by Erik Hamre
“Not necessarily. Some of these high frequency trading firms have no clients. There is no reason for them to advertise their presence.”
“Did Kevorkian’s company have any external investors?”
“No. As far as we know its sole purpose was to manage Kevorkian’s own funds.”
“Was it successful?” Mike Hanna asked, as a locksmith got down on his knees, working on the lock of the front door.
“We don’t know yet. It was a private Delaware company so no figures have ever been released. We’ll have the P&L and balance sheet from the IRS in an hour or so though.”
It took the locksmith almost seven minutes to get through the three doors that shielded Kevorkiana HFT from outside scrutiny. If anyone had expected to see an open office environment with desks filled with phones and computer screens, they would have been sorely disappointed. The room housed only one computer, a massive one. It took up the entire ground floor.
“What the fuck is this?” Vladimir exclaimed.
“That is one big computer,” Mike Hanna chimed in.
Kraut put his phone down. “Just heard back from the engineers. It appears that there is an underground cable between this building and Neuralgo’s data centre in Nevada.”
“What? Are you saying that this computer is connected to my data centre?”
Kraut nodded. “Turns out Kevorkian built a fibre cable connecting this building and Neuralgo’s data centre in Nevada before you guys even moved in.”
“We moved in five years ago.” Vladimir sighed. “At least we now know he has been planning this for a long time.”
Kraut nodded. “Everything you ever did at Neuralgo was probably instantly available here at Kevorkiana HFT.”
“They never did any high frequency trading, did they?”
“They most definitely did. Other people in the industry claim that Kevorkiana HFT were among the most profitable operations around. But only in the last couple of months. Before that, they were just another player. Invisible.”
“So what happened a couple of months ago?” Mike Hanna asked.
“We were finally able to imitate the brain,” Vladimir replied.
“Imitate the brain?”
“Yes. The human brain is actually quite slow. The neurons max out at around two hundred hertz. Today’s microprocessors run at two gigahertz, or ten million times faster than our brains’ neurons. Given that our brains’ internal communication among various neurons moves at about one hundred and twenty meters per second, and computers can communicate at close to the speed of light, the only big benefit brains have over computers is that they fire all the neurons at once. It is instantaneous. Computers can’t do that yet.”
“Are you saying that Kevorkian would have been able to execute trades without any delay at all?”
“That’s my guess. It must be the same technology we have witnessed when all our computer systems are being breached at the same time. There is no delay there either.”
“That’s like quantum computing.”
“Maybe that’s what our brains are?”
“Quantum computers?”
Vladimir shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps. We don’t know if quantum computing is even possible at this stage. But if it is, what’s to stop the human brain from being able to do it?”
“This discussion is going nowhere fast. Let’s bring it back to what we know,” Kraut said. He pointed at the monster of a computer in front of them. “This is most likely the origination point of Cronus. Somehow Kevorkian must have been able to mesh his self-learning high frequency trading software with the copy of his own brain’s neurological structure. And this is the result, the first Artificial General Intelligence.”
“Are you kidding me? Was this his purpose? To make money? I’m disappointed,” Amanda said. “He did all this, he created the smartest computer in the world just so that he could beat the other fuckers on Wall Street?”
“I don’t think so,” Vladimir replied. “Kevorkian has never been driven by money.”
“What drove this crazy guy then?” Mike Hanna asked.
Vladimir didn’t answer. For a moment he was lost in his own thoughts. It had never been about money for Kevorkian. But it was always about money for everyone else. Was that the reason Kevorkian had said he had finally figured out a way to get back at those who killed Kevin? Perhaps creating the first Artificial General Intelligence wasn’t about destroying the world? Perhaps it was about destroying the American economy, an economy built on all that greed that Kevorkian detested? Or maybe it was about destroying the finances of one specific target? If Kevorkian had really figured out who was behind Kevin’s abduction and subsequent murder, then that person could be his ultimate target. He could have built Cronus to take down a powerful man or company. A target he couldn’t otherwise reach. “We need to identify every person who could possibly have held a grudge against Kevorkian because of the TrakTek IPO.”
“That happened in 2005. What’s that got to do with this?” Kraut asked.
“Everything,” Vladimir answered. “Kevorkian wouldn’t willingly have created a doomsday weapon. Not with Sarah still alive. He must have created Cronus with a more specific goal in mind. Kevin was abducted the very morning Kevorkian’s company went public. There was never any ransom demand. Kevin was probably murdered in the first few hours after he was abducted. What does that tell us?”
“Somebody killed Kevin as revenge?”
“Maybe.”
“Revenge for what though?” Kraut asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe somebody lost a lot of money when Kevorkian decided to do the IPO?”
“That could be it, you know. I remember reading something about Kevorkian pulling out of a deal just before TrakTek going public. I’m pretty sure that company went belly up a few months later. Kevorkian obviously made the right call.”
“Maybe a merger could have saved the company? That’s a motive if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Money. Fuck, it is always about money,” Amanda spat out.
“I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Amanda. It is always about money. Kevorkian was rich, filthy rich. But he detested money.”
“It is easy to detest money when you’re a billionaire. It’s harder when you live on a salary and are just trying to keep your head above the water. I think all these brat-billionaires should try living with a mortgage one time,” Mike Hanna said bitterly. Kraut knew the reason. Mike Hanna was well into his second marriage. The trip to Hawaii was supposed to be the relationship-test. Should he stay together with his new wife, or should he go through another expensive divorce? He was still paying for the first one.
“Kevorkian wasn’t born rich. He made all his money himself,” Vladimir said. “But that’s not the point. Kevorkian always hated Wall Street. He hated it with a passion. He was forced to take TrakTek public by his investors. And then he lost his son on the day of the IPO.” Vladimir paused. Then he turned to face Kraut. “Kevorkian blamed Wall Street and investment bankers for everything that was wrong with America. He even blamed them for losing his son.”
“That’s ridiculous. His son was abducted. It had nothing to do with Wall Street,” Kraut said.
“Kevorkian always said greed killed his son. If he hadn’t been in New York on that day, Kevin would never have been taken,” Vladimir replied.
“That actually makes sense,” Mike Hanna interjected. “From what I have read about Kevorkian he has clear narcissistic tendencies. One could even argue he is slightly psychopathic.”
Vladimir wanted to say something, but didn’t. Even though he wanted to defend his friend he knew Mike was correct. Kevorkian had always been extremely narcissistic. He always thought he was smarter and better than everybody else. True, most of the time he actually was the smartest man in the room. But there were other ways of conveying that message. Humbleness had never been among Kevorkian’s strongest skills.
“So he can have created Cronus to take down Wall Street?” Ama
nda asked.
Kraut shrugged his shoulders. “It’s as good a theory as any. Check how many banks and Wall Street companies have been hacked. If the number is disproportionate, then all these other hacks could be a diversion. Perhaps that is Cronus’ mission? To take down Wall Street. To kill greed.”
“We shouldn’t just focus on one lead though,” Vladimir said. “We need to focus broader. Amanda, could you also identify and locate everyone who lost money on the day of TrakTek’s IPO. If Kevorkian blamed Wall Street for losing his son, he could also have a more specific target in mind.”
“That someone on Wall Street abducted and killed Kevin?”
“Yes, that would actually fit Kevorkian’s profile. It is typical for psychopaths to never question their own opinions, to build up the arguments in their own head until they convince themselves that they are right and everyone else is wrong. If he publically blamed Wall Street for losing his son, then the leap to actually believing that the perpetrator also worked there is not far,” Mike Hanna said.
“If he’s planning to sink Wall Street we’re truly fucked,” Vladimir said. “We will probably be better off if he just wants to nuke a city or two. If he nukes our entire economy, who knows how long it will take to recover.”
Kraut stared at the massive computer in front of them. He considered telling the rest of the team what threat they really faced, but he decided not to. It was better that they continued to look for solutions without knowing the full story.
Sometimes it was better to live life in blissful ignorance.
26
2nd of June 2015
Kevorkiana HFT’s HQ
Silicon Valley, California
DAY 2:
0900 Hours
Kraut stared out one of the tiny windows of the first floor. Across the road Facebook was building a new campus, and the Google headquarters building was just a short ten-minute drive away. Kraut had always thought that the first truly dangerous artificial intelligence would be spawned in the research lab at one of those two companies. The government had multiple senior engineers on the payroll in both companies. Artificial intelligence and the advent of singularity was like a religion. You had the ones who believed that all technological development was for good, that whatever humans invented would eventually make Earth a better place. And then you had the other camp. The pessimistic ones, the gloom and doom guys, the ones who believed we had to be cautious, very cautious, when dealing with things like nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. There was a reason the advent of nuclear weapons hadn’t already wiped out humanity; we had developed strict guidelines for the development and spreading of those weapons. We had done the same for DNA research. The effect of the guidelines set out at the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA at Berkeley, California, in 1975 was still being felt by the biotech industry today. The reality was that you sometimes had to halt development to ensure it was safe for the general population. Kraut had been prepared to do exactly that. And the first element in his plan had been to scare the President and the Senate sufficiently for them to realise that some of the most wealthy American technology companies were playing with fire, a fire that could very easily get out of control and scorch the surface of the Earth and make our planet uninhabitable.
That student at Harvard, asking the President the most uncomfortable question he had ever been asked, that student hadn’t just been any other student. It had been Kraut’s best student; his research assistant, Todd Holm. Todd had never lived to see the result of his small stunt however. Todd had been ill with a malignant brain tumour the size of a golf ball inside his skull when he posed that question. He had died three short months later. But with those well-chosen words Todd had achieved more than most other people would in their lifetime. Todd had influenced the most powerful man in the world to really think hard about the most important question of our time: What do we do the moment humanity faces an almost certain extinction event? Do we attempt to save as many as possible and risk losing everyone? Or do we choose to let millions die in order to make sure our species will survive? It was an almost impossible question to answer. And it had kept the most powerful man in the world sleepless for weeks.
The first night after Protocol Cronus had been approved by the Senate, the President had slept like a baby. He truly believed he had made the right choice.
“I don’t understand how we managed to miss this,” Kraut said. “I always thought the Google guys would win the AI race.”
“I always thought it would be the internet itself. That it turned out intelligence and consciousness was a product of complex systems, that it would just emerge without us even realising.”
“Well, turns out both of us were wrong. Somehow Kevorkian managed to create it here, using this monster of a computer.”
“It’s not a monster. It’s a beauty,” Amanda replied.
“What is it?” Sarah asked.
Kraut closed his eyes. “My guess is, it is the most powerful computer ever built.”
“More powerful than China’s Tianhe-2?” Mike Hanna asked.
“Unfortunately, yes. Kevorkian siphoned off more than five hundred million from Neuralgo. And according to the IRS, Kevorkiana HFT had almost a billion in cash three months ago. All those funds are gone. Theoretically Kevorkian can have paid someone to build him the most powerful computer in history.”
“Shit.”
“Do you think we are going to have any luck finding out what he has done here?” Kraut asked Amanda, who was attempting to access the massive computer’s control system.
“My guess is that this was just the launch pad. Whatever Kevorkian created, it is now free. It’s gone.”
“Shit.”
“Should we turn it off?” Mike Hanna asked.
“I don’t think that’s going to help. We might as well see if we can access it and learn what Kevorkian has done. Even if the AI is already on the internet there may still be traces of code left behind inside this big box. People always make mistakes.”
Vladimir pulled Kraut to the side. “I don’t think there is much I can help out with here. Do you mind if I take Sarah along and visit Kevorkian’s house? It’s only a twenty-minute drive away.” Vladimir knew there was no point looking for traces of code left behind. Kevorkian didn’t make mistakes. If they found something it would surely be a decoy.
“We’ve already checked out his house. There was nothing there.”
“I would still like to take a look. Sarah and I are the ones who knew him the best. We might be able to spot if there is something out of the ordinary there.”
Kraut took a deep breath. He rubbed his eyes, before stretching his back. “OK. Sarah stays here with the others. I’ll come with you, Vladimir. We’ll have to make it quick though. I want to be back before lunchtime.”
Vladimir nodded.
Kevorkian’s Silicon Valley home was as remarkable as the man had been. It had taken five years to complete, and Kevorkian had overseen every detail down to the spacing of the tiles in each of the nine bathrooms. He hadn’t spent much time in the house though. He preferred to either be on his two hundred-foot long sailboat, or out piloting his own Gulf Stream Jet when he wasn’t working. But then again he was always working. There was no separation between leisure and business for Kevorkian. He was always working on something, always looking for the next big thing.
The house was a testament to his single-minded focus. Some might argue against Kevorkian being the smartest man in the Valley, there were after all a lot of super smart people living there. The Valley attracted a special type of people. Some with IQs as high as the boiling point for Kerosene. But no one could dispute the fact that Kevorkian had the smartest house in the Valley. It made most other smart houses look slightly retarded. With a simple command to his iPhone Kevorkian could control everything from the water temperature in his bathtub to the stock levels in his wine cellar. ‘Kevorkian always made me feel dumb,’ one of his lawyers remarked, ‘but I never imagined his hou
se would do the same.’
“Have we got a key?” Vladimir asked.
“Kevorkian gave us the code when he was arrested. To me that is evidence we won’t find anything here. Kevorkian was extremely unhelpful when we interviewed him. But he couldn’t seem to care less about us ransacking his house.”
Vladimir shrugged his shoulders. “You’re probably right. But it doesn’t hurt to check it out when we’re already here.”
Kraut keyed in the code, and the big metal gate slowly slid to the side. As they drove up the long laneway to the house, Vladimir thought back on the last time he had been at Kevorkian’s mansion. It had been two years ago, and the house hadn’t been fully completed yet. Kevorkian had stood outside in the garden with a remote control in his hands. One of the neighbours had complained about the height of Kevorkian’s new observatory a few months prior. Kevorkian, of course, would have nothing of it. Instead of settling the dispute in a neighbourly fashion he had gone to extreme lengths to get his observatory approved at the original height. The end result had ended up costing him two million extra, but he hadn’t cared. He had been allowed to build at the height he initially wanted. When Vladimir arrived at Kevorkian’s house he had been busy delivering the final approval from the Council to the neighbour. He was doing it by drone. Vladimir could still remember watching the surprised face of the neighbour, on the tiny LCD screen on the remote control, when Kevorkian dropped the letter from two metres above the ground and straight onto the outdoor dinner table of the neighbour’s ongoing wedding party. Only Kevorkian could think of crashing a wedding party with a drone. That little stunt had cost Kevorkian another fifty grand in fines, and he had been banned from flying any drones within a thousand metres of his neighbour’s house for two years. But if you asked Kevorkian, it had all been worth it.
Vladimir opened the door of the black SUV as it came to a halt outside the house. As he stepped out of the car he realised how much he had missed the California air. It was so different from what he had grown up with in Moscow. His brother back home never quite understood when Vladimir explained you could taste and smell the salt in the air in California. In Moscow you couldn’t taste anything. Everything was tasteless, grey and boring. In California everything was bright colours and exciting. And Vladimir loved it. “You have ten minutes, Vladimir,” Kraut hollered when they stepped inside the Grand Hall, the entrance to Kevorkian’s intelligent house. “Ten minutes, and then we leave.”