by Jason Taylor
Jill narrowed her eyes, her mind churning over the new revelations, I think the ramifications are significant. I wonder why you programmed your construct to ignore these factors?
Matt continued speaking, “I believe we have more important things to worry about. Matt believed your life was in danger, and I haven’t seen any evidence to counter that belief.”
“How did the military team get around the encrypted error check?” Jill asked.
“They found the encryption key.”
“They actually found the key?”
“They devoted their most powerful AI research construct to it, searching exhaustively for correlations. They spent over 100,000 man-years of computing power on the problem. As of last week, they found what they were looking for.”
“What did they find?”
“The key was found embedded in the electrical pattern of the human nervous system.”
Jill’s mouth dropped open. “But… that’s impossible.”
“Improbable, yes. Highly improbable. But the encryption key worked, and the project has entered the next phase. The team has started a series of experiments that will lead to the first human clone.”
“How does it work?”
“Each of us has a unique electrical pattern, a signature if you will. This signature is as unique as our fingerprints. The pattern generated by the first few milliseconds of electrical activity in a developing fetus is used to generate a key that is stored within every cell in the human body. During cell division, the key is extracted and used to error check the DNA. If the error check fails, the cell division fails. If the error check fails throughout the body, then the body dies. I must say, it is a surprisingly elegant solution.”
“That would explain why so many of our attempts at genetic engineering have failed,” she said.
“Once the team knew what they were looking for, it wasn’t that hard to find. As you know, researchers have never had any reason to look for such a mechanism. That is why it has never been found, until now.”
“But why does limited genetic engineering succeed?”
“It seems there is some leeway built into the system. This allows for the type of genetic drift that is possible during natural evolution. As long as any genetic modifications stay within these boundaries, the changes will succeed. When the genetic modifications go too far, resulting in more changes than can be accounted for by random mutation, the error checks kick in and the genetically engineered tissue dies.”
“But why would cloning fail? We aren’t making any genetic changes in that case.”
“In the case of a clone, you have a new nervous system with its own electrical signature, therefore a new encryption key is necessary. Because of this fact, the checksums from the cloned DNA will not decrypt properly, and the error-checks will fail. Unless you also modify the encrypted error check, the clone will not be viable.”
Jill didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, she was ecstatic. She was right! Her life work was a success. She would live to see full genetic engineering on humans, and she would get to see the results of human cloning. There were so many questions that could now be answered. Questions that had intrigued the human race since the earliest philosophers – the nature of the human soul, the importance of nature vs. nurture in the development of personality – they could investigate the very essence of what it means to be human. Her fingers itched to be back in her lab. She wanted to dive into the possibilities.
But if Matt was being honest with her, the entire scientific enterprise had been hijacked for military purposes. If that was true, this would all go terribly wrong. Her life’s work would be used to enslave humanity instead of being used to free it.
Matt cleared his throat. “Jill, it’s time for you to learn how I died.”
Chapter 8
“Are you ready to see this?” Matt asked.
“Yes,” Jill responded. She wanted answers.
“Permission to load the recording?”
“Permission granted.”
Jill saw herself walking away, out of the research space and down the hallway toward the elevators. She could tell it was the previous night by what she was wearing, but now she was experiencing the scene from Matt’s perspective.
Matt stared at the last spot Jill had occupied before she’d turned the corner and disappeared. The conversation hadn’t gone well. No matter how hard he tried to make a connection, Jill rebuffed his advances. He’d have to try another approach. It was imperative to gain her trust, show her somehow that he meant no harm. On top of that, Tros was going to expect him to report progress, and he had nothing to give her. He couldn’t delay any longer. It would not be a good idea to show up late to his meeting with her. It was time get moving.
The civilian lab was quiet now. Most of the researchers had left work and were home with their families. The military facility, where he was meeting Tros, was housed in the upper floors, requiring bio-confirmation of his identity before he could enter. He pressed his fingertip on the elevator scanner, allowing it to take a DNA sample. The system compared his biometrics with what was on file, and then the door slid open. Each floor had a different clearance requirement. He was only able to access the first three; the remaining fifteen for increasingly higher clearance types that were way out of his league.
Once the door closed, the elevator millimeter-wave scanned his body, then a sniffer sampled the air for dangerous substances. Finally, a lens in the elevator performed a retina scan to complete the confirmation of his identity. Like everyone else he had an auto-transmitting ID implanted in his brain stem, but that wasn’t secure enough for Tros’s purposes. Matt had hear stories of implants being stolen from their unfortunate owners, in order to impersonate them.
When the security system was satisfied that he was who his implant said he was, the elevator proceeded up two floors to where he was scheduled to meet Command Tros. He tried to clear his mind, a sense of anxiety forcing its way through his calm facade. What if Tros suspected his reservations about the project? Worse yet, what if she knew about the steps he’d already taken against her?
It was too late to worry about that now. What was done was done. He still couldn’t completely quiet his mind, so he closed his eyes and pictured his daughter as clearly as he could. He used his interface to conjure her before him, as real as a living, breathing person. She was the reason he was doing this. She was the only thing left that mattered in his life. He would do anything necessary, to ensure the world he left behind for her was better than what he’d lived through. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t seen her in ten years. That wasn’t her fault. He would make sure she had opportunities greater than anything he could have dreamed up. Among other things, that required making sure that his commanding officer didn’t destroy the world.
As the door opened in front of him he clamped down hard, forcing his mind into placidity, then he stepped into the hallway. Since he wasn’t allowed on the command floor, Tros was meeting him in an executive conference room not far from his own office. He proceeded to the meeting location, scanned in, and entered the room. She wasn’t there yet, which was typical. She had no reason to value his time. He was tertiary. The meetings they had were a matter of due diligence for her, nothing more.
Matt waited another twenty minutes, increasingly impatient, before Commander Tros finally entered the room. She cast a disinterested look at him as he stood up and saluted.
“At ease soldier,” she said brusquely, looking down at the old tablet she always carried. For someone who was launching them into an uncertain future, she had an odd attachment to the past.
Matt dropped his salute and waited for Tros to sit before taking a seat at the small table across from her. She was nearly six feet tall, as was the current style, and heavily muscled, which wasn’t. Her hair was cut short and she wore a generic military uniform, no sign of rank evident. On her hip was a standard issue needle-gun, her thermo-armor further accentuating
her bulk. There was no question that she was intimidating. It was a characteristic she used to impressive effect on her subordinates. Subordinates like Matt.
“Lieutenant, report.”
“The civilians don’t know yet. Their research proceeds as before.”
“Even that girl?” she asked. She wouldn’t use Jill’s name, instead always referring to her as ‘that girl.’ She seemed to resent the fact that they needed Jill’s help to reach their goal. Even if the help was inadvertent, Jill unaware of it and operating as an unwitting collaborator.
“Jill knows nothing, as far as I can tell. But she doesn’t trust me. None of them do.”
“Trust is irrelevant to this, you know that.” She bore down on him with her eyes as she talked. Matt could feel himself shrinking into his chair. He was a mouse pinned by a hawk.
“If I knew more, I could do a better job of ascertaining how close the civilians are.”
“You know you aren’t cleared for that information. All you need to know is that we have moved to phase two of the project. We won’t need the civilians around much longer, anyway.” And we won’t need you either, she didn’t say.
“What are your plans for them in phase two?” he asked.
“Don’t be impertinent.” She glanced down at her tablet, distracted. Then she looked up again, a new glint of interest or curiosity in her eyes. “Lieutenant?” she said, almost delicately.
“Yes?” he asked, instantly on guard.
“Have you been poking around where you shouldn’t be?” She was looking at him intently, her head still cocked down toward the tablet.
“No, Ma'am,” he said cautiously.
“I have a report here that says you accessed Jill’s research files.” She looked fully at him, an intense curiosity evident in her expression. “Now, why would you do that?”
Matt tried to say something, but the excuses died in his throat as he was confronted by those ice-blue eyes.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she said, almost to herself. And then louder, “Soldier, you are dismissed.”
Matt stood up, feeling shaken and confused. What had just happened?
He walked to his office, mulling their conversation over. The more he thought about it, the more worried he felt. He sat at his desk and considered his options. None of them were good. He realized he was going to have to take on additional risk. He bent to the task of pushing his AI construct to Jill’s personal-node. Then he wrote her a note: “If you are reading this, then I am already dead.”
As soon as he had completed the command sequence necessary to keep his construct hidden in the background until activated, his proximity alarm went off. Someone was penetrating his network defenses. He triggered his interface and started his defense protocols. The neural connection in his brainstem transitioned to full power as he closed his eyes and submerged his consciousness into his node, ready to fight back.
Matt immersed himself in the inky blackness of his interface, rushing toward a point of light in the distance, the light growing rapidly larger until he plunged in headfirst.
He opened his awareness inside his node’s defensive station – a small, bunker-like room with a control panel floating in the center. This simulation was merely how his mind interpreted the data being fed to him via his interface. It provided him with a familiar environment he could use to fend off whatever was attacking him.
He focused on the threat detection system, waiting a split second while it filled his field of view, absorbing the data it provided to him. It didn’t take long to determine the reason for the alarm. Two constructs had opened an unmarked access panel and were attaching a small, black device. Matt sent a query and the defense system identified the device for him. It was a virtualized backdoor. A software mechanism that could be used to gain unlimited access to his node’s data and other capabilities.
None of what he was seeing had any physical reality, of course. His interface was visualizing the attack for him in a way that his mind could easily understand. It wasn’t as accurate as looking at the running code, but he could react quickly and intuitively, allowing him to operate his defenses as if he had a physical presence within the node. His defense-bots were already actively modifying his node’s firewall rules in an attempt to block the hostile incoming data. But he could see right away it wasn’t going to be enough. The attacking constructs were making significant progress installing the backdoor. Someone was after his data. Evidently, someone knew what he’d been up to.
After signing on with Icarus, he had invested in a high-grade security system. It had seemed like the smart thing to do after dedicating himself in opposition to the cloning project. Now, it was time to put that system to the test.
He activated his offense-bot and instructed it to destroy the two constructs. He watched as the bot scuttled in, grabbed the closest construct in a vice grip, and pulled it away struggling. Naturally, the remaining construct didn’t deviate from what it was doing. It didn’t even look up as its companion was drug away, instead remaining intently focused on completing the installation of the backdoor.
Matt panned his view to watch his bot destroy the first construct. To his horror, he saw the construct shake free and then it rapidly expanded in size. As it grew it changed shape, transitioning from a vaguely human form into a brightly glowing blue orb, crackling with energy. His offense-bot backed away, one arm damaged and hanging loosely at its side. The orb pulsed once and his offense-bot froze, twitched, and was instantly disabled, falling limply to the ground. It shimmered for a moment, frozen in place, and then shattered into its constituent bits.
“Shit! Where did that come from?” Matt yelled, his mind racing to determine his next move. The constructs were more than they appeared. Whoever was attacking him had devoted significant resources to the assault. He looked at his screen, and to his shock the other construct, the one that had retained its human form, was observing him, a grim smile on its face.
“Goodbye Matt,” the construct said.
“This isn’t possible,” Matt muttered. The construct couldn’t have peered through his view. It couldn’t have recognized his presence…
He didn’t get a chance to finish the thought before he was pulled violently out of his interface, shocked by a blinding pain originating in his physical body.
While he’d been distracted defending his personal-node, his office had been infiltrated by a squad of military police. He was on his knees, the end of a neural-probe hovering just inches from his neck.
“Think he needs another one?”
“Yeah, hit him again.”
Matt convulsed in agony as the neural-probe touched his neck, sending a series of commands into his brain stem. He lost control of his body as waves of fiery pain rushed through him, a disconcerting warmth spreading from his crotch down both legs as he emptied his bladder. He was on the ground, curled in a fetal ball, and as the pain faded, he could hear himself whimpering.
“Subject is secure. Let’s make this quick boys, we have a lot to do tonight.”
Matt’s face was pressed into the ground. He couldn’t feel his body. He couldn’t even move his eyes. He stared straight ahead, unblinking, the texture of the floor so close he could pick out every detail of the composite weave. Boots walked past his head as the soldiers busied themselves in his office. He thought of his daughter. He thought of the information he’d sent to Jill. He hoped it would be enough. Unable to defend himself, he watched as the probe descended toward his temple.
Unending agony.
He writhed helplessly on the ground, stuck in his mind, begging for deliverance. He tried to trigger his interface and retreat into his node, but it was closed to him. There was no escape. Unable to control his body, unable to get away, it seemed as if his suffering would never end. He was desperately trying to maintain a grip on sanity when the probe overwhelmed the last of his defenses. With a final, quivering twitch his neural circuits overloaded and he lay still.
Jill opened her eyes, gasping, drenched in sweat. Matt’s construct was standing in her room immobile, a weary sadness etched into his features. “I think it’s time for us to talk about how we are going to keep you alive.”
Chapter 9
Jill paced the length of the room, visibly shaken, trying to digest what she’d just experienced. She turned to Matt. “Why did they attack you?”
“I can only guess. Maybe they thought I knew too much. Maybe they decided I was no longer useful.”
“What were you doing for Tros? What was your role?”
“I was responsible for monitoring the civilian researchers and keeping them in line. We were willing to use your work, but we couldn’t allow you to discover the secrets of human cloning first.”
“I knew I couldn’t trust you,” Jill spat back at him.
“It was a national security imperative. Tros believed that whoever was the first to unlock general purpose genetic engineering would have a massive advantage on the world stage. This is bigger than just enhancing soldiers. Imagine a variety of clones, each optimized for a specific job, working tirelessly to serve our national interests. The clones could be worked to death if necessary, because when a clone dies a new one could be easily generated to replace it.
Imagine an army of clones networked together, combining their mental resources, working in perfect coordination with each other. It would allow us to harness the power of human intelligence in a way that has never been possible before. The impact of this technology could easily surpass that of the industrial or information revolutions.”
“That’s a frightening vision. Now that the lab has been nationalized, what do you think will happen to the other researchers?”
“I don’t know. None of the others were so close to a solution, so I think for now they will simply be reassigned to different labs.”