by John Conroe
“The quick answer to that is… nothing. Short of turning off the entire internet world wide, it’s too late. This is now a job for the fixers,” he said. Then he focused on me. “Your companion is very good, Ajaya. World class. But she won’t be able to hide. We’ll find her and end her plans; you have to know that, right? No one can hide from us. We’ve proven that.”
“Oh, you’re referring to the Gaia Group? Easy enough to find them if you’re the ones who propped them up as fronts in the first place, isn’t it? No real trick to that. But let’s lay this out a bit, see where it takes us.
“Harper is a computer genius, raised by a computer genius, inside the deadliest artificial intelligence environment in the world. She fooled CThrees just to survive. You could almost say that the Spiders were her teachers. And she was raised knowing the truth behind Drone Night, the truth behind the Gaia Group. I notice none of you have asked me a single question about what I mean by that and I’ve mentioned it a bunch of times. Interesting. Also, as Fountain just said, she’s been working in the outside world for several months. Preparing. Now, I also find it fascinating that we’ve completely focused on me and Harper and left the whole Spider in the NSA super hideout alone like it’s the elephant in the room. If Peony was sending out bots to influence systems in New York City, what do you suppose Plum Blossom was doing with an NSA uplink? Harper’s goals are to survive and help me survive. Plum Blossom wants to kill the world. You people have really screwed-up priorities.”
“Pretty speech, Ajaya, but it’s all just words. Nothing to back it up,” White said like a bank loan officer questioning my profit and loss statement.
I turned and looked around the room till I spotted a good old-fashioned clock on a wall.
“What time did the videos get released, General?” I asked.
On screen, he frowned for a second but decided to answer. “Ten hundred hours.”
“And the follow-on releases occurred at eleven hundred. It’s eleven forty-seven now. My prediction is that at twelve hundred hours, you’ll get another dose of something to back it up.”
Chapter 40
They stared at me for a few heartbeats.
“Let’s just hook him up and find out everything he knows,” DD Fountain suddenly said.
“Sir, it’s just a few minutes. Let’s wait and see if anything comes out of this drama theater,” Agent Black said.
“Major?” Davis asked from the wall screen.
“I’ll be surprised if something doesn’t happen at noon sir,” Yoshida said, eyes still on me.
“Well then… we wait. But let’s keep chatting, Ajaya,” Weber said. “So far, your mysterious companion has done an admirable job escaping Zone Defense and planting some cleverly concocted videos. But you have to understand that none of that is insurmountable.”
“Like that you could wear it away with a careful campaign to modify public opinion? That over a few months you could put enough propaganda, spin, and diversionary information to make the world audience believe that Harper and I plotted to murder the pope and there is no threat from the Zone?”
Weber’s face twisted up in a mix of a little anger and a little disgust. “I wouldn’t put it so crudely, but you obviously understand the gist.”
“Yeah. Couple things. One, what makes you think you have a few months? Peony escalated its attacks here in New York when those plans came to light. What’s Plum Blossom doing right now? You’re the expert, Director. What mayhem could a powerful artificial intelligence do with access to NSA equipment and systems? Think it could use your own playbook against you? Crash the financial markets, destroy the power grid, cause world military units to falsely attack each other, seed the ground for a nuclear war?”
“That’s a bit of a stretch,” Weber said with a look of disbelief.
“Is it? Plum Blossom’s been working on its plans for ten years. For all you know, it already owns your entire network. They freaking built their own drones and successfully planted them in major infrastructure systems. What if everything they did here in New York was just an experiment to help them do it everywhere?”
Weber stared at me, the disbelief replaced by reluctant realization. His mouth opened, then closed. The others were all looking at him and DD Fountain finally spoke. “That’s not possible, is it?”
Weber glanced at him, then back to me. Abruptly he turned and started another private call.
“I don’t believe it! You can’t tell me this crazy story has any basis in reality,” Fountain said.
“What was number two, Ajaya?” Yoshida suddenly asked. Everyone turned to him, even Weber, who was still on his call. “You said one, what makes you think you have a few months. What’s your follow-on point?”
“Oh, yeah. Two, what makes you think Harper is going to let you run a cover-up? We’ve seen this pattern of changing human behavior through massive spin campaigns all our lives. Hell, I had college classes on it. The thing about spin is that everyone does it. It’s just a question of who does it the most,” I said.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Fountain demanded. I looked at the clock. It was old-school military, had an hour hand to cover all twenty-four hours in a day, with twelve hundred at the bottom where six would be on a standard clock.
I pointed as the last few seconds ticked down and the minute hand clicked straight up, with the hour hand on the twelve hundred hours mark.
They all followed my gesture, stared for a second, and then turned back to me, expressions questioning.
“Well, don’t look at me. Check the internet,” I said.
Davis was already doing so, talking to someone just offscreen.
“Another round of video releases just occurred. Over a hundred, it seems.”
“I’ll go out on a limb and guess a hundred and sixty-nine,” I said. They looked at me, frowning. “You know… thirteen times thirteen? And at thirteen hundred hours, probably something like… what?” I asked, trying to do the math in my head.
“Two thousand, one hundred and ninety-seven?” Agent White asked.
“Nice math, Agent! Yeah. Another multiple of thirteen,” I said.
“How is she doing it?” Davis asked.
“She programs drones,” Yoshida said.
“Yes, but actually her expertise happens to be AI, which almost all drones now have. I’m going to guess that these releases are different, each of them. The first batches were all the same, but these will all vary, as will all the follow-on ones,” I said. I was guessing, but I did know Harper and a bit about how she thought.
“She’s programming AI units to make their own packages. Gave them a mission and set them loose to achieve it. And you know how single-minded AI can be,” I said.
“You have to have something for this?” Fountain said, turning on Weber, who for his part was frozen at my words. The NSA chief’s eyes twitched a bit and then suddenly focused on me.
“Activate Furies,” he said. It took all of us a second to realize he wasn’t talking to us, but to whoever was on the other end of his call.
“Yes, I’ll give the authorization code. Weber, Francis, seven alpha, lima niner echo eight, zulu, zulu, victor. I hereby authorize program Furies.”
“What the fuck is that?” Fountain asked.
Weber, who was really pale, took a breath, blinked twice, and then focused on me. And for the first time, he looked angry. Really angry.
“Something we thought we’d never have to use.”
“Super-killer AI program? Eats the whole internet?” I asked.
“Too crude, but it will eradicate whatever she’s done,” he said.
“At what cost?” Agent Black asked.
“Enormous cost. It’ll knock out most of the internet for at least a day.”
“Shut down airlines, traffic control, power grids, and shit? Did you just do Plum Blossom’s work for it?” I asked, incredulous.
“Please. You think your friend is the only one with programming elegance? We have the best in the w
orld,” Weber said.
I waggled a hand. “Probably not. The best of the best go to the Googles, Amazons, Facebooks, and Apples. You can’t pay them what the corporations can.”
He smiled. “True, but we can exert pressure and have those corporations and others do the work for us,” he said.
“Sure, outsource security. That won’t leave any holes or anything,” I said.
“You little shit. You’re responsible for this! By your actions, you caused this!” Weber said.
I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop my smile.
“Shit! You knew!” Yoshida said.
I shrugged. “Harper guessed. She’s a little paranoid but really, can you blame her? Growing up knowing that everything is a lie.”
“What are you talking about?” Davis asked, holding up a hand to block whoever was talking to him on the plane.
“By doing all this, all these videos, they forced Weber to unleash hell on the internet. If the Spider really has broken into major government systems, wouldn’t that stop it too?” Yoshida asked.
Weber was frowning, working through all the ramifications.
“No. No way are you going to convince me that this, this punk is that smart,” Fountain said. “To make all the pieces fall this way.”
“He doesn’t have to be. It works either way. If their plan resulted in a release of Ajaya, then they would be free to pursue Plum Blossom and we’d be warned about the threat. If there was some killer NSA program, then it could do their work for them,” Yoshida said.
“But leave Ajaya in our hands and lose their internet leverage,” Davis said, frowning.
“Harper doesn’t believe for a second that whatever the NSA has cooked up can actually completely eradicate everything. You think corporate code wizards are going to build you a monster and not think of ways to protect against it? You’re dreaming if you do. Not to mention that China, India, and Russia will have countermeasures in place,” I said. “We don’t even think it will eradicate Plum Blossom’s plans, but maybe it’ll slow them down. She actually thinks that there’s quite a few AIs out there that will fight back on their own. If it threatens their core programming, which it does, then they’ll work counter to it. Most won’t win, but everyone that fights is a drag on your beast.”
“You’ve caused untold damage, Ajaya, and you’re not even clear that you want us to win,” General Davis said.
“You to win? No, not any of you. What we want is for you to stop the ass covering and concentrate on saving humankind. You programmed super AIs for human destruction, let them loose in one of the most resource-rich environments possible, and then left them alone for a decade to plot our destruction. And you did it so you could take power from your predecessors. But your reign will only last until Plum Blossom wipes us all out. So what we did will reverberate around the planet. It may slow Plum Blossom down, but mostly it will alert the whole world to the threats. Probably won’t stop them, not all of them, but it may stop a few, and at least people will have a chance.”
“A chance? A chance? Do you have any idea about the panic and mayhem this will cause?” Weber asked.
“Isn’t panic and mayhem your natural element, Director? Don’t you people excel in calming the masses and presenting the solutions? Well, guess what? You’re up.”
Chapter 41
They threw me back in my guest room. The march back to my gilded cell showed me that Zone Defense wasn’t immune to what was happening across the world. Soldiers ran down hallways, others huddled in small clusters, going silent when our group went through. But the lights stayed on and I still had news access when I got to my room.
The internet was still up, so whatever the NSA Furies program was supposed to do, at least it wasn’t a full shutdown. But standard programming had been taken over by the news desks covering breaking stories all over the world. And much of the mayhem occurred right in the network studios, with unexplained sudden shifts to sponsor ads, with most of those glitching badly. Sound went in and out and every news agency had completely ineffective attempts to go to on-the-ground reporters or drones on the scenes. Eventually the networks just stayed with the on-air anchors and kept the presentation as simple as possible, but breaks in the live presentations still happened. And most of those presentations reported that the issues were being caused from either inside the Zone or by the NSA, or both.
The bulk of the news was here in the US, with financial markets temporarily shut down without clear explanation and people reporting access issues to the millions of blog pages on the net. The airlines also announced computer issues that resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of cancelled or delayed flights. Utility companies announced unexpected systems checks and issues all across the North American grid. But gradually, as the afternoon wore on, key infrastructure came back online.
By dinnertime, things had smoothed out and the glitches mostly stopped, although the blog issue was still full blown. But through it all, the news kept going, and despite the enormous confusion and erroneous reporting, the overall story started to solidify. Talking heads had put together the connection between Harper’s video releases and the worldwide computer issues, which was an easy one to make because all the glitchy messages had mentioned the Spiders and the government over and over.
I turned off the sound after the tenth time hearing my own name and then shut everything off altogether when I got sick of seeing myself. Instead, I started to tear down Rikki, seeing what was recoverable and what wasn’t, making plans for upgrades and new features.
About two hours later, the door opened and Yoshida came in, Agent Black following him, along with some guard types and a tech in a white coat.
Yoshida waved the troopers forward, they grabbed my arms, and then the tech stepped up and zapped me in the neck with a jet gun.
“Okay Ajaya, we’re sending you home,” Yoshida said.
“With a tracker,” I guessed.
“Ah, a tracker and a tiny grain of radio-controlled explosive,” Black said cheerfully. “Sitting right on your carotid artery. And it’s a sensitive little bugger. Look at it cross-eyed in the mirror and it goes off. X-ray it and boom. Try to block its signal and boom. You get the idea.”
“So elevators are out?” I said, my wise ass mouth trying to buy time for my brain to think through the sudden overwhelming fear.
“Nah, way more sophisticated than that. It’s basically a deadman’s switch. As long as it gets the signal, it’s fine. And we’ll be close, count on it. Just don’t go shooting down any odd drones you see. Might blow your own neck out,” Black said with a certain satisfaction.
My attempt at a poker face must have failed because Black started laughing. “Not so smart now, are you?”
Something hardened inside me. The tsunami of terror receded and a kernel of something else started to grow in its place.
“Whoa there, Sniper. Don’t get that kamikaze look on your face. You’ve forced us to close off the doors available to you, but there are still a few ways out,” Yoshida said. He turned to Black. “I told you, you gotta handle operators different. Corner them, leave them no way out and they’ll make a choice that you don’t really want. Blow himself up on television or something equally stupid.”
“He’s not even military,” Black protested.
“He’s military through and through. Doesn’t matter that he never enlisted,” the major said. “Now, Ajaya, you got what you wanted. Kicked over the whole damned hornets’ nest. Can’t do that and be surprised by being stung, can you? You got our complete attention, but now you gotta deal with the consequences.”