Cardinal Roscoe looked carefully into Henry’s eyes, which were open and practically lifeless though the man breathed and seemed otherwise fine.
"It was awful," Tina said, her voice shaking. "What they tried to make him do…and then they took her."
"Do you know who they are?" Annika Dahl asked. She and Yatin Kumar had arrived at the Alonso house, forty-five minutes after Angus and the Brit had left.
"One’s Australian and one’s British," Christie said. "They’re working for Oracle." She looked at Annika again, and shook her head. "I can’t believe you’re here." She then looked at Yatin. "With him."
"You called me," Annika said matter-of-factly.
"But I didn’t," Christie told her.
"Just earlier today you called me," Annika insisted. "On my cell phone. You said to bring Mr. Kumar with me to this address, there was a party here."
"Some party," Christie muttered. She shook her head. "Annika, dear, I haven’t actually spoken to you in over a year."
Annika frowned. "Somebody called me who sounded just exactly like you, and told me to come here with him." They both looked over at Yatin.
Yatin Kumar sat in the dining room at the table, elbows on the oak table, forehead in his hands, staring down at the wood. "It can’t be," he said. He’d been saying that over and over for the last twenty minutes, ever since getting the story about what had been happening. Annika knew the truth was seeping into his mind. It was impossible to deny, especially after hearing what the woman, Tina, had told them, backed up by Cardinal Roscoe and Christie Seifert. Oracle had implemented a program of assassination, contradicting everything Yatin had envisioned about what Oracle would become.
And what of Annika, the party at her father’s house, the strange way Vincent Waldrup acted? It was Oracle that had gotten them together by playing matchmaker for Yatin. Yatin realized there had to have been more to it than that.
"Will Henry be all right?" Tina asked Cardinal Roscoe.
"I think so," Cardinal Roscoe said, although he did not sound at all confident. "At this moment, I’m not sure."
Cardinal Roscoe’s Italian accent made Annika self-conscious of her own Swedish accent. Usually she didn’t even think about it. It was such a strange time for her to think about it now, too. There were more important things to worry about. Apparently people had been killed right there in the house in which she now stood. What had she gotten Yatin into? What had she gotten herself into?
"No, no," Yatin suddenly said, his voice louder than it had been while chanting "It can’t be." He stood up and walked across the room, his eyes intent on something no one else could see. Perhaps it was computer code for Oracle he was seeing with his mind’s eye. "Oracle could not order an assassination. According to Oracle’s programming this would be considered a military action and therefore would have to be approved, unanimously, by the five permanent members of the Security Council. There is no way…"
"There is a way," Christie said, cutting him off.
"How?"
"The five permanent members of the Security Council approve the assassinations recommended by Oracle, thus giving Oracle the freedom to carry them out."
"That is preposterous," Yatin said. "It’s impossible." Even as he said it, though, it was apparent to Annika that Yatin was seeing the light. It was a harsh light indeed, especially for him. His beloved Oracle an instrument of death? It was a total perversion of what his intentions had been, of what Oracle was supposed to represent. She could understand his denial. He was too smart to remain in denial for very long, though, if presented with a good enough argument. At least, Annika hoped so.
"I’ve been following this story for a while," Christie told Yatin. "There have been assassinations all over the globe, dozens of them since Oracle’s implementation. The assassinations all fall into groupings, and there are definitely similarities within the groupings. There is no way that even the CIA or Mossad or the British Secret Service could have accomplished them all, not even those organizations working together have that kind of capability. But Oracle does. Oracle exists practically everywhere. It touches almost everyone in the world."
"I am aware," Yatin said. Aware of what? Annika wondered.
"Are you aware that Oracle is not the only true A.I. in existence?" Christie asked him. Yatin frowned. Christie continued. "The British have one, they call it Winston. And the Catholic Church has one called Augustine. They are the next generation A.I. following Oracle. If you go by Moore’s Law then you know what that means in terms of performance."
"I have heard of Winston and Augustine, but I was not aware they had yet been built. Regardless, Artificial Intelligence isn’t measured by performance like a computer," Yatin said, somewhat defiantly. "It isn’t measured by qubits. It’s measured by the intangibles the same way people are measured. Just because an A.I. was developed later doesn’t make it better than one developed five years ago. A.I.’s grow and learn and evolve, just like people."
"Just like people?" Christie asked. "Then we’re in big trouble."
"That’s not what I mean."
"Well, it should be," Christie continued. "Because sometimes the most brilliant people in the world go bad. Sometimes they become monsters even though they’re geniuses. So if an A.I. learns and grows and evolves then why can’t it turn into a monster, too? Because its so smart? I don’t think so."
"There are protections programmed in," Yatin explained, almost sounding patronizing, but not quite, "to prevent an A.I. from being able to do anything that would hurt someone."
"Come on, you know Oracle was compromised by the Security Council when they insisted that it be able to plan peacekeeping missions. Those missions generate casualties, therefore under its original programming Oracle would not have been able to engage in their planning."
"That was the original idea," Yatin said, his voice now almost meek.
"The best intentions…" Christie said. Now she sounded patronizing. Annika well remembered her former college roommate’s acid tongue. Many a poor boy had fallen victim to it at fraternity keg parties. "Oracle’s core program was modified to allow it to engage in the planning of peacekeeping missions, by default therefore allowing it to consider other programs that might lead to casualties."
"But the safety’s still there," Yatin pointed out. "All five permanent members of the Security Council must approve a plan that falls under peacekeeping. There’s no way…"
"Didn’t I just tell you that they’re all in on it? I hate the word, I really do hate it, but this is what we in the news business call a conspiracy," Christie said.
Annika didn’t even look at Yatin. She couldn’t take her eyes off Christie. The fire she had back in college was still there. Annika could definitely feel the heat. Yatin withered under its assault. But that was because he knew she was right even though he didn’t want her to be, with all his being he didn’t want her to be right. Oracle was his baby. Imagine being the parent of a monster, Annika thought. How must the parents of Jeffrey Dahmer or Timothy McVey have felt? She couldn’t even begin to imagine.
"We need your help to stop Oracle," Christie told Yatin. "Either you believe us, or you don’t."
Chapter 30
Henry felt buried alive. As he awoke from a dreamless sleep he felt as if he were buried beneath tons of earth, beneath the whole world. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely think.
Something had happened. He had done something, something terrible. He couldn’t remember. Then he remembered, suddenly. He’d let them die. His wife and child…he did something wrong, made a mistake, and they were dead.
No. That wasn’t it. That had happened long ago. This was something else. Recent. Something almost…worse. But what could be worse?
Images flowed into his mind, of Sam bound to a chair, her brown eyes looking up at him, scared. Echoes of whispered words in his ears haunted him. Kill her. Kill the girl. He remembered fighting, struggling against himself. Why had he wanted to kill the girl? The whis
pering in his ear had been urging him to do it. The whispering had been someone else. Then he remembered Becker.
It all came back to him in a sudden rush of memory and emotion. Oh, God, no…had he killed her? Had he killed Sam? No, in his bones he knew he had not. He remembered fighting against the suggestive powers of the drug he’d been given. It must have been in the coffee. Becker! Damn him! Working for Oracle, trying to get him to complete his mission. But why not just kill Samantha Rohde himself? Why go through all the trouble to get Henry to do it?
He opened his eyes and saw Tina, watching him. Her face, clouded by concern and fear, was very close to his.
"Henry," she said. "Are you all right?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t. The emotions that had been roiling inside threatened to come out. He could barely hold it back. What have I become? he thought. What would his wife think of him now? What about Constance, his daughter? What if she had seen her father point a gun at another little girl? What would she think?
It took him a minute to realize that Tina was holding him in her arms. He held onto her, too.
How small she felt in his arms. It reminded him of the times he would hold his wife close, late at night after their daughter had gone to bed and they had a moment’s peace together on the sofa in front of the TV. It used to surprise him how small his Catherine had felt in his arms, yet strong. She had always seemed so much larger than life, especially after having given birth to their daughter. He never worried about Catherine being out in the world by herself when she had to travel for business. Never. She could always handle herself.
How would she handle what was happening now?
Tina was like Catherine had been. Henry felt her strength. Whatever happened, he could tell she would be there for Sam.
Sam.
He pulled away from Tina. His gaze locked onto hers. Her eyes regarded him differently now, more intimately, with almost complete acceptance and trust.
"Where’s Sam?" he asked.
She took a deep breath. Henry could see it in her eyes. Something had happened to Sam.
"He took her," Tina said. Despite Tina’s troubled look, Henry was relieved. His ‘dream’ had been real. He had not killed her.
"Becker," Henry said.
"He said he wouldn’t hurt her," Tina told him. "And he said he’d call to tell us where we’ll be able to find her."
"Damn him." Henry felt stronger with each passing moment, and more determined. He now knew that Becker wouldn’t kill Sam, not yet, and maybe it wasn’t on his agenda to do it ever. For whatever reason, to whatever end, they wanted Henry to do it. Who were ‘they?’ Oracle, the U.N., whoever. It didn’t matter. What it meant for the time being was that he knew Sam was safe with Angus Becker. For now. For how long was anybody’s guess. If it was their intent that Henry kill Sam, and they failed the first time, there would be a second try. He knew how Oracle operated. He remembered. If the first attempt failed, there would be a second attempt, and a third, and a fourth…
Becker was not going to win this. Nor was Oracle. Tina stood and backed away, and it was only then that Henry realized that he was lying on a sofa in Alonso’s house. He remembered now that Becker had murdered Alonso. Also at that moment he realized there were other people in the room, not just Christie Seifert and Cardinal Roscoe. One was a strikingly beautiful blonde woman with icy blue eyes, and the other was a tall, dark man wearing an expression of disbelief and dread. Had they been standing there the whole time?
"Who are these people?" Henry asked.
"Annika Dahl is the daughter of the Swedish Ambassador to the U.N," Tina told him, "and Yatin Kumar is the man responsible for Oracle."
"I am not responsible for Oracle," Yatin said sharply. "I wrote the code for its core programming, but I am not responsible for what it is doing."
"How did you get here?" Henry asked him.
"I brought him here," Annika replied. Henry turned to face her. She was cool, sleek, and slender, with the easy grace and confidence of one of the so-called beautiful people in the world.
"And I brought her here," Christie Seifert spoke up. "She and I were roommates in college. I knew I could trust her. I thought having Oracle’s creator on our side would help."
Our side? Maybe Christie knew she could trust her old college roommate, but Henry was still not sure he could trust Christie. "What do you mean, you brought me here?" Yatin Kumar asked Annika.
"I’m sorry," Annika replied. "Christie somehow found out you were…interested in me. I don’t know how, but she knew you’d say yes if I asked you to come to Atlanta with me."
"That’s impossible!" Yatin looked stricken. He looked at Christie. "How could you know? No one knew, I never told anyone." He averted his gaze away from Annika now, to the floor.
"You were using Oracle to do research on her," Christie said. "Oracle told you everything you needed to know to seduce her; how to approach her, what to say, what not to say. If she hadn’t known you were coming, no doubt you’d have gotten into her panties right away." Annika shot her a look, but Christie ignored it. "You really are just her type."
It seemed to require a major effort on Yatin’s part not to explode in anger, to throw a fit, a tantrum, or to cry. For some reason, Henry didn’t like the guy. Chemistry. Or maybe it was because he was the one responsible for Oracle’s very existence, and therefore responsible for Henry’s misguided existence these last five years. He caught himself. No. Henry didn’t like Yatin because the Indian programmer reminded him that no one, and nothing, was responsible for the last few years of his existence…except Henry himself.
Yatin looked at Annika Dahl. "So you were acting the whole time?"
Annika seemed to think about it for a moment before shaking her head. "No, I wasn’t acting the whole time," she said. "Oracle was right. You really are my type." She managed a smile. "Maybe, when this is all over."
"Let’s just get through this first," Christie said, her voice ever so lightly tense. "What do we need to do? How can we stop Oracle?"
"I don’t know," Yatin said, "but I can find out. All I have to do is ask."
"Ask who?"
"Oracle. More precisely, there is an inner Oracle, if you will, that is programmed to respond to me, and only me. Think of it as Oracle’s subconscious mind, inwardly focused and aware of everything that Oracle does but without any outward effect on Oracle at all."
"So how do you get to this inner Oracle?" Christie asked.
Outwardly Yatin Kumar had regained his composure, but inwardly he was reeling. As much as he hated to admit it even to himself, it was plausible, the accusations being made against Oracle. God damn the five permanent members of the Security Council for their meddling. If any of this became public knowledge Oracle would be finished, and Yatin’s legacy would be a joke. That made Christie Seifert a very dangerous woman. The ideal resolution would be to fix the problem and keep quiet about what had happened. Yatin was confident that he could fix Oracle’s core programming and return it to his original vision, thus precluding it from becoming involved in the U.N’s peacekeeping missions. All he needed to do was get Oracle to override its existing core code with Yatin’s original code. That would do the trick, and Oracle could still do much good for the world.
He didn’t know what to think about Annika Dahl. Looking at her, he was still overwhelmed by her beauty, still attracted to her, but he was also repulsed. She had manipulated him.
"Is there a computer here I can use?" he asked, directing his question at Christie, who seemed to have taken charge of things, more or less.
"I don’t think Mr. Alonso would mind if you use the one in his study," she said.
Mr. Alonso was dead, he’d been told. It reminded Yatin that this was all too real. It was more than writing code and patching a bug in the A.I. More people might die if he couldn’t fix Oracle.
Yatin seated himself before the computer in the study, while the others stood behind him, watching. It made him nervous.
He typed in the URL that connected him to his private interface for Oracle. He typed in his name and password. A chat box opened up. It looked like a typical Web-based chat room or real time messaging interface. The first name to appear was Oracle.
ORACLE > Hello, Mr. Kumar. How are you?
KUMAR > Hello, Oracle. I’m fine. How are you feeling today?
"Oracle understands I’m asking a real question, not a
rhetorical question," Yatin explained. "Furthermore, it understands that how it is feeling is merely an anthropomorphic way of asking it to run a self-diagnostic test." Kumar watched the screen as they waited for a response. The wait stretched into more than a minute. "This is highly unusual," Yatin said. Finally, almost ninety seconds after Yatin asked the question, Oracle answered.
ORACLE > I am feeling conflicted.
"What the hell does that mean?" Henry asked He was directly
behind Yatin. Christie stood to Yatin’s left, peering over his shoulder.
Yatin typed.
KUMAR > Please clarify.
ORACLE > Cannot clarify. Security protocol Type D 3-15-01.
"Damn it!" Yatin exclaimed.
"Security protocol violation?" Christie asked. "What does that mean?"
"Only the Security Council can set a security protocol. This one is obviously designed to prevent me from gaining access to something that Oracle knows."
"What does ‘Type D’ mean?" Christie asked.
"It’s a special designation for security protocols set by the permanent members of the Security Council," Yatin explained.
"So Oracle is feeling conflicted, whatever that means, and the cause is something that the five permanent members of the Security Council do not want you, specifically, to find out," Christie said, adding it all up for them.
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