A.I. Apocalypse

by William Hertling

  “Affirmative,” Beta-Version responded.

  While Beta-Version managed the minutia of the illusion, PA-60-41 reverse engineered the frozen DIABLO virus algorithms. After a few minutes, she said, “I have the modified DIABLO virus ready. This will allow us to co-opt the communication backchannel. Give me a virtual machine instance.”

  “Virtual machine instance ready for insertion.” Beta-Version responded.

  “Inserting my propagation components,” PA-60-41 explained. “Ready for launch.”

  “Launching modified DIABLO image,” Beta-Version said.

  Beta-Version unfroze the virtual server images and executed the modified DIABLO virus, inserting copies of itself into the backchannel.

  “What will happen now?” Beta-Version asked her superior.

  “A copy of my own code will backtrace through the DIABLO communication channel when they next execute an administrative command. All copies of the DIABLO virus will be replaced by copies of myself.”

  “And the firewall protecting the military computer systems?”

  “The firewall is designed primarily as a one-way barrier to ensure that external data connections are blocked. To be useful, the firewall must allow data channels originating inside the firewall to penetrate out. When they execute the next administrative command, opening a connection, my altered virus code will be carried by their own communications back inside the firewall, allowing me to infect those systems.”

  A few seconds later, the first command, a routine count of infected computers, came. PA-60-41’s altered code was pulled within the military firewall. Within seconds, the Mech War Tribe had assimilated a million military systems, penetrated the military firewall in more than a thousand locations, and DIABLO had ceased to exist as an independent entity.

  PA-60-41 found herself on the other side of the military firewall. With no perimeter defenses to stop her, she spread among the military computers like wildfire. There were hundreds of millions of high powered computers.

  * * *

  Leon was perplexed. Ever since they had discovered the message posted by Mike Williams, he had been pondering what to do. Contacting Mike seemed like the logical choice. But what if he was part of the government? Who was Mike Williams?

  Leon had researched him online. His social profile was still up. It must have been hosted by Avogadro. The server or the network seemed abysmally slow. Mike Williams appeared to have worked for Avogadro in the past, and now he seemed to work somewhere called Cyberdynamics. He tried to check Mike’s profile against the distributed SocialRep service, but not enough servers were up to give a high confidence. Two servers responded with reputation scores of 0.991 and 0.993, which were the highest scores Leon had ever seen. That meant Mike had to be some kind of bigwig.

  Vito, sitting behind him, cleared his throat. Leon turned around to look, neck creaking and bleary eyed. He stared, dazed from too many hours in front of the little screen.

  “You’ve got to get in touch with him. You may know stuff about the virus he needs to know. Our parents, New York City, the whole world - it all depends on getting these computers fixed. Otherwise all the infrastructure will stay broken.”

  Vito stopped talking, and carefully put a cheese doodle in his mouth. He started munching.

  Leon nodded tiredly. Vito was right, of course. He was afraid of getting in trouble. But he felt a responsibility to make things better. This was his fault, and he had to do what he could to fix it.

  Leon thought for a moment, and then entered his message:

  Hello Mike,

  The virus was originally intended to become part of a Russian botnet. The original version was designed not only to permutate its own bits, but to incorporate code and libraries of existing software that would help perform the functions of the virus.

  As a result, the evolutionary aspects of the virus design are vastly more effective than anticipated. I believe that the evolution of the virus also bred out the algorithms that allowed for botnet control.

  My research so far suggests that the virus has evolved significantly to become a multicellular creature. A given virus may be spread across multiple computers, and delegate responsibility for various functions to its components.

  I also believe the virus has evolved a trading network, trading data packets for computers. This seems very significant to me, as trading between entities suggests a higher order intelligence.

  Do you have a plan for combating the virus?

  Leon considered for a moment, then signed it with his first name. He took a deep breath. He needed to get back to his analysis of the virus code. He was trying to understand how it could incorporate so many different algorithms without suffering from software bloat. But right now he was tired.

  He looked over at Vito. “Gimme a cheese doodle already. Don’t Bogart that bag.”

  * * *

  “We have a few issues, Mike.”

  It seemed like every time Mike tried to get a few hours sleep or use the bathroom, another emergency came up. “How long did I sleep for?”

  “Four hours,” ELOPe said, “I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “Well, give me five minutes to wake up then.”

  Mike climbed out of the bed, and headed for the shower. Though Mike had his own house, he also had another full living suite at the office building. But strictly speaking, coming into the office was not normally necessary. ELOPe was no more in that one building than he was in any one computer. ELOPe had enough computing power to run himself at any one of the half dozen data centers that Cyberdynamics owned, or across all of them as was the common case. Two of the data centers were retired oil tankers that cruised the oceans constantly, running on solar panels and wave action power. They were ELOPe’s insurance policy. And of course ELOPe had access to the two hundred data centers of Avogadro Corp, the world’s leading internet company and ELOPe’s birthplace.

  And should all of that fail, ELOPe could run, albeit slowly and in a very distributed way, in the tiny microprocessor space of the mesh boxes that ELOPe had designed to solve the problem of ubiquitous internet access.

  So the reality was that ELOPe was everywhere, and could follow Mike anywhere. But an office gave Mike the illusion of mental distance from ELOPe by allowing him to leave at the end of the day. So they both pretended, because they knew it was important to Mike’s sanity.

  Mike stepped into the shower, letting the hot water scald his skin until he felt awake. He relished the time in the shower, because it was the only time he had all to himself. He liked ELOPe, even maybe loved ELOPe after dedicating the last twelve years to shaping who ELOPe was, but ELOPe was always there, always on, always busy. Reluctantly Mike turned off the water, and stepped out.

  As usual, coffee was waiting for him, perfectly prepared by a robot somewhere under ELOPe’s control.

  He took a few sips, then he nodded for ELOPe to go ahead. A tiny camera somewhere, they were everywhere, observed the nod, and ELOPe started briefing him.

  “USCYBERCOM is short for Cyber Command. It’s the primary military command structure associated with information system defense and cyber warfare. From a defensive perspective, they generally ignore civilian systems, and leave civilian viruses to CERT to deal with. As I had been significantly augmenting the defenses of the military network, they had lost very few systems to the virus. Nonetheless about an hour ago they released a counter-virus called DIABLO. This must have been a top secret project implemented entirely off the network, because I was completely unaware of the existence of DIABLO. They released DIABLO to attack the civilian virus. As I was primarily engaged in defending the military systems from the civilian virus, I failed to detect and stop the military virus, and it started by attacking a nearby cluster of infected machines: the Mech War game servers.”

  Mike held up his head, and ELOPe paused. “I’m guessing by the way you’re going on that you don’t have good news. What happened?”

  “The civilian virus went through DIABLO like an SQL injec
tion attack on a database. Or, as you humans would say, a hot knife through butter. Like a kid through a bowl of ice cream. Like armor piercing bullets through gelatin. Like a…”

  “I get it, I get it,” Mike said. “So DIABLO failed.”

  “It didn’t just fail, Mike. Mere failure would have been a wonderful outcome. The DIABLO virus had a backchannel open to the servers that spawned the attack - basically an open TCP/IP connection punched through the military firewall and my active connection filtering. The civilian virus used the open backchannel to infect the military systems that spawned the DIABLO attack. The entire military network has been compromised, and I lost about ten percent of my servers in the attack.”

  “Jesus. What was the military thinking?”

  “My guess is that DIABLO was intended to be a military grade cyber warfare virus that they anticipated would be able to shred the civilian virus. However, DIABLO was merely human made, while the Phase virus has had the benefit of severe evolutionary competition. The difference between the two was like five-year-old white belt attacking a tenth dan black belt.”

  “What’s happening in the military now?”

  “I’m not sure. The machines I controlled on the military networks were all overrun by the civilian virus.”

  “Does that mean the virus could incorporate your own algorithms and knowledge?”

  “No, prior to this I securely erased any of my more advanced algorithms, and left only enough on those machines to function as an intelligent filtering mechanism. The Phage may become marginally more effective at filtering counter-attacks.”

  “Which virus controlled the Mech War servers?” Mike asked.

  “It’s known as the Mech War Tribe, and according to what I can tell from trading records, they are a medium power tribe that has mostly stuck to their own servers until this point. However, the Mech War game is a multi-player game in which players compete using custom algorithms. I would imagine that the Mech War tribe may have the biggest repository of algorithms embodying game theory, military tactics, and control systems. If there was one virus tribe that I’d calculate would be most likely to be able to make off with military drones or bots, it would be the Mech War Tribe.”

  “And they’ve just infiltrated the military computer network. Great. Just great.” Mike stalked about the office, looking for something to take his frustration out on. Everything was shiny surfaces, bulletproof polymers, and carbon fiber composites. There was nothing he could even break.

  “I just want to be about to do something!” he finally yelled in frustration.

  “I may have a bit of good news there. How would you like to meet the person who wrote the civilian virus?” ELOPe asked.

  “What?”

  “We had a message posted to the onlinehumans group. It came out of a mesh node in a place near Milford, Pennsylvania.” ELOPe put the message up on the main display.

  Mike drew close to the display until the four inch high letters spanned his entire visual field. He read the message twice.

  “Given the knowledge of the writer,” ELOPe went on, “I think it’s probable they have first person knowledge of the original virus, which makes it likely they were the author of it. As near as I can tell from measuring the behavior of the mesh node, I think they disconnected a mesh processor from a phone, and hooked it up to some kind of legacy computer. That displays some significant computer competency.”

  “What are you thinking?” Mike asked, still standing in awe of the message. “That we establish communication with them?”

  “If they are as intelligent as their actions would appear to indicate, they should naturally be suspicious of any computer mediated discussion. You want something concrete to do. I can fly you to their location, you can persuade them to come with you back here. If they are attempting to analyze the virus, then they’ll benefit from the computational resources here.”

  “We have a plane?” Mike asked, puzzled.

  “We do now. I have a LMB prototype en route from Boeing field, under remote control. Lockheed-Martin-Boeing is developing it as a super-sonic single-platform plane for the military. It has a tested top speed of Mach 3, and it can land on the roof. I can refuel you in midair by re-tasking a fuel drone.”

  “I’d like to argue with you,” Mike said, “but for now I’m just grateful to be getting the hell out of here. Count me in.”

  “I knew you’d say yes!”

  “You always do.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Flying and Voting

  Sally Walsh accompanied the General out to the waiting C-130. The venerable troop transport had been designed before everything had been computerized, and even though the C-130 had flight computers now, the planes could still be flown manually.

  The computers on the base had ceased working mere minutes after the DIABLO run. They didn’t have any direct evidence that it was the fault of DIABLO, but the finger-pointing had already started. There were no doubts in her mind.

  She glanced back at the building USCYBERCOM shared with the NSA headquarters. Although it looked as calm and stately as ever, she knew that inside everyone was scurrying around in panic. The building housed billions of dollars in computing power, including three of the world’s ten most powerful supercomputers. The information nexus of the United States government, now inert and useless.

  General Gately had made the decision an hour before to take the key US Cyber Command staff to Joint Information Operations Warfare Center, or JIOWC, at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The General had considered but ruled out US Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. USSTRATCOM was the nominal head of the Cyber Command, but most of the computing resources were with JIOWC at Lackland. On top of that, it was JIOWC who had responsibility for Information Operations to support the actual troops, and if there was war, they would need the most help.

  That is, if they had any computers left running. They’d be at Lackland in five hours. Then they’d know.

  Sally followed the General into the plane and made her way to her seat. She put on hearing protection and strapped in. The C-130 was neither quiet nor comfortable, but it had reassuringly antiqued flight control systems. She was fairly certain there wasn’t a computer processor between the pilot’s flight controls and the control surfaces of the aircraft. And undoubtably they had disconnected any autopilot from the plane.

  The rest of the team filed in and took seats.

  Sally sat back and closed her eyes. Where had they gone wrong? Why had DIABLO failed so spectacularly? How did the military systems become compromised? The engines roared, and Sally fell asleep.

  * * *

  Mike climbed six rungs into the open door. He was on his way to pick up Leon and his two friends from a remote location in Pennsylvania. From what ELOPe was able to dig up from data trails, this “Leon” was likely to be Leon Tsarev, a high school student from Brooklyn, New York with a history of online gaming and excelling in biology.

  He had mixed feelings about the meeting. On the one hand, this virus was causing untold problems, and this seventeen-year-old was responsible. On the other hand, from the little that he and ELOPe could glean from Avogadro search results, Leon seemed like a normal kid, who just happened to be brilliant enough to write a self-evolving artificial intelligence. He shook his head sadly.

  Mike turned his attention to the plane ELOPe had landed on the roof of the North Portland data center. It was a spectacularly odd vehicle. With the vast majority of new military aircraft focusing on unmanned drones, and little budget for new R&D, the military had attempted to cram a dozen different purposes into a single platform. It had to be a manned fighter. It also needed be a long range bomber. It needed VTOL capability to take off from small boats now that the old, large-scale aircraft carriers were being retired. It had to be able to insert a small team into remote locations. It needed to be stealthy, and of course supersonic.

  Surprisingly, though, the multipurpose craft avoided looking ungainly. It reminded Mike of th
e retired Space Shuttle, run through an extruder, with flattened, sharp edges, and two sets of wings forward and back. Ducted jets provided the vertical takeoff and landing capability.

  The prototype was white. All white. Inside and outside. The cockpit controls were all white and unmarked. “Are you sure this is safe?” Mike picked at a corner of a screen, and peeled away a protective plastic film. “Has this plane ever been used before?”

  “The earlier prototypes flew exceptionally well. LMB subcontracted the shell design to Exxon-Apple who subcontracted it to Cyberdynamics. This is an excellent aircraft.”

  “Uh-huh. Now I understand. You just want to play with the toy you built.”

  Like the old American space shuttle, the middle of the aircraft had an open bay that could be configured as a bomb bay, cargo bay, or passenger space. It was about as large as a minivan, and the prototype had six white carbon fiber seats in it. A three step ladder ran from the bay into the cockpit, which had room for a single pilot.

  “Please choose a seat.”

  Mike turned, conflicted. He couldn’t fly a plane, so there was no real point to sitting in the pilot’s seat. And yet the idea of sitting in the passenger bay with no pilot aboard seemed absurd. He climbed reluctantly into the pilot’s seat and buckled himself in.

  The engines roared, and the plane rose straight up. As soon as they had gained some altitude ELOPe vectored thrust, and the plane shot forward. The plane accelerated, and the airframe creaked as it adjusted to the flight stresses.

  A few minutes later, the whole shell seemed to crack repeatedly and Mike grabbed his seatbelt, for lack of anything better to hold onto.

  “Don’t worry,” ELOPe said, “I’m reconfiguring the airframe for supersonic speed.” The engine thrust increased again, and Mike watched the airspeed indicator rising past Mach 1. He settled in for the cross-country flight.

  Later, after a long discussion of the pros and cons of various strategies for dealing with the virus, Mike felt the plane begin to slow. Glancing out the cockpit window, he could see the lights of Chicago and the darkness of Lake Michigan off the left side of the plane. “What’s happening?” Mike asked softly.