The Oracle Paradox

by Stephen L. Antczak

  Yatin typed some more.

  KUMAR > Is Security protocol Type D 3-15-01 a measure taken by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council?

  ORACLE > Yes.

  KUMAR > Is Security protocol Type D 3-15-01 related to why you are feeling conflicted?

  ORACLE > Yes.

  KUMAR > Is Security protocol Type D 3-15-01 a peacekeeping

  measure?

  ORACLE > Yes.

  Conflict.

  If Oracle detected a conflict then it stood to reason that, internally, there might be two sides to an argument. An argument, to Oracle, was a problem to be solved. Programming dictated how Oracle would go about solving this problem.

  The Security Council had overridden Yatin’s core program. Oracle had been carrying out assassination orders issued to it by the five permanent members of the Security Council in unanimous votes, but each time Yatin’s own core program had argued against it, acting as Oracle’s conscience. Knowing what he knew about Oracle’s inner workings, Yatin realized the issue would never be truly resolved; it would continue to be argued even while the act itself, the assassination, the murder of a human being would be carried out each time. The arguments would build one upon the other and eat up more and more resources while Oracle continued to tackle all of the other issues thrown at it by the United Nations’ myriad missions and agendas.

  Acting on a sudden hunch, Yatin typed another question. He wasn’t sure how to word it, though. He tried several times, and deleted each attempt. Christie sighed in exasperation.

  "What are you trying to say?" she asked.

  "I want to find out if Oracle is working at odds with itself. Is it trying to fulfill a solution to a problem while at the same time attempting to fulfill the solution to another problem that is essential directly the opposite of the first solution."

  "Okay." Christie thought about it for a few seconds. "How about this… Are you currently engaged in two actions directed towards one subject, each attempting to affect an opposite result?"

  Yatin considered her wording, nodded, and typed it in. This time is took a while for Oracle to reply.

  "Should it be taking Oracle this long to answer?" Cardinal Roscoe asked. Yatin had almost forgotten about him.

  "The longer it takes to answer the question, the more relevant I think our answer will be," Yatin said. When this was all over, he decided he would need to approach the Vatican about observing Augustine. The same with the British and Winston. Were they really improvements in A.I. technology? Oracle had been designed to update and upgrade itself. Theoretically, any advancements made in A.I. technology Oracle would be aware of, and would apply to itself.

  There was another aspect of Oracle, and any A.I. linked to the Internet. Augustine, Winston, and Oracle afforded a prime example of a theory which Yatin had come up with. The theory posited that, although the A.I.’s were indeed different entities in many ways, because they were networked to the Internet, and thus to each other, they were in effect one artificial group mind. Anyone who understood how artificial intelligence worked knew that a networked A.I. could not maintain complete autonomy in such an environment. It was impossible. The same held for the British A.I, Winston. There were other, lesser A.I’s that worked for corporations and governments all over the world. They were all part of Oracle, and Oracle was part of them.

  The screen darkened and a Coca-Cola screen saver came on. Several small Coke labels bounced around the screen apparently at random. Yatin tapped the space bar on the keyboard and the screen saver blinked out. The messenger box was there, as was Oracle’s answer.

  ORACLE > Yes.

  "We waited that long for that answer?" Annika exclaimed. Yatin, surprised, had all but forgotten about her, too.

  "But now we know," Henry said.

  Yatin nodded. "Yes, now we know."

  "What do we know?" Christie asked. She wanted it spelled out for her, like most reporters. Yatin, a scientist forced to play the public relations game, had gotten used to dumbing down his ideas for the media.

  "If indeed Oracle sent Henry to assassinate a little girl, then the conflict is obvious. Even given the Security Council’s provisions for allowing Oracle to issue strategic plans for peacekeeping missions that could directly result in the deaths of enemy soldiers, it would be impossible for Oracle to do so in regards to a child."

  "Why?" Christie asked.

  "Because, even with the Security Council’s override allowing Oracle to plan peacekeeping missions that will directly result in the deaths of soldiers, such missions only indirectly result in the deaths of civilians. The girl is a civilian, therefore Oracle could not even suggest a course of action that would result in her death."

  "Then why did Oracle order her assassination?" Tina asked.

  "Perhaps…" A new idea occurred to Yatin Kumar. It almost made his head spin.

  There were no coincidences here. Oracle had recommended the assassination of a little girl despite, supposedly, the impossibility of such a recommendation; Oracle had sent Henry to do the job, and Henry had not done the job; Oracle should have known in advance that Henry would not do the job; hence, although the wheels of assassination had been set in motion the little girl was still alive.

  What did it all mean? Yatin grasped at the straws of an idea. Oracle sent a man to kill a girl knowing that the man would not be able to kill her. To what end? Yatin did not doubt that this lay at the root of Oracle’s internal conflict. Was it a moral conflict, a tug of war between Yatin’s code and that of the Security Council’s programmers? A mere computer would simply crash under the circumstances of a problem that forced such a conflict. Not artificial intelligence, though. An A.I. would try to figure a way to resolve the conflict. Were Henry and the little girl part of that resolution? What about Christie Seifert, Annika Dahl, and Cardinal Roscoe? What about himself, Yatin Kumar, Oracle’s creator now being manipulated by his creation?

  Chapter 31

  Sam watched as Ribbett appeared on the screen of her laptop. To her left, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Angus Becker working on his own laptop, not paying any attention to her. He was sitting at the desk by the window. Sam wondered if she could run away, but then she remembered that the door was locked. She couldn’t leave. Ribbett watched her, waiting for her to say something. Sam didn’t want to speak, she didn’t want Angus to hear her.

  Finally, Ribbett shrugged his shoulders and asked Sam, in a word balloon, if she wanted to talk out loud. Sam shook her head no. Ribbett smiled, gave her two thumbs up, and winked.

  "Bloody hell," Sam heard Angus mutter as he tapped away on his keyboard. She glanced over at him. He happened to glance her way and noticed her looking at him. "What the hell are you looking at, eh?" he asked, sneering.

  Sam did not like him, but she still wasn’t afraid of him. She returned her attention to Ribbett, who now danced around like a monkey. Sam smiled. A frog dancing like a monkey was funny. Suddenly Ribbett stopped dancing. He pulled a chair out from behind him and sat down.

  A word balloon appeared over his head. We need to talk. Ribbett looked serious. That word balloon disappeared and another replaced it. Some things are going to happen… That word balloon popped and Ribbett inflated another. …that will make you scared. That word balloon disintegrated, and then reformed into the next one. But remember this: That word balloon got zapped by lightning from the top of the screen, and another bolt of lightning created the next word balloon. Everything will be OK in the end! Ribbett smiled broadly and winked at Sam as that word balloon slowly faded away. Another one appeared. Do you understand? Sam understood. If Ribbett said everything would be okay, then she knew it would be true.

  A picture of Angus suddenly appeared on the screen, and a word balloon next to it said, This man acts like he wants to hurt you, but he doesn’t. The picture disappeared and Ribbett was still sitting in the chair. If you ask him to buy you ice cream later, he will. Sam nodded.

  Now, Ribbett stood up, grabbed the cha
ir and folded it up into a hat and put it on his head. Sam smiled. She liked it when Ribbett did things like that.

  She turned to look at Angus.

  "I want ice cream," she said, remembering what Ribbett told her.

  "Ice cream! Bloody hell," Angus grumbled. "I’m not going out to get you ice cream." She kept looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to change his mind as Ribbett had said he would. "Well don’t keep bloody staring at me. It ain’t gonna happen." He turned away from her. Ribbett had said Angus would get her ice cream if she asked.

  Asked. Sam realized she hadn’t actually asked. Her mother would have said, Was that a request, or do you think you can just tell me what to do? Then Sam would have been in trouble.

  "Please," she remembered to add, "can I have ice cream?"

  "Oh, bloody hell," Angus said, then stood there for a moment before he picked up the receiver for the telephone and dialed a number. "Room service," he said.

  Sam turned to look at the monitor of her computer. Ribbett was gone. A giant word balloon was there in his place. Good bye, Sam!

  One ice cream sundae and one banana split later, Samantha Rohde slept in one of the twin beds. Angus looked at the girl with wonder. Who was she going to be when she grew up? That was a trick question, Angus reminded himself. She would never grow up. Henry was going to kill her. The wheels turned. The Brit, Avery, and that reporter Christie Seifert, the Cardinal, the Swedish woman Annika Dahl, Oracle’s creator Yatin Kumar…these people and others all played a role in delivering Samantha Rohde to her destiny, as sacrificial lamb for the human race.

  Oracle had told him so. Angus had the inside scoop, he knew the truth. He watched it unfolding before his very eyes according to the plan. It amazed him how like clockwork it all was. Even the failure at trying to get Henry to kill Sam in the dead Coke exec’s house had been part of the plan. It had been expected.

  Next time, however, Henry would not be able to resist. He would squeeze the trigger. The environment in which he would do it was being prepared by Oracle. Angus’ job now was to merely wait. Others had their own parts to play, pawns whom Oracle needed to move around on the chess board before the grand finale. Some of them would die in the end, although now they were blissfully unaware that their lives were hurtling along towards their inevitable conclusions; some would live, although doubtless they feared their own imminent deaths. It had all been pre-arranged by Oracle. Oracle had decided who would live and who would die. And as for Angus Becker, Oracle told him he would know what to do in the end. That was good enough for him.

  The World of Coca-Cola tour had concluded with free samples, which pleased Milla. While she sipped a cold Coke Classic she checked her cell phone to make sure she hadn’t missed any calls. An envelope icon in the upper left of the screen indicated she did indeed have a message waiting. Udin, no doubt.

  She pressed the TALK button and listened. The deep, rolling voice of Udin poured into her ear. He had made reservations for her at a hotel and wanted her to go there to check in, and wait. More waiting. She’d forgotten what it was like, her line of work. Long, long periods of waiting, and then an explosion of activity, adrenalin, and fear. When her Antony had been alive their lovemaking after a job would transport them for an entire week to an otherworldly state of being. Their passion would burn brighter than the Sun. It became such that the mere mention of being sent on assignment would make Milla tingle with desire.

  Even now, with Antony gone, she felt a remnant of that desire smoldering inside. It was barely enough to give her life. When the coals were finally cold forever, she knew she would die by her own hand.

  Milla wondered what had happened in the world of Udin to warrant resurrecting her and sending her to the city of Atlanta. It was a city she had never really considered. She knew Coca-Cola had its headquarters there, but that was it. It was not an American city one heard much about in Eurasia, like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or even Miami. She liked it, though. Atlanta hummed with life as the constant traffic gave the city a voice. The air, cool and crisp in the morning, had become hazy and smelled of exhaust by late afternoon.

  She walked. Udin had given her the name and address of the hotel. It was within walking distance. In her halting, heavily accented English, Milla asked a young black woman who worked at the World of Coca-Cola how to get there. The woman had simply pointed north by holding her hand out with all her fingers outstretched, and long, curved, purple fingernails that made her hand look like a claw. Milla could not imagine her hands like that. How would she handle a gun or a knife with such fingernails?

  She walked along at a leisurely pace. On her right she passed a small park that looked as if it had been taken over by homeless men. Most of the men were black, but there were also white men there, with disgusting beards and dirty clothes. She wondered about them. How could a man find himself homeless in America, the land of opportunity? The black men, it wasn’t such a mystery as everyone knew the United States was oppressive to blacks. But the white men? Of course there were lazy men everywhere. Seeing them reminded her of the times she and Antony had gone on their occasional killing sprees among the homeless of various cities in Russia and Ukraine. Antony had hated homeless men. His father had died homeless, living on the streets of Moscow in the last decade of his miserable life. Milla had only gone with Antony because it was Antony, she could not bear to be apart from him. One night in Kiev they had murdered six men in an abandoned Army barracks. She thought it might be a nice gesture to slip out of the hotel late in the night and come back to the park with her knife. She would get a small taste of Antony again. She would also heighten the attention of the authorities in Atlanta, which could endanger her mission. No one would naturally suspect her, she was only a petite woman after all, but if someone saw her…it was too risky. Milla sighed and continued on her way.

  Past the park the volume of traffic on the sidewalk increased substantially. Milla noticed men in business suits looked at her as she walked by, some of them bold, some subtle, some appreciative and some purely lustful. She could feel the heat of their eyes radiate across her body. Had she been with Antony she would have loved it because he hated the way other men wanted her. She would have loved it because she would know that she had given Antony what so many men had wanted, but could never have. Antony had her. He could have done anything he wanted with her, humiliated her, abused her, even killed her. She had always wanted all the other men to know that. Antony had owned her.

  Ahead loomed the monolithic Marriott Marquis. She would check in, go to her room, and look out the window until Udin called. She would spend the time thinking of Antony, remembering his eyes, his touch, his smell and his sounds. Then, when the call came, she would undertake to accomplish whatever mission Udin had for her. After that, if she did not kill herself, perhaps she would still end herself, become someone else entirely, and forget that Milla and Antony had ever existed.

  Ferguson watched for the exit sign that would tell him where to get off. They had reservations at a motel where they would be able to coordinate their plan of action and prepare their weapons and ordinance. The trip had taken a good bit longer than it might have. For one thing, preparations had taken far longer than he’d expected. Being ready for action still meant having to pack everything and having to implement the beginnings of their cover story. They all had fake identities, and the car had false plates. Ferguson had been very careful to drive the speed limit, and they had stopped off for food and bathroom breaks several times. He and the other men were excited yet grim. This was their biggest mission yet. It would easily have a much greater impact than Timothy McVey’s bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. Theirs was a very specific target that would send a very clear message to the government, and the world. The United Nations was not welcome in America, and Americans wanted their country to quit the U.N. It was that simple.

  Ferguson assumed that their attack would merely be the first of a whole series of attacks across the nation. It never occurre
d to him that perhaps they would be the only ones, that perhaps theirs would be a futile, foolish gesture. His imagination ran wild with images of the repercussions of their actions, of the U.S. flag being lowered and removed from a flagpole in front of the U.N. building in Manhattan, of U.S. troops on U.N. peacekeeping missions dropping their blue helmets into a massive pile as they filed past their foreign U.N. commanders and climbed aboard a Hercules transport plane, of Palestinian villagers who’d hated the United States their whole lives now begging the U.S. not to leave them to the mercy of Israel. Take the U.S. out of the international equation, he thought, and then see what happens. He didn’t think beyond that, of course. He didn’t have the capacity to wonder what might happen next. He didn’t care.

  The radio played a tape of country and rock music he’d made specifically for this trip. At that moment Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ blasted from the speakers. Ferguson held his head up high as he drove, proud to be an American, proud to be exercising his God-given right to question the authority of his own government, passed down to him by Thomas Jefferson himself. The tree of liberty was about to be replenished with blood of tyrants, thought Ferguson.

  Sure enough, while Watts lunched with the Vice President and a Cabinet member, Alison had found the file where the e-mail said it would be. The camera had arrived at her apartment the day before. The e-mail had been very specific as to when she should look for the file and how long she would have to take the pictures. She would get ten thousand dollars automatically deposited to her bank account which would be documented as an advance for contributing research for a non-fiction book. Once the files were uploaded and verified, she would get another ten thousand dollars.

  She would resign from Senator Watts’ office. Not right away, of course. Perhaps in three months. First she would begin to show signs of dissatisfaction with her job by asking for a ridiculously high raise. This was the advice of her anonymous benefactor. The raise would be refused, giving her a sterling reason for her resignation later on. It was perfect.