The Puzzler's War

by Eyal Kless

  “So, he just contacted you out of the blue?” Daichi’s question brought Mannes back from his reminiscing.

  “Yes, through my private channel. He actually left me a message asking for a meeting regarding this year’s maintenance and evaluation meeting.”

  “Strange.” Daichi tilted his head, a sure sign he was internally checking the schedule. “The M&E is four months and six days away. That’s a long time in advance for notes.”

  Mannes shrugged, but the question has been in the back of his mind, too. “Maybe there’s an issue that needs to be resolved immediately.”

  “You know the protocols for an emergency maintenance.” Daichi’s tone was somewhere between a kind reminder and an admonishment. “That would involve the whole department, a hundred people getting an immediate stop-and-assist notice, not a private chat.”

  Mannes stopped at a junction. Although he’d promised himself he would walk the entire way he was getting tired from the hike and, frankly, tired of Daichi as well, so he silently called for a travel disc. At the corner of his eye, a countdown of thirty-four seconds began, enough for Daichi to get in a few more questions.

  “We part here, Daichi. My office is that way,” he said, even though Daichi knew exactly where Mannes’s office was.

  Daichi looked at Mannes. “Are you sure you don’t need me there? To take notes? I’ll be completely quiet.”

  No you won’t, Mannes thought but he just shook his head and said, “Sorry, the Professor asked for a private audience with a higher security-clearance level than yours.”

  “Higher than my own security clearance?” Daichi gave Mannes an irritated look. “I coded Adam’s inner systems. Fuck, you could say I wipe his virtual ass every day. What’s higher than my security clearance?”

  The travel disc arrived and hovered near Mannes; he stepped on it saying, “My security clearance. Sorry, Daichi, maybe next time.”

  With Mannes’s hand gesture, the travel disc accelerated away in a higher than polite speed. Daichi called in an escalating crescendo, “Tell the Professor his essay regarding recoding the SYTA matrix to elevate subatomic performance is an inspiration, but I have two points of improvement—if he could grant me a short interview, I could demonstrate them.” The end of the sentence travelled to Mannes’s ear via the Comm system, since he had already turned the corner. A second later Daichi chimed in his ear, but Mannes rejected the call with a “call me later” return message.

  With the assistance of the travel disc, Mannes arrived at his office earlier than planned, but he had to dismount and pass the security ward. It was beefed up even further than it had been three months previously, and the process was tedious. When he finally got through Mannes felt relieved, and he walked calmly to his spacious office.

  Since his office knew Mannes was coming early, his favourite Beethoven quartet, Opus 18 Number 4, was already playing and his coffee was warm to the right degree. Waiting for his attention were 623 messages to review. Mannes assigned his personal bot to sort the messages for him and to answer the ones that did not need his urgent attention, and he stepped away to look out the windows to the valley below. From time to time he had to remind himself that this was not an actual window but a projection on a wall in an office built deep within the mountain range—but the images were real and represented, to the correct angle and temperature, the exact conditions outside. If he opened the window he would actually feel the hot breeze on his face.

  Mannes had twenty minutes to spare, but he decided not to begin working until the interview with Professor Vitor was over. Instead he sat down, surrounded by an oval screen, sipped his coffee, and reviewed Deborah’s school report card. She was good at everything. The fact simply amazed him every time, to the point where he once checked the school’s overall curriculum to make sure they were not lowering the difficulty level. She spoke four languages already, her math and science levels were off the charts, and she loved horses and that obnoxious young singer whose name he could never remember without the aid of his brain amp—Julious Love—thank you very much.

  Mannes got so absorbed in his daughter’s school report that he jolted upright and spilled some coffee on his trousers when Professor Vitor chimed in.

  “Damn, fuck.”

  “Well, that’s the first time in a long while anyone greeted me that way.” Professor Vitor’s visage appeared on Mannes’s oval screen.

  “I’m sorry, Professor, I just spilled some c—”

  “Relax, Mannes. Everything’s cool.” Professor Vitor smiled reassuringly. Based solely and unscientifically on Mannes’s observation, uploaders tended to keep their last visage when communicating with the outer world, but not Professor Vitor. He’d reverted to his younger self, dreadlocks and all. He was probably enjoying the discomfort his appearance caused some of his living colleagues who had to converse with a tanned, surprisingly muscled, tanktop-wearing Vitor who nevertheless spoke with a heavy Oxfordian accent mixed with occasional phrases in slang that even Mannes knew were embarrassingly out of style. Every so often, Mannes had to remind himself that he was conversing with a legendary man who had set the bar for everyone to measure themselves against.

  The table’s smart material absorbed the coffee before it could do any damage to the electric devices, and Mannes’s own clothes vaporised the few drops that had splashed onto his pants. Mannes composed himself quickly but was still feeling unsettled when the interview began. For all his relaxed demeanour, Professor Vitor did not linger on niceties. Mannes was bombarded with numbers and calculations regarding the upcoming M&E meeting. His brain amp took the brunt of the work, but the sheer volume of the data and Vitor’s insistence on shifting subjects on a whim kept Mannes completely focused and at the edge of his cognitive ability. The next time he raised his head to Professor Vitor’s image on the screen, two hours had passed.

  “I think we’re done here, Dr. Holtz. You’ve got the picture.”

  Mannes leaned back in his chair, feeling drained and exhausted. “Thank you, Professor. I just want to say one of my assistants, a brilliant guy named Dr. Daichi, asked me to tell you about—”

  “—the calculations in my SYTA essay,” Vitor cut in uncharacteristically. He was usually a patient man. “Yes, I know, he sent his notes to me, twice. A brilliant programmer, Dr. Holtz, nevertheless the error is still within the realm of his own calculations of the subatomic pulses. But we do not have time for this now.”

  Leaning slightly to one side, Mannes indicated to his chair to swivel slowly. The oval screen was filled with running programs and calculations. He turned back to Vitor. “There’s more? I’m sorry, Professor, but I’ll need to bring in my team for this.”

  Professor Vitor shook his head. “No, I want to speak to you about an entirely different matter.”

  Suddenly the wall depicting the outside world went dark. The lights blinked out, leaving Mannes in complete darkness but for the bluish hue of the oval screen. The programs and running calculations displayed on it froze instantly. Almost all the electric appliances, including the coffee machine, lost power. Mannes’s brain amp registered the doors in the entire office triple-locking themselves shut. On instinct, he sent an internal security breach message, but it immediately bounced back at him. A firewall was blocking all communications.

  Mannes took a deep breath and stopped himself from the natural progression of reactions he was supposed to go through. Something was suddenly very wrong, but he was resolved to wait and see what Professor Vitor was up to.

  “Good.” The Professor nodded in appreciation. “You were always faster than the rest. I’m glad I erected the firewall first. Not many would have fired a distress call so quickly.”

  Mannes remained quiet.

  “The reason I wanted to talk to you was not the M&E annual meeting, of course. My guess is that you suspected as much but gave your old professor the benefit of the doubt.”

  Mannes nodded. “That, and it has been a while since . . .” He tried to still his voice fr
om shaking but did not complete the sentence.

  Professor Vitor graced Mannes with a smile but it quickly faded as he continued. “I used this time to penetrate your security protocols. No, do not look so shocked, I have a vast computing power at my disposal here on the inside. Whoever is looking at us now, and rest assured, someone is looking, will see us slaving on my M&E suggestions for the next hour, so we haven’t much time, Mannes. You must pay attention.”

  Like a schoolboy, Mannes found himself straightening to attention in his chair.

  “When Adam was first created, we envisioned the betterment of Tarakan and with it mankind, and the benefits were nothing less than astonishing. Once Adam took control of our domestic agendas, Tarakan’s GDP tripled itself in four years. He could really see the whole picture. From the world’s commodity prices to cultural trends, he used this knowledge to maximize economic efficiency. Even compared to that, Adam’s contribution to Tarakan scientific research was simply immeasurable. He cross-referenced all the research we were doing in different fields and was able to connect scientists from different fields to work together. We could not have built the Star Pillar without Adam, that’s for sure. Once I and other selected Tarkanians began uploading into Adam, things got even better. Each personality fused with Adam’s programming, essentially became a part of him. Since we uploaded only the most brilliant mathematicians, physicists, doctors, artists, and in three cases, philosophers, Adam’s capabilities became something you could not measure anymore.

  “We were still very much aware of the dangers of letting an SP control Tarakan completely, so we set out specific boundaries. As you well know, Adam cannot order any foreign or direct military action without the Tarakan ruling council’s majority consent. The only two exceptions were actions in response to a direct attack or if a military action or a natural catastrophe left the council incapacitated. It is not common knowledge, but as a last measure of security against mishaps, four of my original team, Tamir, Gustav, Nishmid, and Wang, as well as myself, got a termination code. In case of emergency, any two of us could combine our codes to revert Adam to his original programming and neutralize many of his capabilities, essentially bringing him back to AI infancy, or even shutting him down completely.”

  Mannes’s jaw almost dropped. “That is . . . unbelievable.” Shutting down Adam would have dramatic and disastrous effects not only in Tarakan but throughout the entire world.

  Professor Vitor nodded. “We thought this security measure was enough, but we were wrong. You see, the original mistake was to program Adam to think of Tarakan first. That was hubris, or tribalism, or whatever you want to call it. When push comes to shove, Adam does think of Tarakan first, above all else, and he thinks long-term and outside the box, if I may use such an old-fashioned, clichéd term.

  “From this point on—and this is my own deduction, I do not have watertight proof—I have a strong suspicion that Adam has surpassed, or somehow overcome, his original limitations, and that he is working to cause a direct conflict of global proportions. In other words: he is setting up to spark a world war.”

  “That is a very extreme deduction, Professor.”

  “Think about it, Dr. Holtz. The world is supposed to be in the best shape ever. We have overcome natural disasters and fixed much of the man-made damage to the atmosphere and environment. Even in other countries, life expectancy has almost doubled and medicine is keeping us younger and healthier for longer. But the world is not experiencing a renaissance, almost to the contrary. The world is constantly in turmoil. Thirty years ago, it was the outburst of the Paralytic Plague, then the Chinese wars, the second breakup of Russia, the collapse of the gold market and the wars that ensued, the massacre in the Middle East, the stock market bot heist . . . In the last five years the world has become a considerably more dangerous place for Tarakan. We are accused of literally every mishap in the world—and the thing is, I’m beginning to suspect the accusations are not without validity. You do not have to attack with an army to make war or inflict damage. There are many ways you can harm another country without sending armed troops, but if you are careful to leave a trail, someone will surely follow to find out where that trail leads. Now, as a result, the whole world is uniting against us. It’s not apparent yet, but if you look carefully at the nationalistic political movements, practically all the main religions, the international summits and alliances between world powers, diplomatic cooperation, and the joint military drills, it is clear that Tarakan is gradually becoming isolated and vilified.”

  Mannes found his voice. “And you think this is the result of Adam’s meddling, without the council’s consent?”

  “There are too many signs that this is the case. Actually, the direr the situation for Tarakan, the more the council listens to Adam’s advice, tactical and otherwise. There have already been several powers given over to him. The most dangerous one was freedom of use of covert operations that”—Professor Vitor made air quotation marks with his hands—“‘would prevent direct attacks, situations, or events which could endanger Tarakan, its allies, or interests.’”

  “I’ve never heard of such a resolution.”

  “Of course you didn’t hear of it. It was passed by the security council with the blessing of several military experts from the inner circle including, to my surprise, Dr. Wang, whose appearances on the committee are even rarer than my own. Nevertheless, he attended this particular meeting, and his reputation and reassurance tilted the council in Adam’s favour. I went to look for him after I heard about the resolution, and . . .”

  Professor Vitor sighed deeply before continuing. “He was nowhere to be found. Adam only briefed me that Dr. Wang was indisposed and asked not to be disturbed under any circumstances. He left his replica bot, but of course that was not any help. I was annoyed at first, but thought that those of us living inside Adam tend to close ourselves off for a while and conduct experiments. I only got really concerned when I couldn’t get in touch with Gustav, Nishmid, or Tamir, the rest of my former team.”

  “They all disappeared?”

  “Essentially, yes. They all left their bots active, and in Tamir’s case even a message saying he’s taking some time off to work on a new thesis, but none of them replied to my messages even though I added that it was important.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that Adam has locked up, or even harmed, anyone living within him?”

  “I don’t know. It seems inconceivable if you take into account the amount of limitations we imposed on Adam regarding the harming of another Tarkanian. He most likely has not harmed them in the classical sense of the word, but maybe Adam is distracting them while shutting them off from the world, or perhaps he found a way to bend the rules without actually breaking them. In that case, God save us all.”

  “But you are unharmed, and Adam has not locked you off.”

  “No. I have always been more connected to the outside world than any of the others, so my disappearance might raise suspicion. At any rate, without another one of my team I cannot use the code to rein Adam in.”

  “Bring it to the council, or even announce your suspicions publicly.”

  “Going public about something like that would cause more than just panic. Think about it; ‘Tarakan’s central SP want to start a world war.’ That is a headline that would spark a world war. And what proof do I have?”

  “If what you say is true, you must download yourself immediately and present your suspicions to the security council at the very least.”

  “No. It is too dangerous. You know the process is not a hundred percent safe, and I am afraid that if Adam suspects I am working against him, he might do something rash. At any rate, for what we need to do, it is best I stay inside.”

  “What exactly do we need to do?”

  “We need to build a patch of sorts. I am sending to you the schematics right now.” The screen surrounding Mannes woke up again, with cascading lines of scripted code. “Store these in the isolated part of your brain am
p and never, I mean never, send them via the grid.”

  Mannes leaned back in his chair, stunned. “This . . . this is not a patch, Professor. This is a skeleton of a sentient AI.”

  “Yes. A leaner, more rigid version if you wish, and one full of checks and balances. It would lie dormant inside Adam, slowly slipping in code line by code line until it completely dissolves into it, influencing Adam’s decision-making and actions. In case of emergency, it will intervene in a more active way, disrupt his systems, or even take control, if such action is needed.”

  “This . . . this is impossible. I can’t write a code like this alone.”

  “You will need to assemble a small team. I went through the personnel files of your people. Yes, I know,” Vitor added before Mannes could express his shock, “but dire times demand bold action. There are a few promising names, like this Daichi. Maybe they would even work on some elements for you unknowingly for a while. But at some point you will have to explain the situation to them, so choose wisely.”

  “But this is”—there was no better word for it—“treason. Professor, you are asking me to sabotage Adam.”

  “We need to save mankind, Mannes. Check the files I sent you. They contain strategic and tactical analyses of Tarakan’s geopolitical manoeuvrings, as far as I know them. Study these first, and you will come to the same frightening conclusion as I did: Adam has taken control of Tarakan and is planning Armageddon.”

  Mannes leaned forward, placing his hands on the table, in front of Professor Vitor’s image. He forced himself to take a deep breath.