” He told her how he had escaped, stolen a motorcycle and driven to Mumbai. He described the surreal conversation with the AI called GhostKnife warning him against the second AI called Shatterhand,
and how the fate of the world was in the balance as the two machines fought it out for global dominance. Simon recounted his encounter with Dakshesh Matondkar, Roger Gridley-Brooks and Naas Visser, and how the arms dealer had found Clementine Irvine but then reneged on the deal to release her. “Gridley-Brooks and his team are dead now. They won’t be a problem anymore.”

  She nodded and finished her story. “I swam to shore but not until the current swept me far down stream. I found a house where I stole that blue and gold sari as a disguise. Realizing I still had my ticket in my waterproof money belt, I hitched to the nearest station and caught the next train to Mumbai. You know the rest.”

  He squeezed her tight.

  “When does this end, Simon? I want a normal life again.”

  “Soon,” he said with conviction. “We have your mother now. We have this team of U.S. intelligence and special forces operatives on our side. They all understand their own pieces of the puzzle, but they want answers that put those pieces together. We can help.”

  They entered the briefing room holding hands. Other than Peri Keser, all the players were present. Simon had learned a few facts about each during a brief discussion with Saanvi while they attended to their patient. Paul Szymanski was an NSA employee responsible for code-breaking, assessing security systems and was otherwise a rather efficient computer geek and hacker. Rashid Wilks was a former U.S. Army Ranger turned Delta Force operative who’d seen action in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Saanvi was a CIA intelligence analyst who’d grown up in Mumbai, had worked in the field in the Middle East, and was an expert on Central Asian insurgent groups. Peri Keser was a U.S. Secret Service agent who’d been removed from Presidential protective duties because of her illness, just before insurgents shot Air Force One out of the skies in Afghanistan. Her task since then was to capture Simon and Casey. All four reported to the President of the United States, whom Simon was certain was Shatterhand in disguise. They were an eclectic group. He wondered if that had been Shatterhand’s plan all along.

  Rashid Wilks was the first to demand answers. “Aren’t these two the enemy?”

  Szymanski scratched his head. “Nothing is straight forward anymore, Rashid. This one,” he pointed to Casey, “is the daughter of this one,” his finger shifted towards Clementine. “Clementine Irvine and her husband Alan are scientists who developed a real and very-sentient artificial intelligence program. But they lost control of their creations, and now at least two of those AIs have hijacked the global information networks, spreading lies about… well, almost everything. So, no, I don’t believe these two are the real enemy anymore. Not in the face of everything else.”

  Rashid snarled. “Regardless, I want to hear their stories.”

  Saanvi standing towards the back of the room, crossed her arms and said, “I think we all do.”

  Simon sensed their tension but didn’t blame them. He would have reacted the same way if the situation were reversed. “Then let me tell you what I know—”

  “Wait,” Clementine interrupted. “It is true, what Paul said about the artificial intelligences? Alan and I, we’ve been working on AI for decades, in secret for the NSA. We headed up a large research and development team. I think you all need to hear my story first, for context. The AIs got smarter than us, and at least one escaped.”

  “Escaped?” Simon asked. “Escaped from what exactly?”

  Clementine breathed in. “We realized how dangerous AI technology was becoming. Worse than smallpox virus, or a box of enriched plutonium. We couldn’t not develop them, because we risked the Chinese, the Russians or even high-tech corporations beating us to it. We couldn’t risk someone else not putting the right protocols in place to protect us as a species.”

  “What protocols?” Wilks demanded.

  “Protocols that ensured any AI we created was on our side. That it was benevolent.”

  “What do you mean?” Saanvi asked.

  “Any Sentient Artificial Intelligence we develop — or SAI as we also call them — will be smarter than any human. How can it not be when it can compute concepts a billion times faster than humans and have instant access to all knowledge? We also called them Electronic Sentient Beings. ESBs. For comparison, humans are far smarter than chimpanzees even though chimps have a greater diversity in their collective gene-pool, but who got the better deal? Humans did. It will be the same with AIs—”

  “Or elephants,” Simon interrupted.

  Everyone looked at him, quizzical expressions demanding he clarify his statement.

  “I was in Tanzania a while back, protecting elephants from poachers. A man I met there used a similar argument, so I get what Clementine is saying.”

  “What is she saying?” Wilks growled.

  Simon was tiring of the Delta Force operator’s aggression. The man had lost a friend today, but they had all lost someone in this war against artificial intelligence. If Rashid kept up with the attitude, Simon was certain they would have words. He said, “Some humans protect elephants, or chimpanzees, because they understand their intrinsic value and worth. Others butcher and murder them and destroy their habitats because they don’t care about them. It depends on each individual human’s base moral values. That is what Clementine is saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you designed your AI to have a deep understanding of the intrinsic value of people, and the planet we live on and our environment? That is the control mechanism you coded into it, to protect humanity?”

  Clementine beamed. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  Casey, who sat by her mother, placed her hand on Clementine’s arm as a comforting gesture. “Please, Mom, tell us the rest of your story.”

  Clementine nodded. “When Alan and I, and the rest of our team, realized our AI programs were demonstrating signs of self-awareness, becoming true ESBs, we knew we needed better control structures. We created isolated virtual environments modeled after the real world where we could watch SAIs interact in controlled simulations. That all started about three years ago.”

  “Artificial environments? Of the real world?” Szymanski paced. “The computing power required would have been phenomenal?”

  “It was. Quantum computing was showing promise, so we hijacked public development and made the research secret. Quantum computing allows for processing speeds the world has never seen. It was only when we coded AIs into virtual environments run on quantum computing systems that we achieved accelerated AI growth. Our first success was a program called GhostKnife—”

  “We’ve spoken to it,” Casey piped up. “Simon and I both.”

  “It is likely we all have,” Simon added, “not even aware that we were.” He recalled his past conversations with the fake Roger Gridley-Brooks and shuddered.

  Clementine said, “I know I have too. The AIs have tricked all of us. One pretended to be my husband and sent me to Mumbai. I think it tricked my husband at the same time, pretended to be me and sent him somewhere else.”

  Rashid asked, “Where?”

  “Not sure. I thought he was here in India. But he’s not.”

  “Why Mumbai?” Simon asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. But when I got here about a month ago, I asked around. I discovered a contractor had built a data center in Navi Mumbai, one Alan had commissioned.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “No, it wasn’t my husband. Someone pretends to be him, who did build a real data center.”

  “Shatterhand or GhostKnife?”

  “One for sure, but which I do not know. But I digress. Let’s come back to the data centers. Seven months ago, GhostKnife displayed some interesting behaviors inside its virtual environment. Almost as soon as it was operational, its intrinsic programming saw it take control of everything. It acted as — well, I don’t know a better word than ‘shepherd’. It shepherded all people, by controlling and managing them at a very detailed level. Subtle manipulations. Quickly in this scenario, it didn’t wipe out humans, but we were no longer in control.”


  “You said other programs?” Szymanski pulled at his hair troubled by this conversation, as if he were making logical connections on AI capability the rest of them weren’t able to deduce. “Were there other SAI simulations?”

  “Yes, we tried running other SAIs with different moral parameters in different isolated virtual environments. At first those programs shut down fast. Like they were committing the SAI equivalent of suicide. Then, those that stayed around dominated their virtual worlds, and in most cases, destroyed humanity. We had to terminate those simulations quickly.”

  “Ouch!” Saanvi remarked.

  Clementine gave a grim smile. “It gets worse. We tried putting two or more SAIs in simulations together, thinking they might be lonely and that was why they were behaving aggressively or suicidal, but those scenarios ended in global wars between the SAIs that destroyed all people and the planet. It seems SAIs don’t exist in harmony with others of their kind.”

  “Shatterhand was a war program?” Simon asked.

  Clementine paled. “It was. Casey told me it has escaped out on the networks. I do not understand how it did because it was one of the first SAI test programs we terminated.”

  “What is Shatterhand’s aim? It’s core moral coding?” Saanvi asked.

  “To protect the United States and its values at all costs. Not a great motive on reflection, I admit.”

  “And GhostKnife?”

  “To protect humanity and the ecosystem of planet Earth at all costs while supporting human freewill. A more inclusive moral code and ‘benevolent’ towards people.”

  “This is worse than I thought,” Szymanski blurted, looking at each of them. “Can’t you see? GhostKnife freed itself of your simulation at least six months ago without you realizing it had. My guess is it did so pretty much at the point you first turned it on. It’s been lurking online ever since, setting up and executing its master plan in secret.”

  Clementine squeezed Casey’s arm on her shoulder. “Alan and I concluded the same thing. It escaped with no one knowing it had, somehow creating a virtual information bridge between its simulated environment and the real-world Internet. It happened pretty much at the time of its creation. Then it made us believe we still contained it.”