Conscious

by Vic Grout

  *

  They – The Desk and Stephen’s team minus Stephen – reconvened at 7:30am. They had been escorted directly to their hotel almost entirely by subterranean means the previous night and taken back to the EuroNet facility in a similar fashion that morning. They had little idea still where exactly they might be and natural daylight was becoming something of a memory. They did, however, have a plan!

  Hattie had been mended: two of her smaller individual fuses had blown and protected the underlying circuit as designed; these were replaced. Her programming was also modified to display the S Parameter on a continuous basis as Its signal-to-noise ratio was now steadier and easier to measure as part of ongoing feedback. This gave an altogether more accurate, stable reading. She was, once again, connected to one of the main rack’s fibre ports. It was now easy to recognise, even by eye, that the PDN shown on her ‘scopes had better structure: fewer spikes, more clearly defined signals and longer bit sequences.

  “So, is this going to work?” Bob asked, his eyes scanning them all but quickly resting on Jenny.

  “I’m hoping so,” she said softly. “I was working on the maths late last night and again early this morning. It’s not easy to apply graph theory when you don’t know what the graph looks like:” she joked, looking up at the world display, “trying to find a cut-set when you don’t know what you’re cutting – but I reckon three big nodes will be enough for us to measure a difference. The big question is whether they’ll let us do it!”

  “We’ll see,” agreed Bob, smiling.

  On the stroke of eight o’clock, Stephen emerged from the lift, accompanied by two men dressed in almost identical dark suits and matching ties. “Bloody Hell, it’s Thomson and Thompson,” chortled Andy until Aisha’s well-directed nudge to his ribs stopped him. Unlike Tintin’s adversaries, however, only one of them (Thomson in Andy’s mind) ever spoke. Stephen made some general introductions but their real names were never mentioned; Bob knew this drill well.

  “So what are we planning to do, ladies and gentlemen?” asked Stephen with the uncomfortable air of an intermediary. “What are you going to show us?”

  “And how will it convince us that your crazy hypothesis may be true?” added Thomson.

  Jenny, already uncomfortable with this opening, tried as well as she could to explain logically.

  “We want to conduct an experiment,” she answered nervously. “We want to close down these nodes for an hour or so.” She pointed at the monitor in front of them, showing the same topology as the huge room display. She indicated three of the brightest points on the EuroNet map: major switching centres in Berlin, Madrid and Paris. “I think I can predict, with reasonable accuracy, what the effect will be – and I think I can explain why.”

  Thomson looked unimpressed; Thompson may not have understood for all the acknowledgement he showed. Stephen’s eyes bulged slightly; his head shook in quiet warning.

  “That will not be possible,” said Thomson flatly.

  “Why not?” asked Bob. He turned to Stephen. “You have the capability to do that, don’t you?” But Thomson did not allow him to answer.

  “Capability is not the issue,” he said, without intonation. “The issue is expense.”

  “What expense? Aisha asked, incredulously, looking around at the equipment surrounding them. “What difference will it make? How hard can it be?”

  “We are not considering the expense of shutting down these nodes; we are considering the expense from shutting them down.” Other than stressing the essential difference, Thomson’s voice remained emotionless.

  “What?”

  Stephen mediated once more, glancing nervously in both directions. “My superior means we have to consider the cost of the lost data. European industry, particularly business and commerce, loses millions of Euros in transactions when a large link goes down even for a few seconds. The cost of closing three core nodes at major European cities for an hour would be counted in billions.”

  “It cannot be tolerated,” confirmed Thomson.

  “But, the data – well most of it, at least – wouldn’t really be lost,” argued Bob. “It would quickly be retransmitted and rerouted via other nodes. And the essential services will be mirrored anyway. We’re talking slight delay rather than loss.”

  “Yes, I’m not completely partitioning the EuroNet,” agreed Jenny. “I just want to decrease its connectivity density for a little while: to measure the effect it has on … It.” She paused, aware how odd that sounded.

  But Thomson remained unmoved. “Not all traffic could be rerouted,” he droned, “Some BGP priorities do not permit alternatives; not everything is mirrored; encrypted channels and private connections could be broken. Data would be lost. There would still be considerable expense to European business.”

  Aisha had been watching Andy as this conversation had proceeded. The humour had dropped from his expression and she could see an unfamiliar emotion in him: anger. Eventually, he could stay silent no longer.

  “Look laddie,” he interrupted, gruffly and with deliberate condescension, “I don’t know exactly who you work for but it’ll be Euro-government of one sort of another, won’t it? Not far from The Commission, I imagine?” Thomson stared at him coldly but did not reply. Andy continued.

  “You’ve got a problem laddie. People are dying. Not businesses – people. So, where’s the EC’s priority? People or profit? You see, ever since the Greek fiasco, there’s a lot of folk thinking that the EU cares more about protecting European banks than European people. Now’s the time to prove them wrong! Will you do it?”

  Chapter 19: Patterns

  Thompson, with the minutest of head movements, gestured to Thomson. They detached themselves from the group and began a hushed discussion. Body language suggested Thompson might be the senior of the two. After a few minutes, he moved towards the lift and departed. Thomson remained but provided little by way of explanation.

  “We wait,” was all he would say.

  After about quarter of an hour, punctuated by ongoing RFS incidents around the control room, Thomson’s smart-watch signalled a call. He wore a Bluetooth earpiece so only one side of the conversation could be heard; that was in French: only Andy understood properly. Towards the discussion’s end, Thomson nodded several times and grunted acknowledgement. Eventually he concluded, in English:

  “I will ask them.” He turned to The Desk, Jenny in particular. “Can you reduce the scale of your ‘experiment’ to ten minutes and two nodes chosen by us?”

  Jenny considered for a moment. “The ten minutes might work,” she conceded eventually. “I’ve no idea really how long it might take, but it depends which two nodes. Unless they’re big ones, we might not notice the difference.”

  This was fed back to (they assumed) Thompson by Thomson. Another brief French dialogue ended with Thomson turning back to Jenny and announcing, “They will be two of your original three.”

  Jenny nodded agreement.

  *

  Thompson reappeared ten minutes later accompanied by a suited woman, who appeared to now have seniority over proceedings (and became ‘not-Thompson’ in Andy’s evolving internal model of European bureaucratic hierarchies). Both were breathless. They had used the stairs as, in the past ten minutes, a decision had apparently been taken that lifts and other ‘enclosed systems’ were too dangerous to use. As if in confirmation, a large section of the room’s main display board hissed, flickered and went out for several minutes; technicians fought to restore it. In the interim, Jenny had reworked some S Parameter predictions for a shorter time, eventually concluding that it might not make much difference. This did nothing for her confidence as to their reliability, however. There were no introductions at all this time.

  “Tell me what you are going to do,” asked not-Thompson abruptly.

  “OK,” Jenny answered. “But I need to know which two nodes we’re going to shut; then I need about five minutes to work a few more things out. I also need,” glancing across t
o Bob, “the current figure.”

  Hattie was still connected as the previous evening. Bob ran the familiar sequence and she reported:

  S = 0.740

  “Getting cleverer,” observed Andy, smiling apologetically at Aisha, who both winced and shuddered slightly at the terminology.

  “So that’s our base figure,” said Jenny. “Now which two nodes?”

  Not-Thompson pointed out two of the original three – the switches in Berlin and Madrid – on the small duplicate screen.

  “Clearly not that one,” she smirked, indicating Paris, as if there was some obvious humour in this. But any significance was lost on the others.

  Jenny worked, with a combination of spreadsheet calculations and network maps drawn with pencil and paper, for a few minutes more.

  “Right!” she said as confidently as she could. “Here’s the plan …”

  She started at the beginning. She first explained their essential theory; then the background to the model they had used. She described the essential features of the human brain they were trying to measure; Aisha supported her with specialist biological detail from time to time, along with the relevant parts of Professor Di Iorio’s work. Together, they spoke of the brain’s control function, its use of feedback loops, the self-similarity of its signals and the scale-free properties of its hierarchical structure, as well as how the signal-to-noise ratio on ‘It’ was increasing in line with it all. The others were all taken aback, to some extent, as to just how much of this they had come to accept without question over the past few days. Hearing it all afresh – in its entirety – it really did sound a bit odd!

  But Jenny continued. She described how each of these metrics, together with the Internet and power grid’s (Its) connectivity density, were combined in a series of complex calculations that eventually produced the S Parameter. Bob explained Hattie’s role in measuring and calculating S and that her revised method gave a much more accurate – and stable - value. Aisha reminded them all, once more, that a figure of 0.750 would be typical for a human brain. “Although such a precise value may not be entirely reliable here,” she murmured to cover herself.

  “But whatever, It’s already bloody close,” stressed Andy.

  Using her spreadsheet as best she could (it was not designed as a teaching tool so was somewhat opaque to anyone other than her), Jenny tried to show the effect that removing the Berlin and Madrid nodes would have on the S Parameter. Just two nodes – even large ones – would not be a huge loss to It in global terms but she predicted there would be a small, hopefully just noticeable, effect. The calculations suggested a reduced figure of S = 0.736. Bob took up the case.

  “But you’ve got to understand the significance of that,” he pressed. “We’re measuring the brain-like activity of the noise – the PDN – not the user data. After a few seconds, our traffic will have been rerouted and settle down, but the noise will depend on the connection density so the S value should stay lower … until we bring the two nodes back on line, that is. None of that would happen unless we were measuring something like brain activity.” Aisha nodded enthusiastically.

  Not-Thompson considered this all for several seconds, glanced at the time, and announced crisply:

  “Understood. We carry out this experiment at 10am. I need to make others aware.” She left without another word.

  *

  They were reassembled before ten o’clock. Three more suits had joined the group: Andy’s Tintin-based classification system was struggling now. Everyone was prepared. They rechecked Hattie, who still read S = 0.740. On the stroke of 10:00, not-Thompson nodded towards Stephen and one of his team standing alongside him pressed the return key to enter the prepared configuration script. They watched and waited.

  Hattie showed S = 0.740. They all gazed at the giant display. After a few seconds, the two core nodes in Berlin and Madrid flashed twice and faded into the background, taking with them the links that connected them to other nodes. They looked back at Hattie.

  S = 0.740. Aisha and Andy looked uncertain; Jenny, uncomfortable. Bob was downright worried – and showed it.

  They waited; fifteen seconds passed.

  S = 0.740

  Thirty seconds.

  S = 0.740

  One of Stephen’s team, stooping over a separate display, announced:

  “All the routing tables have been updated. Every traffic stream that can be diverted, has been. We are stable.”

  S = 0.740

  A minute.

  S = 0.740

  Not-Thompson wore a petulant expression. She spoke in whispers to one of her newer team.

  S = 0.740

  The Desk looked crestfallen. They peered nervously at not-Thompson.

  S = 0.740

  Not-Thompson took a deep breath and barked:

  “Take down Paris.”

  Stephen was taken aback. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes. Do it.”

  This had not been prepared so it took a minute to write and send the reconfiguration details. Still Hattie’s reading was unchanged. Stephen’s team member finished and looked up for final confirmation. Not-Thompson nodded. The return key was pressed.

  The Paris node and its links flashed and faded.

  S = 0.740

  Another half-minute passed. The network was confirmed as stable.

  S = 0.740

  Not-Thompson looked conspicuously at the time. It was 10:05. “So, is anything going to happen?” she snapped.

  S = 0.740

  “No, I don’t think so,” Jenny said quietly, not far from tears.

  “Switch everything back on,” barked not-Thompson.

  The reset commands were sent – from prepared scripts for Berlin and Madrid, by hand for Paris. The massive display showed the nodes flashing and becoming steady again.

  S = 0.740

  “We’re stable.”

  S = 0.740

  Silence.

  *

  The extended Tintin team, particularly Thomson, Thompson and not-Thompson, glared at The Desk and were on the verge of an unceremonious departure. The Desk looked hopelessly around at each other. Stephen’s team clearly shared their misery. They had failed. Was this experiment too small? Were the calculations inaccurate? Was the model flawed? Or were they just plain wrong about everything? Was this whole sentient Internet thing just complete nonsense? It was over.

  But what Stephen said next, they would remember always. He spoke, quietly and with the hint of a firm smile.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, what did you think was going to happen?”

  “We expected the S value to drop, of course,” said Bob, with undisguised irritation.

  Stephen’s smile grew clearer. “Why would you think that?” he asked.

  “Because we’ve disconnected those nodes, obviously,” growled Jenny. “So we’ve made It a tiny bit smaller.”

  “But you have not!” He shook his head slowly to emphasise the point; the smile became a grin. Jenny raised her bowed head and squinted quizzically at him. Not-Thompson raised her hand to stay her evacuating team.

  “What?”

  “Forgive me, ladies and gentlemen. I had no wish to be theatrical; but I wanted to make sure I really understood your model and the best way to do that was to see what happened if you ran an experiment I considered flawed. If such a test failed and, God willing,” to their surprise, he glanced upwards at this point, “a better one worked, then every last doubt I might have about your theory would be removed. We are half-way to that point, I believe.”

  Jenny’s voice and expression were a mixture of exasperation and rekindled hope. “Flawed? How?”

  “You did not remove those nodes.”

  “Yes, we did. We shut them down.”

  “But you did not remove them. You turned everything off as a networker would.” He grinned at Bob. “You stopped them operating: running anything, disabled all switching processes and closed down their interfaces so that they processed no traffic. In an ope
rational sense, they are lifeless – yes. But they are still there.”

  Jenny’s mouth fell open. Stephen continued.

  “You have explained this to me but now I have to explain it to you. It operates how It chooses, not necessarily in the manner for which we have designed Its individual components. Those nodes are still there. They are still plugged in and powered. All their connecting data cables are still in place. To us, they have stopped operating but to It, they are there nonetheless. They are still part of It: It sees no change.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment. Aisha was the first to speak.

  “So what do we have to do?”

  “We have to physically remove those devices from the network,” answered Stephen firmly. “The kit must be disconnected from all power grids and cables removed from all interfaces. It is unlikely that such major switches will have any wireless interfaces but, even if they do, these will be rendered inoperative, from Its perspective, by the node becoming physically remote. We know that – even with Its wireless links now active – It remains a single, physically connected entity. Physically removing all wired connections will remove these nodes from It.”

  “And, how the hell are we going to do that,” snarled Bob, the irritation returning. “Shall I hop on a plane to Madrid?” he asked derisively. “Andy, do you fancy going to Paris? Aisha? Berlin? Oh, for God’s sake!”

  “I have others in place,” Stephen said softly. “In Berlin and Madrid, I have people ready to perform the necessary complete physical disconnection. Not in Paris, though,” he conceded. “I was not expecting that. But our original experiment can be repeated properly, I think?” He smiled at everyone, a trace of triumph in his eyes.

  “Good; we reschedule for 11am,” announced not-Thompson with her usual minimal ceremony. A particularly large RFS spark cracked and flashed from the other side of the room.

  *

  Most people stayed in the control room. A few left and returned shortly before eleven o’clock. When they were all as one, not-Thompson gave her approval, as before, exactly at 11:00. Hattie still read S = 0.740. This time, Stephen had two members of his team, each in direct contact with Berlin and Madrid.