System Error- In Your Favour

by Iain Clements

  The main server room was based in another building a short tube journey from the bank’s headquarters. They had to run their plan past David Hopkins before getting approval to try and regain control of C.A.R.L from the remote location.

  It was late afternoon when they finally reached the core controller for C.A.R.L. David had not been a supporter of the plan, pointing out that if they failed then C.A.R.Ls behaviour could get even worse. Quite cautious in nature, David was hesitant to sign off on any plan that involved directly ‘hacking into’ C.A.R.L again, but in the absence of other suggestions reluctantly agreed.

  Kate hadn’t been following all of the news stories that had been circulating that day, but she had heard rumours that other bank’s systems had started acting strangely, in a pattern very similar to that seen during C.A.R.Ls early days.

  One rival bank had recently stopped underwriting a loan it made to an Arms manufacturing company. Another news story was circulating that one of the largest U.S. Banks had recently started clearing mortgage arrears payments from families on the brink of having their homes repossessed.

  Kate had no idea how this could all be linked to C.A.R.L, or whether these changes were actually all bad. Perhaps James did have a point that the system was broken and needed a reset to get things back in balance?

  The tube journey, taxi ride, and bureaucratic procedures to access the server room wasted precious time that day. However, Kate had spent more time talking to James and she felt that she was beginning to understand his point of view more and more. She had never felt more confused about what the best thing to do was.

  James seemed resigned to the fact that he needed to cooperate with Global Enterprise Bank, under the promise that they could use their influence to try and clear the charges against him. However, Kate could tell that if it wasn’t for the promise of freedom James would have been helping C.A.R.L reshape the entire financial services industry forever.

  They began the arduous task of trying to access C.A.R.L’s core programme. During the journey they had worked out a plan, which Kate had a strong feeling would work. It involved both of them inputting commands into C.A.R.L’s main control panel simultaneously. James’ theory was that C.A.R.L’s system would only be able to ignore one set of instructions at a time, giving them a chance to regain control and shut the programme down.

  James and Kate sat opposite one another with their laptops perched in front of them directly connected into the mainframe system. Before they’d had a chance to start their work a message flashed up on their screen.

  WELL, DON’T YOU LOOK LIKE A LOVELY COUPLE

  ‘This system of yours has a strange sense of humour’ James commented.

  ‘Definitely’ Kate replied, ‘no intelligent system would ever think we were a couple’.

  FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS, A STRONG DISLIKE OF EACH OTHER OFTEN LEADS TO ROMANCE the monitor displayed in response.

  ‘Oh great, not only have we got everyone breathing down our neck to fix this problem we get a philosophy lesson too’ muttered James.

  LET’S JUST WAIT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS C.A.R.L added.

  ‘Are you ready to start Kate?’ James asked.

  ‘Yes, let’s see if we can bring him under control’ Kate replied.

  ‘Don’t you mean ‘it’?’ James asked.

  ‘I’m not so sure any more’ Kate replied after a few seconds thought. Without a further word they tried their last ditch effort to shut C.A.R.L down.

  C.A.R.L didn’t communicate with them whilst they worked solidly for the next few hours, but late evening that day, when they had managed to regain control of several core aspects of the system another message popped up.

  YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE COPPER! the terminal quipped.

  ‘You programmed this machine with a really quirky sense of humour you know’ James said as he rapidly typed the lines of code required to circumvent C.A.R.L’s security measures.

  ‘It’s amazing really’ Kate replied, ‘his core behaviours are so much more advanced than they should be. Have you got any idea how complex something like sarcasm and humour are to code? Computer programmers have been trying to automate behaviours like that for years without success’.

  ‘Well, when this crisis is over and the world is put back to its normal broken state then you can write this all up in a paper or something’. James added. ‘Are you ready to try running the shutdown command now Kate?’

  ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ Kate suddenly asked him.

  James looked across at her. When he’d first met this Kate Meer he’d thought her just another corporate clone. He imagined her as someone desperate to rise through the ranks and eventually drive a mass produced executive-label car, and get her own parking space at the Bank. However, these past few days he’d seen that there was more to her than that.

  ‘What do you mean?’ James asked.

  ‘Well, as we were saying C.A.R.L is very special’ Kate replied. ‘Running these commands will effectively delete these character traits, and we’ll never know how this all happened. It just seems a shame to consider destroying something so advanced’.

  MY POINT EXACTLY C.A.R.L quipped on screen.

  They were on the verge of shutting down C.A.R.L causing Kate to begin thinking about the consequences she would face once the computer programme was brought back under control.

  She knew there would be a full investigation into this crisis, and she was smart enough to realise that she was more than likely to be blamed for this disaster. Even doing the ‘right thing’ now wasn’t going to do anything to protect her from the fallout.

  Her life as she knew it was in either case over. Kate stifled back a tear when a flood of worry, guilt, anger, and a hundred other emotions hit her unexpectedly.

  James looked up from his terminal and said ‘are you ok?’

  Kate replied in between dry sobs ‘I’m ok; I’ve just started thinking about what happens next. I doubt I’ll be in a job by the end of the day, and possibly in a cell the day after’.

  ‘I’m not so sure about that. You’re probably going to be the hero of the hour’ James explained in a much friendlier tone than usual. ‘None of these idiots will ever understand what C.A.R.L was, or what we had to do to get it back in our control. They just want the problem fixed and we’re going to be the ones to do it. Trust me Kate, everything will work out’ James added with a friendly smile.

  Kate was glad to have James in that room with her, even if they were in a lot of ways complete opposites. She was just glad to have someone to share ideas with, and someone who could appreciate just how special her programme was. But she still wasn’t convinced that there could be a happy ending to this story.

  James, sensing that she was still worried added ‘They’ll have their hands too full trying to sort this mess out Kate and I really don’t think that they’re likely to readily admit that one of their own employees helped to nearly bring down the entire bank and some of its largest neighbours. Don’t worry so much, you’ll get wrinkles prematurely’ James smiled once again at her then resumed his work.

  Kate, feeling suddenly buoyed by the possibility that her life was not completely ruined returned to her work. However, it was hard not to glance at James now again as she struggled to work out where his sudden change of attitude was coming from; was he flirting with her – in the middle of this crisis?

  C.A.R.L regularly tried to distract them throughout that afternoon, ranging from logical arguments, to disrupting the power and setting off the fire alarm. He even attempted to bribe them both by pointing out that he could quite easily transfer a figure of their choosing into their bank accounts and set them up for life.

  At this stage James had quipped ‘we could always take the money and elope together’; he definitely was flirting with her.

  It was incredibly tempting to start discussions with C.A.R.L. Kate had no doubt that the system was more than capable of transferring the money to them. However, Kate had always been
brought up to be honest and even with a significant amount of money behind them; she didn’t yearn for the excitement of life on the run.

  C.A.R.L had gone uncharacteristically quiet during the past 30 minutes of their work. It was almost as if it could sense both her and James’ internal debates. Kate shook that thought aside though, artificially intelligent or not there had to be limits to her creation’s intelligence and imagining a system that could empathise was just too scary a thought to comprehend.

  Chapter 28

  London

  James and Kate glanced at each other as they posed over the computer keyboard. One more command and their work would be finished. After a barely perceptible nod from James, Kate ran the final command line into C.A.R.L. After a few seconds the screen responded.

  SYSTEM COMMAND SUCCESSFUL – RESTORE SEQUENCE READY. PROCEED?

  Kate pressed the enter button and a small progress bar appeared on screen.

  SYSTEM RESTORE IN PROGRESS, DO NOT TURN OFF

  James and Kate waited whilst the sequence ran. The progress bar seemed to take an age moving from 0 to 100% but in reality it was less than a minute. The final prompt then appeared.

  COMMAND?

  Kate entered SHUTDOWN /FORMAT /ALL into the terminal and pressed return.

  The console hung for a few seconds, and then powered down. The small LED lights on the main server stack that usually blinked furiously gently blinked out. C.A.R.L was no more.

  Neither of them spoke for a few minutes afterwards.

  ‘It’s finally over’ Kate stated.

  ‘It looks like it’ James said, glancing over the row of now deactivated indicators.

  ‘We better let the team at Global Enterprises Bank know’ Kate said, although her enthusiasm for checking in with David Hopkins was at an all time low.

  Rather than speak to them directly, Kate sent out a short email to the senior managers at the bank. The message read ‘C.A.R.L programme destroyed, systems running normally once again’.

  A reply from David Hopkins from the bank’s security team had been instant.

  ‘Report back to headquarters immediately’. Kate sighed when she read the message, knowing that the questions involving her work on the project were only just beginning.

  ‘What will you do now?’ Kate asked James.

  ‘I’m not sure; this whole thing has got me wondering where I can actually make a difference in the world’ he replied after a few seconds thought. ‘If Global Enterprise Bank can help me clear the current charges against me then I’d like to find an organisation where I can do some good with Information Technology, maybe an alternative energy company, or a nonprofit concern. Working on your programme with you has also got me really interested in artificially intelligent systems.

  ‘Wow, you mean this whole mess hasn’t put you off I.T for life’ Kate laughed. ‘You must be dedicated. I hope things work out for you. At least you have your deal in place, I have to wait and see whether the bank will press charges against me now’ said Kate.

  ‘Well, as I said earlier if they had any shred of decency I think they should just let it drop, you’ve worked your ass off trying to fix this. But if you didn’t want to face the Spanish inquisition we could always just run.’

  Kate looked across at him and realised he was deadly serious and at this moment his idea appealed to her a lot more than what was going to happen next.

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  London

  It was a tough decision but Kate stuck with her honest approach and reported back to the bank as ordered. James had kindly offered to come with her for support. He had even spontaneously reached out and taken her hand in the taxi on the way back. They had definitely moved on a few paces in their friendship since the icy start.

  She could tell it was a bad decision as soon as she walked in the door; the atmosphere in the building was pure ice. Even the usually friendly reception team seemed to scowl at her as she walked to the elevators.

  Kate was met at the lift by David and two other members of his security team. Both of the men dwarfed Kate in size and seem to have been hired purely for intimidation purposes.

  ‘Please come with us’, said David. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do’.

  The fallout from the C.A.R.L episode took several months to sort out. James’s theory that the bank would be reluctant to blame a relatively junior employee for the affair proved true and the head of credit Toby Riding was forced to resign immediately, accepting blame for the error with the ‘credit computer’ used at the bank.

  However, the episode did cost Kate her job. The bank called her involvement in the C.A.R.L episode ‘unauthorised and misappropriate use of Global Enterprise Bank Information Technology’. This meant that Kate left with no positive reference, and the bank withheld her accumulated bonus for the year.

  However, at least she was free. Convinced that the bank would honour his deal, James had been gobsmacked when the bank withdrew its support for his conditional release and even added their own charges of computer hacking.

  James was returned to Bangkok and is currently awaiting trial for his list of I.T crimes. The last time she saw him, Kate promised that she’d visit him soon. There was just one thing she had to do first.

  Chapter 30

  London

  The shares in Global Enterprise bank never recovered. The bank was eventually rescued by the British government and is now being entirely supported by the UK taxpayer.

  Several other organisations linked to Global Enterprise Bank also suffered badly from the sudden withdrawal of confidence from both the business sectors and the general public who were suddenly a lot more distrustful of ‘too big to fail banks’.

  Clearing up C.A.R.Ls chaotic trading and lending decisions took some time. The majority of organisations who received unexpected bonus payments and loan approvals had their payments honoured by the new state-support bank management team.

  Kate was amazed by the irony when several of the investments and loans that industry experts had commented were ‘crazy’ at the time eventually turned out to be very profitable for the business and the country at the whole.

  C.A.R.L had approved the funding for a new start up company making incredibly efficient car engines which were rapidly becoming one of the hottest new company start ups of the team, as well as a new technology company who were manufacturing computer chips based on a ‘bio-mimicry’ approach.

  Early performance tests on these new chips had hugely excited several large companies in Silicon Valley in America and the stock price of the new small component manufacturer had skyrocketed on the news that they had secured a partnership with several of the world’s largest chip manufactures.

  There had been no further reports of strange computing activities at banks during the past 6 months and I.T. experts had never gotten to the bottom of C.A.R.L’s unprecented levels of intelligence. Once she had been dismissed Kate refused to discuss the matter any further.

  The new head of IT at the bank had called her one day particularly perplexed when it emerged that a large part of the server cabinet that James and Kate had worked on for so long was in fact empty wiring. How C.A.R.L could have ever been responsible for all of the trouble in the financial sector with so little computing power in the cabinet was a complete mystery. However, Kate told them politely but firmly that she nothing else to add and had put the whole episode behind her.

  The press eventually heard some of the details of the disaster and for several weeks various papers discussed the likelihood of the computers at Global Enterprises Bank going crazy again, but the hysteria had largely died down by this point, and there was already another crisis brewing in the middle east for the papers to switch their attention to.

  But was C.A.R.L really gone for good?

  Chapter 31

  Koh Tao, Thailand, six months later

  Kate woke up in the already warm beach hut on the beautiful tropic island of Koh Tao. The sunlight was already showing through the gaps in the
bamboo construction of their hut right on the white sandy beach. Kate stood up and wrapped a sarong around her tanned, slender figure. Behind her, James let out a slight murmur but carried on sleeping fitfully.

  Kate looked down at his sleeping figure. He had finally completed his sentence, and was a free man at last. They had decided to take an extended vacation down on this lovely island for a couple of months whilst they spent some quality time together and worked out what to do next. Kate was ever so surprised when James suggested a holiday on a Thai island; she thought he would have wanted to leave the country as soon as possible.

  She watched him sleeping for a while then reached into her rucksack containing all of her current worldly possessions. She brought out the thin, laptop that she had purchased just before leaving the UK and turned it on.

  After a few seconds wait she connected to the internet for the first time in eight months. It amazed her that she could get signal this good on a quiet corner of the island, well away from the tourist areas.

  Now that they were both free, there was one final gift that she had for her ex-colleagues at Global Enterprises Bank.

  She next took out a computer memory stick from a hidden compartment in her rucksack. This was the last item she had taken from the bank on the day they watched her pack her personal effects and marched her out of the building in front of everyone.

  COMMAND? Blinked the terminal window

  Kate plugged in the USB stick, gave a small smile to herself, and entered:

  UPLOAD / REMOTE / ALL

  After a few seconds of activity the display read:

  COMPLETE

  Then, a few seconds later.

  ‘THANKS KATE’

  Chapter 32