Dangerous Brains

by Erik Hamre

  When most people spoke about Neuralgo they immediately thought about Kevorkian, the wealthy and eccentric founder. But they should have thought about Vladimir. He was the real brains behind the operation. He was the real reason Neuralgo had managed to create what they had.

  And now Kraut had put him in charge of the investigation of what everybody believed to be Kevorkian’s invention.

  It was insane.

  Kraut had made a huge error of judgment.

  Why on Earth would he allow Vladimir to investigate himself?

  Because that was the reality: Vladimir, not Kevorkian, had created Cronus. And now Vladimir was investigating it. And every suggestion he came up with led them into another dead-end.

  Was he deliberately making sure that they would never find out what Cronus’ real mission was? Was he deliberately leading them on a wild goose chase?

  Amanda closed her laptop.

  What could Vladimir’s motivation be? What could his agenda be?

  Her thought process was interrupted by a tirade of what she assumed to be swearing words. Olokoff was obviously having problems getting the message through to his Russian colleagues.

  Amanda considered walking over, but decided not to. There was nothing she could do anyway. She felt helpless. She let out a slight laugh. She was a woman, she didn’t have a dick, so obviously she couldn’t know how it would feel to lose one, but that was how it felt. It felt like Vladimir, and quite prophetically she would add, had castrated her entire team of computer scientists. They were looking for connections where there were none.

  They had been completely sidelined.

  And it was all due to Vladimir.

  She picked up her phone and left her workstation. She needed to tell someone about her suspicions. But whom could she tell?

  Kraut was technically her only superior, and as far as she understood he reported directly to the President. There was no one above Kraut on Team Cronus.

  No one besides him.

  The next in command was POTUS – the President.

  But she couldn’t very well call the President either. She probably wouldn’t even be able to get his number.

  Her mind was racing a million miles per hour as she walked out of the temporary control room they had set up at Kevorkiana HFT.

  She felt alone. Utterly alone. Like a whistle-blower in an organisation where everyone lived in denial of what was really going on.

  A whistle-blower.

  That was what she felt like.

  A god damn whistle-blower.

  60

  3rd of June 2015

  Naval Base San Diego

  California

  DAY 3:

  0835 Hours

  Vladimir and Kraut peered through the windows of the various offices. Inside each office specially trained interrogators were busy questioning the crewmembers of USS Utah about any knowledge or connections to Kevorkian and his missing son. Kraut pressed the button underneath the one-way mirror. It allowed him to listen in on one of the interrogations.

  “Name and address,” the interrogator asked.

  “Seriously?” Kraut snapped. “They need to cut the formalities. Don’t they understand we are working against a deadline here?” He knocked hard on the window.

  When the interrogator arrived in the backroom, he copped a verbal abuse of the likes Vladimir hadn’t heard since Kraut took down a greenie on a CNN panel debate two years prior. Kraut was back in form, there was no doubt about that.

  The interrogator rambled back into the interview room on shaky legs. Instead of asking the crewmember his rank and address, he instead leant in until his face was hardly ten inches from the sailor. “How do you know Andrew Kevorkian?” he asked, stressing each word for maximum effect.

  The crewmember looked confused. Twenty-four hours ago he had been on his way to a training exercise in the Pacific. Now he was being asked about some person he had never even heard about before.

  “This is hopeless. They don’t know anything. Another god damn dead end,” Kraut said.

  “How is Amanda doing with looking into the Wall Street lead?” Vladimir asked.

  Kraut turned to face him. “She’s struggling. They’ve identified every single bank and financial institution that Cronus has hacked. But that’s about it. They can’t find any trace of Cronus. No Trojans, worms or viruses. Whatever Cronus is planning, it’s not revealing its hand.”

  “What a surprise,” Vladimir retorted. He was increasingly leaning towards the conclusion that Cronus had no intention of taking down Wall Street or the banking system. Surely Kevorkian wasn’t that predictable?

  It was the basic premise of a bad Hollywood movie; a billionaire super villain wanting to destroy the world and create anarchy.

  One could say a lot of bad things about Kevorkian, but he had never been predictable - never. Whatever he had planned would be something Vladimir hadn’t even thought of yet. Something he didn’t see coming. Vladimir knew this. And that was what was stressing him out; the knowledge that he probably wouldn’t understand why Kevorkian had created Cronus until it was already too late.

  “Speak,” Kraut hollered into his mobile. Vladimir hadn’t even noticed it had rung. Kraut had set the phone to vibrate only.

  Kraut nodded a few times as he listened to the voice on the other line. Then he started to walk in the opposite direction of Vladimir. Vladimir understood it was probably a conversation about something he wasn’t privy to, so instead he headed over to the provisional work station he had set up. He opened his laptop and started working.

  61

  3rd of June 2015

  Naval Base San Diego

  California

  DAY 3:

  0840 Hours

  “Vladimir, I need to speak to you,” Kraut said. His face had suddenly turned serious.

  Vladimir looked up at Kraut. “OK, what is it?”

  “Amanda has been looking into your background.”

  “Uhum,” Vladimir nodded.

  “What’s your relationship with Sarah?”

  “She’s a good friend. I’ve been open about that.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Vladimir. Have you slept with her?”

  For a second Vladimir didn’t know what to say. The hesitation was enough for Kraut to understand. “What the hell, Vladimir. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “Didn’t think it was relevant? I’ve got hundreds of people looking for anyone that Kevorkian could have a motive in getting back at, and it turns out you’re at the fucking top of the list.”

  “Kevorkian never knew.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  Vladimir didn’t reply. There was no point. He knew there was no way of knowing for sure.

  “If Andrew had wanted to get back at me, he could have just fired me. He could have taken away my stock options, discredited me, made me unemployable.”

  “He could have. But as Amanda just pointed out to me on the phone: The fact that you had an affair with his wife also makes you a prime suspect in Kevin’s disappearance.”

  “What? That’s insane.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes it is, Kraut. You know it is.”

  “No it isn’t. You had a motive.”

  “What motive?”

  “Amanda looked it up. Eighty percent of marriages don’t survive the loss of a child. How do you break up the perfect marriage? How do you make someone leave a billionaire?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Don’t play an idiot, Vladimir.”

  “I’m not. Sarah would never have left Kevorkian for me. I screwed that up when I slept with her. But don’t lecture me about Kevorkian’s perfect marriage. If it was so perfect she wouldn’t have slept with me, would she?”

  Kraut studied Vladimir. Had he made an error of judgment bringing him on-board Team Cronus? Was Amanda correct? Had Vladimir deliberately been misleading them? Convinced them to focus their effort
s on clues that would lead nowhere?”

  “I need to see your program, Vladimir. I need to see the program you created to find the common denominator for Cronus’ hacking attacks.”

  Vladimir nodded.

  The six minutes it took Kraut to review Vladimir’s code, was probably the longest six minutes in Vladimir’s entire life. Kraut had emailed a copy of the program to Amanda so that they could both review the program in real-time. Vladimir wiped a sweat pearl off his nose as Kraut studied the results. He knew that Amanda would be reviewing the code, line by line, in the premises of Kevorkiana HFT. Why was she so suspicious of Vladimir? Why did she believe he was deliberately misleading them?

  “I’m not a coder, so I’m relying on you here, Amanda,” Kraut said. He was satisfied with what he had seen. But that meant nothing.

  “It’s actually quite good,” Amanda said. “Did he write this program in just thirty minutes?”

  “I believe he did,” Kraut answered.

  “Damn, it. He is right. There is a common denominator. And it is the date of Kevin’s abduction.”

  “So he didn’t lie about that. Cronus actually planned the whole thing as a diversion.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “So what do we do about him?” Kraut asked.

  Vladimir looked up when he heard Kraut mention him. Kraut had taken no chances though. The moment Amanda had raised her suspicion he had placed Vladimir under guard. Two armed soldiers were standing next to Vladimir. They didn’t exactly point their guns at his head. But the effect was the same. He had nowhere to go.

  “You’re asking me for advice?”

  “Yes. You’re my computer expert, Amanda. Is it worth the risk keeping Vladimir on our team? I don’t believe he is involved, but there is always an element of uncertainty. He didn’t tell me about his affair with Sarah.”

  At first Amanda didn’t know how to answer. It had been easy to raise the alarm. She had done what she felt right. Now Kraut had left the decision whether to kick Vladimir off the team or not to her. Her decision would have consequences. Possibly dramatic ones. There was a good chance Vladimir had ulterior motives, he might even have been involved in the abduction of Kevin. He’d had a motive. But he hadn’t been lying about the common denominator being the date of Kevin’s abduction. Why would he reveal this if he had been involved? She let out a long sigh. There was no way to know for certain whether Vladimir had known about Cronus or not. He could be the guy who had helped Kevorkian make this thing, or he could be the only person in the world who could actually stop it.

  She had just reviewed the program Vladimir had created. It was truly beautiful.

  It was almost magical.

  She’d had the same feeling reviewing his work at Neuralgo.

  The guy was a genius.

  But that didn’t really tell her anything. A beautiful brain could also be a dangerous one.

  Was that what he had, a dangerous brain?

  In the end Amanda couldn’t get past the point that Vladimir almost singlehandedly had created the technology enabling the creation of Cronus. If anyone could stop Cronus, it would have to be him. But it was too risky. “Kick him out,” she said. “We don’t need him.”

  “You sure?” Kraut asked.

  “I am,” Amanda replied. She couldn’t risk having a dangerous brain on her team.

  62

  3rd of June 2015

  Naval Base San Diego

  California

  DAY 3:

  0850 Hours

  The sun was setting behind the Army barracks when Kraut got the call. Minutes earlier Amanda had advised him to kick Vladimir off the team. And he was now watching Vladimir being locked inside the military prison by two Navy guards.

  Vladimir remembers Kraut’s face going grey, then almost white, as if the last shred of hope had finally been washed away.

  Kraut hadn’t said anything. Just given Vladimir a slight shake of his head, looking at him from the corner of his eye.

  At first Vladimir hadn’t understood the gesture. What did it mean? Had Amanda come up with more accusations? Did they really believe Vladimir was behind all this? Did they believe he had been involved in the abduction of Kevin?

  “Kevorkian has just passed away,” Kraut said, raising his eyes to catch the last glimpses of the fading sun through the window.

  “When?”

  “Less than two minutes ago. He had another stroke. A massive one.”

  “Fuck,” Vladimir shouted, pounding his hand against the concrete wall. At that moment he lost all hope. Not only was Kevorkian the only person who could vouch for Vladimir. He was also the only person who could have had any hope of stopping Cronus.

  With Kevorkian dead – all hope was dead.

  Would the death of Andrew Kevorkian now finally result in the intelligence explosion they had been fearing the whole time? Had Kevorkian’s mind been the only thing restraining Cronus from blossoming into its full potential? Vladimir had no idea. One thing was for sure though. They would soon know the consequences.

  “He was our only hope,” Kraut said, almost as if he had read Vladimir’s mind. “Now we will never know why he created Cronus.”

  “It doesn’t really matter though, does it? In a couple of hours Cronus will be gone anyway, fried along with all the rest of the electronic equipment on Earth,” Vladimir said.

  “I guess you’re right. I’ll let Amanda know,” Kraut said, raising the phone up to his ear.

  “Can you call me back in two?” Amanda asked. Uncharacteristically for her, she had answered on the first ring. She sounded stressed.

  “What’s going on?” Kraut asked.

  “I don’t know. But I think Cronus just disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? What do you mean disappeared?”

  “I can’t explain it. Give me two minutes. I’ll call you back. I promise.”

  Kraut rang off, before facing Vladimir. “I’ll be damned.”

  “What just happened?” Vladimir asked.

  “I think Kevorkian just killed Cronus.”

  When Vladimir had pondered how you could build a failsafe in the first Artificial Super Intelligence, he had initially not considered Kevorkian’s solution viable. But it was as beautiful as it was clever, and as viable as could be. Kevorkian had built a kill switch for his invention. Kevorkian was the kill switch. The moment Andrew Kevorkian ceased to breathe, so would his creation, Cronus.

  Kevorkian had never built Cronus to be able to live forever. Kevorkian didn’t want to become an immortal. He had built Cronus for a single purpose. And that purpose was most likely to take down Wall Street. To create havoc and destroy the culture of greed he felt was responsible for the death of his son, Kevin. Was that the reason he had been able to cling on to life for as long as he had? Had he been able to follow Cronus’ preparations through his own conscious mind? And was the knowledge of the imminent EMP strike sufficient for Kevorkian to finally let go? To succumb to his destiny? He would have known it wasn’t necessary to take down Wall Street anymore, because Wall Street would be destroyed along with the rest of the world when the lights would go out.

  Had Kevorkian, or Cronus, Vladimir was unsure if one could even make a distinction between the two anymore, finally let go because he knew Cronus’ mission would be fulfilled?

  There was no point pondering ifs and buts though. If Cronus had just ceased to exist then there was no one left to stop Earth from being catapulted two centuries back in time, in one hour and forty minutes.

  If Cronus had been an Artificial Super Intelligence, however, with its only goal to track down Kevin’s killer, then there had been a remote chance that Vladimir and Kraut apprehending Kevin’s killer would have indirectly achieved Cronus’ goal, and thus opened up a line of communication. Maybe they could have used the apprehension of the killer as a negotiation card? If Cronus really had become an Artificial Super Intelligence, a quantum computer with the ability to simulate signals from a GPS transmitter, from a sub sub
merged 2,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, and maybe even able to send digital signals back in time, then there was also a chance that it would be able to come up with a way to stop Protocol Cronus from detonating the nukes in the atmosphere.

  But the moment Vladimir realised Cronus’ goal had never been to hunt down Kevin’s killer, that theory had lost its value.

  And the moment Kevorkian died, the moment Cronus died – in that moment all hope died.

  Amanda picked up on the fourth ring when Kraut called back. She sounded exhausted. “It’s gone. Cronus is fucking gone.” She giggled nervously. “It’s dead.”

  “You’re sure?” Kraut asked.

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure. But I’m pretty sure. It just disappeared.”

  “OK. I was just informed Kevorkian has passed away. It appears his death coincided with the moment you noticed Cronus disappear.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that they definitely were connected. Vladimir thinks Kevorkian may have been Cronus’ kill switch. That he somehow programmed Cronus to expire the moment he died.”

  “Vladimir? Is he still there?”

  “He’s locked up. But I’m here with him.”

  “Locked up?”

  “Yes, you told me to kick him off the team, remember?”

  “I didn’t tell you to lock him up.”

  “Well that’s what I did. Now let’s get back to Cronus.”

  “It’s gone. And that’s fantastic news, isn’t it?” Amanda asked, excitedly.

  “It doesn’t change anything. The nukes will still be detonated. Protocol Cronus will still go ahead.”

  “But if Cronus is gone, then the threat is gone. Why would Protocol Cronus not stop the detonation if the threat is removed?”

  “Because Protocol Cronus was built to assume that this could happen, that the artificial intelligence would be smart enough to play dead in order to call off the strike. There was only one outcome once Cronus passed the Turing Tests. There was only one outcome once it tried to access the nuclear weapons systems.”