by PJ Manney
The young launch pilot, Calvin, killed the engine and docked the launch. “Sorry, sir . . . I’m supposed to stay put, sir, but I don’t know what to do.” He knelt down, made sure Tom wasn’t swallowing his tongue, then laid his hand on Tom’s chest to comfort him.
When Winter was back on the pier and well out of reach, Tom’s body stopped seizing. He lay there, trying to comprehend the bizarre encounter.
Calvin asked, “What can I do, sir?”
“Get . . . us back,” said Tom, his voice sounding as crushed as his neck felt.
Calvin helped him up, and Tom limped into the launch and collapsed on a seat. Calvin took the helm and motored for the Zumwalt.
As Tom sat watching the final rays of the setting sun, one thought ringing through his head, on a loop, over and over and over, cycling in nanoseconds, millions of times: How had Winter hacked him, and why had she let him go?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Like Stanford University in Palo Alto to the north, Pasadena was wealthy, a sheltered community enveloping the precious minds at the California Institute of Technology—known around the world as Caltech. Wrapped in a bubble of protection, privilege, clean treelined streets, and gracious architecture, it allowed these minds to think big thoughts with minimal distractions. But unlike Palo Alto’s obsession with the next big thing out of Stanford, few Pasadenans thought much about the incredible work being done right under their noses at Caltech. It was too way out in the stratosphere to capture the public’s attention.
Caltech was unique. Its tiny size belied its incredible influence in science and technology. Attracting the world’s best and brightest to train in technical fields and applied sciences, it was famous for running, training, and supporting NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in its mission to explore beyond our Earth, managing six of the world’s most important astronomical observatories and performing some of the most elaborate and successful college pranks of all time.
But there hadn’t been a lot of pranks lately.
The day after his fight with Winter, Tom sat a block from campus at the 1960s-themed diner, Pie ’n Burger. While he waited to meet the only man who might be able to prevent Winter’s next attack, he ate a cheeseburger with grilled onions and the diner’s famous homemade Thousand Island dressing, with a side of fries. He hoped the man would come voluntarily.
Around him construction workers ate an early lunch, and a handful of students studied textbooks with titles like Engineering Mechanics/Dynamics, Vol. II and Fundamentals of Aerospace. Neuroscience had proved that information gleaned from paper texts was remembered with greater accuracy than from digital texts, and printed books had made a comeback. The students took any advantage they could get. The pressure on these young men and women was no longer to make huge scientific strides, or create a successful technology, or get into the top graduate school program. They now had to save the world. Hunched over tables and counters, oblivious to distractions around them, they felt that pressure distinctly.
Tom dug into his burger, a perfect combination: the softness of the bun, the crispness of fresh iceberg lettuce and pickles, the sweetness of the dressing, the tanginess of the grilled onions, the gooeyness of melted cheese, meaty warmth, a bounty of textures and flavors wrapped in a little parchment-paper envelope to prevent all that contradictory goodness from falling apart. He stared covetously into the Plexiglas cabinet with pies of twenty-six varieties, eyeing a piece of peanut-butter pie. Neither Peter, nor Tom, had eaten peanut-butter pie, but he assumed Rosero had loved it, because he felt the desire all the way down in his toes. He had never craved what in his last life he would have considered junk food. It was a revelation! He suddenly understood so much more about the why of American eating habits. Sugar plus bad fat plus too much salt equaled awesome. He’d be dead well before the food got him anyway.
Next to his captain’s stool at the counter, he held an open seat with a copy of Dr. Arun Ponnusamy’s textbook, Artificial Human-like Intelligence: Next Steps to AHI. The waitresses frowned at his saving a seat, but it was still early for the lunch crowd, which usually lined up out on the sidewalk, even during these troubled times.
The door opened precisely at 11:00 a.m. It was Ponnusamy. A fit thirty-two-year-old of Southern Indian descent, he wore an Ohio State T-shirt, crisp jeans, and new running shoes and had a collection of prayer beads and blessing bracelets wrapped around his left wrist. A professorial messenger bag was strapped diagonally across his torso. He stood for a moment, his eyes adjusting from the bright sun in the dark diner.
Tom nodded to him. Ponnusamy sauntered over.
“Subtle,” said Ponnusamy. “Sure you’re not a comp-sci or neurogroupie? Or a desperate Caltech prospective?”
Tom removed the book and gestured for him to sit. “Nope.” He pointed at Ponnusamy’s shirt. “I don’t remember Ohio State from your CV.”
“My religion is the Buckeyes.”
Tom snorted.
“The message,” Ponnusamy continued, “said that I was meeting someone to see Ruth Chaikin and the Thomas Paine AHI.” He looked around tentatively, as if feeling that this meeting was for naught.
Winter was right. Tom felt chronically underestimated in this new body. “Yep. That’s me.”
“You know them?”
“As I said. That’s me.”
It still wasn’t registering. “I’m kinda busy . . . midterms . . . ” He fiddled nervously with his bracelets. A waitress came to take his order. “Thanks, Denise, not yet.” She nodded, flicked a glance at Tom, and left.
“I’m part of the Thomas Paine AHI,” said Tom.
Ponnusamy rose from the stool and swung his bag around his back. “And that’s my cue . . . ”
“‘Integration of a biological neural network into an AI is by no means theoretical. The example of Peter Bernhardt/Thomas Paine, while doubted by those scientists whose egos he bruised by accomplishing it first, is to my mind clearly existent and demands to be studied in depth. The key technologies that record memories became the bedrock of an AHI consciousness in Peter Bernhardt’s Hippo and Cortex 3.0, endovascular nanowire implants, combined later with the nano-sized macrosensors, which have been replicated in animal studies as both an output of neural stimuli and an input for digital information. But what hasn’t been revealed is the “magical upload” process, which supplanted the previous . . . ’” Tom sighed. “Do I need to go on?”
Ponnusamy stood still. “Anyone with half a brain could have memorized a paragraph in a paper.”
“That paper hasn’t been published. Yet. It was your letter of introduction to Ruth Chaikin. But it turns out I have more than half a brain. Probably two, maybe more. If you include the net, the size of one’s ‘brain’ is hard to quantify. And I wouldn’t have to memorize it, although I really can’t help it. I could have been reading it off the e-mail. And by the way, your message manner annoys the hell out of both Ruth and me. You’re a persistent ass.”
Ponnusamy sat back down, and his eyes narrowed. “Why are we meeting here?”
“Your campus has too many cameras. In the old days, NASA, DARPA, NIH, NSF, GE, GM, IBM, and who knows who else watched on the other end. In our new world, who’s watching now? You still have money coming in. You sure where it’s from? And every student I see has a self-designed drone and posts everything, all the time, to social media.”
“And there are no cameras here?” asked Arun.
“Other than the diner’s GOs, no. I checked. Apparently, your new grantors don’t care about cramming students. An error on their part.” He looking longingly at the pie case again.
“If I pissed you off, why are you contacting me?”
“We need your help. My AHI is under attack, and we’re not sure how they did it. Or what they may do next.”
“Flattering. But you still haven’t proved to me that you have anything to do with Thomas Paine or AHI.”
Tom shook his head. “Accept the chat in three . . . two . . . one . . . ” He pointed at P
onnusamy’s pocket with his GO inside.
The GO buzzed. Arun grabbed it from the pocket and looked at the screen, accepting an anonymous live screenchat.
Ruth was waving from her favorite ergonomic chair on the Zumwalt’s bridge. “Dr. P-P-Ponnusamy? I p-presume? I’m Dr. Ruth. Chaikin.” Ruth had become quite famous two years ago and possessed a face, voice, and mannerisms that were hard to forget. “You don’t believe? That young man? He is part of our AHI. He p-p-placed our call. His brain is a download. Of Major Tom. And we need your help.”
Next to her, a monitor displayed a Thomas Paine avatar on it. “We greatly appreciate any assistance you can give, and we’ll give you complete access to our AHI. We would like to host you on our ship if you would go with Tom. After he finishes his burger, of course. He never stops eating.”
“But how do I know this is real?” asked Arun.
The Thomas Paine avatar looked at Ruth and said, “See? I told you. Again, in three . . . two . . . one . . . ”
Every GO in the room vibrated or rang at once. Patrons and employees checked the unlisted number or answered a caller that hung up.
Arun waved Denise over, barely looking up from his GO screen. “The usual, Denise. Thanks.”
“Veggie burger, strawberry pie, iced tea . . . ,” Denise said.
“To go,” said Tom. “And peanut-butter pie, please. Make that two. All to go. We’re in a rush.” He was grateful there would be no kidnapping. He took another huge bite of his burger. God, it was good.
One of Tom’s conditions was that Arun not be allowed to return home or pack a bag. Talia picked the two men up in a 1995 BMW 325i, gas-powered, built before black boxes or GPS came with cars. They headed to the Zumwalt.
“Why are we going to New Orleans?” asked Arun.
“I made a promise to a man named Rick Blaine,” said Tom. “For access to information and the robots I’ve used, I promised to help him with the refugees in New Orleans and South Florida.”
Arun looked at him like he was crazy. “Won’t that take you away from dealing with Carter Potsdam?”
“No,” said Talia. “Carter’s part of the refugee crisis. He may have helped create it.”
“How?” asked Arun. “I thought this was a battle of AHIs.”
Tom laid his head back against the seat. “I wish it were that simple. I’m not sure how yet, but he’s connected to whatever the hell is happening in the Southern States of America. The Phoenix Club isn’t dead.”
“And we have to help the refugees,” said Talia. “It’s the most important thing we’ll ever do. These boys can play their brain games later.”
For a moment, the only sound was Arun’s fingers twiddling his bracelets.
Tom sighed. “Talia’s my moral authority. You heard her. We’re doing both.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Zumwalt cleared the Panama Canal with difficulty. The Panamanian government had lost control over the canal. Long-unpaid lock workers extorted large amounts of the Zumwalt’s consumables in exchange for passage. Ruth was concerned that this would happen at each stop, and they needed massive quantities of food and supplies for their next mission. At thirty knots, they had only two days left at sea until reaching New Orleans.
Talia and Steve worked at a conference table on the bridge, planning the logistics of saving hundreds, then thousands, of homeless humans from the clutches of the SSA.
Major Tom’s primary goal was to find and stop Carter. Below deck in the surgical theater, he lay on an examination table, his body covered in so many sensors, wires, and contraptions that he looked like a fly caught in a massive spider’s web. They could have gone wireless, but as Ruth often said, the old ways were best. Based on discussion with Arun Ponnusamy over the past four days at sea, Ruth ran diagnostics on the AHI information systems. Veronika manned the console, linking the data streams to get a bigger visual picture of the vast system.
Arun asked Tom, Ruth, and Veronika a million questions, poked and prodded physical and electronic systems, and paced. “You’re screwed,” said Arun, twiddling his prayer bracelets. You’re melding biological and digital systems. Works well in small doses. The world’s filled with medical cyborgs. And your hypotheses are valid, but you’re doing it over huge, complex, and interconnected body systems, all at once, with no testing. You’re the only lab rat. How can we be sure if it’s working? Or harming you?”
“There are two lab rats,” said Tom.
“Yeah,” said Arun, “but I can’t analyze Winter.”
Ruth pursed her lips, and her left arm quaked. “You understand less. Than I assumed.”
“Come on, Ruth,” said Arun. “I explore AHI concepts and apply them to deep learning and intuitive systems. I don’t deal directly with flesh and blood, but I’m not an idiot. Some of my best friends build brain-computer interfaces.” He smiled with faux condescension.
Ruth’s head twitched, her lips burbling in disdain. She turned to look at the EEG.
Arun pulled a chair up to the examination table and, for the first time, gently laid his hand on Tom’s arm. “You realize all these electronics will probably shorten your biological life, right? If someone doesn’t murder you, you’ll certainly die from something you did to yourself.”
“Like cancer? Or a stroke?”
“Yeah. Could be anything interfering with this body’s normal operation. Electronics and cells didn’t evolve together. You must know this.”
Tom sighed. “Of course I do. I’ve minimized the impact and keep medical help nearby. But one doctor, well, he likes the money and does what I tell him. The other probably wouldn’t mind if I shuffled off the mortal coil. Or slunk back to my server. Or just disappeared. I can’t dwell on personal consequences. Or I couldn’t do this.”
“The second one wants you dead?”
“Well, out of the way. I’m ruining his life.”
“Great docs to have in your corner,” Arun sneered.
Tom wanted to itch where a sensor was glued, but he resisted. “There are trade-offs in life. I make bigger ones than most, and trust me, it’s not as fun as it looks.”
“Well, it’s still more fun than dying,” said Arun, “because you get a second chance. And a third. The rest of us don’t. How long can you prevent the inevitable?”
“What? Dying for good?” asked Tom. “Or others trying this?”
Arun nodded, impressed that Tom understood the ethical implications. “Both.”
“Same answer. As long as it takes so that I don’t hurt anyone ever again.”
Arun sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m betting you won’t make it that long.”
“Thanks for the support.” Tom closed his eyes to shut him out.
But Arun didn’t stop. “No. I mean you know how to do this, and Carter Potsdam does, too. How can you be sure he won’t share the tech with everyone? Or I won’t, for that matter? A Nobel Prize looks mighty nice on the mantel.” He winked.
“They’re overrated . . . ,” muttered Ruth.
Tom shook his head. “You won’t want to share this if you spend enough time with me. And Carter? He’s not big on sharing. This is the most powerful technology ever created, and he’s enough of a narcissist and strategist to keep all the power for himself. For now.” Tom said nothing more for a few seconds, running statistical modeling scenarios for how long Carter might keep the secret. None of them made him feel better. “Can we please focus on getting Carter out of my head?”
Arun asked, “Can someone show me where you keep the data that came from outside his servers since he left his digital home?”
“There is nothing. I went over this,” said Ruth.
Veronika said, “But we never checked, like, before he left the Memory Palace.”
Tom was surprised. “Are you sure?”
“Let’s go as far back as the program goes,” said Arun. “To before you were uploaded. There must be bugs, or malware, in there. Can we contact this Miss Gray Hat and comp
are systems?”
Veronika said, “I’ve got it up already.”
Tom mentally dove into the programming himself. The code looked good to him.
Arun turned to Veronika. “If I was going to put a body override into a virtual AHI, it could be really hard to find and eradicate because the goal function can be distributed all over the intelligence.”
Veronika studied the data in her glasses. Tom looked from the outside on the table, and Major Tom from inside his server.
“Wow,” said Veronika.
“What?” asked Tom.
“You don’t see this?” she asked.
“See what?” he asked again.
“Both of you, throw what you see onto a big screen,” Arun said, “so we can compare them.” Veronika split a HOME screen and displayed her programming on the left, Tom’s on the right.
Arun considered both. He turned to Tom on the table. “You, my strange friend, are leading a double life. You think that’s you, because that’s what you see,” he said, pointing to the right. “But that’s you, too,” he added, pointing to the left. “I’m not sure you’ve ever been in control of you, since the Memory Palace began. If we don’t fix it, they’ve got you. For good.”
Arun’s declaration took Tom aback. “Wait, you’re saying I’m not me? And someone or thing created a version of me that I think is me?”
“Bingo,” said Arun.
Tom studied the programs, but this was out of his league. “Help?”
Veronika and Arun shared a look of concern. She pointed to a line of code on the HOME screen. “This, like, right here, replicates you in another location.”
“Can we fix it?” asked Tom.
Veronika studied the screens and chewed her hair. “Maybe.”
Arun regarded the team with incredulity. “Look, I know you like your little scrappy band of rebels—and hey, thanks for the secret handshake—but we need more help. I’m guessing your opponents have ten times the help you do.”