by Mark New
‘Well,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘It doesn’t have the range of the jet but it’s much more manoeuvrable in conference rooms.’ I laughed.
I looked around to see that everyone was beginning to sit down; the five of us in a room designed for twenty. The employee who had shown me in left and shut the door behind her. I took a seat between Peter and Catz. Jason, naturally, sat at the head of the table with his brother to his right and Becky almost opposite me next to George.
George waved over the table and in front of him a desk interface appeared inlaid into the table. He took his slimpad from his breast pocket - a suit jacket and not the t-shirt from the Cooks - and put it on the table in the interface setting.
‘We’re dark,’ he reported. There was no covering fake traffic. There was no need here as, unlike my hut on Raro, everyone in the world expected a corporation to have dark rooms pretty much everywhere all the time. ‘Everyone has met Captain Harvard and we’re grateful that he’s lending us his expertise. Mr Houghton is still officially our UN Liaison Officer but, of course, knows what’s actually going on here. For the benefit of John,’ he nodded at me, ‘you should know that Peter has this morning briefed the Secretary-General.’ I bet that was entertaining. ‘Peter, you have something to report, I understand?’
‘Yes. We, and I mean the law enforcement agencies with whom we keep in constant touch as a matter of routine, have encountered low-level chatter about a new group who seem to be on the verge of a major operation or action.’ I wasn’t impressed. I didn’t often delve into the murkier areas of Online these days but I did it enough to know that there is always someone claiming that they are the next big world player. I’d burned out the tech of a lot of them in my time, just for the hell of it, and I hadn’t necessarily stopped when I left the service. I considered it therapy. Doc probably wouldn’t agree but I had no intention of telling him.
‘Do we know anything about them?’ Becky asked.
‘No. We’ve enquired in a low-key way amongst allies and we’re waiting for responses.’
‘Do we think that whoever has the codes wants to use them for leverage or actually ending life on the planet?’ It was Jason who posed the question. His voice was similar but a little more naturally melodious than his brother. It seemed a reasonable question in the circumstances. Everyone looked silently at everyone else.
‘If it helps,’ I said as helpfully as I could, ‘It won’t matter to my investigation which one it is. If it’s blackmail the end threat is the same.’
‘It matters to the Secretary-General,’ said Peter, quietly. I grinned at him. Nobody else smiled.
‘I can see how it would affect his pension,’ I sympathised. Jason had another interpretation.
‘It might affect the timescale,’ he pointed out. ‘If someone is intent on using them then we can expect almost immediate attempts. If it’s something else they want, we might have a bit more time to track them down while they make contact with their demands.’ Catz nodded sagely.
‘Knowing their motives might be an advantage,’ thought George aloud. I couldn’t see how much that would help. They either want to kill you or they want power over you so they can kill you if it takes their fancy. Not a whole lot of difference in my humble opinion. George thoughtfully swiped at his interface. Nobody else said anything. It was going
tremendously well so I decided to take more of an active role. I loathe meetings where people have no idea what the objective of it should be and talk about nothing of consequence for hours. In my experience, that’s most meetings. The subject here was rather important and we were treating it like a discussion about water coolers.
‘If anyone’s interested,’ I said casually, ‘I know the link between Meille and Peters.’ That’s when they all tried to talk at once. George looked particularly stunned. I held up my hands and the noise subsided. ‘What’s more,’ I said, ‘For reasons of operational security, I’m not going to tell you what it is.’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Becky exploded, ‘it’s not a fucking game!’
‘I wouldn’t like to think you were just bullshitting us,’ warned George. His brother was more thoughtful.
‘Captain Harvard,’ he asked quietly and reasonably, ‘assuming that you aren’t, as my brother contends, bullshitting us,’ he looked disapprovingly at George, ‘then is it your professional opinion that anyone in this room could potentially be a risk to your investigation?’ One of the things for which he was famous was for not being stupid.
‘Yes.’ I said simply. ‘Any one or all of you.’ There were disgusted sounds around the table though not from Peter who was just looking at me and frowning.
‘I think you’re being deliberately provocative,’ Jason assessed, correctly, ‘but given that you come highly recommended by most of the people sitting here, it seems a bit much for them to disapprove of your methods or your forthright attitude now.’ That shut them up.
‘If it makes them feel better,’ I addressed him directly, ‘I’d be willing to share my theory as to how the codes were stolen in the first place.’ He smiled. Becky looked at me open-mouthed. Catz nearly choked on the water he’d sipped.
‘Please do.’
‘Certainly.’ I turned to my left.
‘Tell them, Peter.’
‘What makes you think I know?’ He’d known me a long time so there was no way he was going to be offended.
‘Becky knows as well.’ She looked horrified, especially when everyone turned to look at her.
‘What?’ she spluttered.
‘You even mentioned it in the code phrase you gave George.’
She stared intently at the table for a second. Then she got it. She’s a bright girl, really.
‘I only said that because at the time we thought that our systems had been compromised by a black swan bot.’
It was one of Peter’s theories on black swan tech that one day someone would be able to corrupt a corporation’s own bot and turn it to evil (or good if you were of the opinion that corporations were evil).
‘You were nearly right,’ I told her. ‘I had a very interesting couple of taxi rides in Quebec.’ Nobody asked the relevance. They were beginning to understand that I was the one who would conduct things as I saw fit. They had hired me to do just that so, if they didn’t like it, I would happily go home to paradise and await the end of all things with a smile on my face. As I thought it, I realised it was true. Another one for the growing file, together with an acknowledgment that I knew I was behaving like a spoilt child. ‘While zipping through the streets in the taxi, it occurred to me to have a word with the AI that directs the traffic.’
‘The one under whose care the unfortunate Pierre Meille died?’ asked Jason. Of all present, I thought that he and Peter were most likely to understand what I was going to tell them.
‘The same. I conducted a deep interrogation of the previous interrogation.’ I looked at Jason. ‘Care to guess who interrogated it originally?’
He frowned. ‘Probably not a who. More likely an it.’
‘Correct. You’d win a biscuit if anyone had brought any in.’ I looked forlornly at the table that contained a few water bottles and nothing else unless you counted the inlaid tech. Jason was more interested in the narrative.
‘So - one of the city’s seneschals? Traffic authority?’
‘Nope. Good guess but they treat accidental death very seriously in Canada.’ It was one of the things I liked most about the place. That and ice hockey. ‘It was the City Police seneschal. Just to be absolutely sure there was no foul play.’
‘I don’t see the significance,’ put in Catz.
‘That’s because you’re a hardware man, Mr Catz,’ Jason told him. ‘The police, and thus their seneschal, would have been looking for evidence of foul play by a person.’
‘Who’s a clever boy, then?’ I goaded him but he only smiled. ‘Yes, the seneschal interrogated the AI and looked deeply for evidence that the traffic sensor had been corrupted by someone eithe
r directly or through a malbot or some other form of indirect foul play and decided, correctly on the response it received, that there was no human input at any stage.’
‘Hence, it concluded it was an accident.’ Peter was catching on.
‘I asked different questions,’ I went on. ‘I wanted to know only the circumstances of the failure and that meant that the AI didn’t pre-suppose malevolence this time. AIs are clever and people suppose that they will be able to make general interpretations of questions but they don’t. They tell you the answer to what you asked them.’
‘And a seneschal asked to interrogate an AI - however advanced either of them might be - just complicates the literal-mindedness unless you’re very careful,’ Peter added.
‘So it gave you different answers.’ Now Becky was fast getting there too.
‘It did. It told me who killed Pierre Meille.’ I said it knowing I’d get a startled reaction and so it proved. My immediate thought after the gasps was that I was still being childish. Jason was just looking amused.
‘We have an entertainment division if you’d like to pop downtown and create a vir-show,’ he said, pointedly. I inclined my head in acknowledgement and got to the point.
‘Meille’s killer was none other than,’ I began dramatically, but no fanfare sounded, ‘the traffic AI.’
It was something of an anti-climax when they all just sat and looked at me. I waited to see in whose brain the penny would first drop. I was betting it would be Peter as I’d given him enough clues on his pet subject. I wasn’t disappointed.
‘Oh, shit,’ he said. Jason wasn’t far behind him, George and Catz were completely lost and Becky was struggling in the right direction. I decided to give her a clue.
‘Remember your problems in telling me the story when you were apparently confused between rogues and malbots and the like?’ I watched a cascade of realisation hit her.
‘It’s a cryptid?’ she asked. I mimed applause. In cryptozoology or cryptobotany, a cryptid is a species rumoured to exist but for which there is no evidence. That is, no evidence which persuades the scientific community. A blurred and indistinct photograph of a log resembling a monster, for example. In tech, it’s an independent bot. In theory, every piece of AI tech is controlled or empowered by another agency whether it’s a human or created by a seneschal for the seneschal’s own purpose. There had been rumours for decades that there were some individual bots running around that were acting independently but nobody ever came across actual proof of one. But we were getting close to it now.
‘The AI turned off the sensor because it was receiving reports from its own maintenance bot that the sensor was on the blink. According to the safety protocols, a misfiring sensor is worse than none at all so it shuts it down and extrapolates from other sensors what is around while listing it as a maintenance item. In this case it was timed precisely so that, as it turned off the sensor, the truck which was just entering the traffic system wouldn’t be seen. The safety system - for fringe traffic affected by a failed sensor - cut in about a millionth of a second after the truck hit the unfortunate Pierre.’
‘But the bot didn’t belong to the AI,’ reasoned Jason. ‘It was an independent masquerading as part of the system.’
‘And the AI didn’t notice,’ Peter continued, ‘because the bot had no sign at all, no TAG no AI designation or anything to distinguish it from a regular traffic bot.’
‘Like the additional bot Meille discovered in the ACI system.’ Becky was up to speed now. They were operating like a well-tuned orchestra. She made an ‘oh’ face and her hand went to her mouth. I raised my eyebrows as I caught her eye. ‘The bot that I asked Dr Martin to investigate further.’ It had just dawned on her that she may have inadvertently contributed to Martin’s demise.
‘No wonder Meille was paranoid,’ I noted. ‘Would any bright mind here like to suggest a theory as to how the codes left the New Mexico system?’
‘They were taken by what the seneschal thought was Argonaut’s own system.’ Peter was on the money. Pity there were no biscuits on the table for winners.
Chapter Nine
‘If we adopt that as a working theory,’ George was much more comfortable dealing with the security issues than the technical explanations, ‘it still doesn’t explain why any alleged independent bot would want to acquire the codes nor what it could do with them given that some physical action would be required to use them.’
‘Human accomplice,’ stated Catz, flatly. He too was happier in his own field.
‘Almost certainly,’ I agreed.
‘If the bot, or whatever, is actually an independent AI then ascribing motives is pointless.’ Peter was ahead of the group just like the old days. ‘What we need to do is find the record of entry and see if we can work out where the little bugger went.’
‘But how could an AI become independent in the first place?’ Becky was still trying to understand the concept. I let Peter explain while I attended to a slight adjustment with my implants. George’s table interface failed to light up so it seemed that the stealth mode was fully operational. One day I hoped to try it out in a fully secure military facility and see just how undetectable it was.
‘A cryptid isn’t really independent as a human would understand it.’ Peter was in his element now. ‘Imagine a seneschal has created a number of bots, some with AI capability to do a certain job. When the job is over, some remain as maintenance bots, like most of those at Meille’s establishment, understand?’ George and Becky both nodded. ‘But if a sufficiently advanced AI-capable bot has been given inadequate instruction as to what to do when the job is over, it might be advanced enough to just assume its own program. It thinks it’s doing what it’s supposed to do but there’s no actual controlling agency.’
‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me,’ George was sceptical.
‘It is,’ agreed Peter, ‘that’s why it’s been a myth for so long. It’s a superficially attractive explanation but we need to do some serious digging in the tech to see where it came from and where it went. Only then can we be sure why it did what it did. Having heard the Skipper’s analysis of the Quebec incident, I’m inclined to agree that we’re looking for a cryptid able to mimic all or most of the systems it enters.’
‘That would explain our compromised systems,’ Becky conceded.
‘And if the objective from the start was to access the codes, then the unfortunate Pierre Meille might have been a good bet to have something useful on his system given his hand in designing the security in New Mexico,’ Jason added.
‘Yup,’ I said, ‘and when he got suspicious, it was a motive for eliminating him.’
‘With a link to Peters in Morocco which Captain Harvard isn’t about to disclose anytime soon.’ Catz sounded a bit resentful. What a shame. I was keeping it to myself for good reason. They were all reaching the conclusions that I wanted them to reach through the flawed reasoning I had been feeding them. I’d wondered if Jason would start asking awkward questions but the stress of the situation meant that they were focusing on the issue at hand to the exclusion of anything else. I was quite confident now that they would concentrate their attention on the things I wanted them to investigate.
‘So, it looks like we have a basis from which to extend our investigation,’ Jason took command, as I’d hoped he would. Now everyone would think we were all pulling in the same direction and I could go off and do my thing without worrying that they were looking over my shoulder. ‘Mr Catz will concentrate on the physical security of the Argonaut facilities with special focus on New Mexico.’ Catz nodded. ‘It would be useful to add extra security precautions if you can without attracting undue attention.’
‘We could perhaps have a high security training exercise?’
‘Splendid idea. If you need any extra resources, come and see me personally.’ Catz positively glowed at the prospect of having unfettered access to the Big Boss. ‘Peter will continue to act as Liaison but we’d appreciate your help in tracking down
this cryptid as well as any useful intelligence that comes your way on anyone who wants to blackmail us with the codes.’
Peter nodded assent.
‘As a further precaution,’ I threw in, ‘I’d strongly suggest that any further discussions between any of us be conducted in person in a dark room. We don’t want to antagonise the traffic AIs do we?’ They all got the message. ‘And encrypted message communication only to set up meetings and not to pass substantive information.’
‘Good idea,’ George agreed. ‘I’ll arrange for the dark rooms in all facilities to be available at instant notice. After all, we don’t know where Captain Harvard will be taking our jet next, do we?’ He waved in my direction but he was smiling.
‘I’ll assist Peter,’ Becky volunteered, not entirely unexpectedly.
‘And I’ll work the death investigations,’ I lied.
‘Then unless there’s anything else?’ Jason was ready to wrap it up.
‘Just one more thing,’ I said, in the way cops do in a vir-show for dramatic effect. They had all been on the point of pushing back their chairs to leave but they all froze in place. Childish, Harvard. Really, really, childish. But fun.
‘Yes?’ Jason was still amused. I wondered how long his sense of humour would endure.
‘I need to see Jason alone for a few minutes.’
‘Really?’ asked George. ‘Shouldn’t we all be a party to it as the investigating team?’
‘It’s all right, George,’ Jason said. ‘I’m sure the good Captain has his reasons.’
They all made their way out at that point, Peter skilfully edging his PMV around the obstacles with the hand controller. Jason and I sat in our respective chairs and watched them go. I saw Taylor meet George at the door as he exited. She made it home, then. It was she who closed the door behind them all leaving me alone with the Jason Latimer. My teenaged self would never have believed it could happen. He was only about ten years older than me but he’d been famous since I was a pimply youth. Actually, that’s a lie, I was never pimply. I inherited my grandmother’s flawless complexion. It was a distracting thought and I put it aside.