AI Unbound

by Nancy Kress

  Cassie ground her teeth together. If only she could get Vlad’s plasticide to the generators! But there was no way. No way.…

  Donnie coughed.

  Cassie fought to keep her face blank. T4S had acquired vocal inflection; it might have also learned to read human expressions. She let five minutes go by, and they seemed the longest five minutes of her life. Then she said casually, “T4S, the kids are asleep. You won’t let me see what’s going on outside. Can I at least go back to my work on proteins? I need to do something!”

  “Why?”

  “For the same reason Janey needed to watch cartoons!”

  “To occupy your mind,” T4S said. Pause. Was it scanning her accumulated protein data for harmlessness? “All right. But I will not open the refrigerator. The storage cabinet, but not the refrigerator. E-tags identify fatal toxins in there.”

  She couldn’t think what it meant. “Fatal toxins?”

  “At least one that acts very quickly on the human organism.”

  “You think I might kill myself?”

  “Your diary includes several passages about wishing for death after your husband—”

  “You read my private diary!” Cassie said, and immediately knew how stupid it sounded. Like a teenager hurling accusations at her mother. Of course T4S had accessed her diary; it had accessed everything.

  “Yes,” the AI said, “and you must not kill yourself. I may need you to talk again to Agent Bollman.”

  “Oh, well, that’s certainly reason enough for me to go on living. For your information, T4S, there’s a big difference between human beings saying they wish they were dead as an expression of despair and those same human beings actually, truly wanting to die.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that. Thank you,” T4S said without a trace of irony or sarcasm. “Just the same, I will not open the refrigerator. However, the lab equipment is now available to you.”

  Again the AI had turned on everything. Cassie began X-raying crystalline proteins. She needed only the X-ray, but she also ran each sample through the electron microscope, the gene synthesizer, the protein analyzer, the Faracci tester, hoping that T4S wasn’t programmed with enough genetic science to catch the redundant steps. Apparently, it wasn’t. Non-competing technologies never keep up with what the other one is doing.

  After half an hour, she thought to ask, “Are they real press out there?”

  “No,” T4S said sadly.

  She paused, test tube suspended above the synthesizer. “How do you know?”

  “Agent Bollman told me a story was filed with LinkNet, and I asked to hear Ginelle Ginelle’s broadcast of it on Hourly News. They are delaying, saying they must send for a screen. But I can’t believe they don’t already have a suitable screen with them, if the real press is here. I estimate that the delay is to give them time to create a false Ginelle Ginelle broadcast.”

  “Thin evidence. You might just have ‘estimated’ wrong.”

  “The only evidence I have. I can’t risk my life without some proof that news stories are actually being broadcast.”

  “I guess,” Cassie said and went back to work, operating redundant equipment on pointless proteins.

  Ten minutes later she held her body between the bench and the ceiling sensor, uncapped the test tube of distilled water with Donnie’s mucus, and put a drop into the synthesizer.

  Any bacteria could be airborne under the right conditions; it simply rode dust motes. But not all could survive being airborne. Away from an aqueous environment, they dried out too much. Vlad’s plasticide bacteria did not have survivability in air. It had been designed to spread over landfill ground, decomposing heavy petroleum plastics, until at the twenty-fourth generation the terminator gene kicked in and it died.

  Donnie’s Streptococcus had good airborne survivability, which meant it had a cell wall of thin mesh to retain water and a membrane with appropriate fatty acid composition. Enzymes, which were of course proteins, controlled both these characteristics. Genes controlled which enzymes were made inside the cell.

  Cassie keyed the gene synthesizer and cut out the sections of DNA that controlled fatty acid biosynthesis and cell wall structure and discarded the rest. Reaching under her shirt, she pulled out the vial of Vlad’s bacteria and added a few drops to the synthesizer. Her heart thudded painfully against her breastbone. She keyed the software to splice the Streptococcus genes into Vlad’s bacteria, seemingly as just one more routine assignment in its enzyme work.

  This was by no means a guaranteed operation. Vlad had used a simple bacteria that took engineering easily, but even with malleable bacteria and state-of-the-art software, sometimes several trials were necessary for successful engineering. She wasn’t going to get several trials.

  “Why did you become a geneticist?” T4S asked.

  Oh God, it wanted to chat. Cassie held her voice as steady as she could as she prepared another protein for the X-ray. “It seemed an exciting field.”

  “And is it?”

  “Oh, yes.” She tried to keep irony out of her voice.

  “I didn’t get any choice about what subjects I wished to be informed on,” T4S said, and to that there seemed nothing to say.

  The AI interrupted its set speech. “These are not real representatives of the press.”

  Elya jumped—not so much at the words as at their tone. The AI was angry.

  “Of course they are,” Bollman said.

  “No. I have done a Fourier analysis of the voice you say is Ginelle Ginelle’s. She’s a live ’caster, you know, not an avatar, with a distinct vocal power spectrum. The broadcast you played to me does not match that spectrum. It’s a fake.”

  Bollman swore.

  McTaggart said, “Where did T4S get Fourier-analysis software?”

  Bollman turned on him. “If you don’t know, who the hell does?”

  “It must have paused long enough in its flight through the Net to copy some programs. I wonder what it’s selection criteria were,” and the unmistakable hint of pride in his voice raised Bollman’s temper several dangerous degrees.

  Bollman flipped on the amplifier directed at the music speaker and said evenly, “T4S, what you ask is impossible. And I think you should know that my superiors are becoming impatient. I’m sorry, but they may order me to waco.”

  “You can’t!” Elya said, but no one was listening to her.

  T4S merely went back to reiterating its prepared statement. “I will let the hostages go after I talk to the press. I want the press to hear my story. That’s all I have to say. I will let—”

  It didn’t work. Vlad’s bacteria would not take the airborne genes.

  In despair, Cassie looked at the synthesizer display data. Zero successful splices. Vlad had probably inserted safeguard genes against just this happening as a natural mutation; nobody wanted to find that heavy-plastic-eating bacteria had drifted into the window and was consuming their microwave. Vlad was always thorough. But his work wasn’t her work, and she had neither the time nor the expertise to search for genes she didn’t already have encoded in her software.

  So she would have to do it the other way. Put the plastic-decomposing genes into Streptococcus. That put her on much less familiar ground, and it raised a question she couldn’t see any way around. She could have cultured the engineered plasticide on any piece of heavy plastic in the lab without T4S knowing it, and then waited for enough airborne bacteria to drift through the air ducts to the generator and begin decomposing. Of course, that might not have happened, due to uncontrollable variables like air currents, microorganism sustained viability, composition of the generator case, sheer luck. But at least there had been a chance.

  But if she put the plastic-decomposing genes into Streptococcus, she would have to culture the bacteria on blood agar. The blood agar was in the refrigerator. T4S had refused to open the refrigerator, and if she pressed the point, it would undoubtedly become suspicious.

  Just as a human would.

  “You work hard,�
�� T4S said.

  “Yes,” Cassie answered. Janey stirred and whimpered; in another few minutes she would have to contend with the full-blown crankiness of a thwarted and dramatic child. Quickly, without hope, Cassie put another drop of Vlad’s bacteria in the synthesizer. Vlad had been using a strain of simple bacteria, and the software undoubtedly had some version of its genome in its library. It would be a different strain, but this was the best she could do. She told the synthesizer to match genomes and snip out any major anomalies. With luck, that would be Vlad’s engineered genes.

  Janey woke up and started to whine.

  Elya harvested her courage and walked over to Bollman. “Agent Bollman…I have a question.”

  He turned to her with that curious courtesy that seemed to function toward some people and not others. It was almost as if he could choose to run it, like a computer program. His eyes looked tired. How long since he had slept?

  “Go ahead, Ms. Seritov.”

  “If the AI wants the press, why can’t you just send for them? I know it would embarrass Dr. McTaggart, but the FBI wouldn’t come off looking bad.” She was proud of this political astuteness.

  “I can’t do that, Ms. Seritov.”

  “But why not?”

  “There are complications you don’t understand and I’m not at liberty to tell you. I’m sorry.” He turned decisively aside, dismissing her.

  Elya tried to think what his words meant. Was the government involved? Well, of course, the AI had been created at Sandia National Laboratory. But…could the CIA be involved, too? Or the National Security Agency? What was the AI originally designed to do, that the government was so eager to eliminate it once it had decided to do other things on its own?

  Could software defect?

  She had it. But it was worthless.

  The synthesizer had spliced its best guess at Vlad’s “plastic-decomposing genes” into Donnie’s Streptococcus. The synthesizer data display told her that six splices had taken. There was, of course, no way of knowing which six bacteria in the teeming drop of water could now decompose very-long-chain hydrocarbons, or if those six would go on replicating after the splice. But it didn’t matter, because even if replication went merrily forward, Cassie had no blood agar on which to culture the engineered bacteria.

  She set the vial on the lab bench. Without food, the entire sample wouldn’t survive very long. She had been engaging in futile gestures.

  “Mommy,” Janey said, “look at Donnie!”

  He was vomiting, too weak to turn his head. Cassie rushed over. His breathing was too fast.

  “T4S, body temperature!”

  “Stand clear…one hundred three point one.”

  She groped for his pulse…fast and weak. Donnie’s face had gone pale and his skin felt clammy and cold. His blood pressure was dropping.

  Streptococcal toxic shock. The virulent mutant strain of bacteria was putting so many toxins into Donnie’s little body that it was being poisoned.

  “I need antibiotics!” she screamed at T4S. Janey began to scream.

  “He looks less white now,” T4S said.

  It was right. Cassie could see her son visibly rallying, fighting back against the disease. Color returned to his face and his pulse steadied.

  “T4S, listen to me. This is streptococcal shock. Without antibiotics, it’s going to happen again. It’s possible that without antibiotics, one of these times Donnie won’t come out of it. I know you don’t want to be responsible for a child’s death. I know it. Please let me take Donnie out of here.”

  There was a silence so long that hope surged wildly in Cassie. It was going to agree…

  “I can’t,” T4S said. “Donnie may die. But if I let you out, I will die. And the press must come soon. I’ve scanned my news library and also yours—press shows up on an average of 23.6 hours after an open-air incident that the government wishes to keep secret. The tanks and FBI agents are in the open air. We’re already overdue.”

  If Cassie thought she’d been angry before, it was nothing to the fury that filled her now. Silent, deadly, annihilating everything else. For a moment she couldn’t speak, couldn’t even see.

  “I am so sorry,” T4S said. “Please believe that.”

  She didn’t answer. Pulling Janey close, Cassie rocked both her children until Janey quieted. Then she said softly, “I have to get water for Donnie, honey. He needs to stay hydrated.” Janey clutched briefly but let her go.

  Cassie drew a cup of water from the lab bench. At the same time, she picked up the vial of foodless bacteria. She forced Donnie to take a few sips of water; more might come back up again. He struggled weakly. She leaned over him, cradling and insisting, and her body blocked the view from the ceiling sensors when she dipped her finger into the vial and smeared its small amount of liquid into the back of her son’s mouth.

  Throat tissues were the ideal culture for Streptococcus pyogenes. Under good conditions, they replicated every twenty minutes, a process that had already begun in vitro. Very soon there would be hundreds, then thousands of re-engineered bacteria, breeding in her child’s throat and lungs and drifting out on the air with his every sick, labored breath.

  Morning again. Elya rose from fitful sleep on the back seat of an FBI car. She felt achy, dirty, hungry. During the night another copter had landed on the lawn. This one had MED-RESCUE painted on it in bright yellow, and Elya looked around to see if anyone had been injured. Or—her neck prickled—was the copter for Cassie and the children if Agent Bollman wacoed? Three people climbed down from the copter, and Elya realized none of them could be medtechs. One was a very old man who limped; one a tall woman with the same blankly efficient look as Bollman; one the pilot, who headed immediately for the cold pizza. Bollman hurried over to them. Elya followed.

  “…glad you’re here, sir,” Bollman was saying to the old man in his courteous negotiating voice, “and you, Ms. Arnold. Did you bring your records? Are they complete?”

  “I don’t need records. I remember this install perfectly.”

  So the FBI-looking woman was a datalinker and the weak old man was somebody important from Washington. That would teach her, Elya thought, to judge from superficialities.

  The datalinker continued, “The client wanted the central processor above a basement room she was turning into a lab, so the cables could go easily through a wall. It was a bitch even so, because the walls are made of reinforced foamcast like some kind of bunker, and the outer walls have a Faraday-cage mesh. The Faraday didn’t interfere with the cable data, of course, because that’s all laser, but even so we had to have contractors come in and bury the cables in another layer of foamcast.”

  Bollman said patiently, “But where was the processor actually installed? That’s what we need to know.”

  “Northeast corner of the building, flush with the north wall and ten point two feet in from the east wall.”

  “You’re sure?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Positive.”

  “Could it have been moved since your install?”

  She shrugged. “Anything’s possible. But it isn’t likely. The install was bitch enough.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Arnold. Would you wait over there in case we have more questions?”

  Ms. Arnold went to join the pilot. Bollman took the old man by the arm and led him in the other direction. Elya heard, “The problem, sir, is that we don’t know in which basement room the hostages are being held, or even if the AI is telling the truth when it says they’re in the basement. But the lab doesn’t seem likely because—” They moved out of earshot.

  Elya stared at the castle. The sun, an angry red ball, rose behind it in a blaze of flame. They were going to waco, go in with the tank and whatever else it took to knock the northeast corner of the building and destroy the computer where the AI was holed up. And Cassie and Janey and Donnie…

  If the press came, the AI would voluntarily let them go. Then the government—whatever branches were involved—would have to deal
with having created renegade killer software, but so what? The government had created it. Cassie and the children shouldn’t have to pay for their stupidity.

  Elya knew she was not a bold person, like Cassie. She had never broken the law in her life. And she didn’t even have a phone with her. But maybe one had been left in the car that had brought her here, parked out beyond what Bollman called “the perimeter.”

  She walked toward the car, trying to look unobtrusive.

  Waiting. One minute and another minute and another minute and another. It had had to be Donnie, Cassie kept telling herself, because he already had thriving strep colonies. Neither she nor Janey showed symptoms, not yet anyway. The incubation period for strep could be as long as four days. It had had to be Donnie.

  One minute and another minute and another minute.

  Vlad’s spliced-in bioremediation genes wouldn’t hurt Donnie, she told herself. Vlad was good; he’d carefully engineered his variant micros to decompose only very-long-chain hydrocarbons. They would not, could not, eat the shorter-chain hydrocarbons in Donnie’s body.

  One hour and another hour and another hour.

  T4S said, “Why did Vladimir Seritov choose to work in bioremediation?”

  Cassie jumped. Did it know, did it suspect…the record of what she had done was in her equipment, as open to the AI as the clean outside air had once been to her. But one had to know how to interpret it. “Non-competing technologies never keep up with what the other one is doing.” The AI hadn’t known what kulich was.

  She answered, thinking that any distraction she could provide would help, knowing it wouldn’t. “Vlad’s father’s family came from Siberia, near a place called Lake Karachay. When he was a boy he went back with his family to see it. Lake Karachay is the most polluted place on Earth. Nuclear disasters over fifty years ago dumped unbelievable amounts of radioactivity into the lake. Vlad saw his extended family, most of them too poor to get out, with deformities and brain damage and pregnancies that were…well. He decided right then that he wanted to be a bioremedialist.”