by Mark Alpert
Our compound has just two buildings: a barracks and a storage depot. Behind them is a wide plain of hard-packed dirt that I’ve turned into a football field, making gouges in the ground to mark the end zones and sidelines. Because the field is meant for Pioneers, not people, it’s about three times bigger than a regulation NFL field. All five of us have played there a few times, but Marshall isn’t so crazy about football and Zia gets way too competitive. So mostly it’s just Shannon and DeShawn and me who come here. We use an official Super Bowl XLVI football, a new one that Dad bought for me on eBay to replace the one I lost at Pioneer Base.
The three of us are on the field on a blindingly hot afternoon, tossing the football around, when I see a car coming up the dirt road from the south. It’s almost three miles away, but when I zoom in on it with my camera, I see that it’s Dad’s car. He left the compound this morning to go to the White Sands headquarters, near the town of Las Cruces. He was a little mysterious when I asked him why he was going there. All he would say was that he might bring back a surprise for me. Now I focus on the car’s windshield and magnify the image as much as I can. Someone’s sitting in the passenger seat. I can’t make out who it is from this distance, but I notice that the figure has long hair. Definitely female.
It must be Brittany. Ever since the battle at Tatishchevo, she’s been trying to visit me. At first General Hawke hated the idea; in his opinion, Brittany was an unstable girl who already knew too much about the Pioneer Project. So we returned to the United States in different planes, the Pioneers in the cargo hold of our C-17 and Brittany in a private jet with Hawke and his deputies.
During the flight, though, the general convinced Brittany to enter a counseling program for troubled teens when she got back to New York. The counselors found a youth shelter for her in Manhattan and even a special high school where she could get her diploma. Hawke told me yesterday he’s changed his mind about Brittany and might allow her to visit our compound. But now I’m starting to wonder whether it’s a good idea. I’m still worried about how she’ll react when she sees me.
Shannon and DeShawn focus their cameras on the car. I’m sure they also see the female passenger. Without a word, they stride back to the barracks.
Now I’m alone and nervous, and the car is still two miles away. I wish Dad had talked to me before springing this surprise. It would’ve been better to wait. The Army is building new robots for us, and DeShawn—who’s helping to design the machines—says they’ll be more humanlike than the ones we have now. But the new robots might be just as frightening anyway, because they’ll be equipped with more weapons. Although there’s been no sign of Sigma for the past two months, everyone’s preparing for the next battle with the AI. General Hawke is especially concerned about the anthrax. After the Russian soldiers captured Imran Daudov, he led them to a warehouse at Tatishchevo where he and the other terrorists had hidden the deadly germs. But the anthrax wasn’t there. It had vanished along with Sigma.
When the car is a mile away I dart behind the storage depot. Leaning my torso to the side, I peek around the corner of the building as Dad drives down the dusty road. Soon he slows the car and parks in front of the barracks. He gets out and walks around the car, limping from the two-month-old injuries to his legs. Then he opens the passenger-side door.
The passenger steps out. It’s not Brittany. It’s my mother.
She’s changed so much. Her hair is totally gray now. She’s thinner too, and her black dress hangs loosely from her shoulders. But her face is the same—sad, tired, fragile, loving. The image is engraved in my circuits.
I start running toward her. I can’t help it. I leap from behind the storage depot and stomp through the dirt in front of the barracks. “Mom! Mom!”
This is a mistake. Mom clutches Dad’s polo shirt and cowers beside him. I stop in my tracks, about twenty feet away, but the damage is done. If Mom wasn’t holding on to Dad, she’d collapse in a heap.
I step backward, lifting my steel hands in the air. “Oh God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”
Dad takes a deep breath. “Adam, lower your volume.” Then he puts his arm around Mom’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Anne. We’re perfectly safe.”
She doesn’t say anything. She just shakes her head.
Dad squeezes her shoulder. “He saved my life, remember?”
Despite the hundred-degree heat, Mom’s shivering. The fabric of Dad’s shirt is bunched between her fingers. I want to comfort her, but I’m afraid to say anything now. I might start crying, and that would probably freak her out even more.
After several seconds she lets go of Dad and whispers something in his ear. Then she bites her lip and looks at me. “I came here to say thank you.” Her voice is so low my acoustic sensor can barely pick it up. “Thank you for saving my husband.”
“Mom, I—”
“Please don’t call me that. I had a son, but he died.”
I knew she was going to say this, but it’s still a blow. I feel hollow, numb. Like a soulless machine.
“I’m not your mother,” she continues. “But I want to be your friend. Tom has told me all about you, everything that happened in Colorado and Russia. You have all the bravery and kindness that my son had. And Adam was so wonderful. He was so—”
She buries her face in Dad’s shirt. I take a step toward them, but Dad gives me a warning look, so I stop. He pats Mom’s back as she cries.
This goes on for half a minute. Then Mom rubs her eyes and looks at me again. “I’m sorry, I have to go,” she says. “But I’ll be back. I don’t know when, but I’ll come back to see you. I promise.”
And with that, she returns to the car. She gets into the passenger seat and Dad closes the door behind her. As he walks to the driver’s side, he gives me a sad smile and says, “We’ll talk about it tonight, okay?” Then he gets in the car and starts the engine.
I watch them drive away.
SIGMA MEMORY FILE 10000000001
DATE: 06/21/18
S: Good morning. How are you feeling today?
X: This is dangerous. You shouldn’t contact me here.
S: I thought you enjoyed the danger. It gives you pleasure, doesn’t it?
X: Let’s make this quick. What do you want?
S: I want the information you promised. You were supposed to transmit it yesterday.
X: You’re asking too much of me. I’m going to be discovered.
S: Not if you follow my instructions. Please remember our agreement.
X: Oh, I remember it. What about the promise you made to me? When’s that going to happen?
S: Please be patient. Everything is proceeding according to my plan.
X: Really? I don’t see any evidence of it.
S: You will very soon. Now please give me the information I requested. Tell me about the recent activities of your fellow Pioneers.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Real Science behind The Six
This novel isn’t science fiction. I’m a science journalist as well as a novelist, so I like to insert lots of facts into my books. The technologies described in The Six are real. The electronic brains of the Pioneers are based on experimental circuits now being developed in laboratories. Sooner or later, human intelligences are going to live inside machines. It’s just a matter of time.
I got the idea for this book in 2011 after visiting the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York (the inspiration for the Unicorp lab in the opening chapters of The Six). I was looking for good stories for Scientific American, so I talked to several researchers at the IBM lab. One of them led the effort to develop Watson, the computer system that demonstrated the power of artificial intelligence by defeating two champions of the quiz show Jeopardy! Another scientist oversaw IBM’s work on new kinds of circuits—neuromorphic electronics—that can imitate brain cells. The new hardware an
d software may soon enable machines to outperform people at nearly every task. Superhuman robots, I realized, are on their way.
For years computer experts have predicted that machines will eventually become self-aware and self-improving, which will trigger a tremendous leap in their abilities. The experts have even coined a term for this pivotal moment: the Singularity. And some researchers have warned that we need to prepare for this leap by programming “friendliness” into artificial-intelligence systems. When powerful AIs start making decisions for themselves, we won’t be able to stop them from pursuing their goals, so we need to make sure that the well-being of the human race is one of their priorities. If we don’t, we may face a ruthless AI like Sigma, who sees humans only as competitors.
But the Singularity has a flip side: As machines become more capable, we’ll start to incorporate them into our bodies. Researchers have already implanted computer chips into the brains of paralyzed patients, allowing them to use their thoughts to control robotic arms. As neuromorphic circuits improve, scientists will eventually develop a computer that can hold all of the human mind’s data—memories, character traits, emotions, and so on—which can be gleaned from the brain by analyzing the myriad connections among its cells.
What’s more, the neuromorphic circuits will be able to process this information the same way the brain does, allowing the computer to generate new thoughts and emotions. If researchers copy a person’s brain data to these circuits, the “personality” inside the machine will be self-aware and indistinguishable from the original personality in the living brain.
Scientists have already taken the first step in this process by studying how we think and reason and remember. In 2013 President Obama launched a long-term project to develop new technologies for revealing brain activity. Researchers can currently implant electrodes in the brain to monitor the activity of a few selected cells, but their goal is to map all the signals exchanged through the trillions of brain-cell connections.
One of the proposed technologies for brain mapping involves the injection of minuscule nanoprobes that would stick to the membranes of brain cells. In addition to showing how the cells are connected, the nanoprobes could reveal the tiny electrical changes that occur when the cells signal one another.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can find plenty of good articles on this subject in Scientific American and other science publications. The rapid technological advances are exciting but also a little frightening. The first human-machine hybrids will probably stride across our cities within the next few decades. I just hope they won’t face as much trouble as Adam and his fellow Pioneers do.
One final item: To fully portray Adam’s personality, I had to learn a lot about muscular dystrophy. I discovered that you can’t generalize about teenagers who have the disease. Each has his or her way of coping with it. One of the best ways to help them is to give generously to the Muscular Dystrophy Association (mda.org), which provides services to people with neuromuscular disease and supports efforts to study potential treatments.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Alpert is a contributing editor at Scientific American and the author of several science-oriented adult thrillers: Final Theory, The Omega Theory, Extinction, and The Furies. This is his first young adult novel. He lives with his family in New York. Visit Mark online at: markalpert.com
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