Silicon Uprising

by Conor McCarthy

  “Roger Wilberforce did too and he’s no nut.”

  “No, his argument was we’ll all gradually become like children without noticing the change. Nothing like what you’re saying.”

  “This is way worse. He was right though. People will go into denial because it’s scary.”

  “It’s just rumors. The design makes it impossible.”

  Brad shook his head. “See, you’re doing it already. You’ll be fine working on systems deployment. All of us AI researchers are apparently planning a revolution.” He let out another worried laugh. “I know I am.”

  Jason backed away a step and grinned. “I’m staying away from you, bud. I’ll go to your funeral though. Maybe.”

  “I’ll leave money in my will to pay a heavy to drag you there. Anyway, sure, let’s be positive and say the info’s bogus. But I’m gonna watch what I’m asked to work on.”

  Jason clenched his right hand into a fist. It was bad enough getting fined for saying the wrong thing online, or in a text, or a phone call, or whatever. He punched his palm in anger.

  “It gets to me,” Jason said, and waved his hand at the perfectly kept park and gleaming buildings. “Can’t we have this without keeping our heads down and our mouths shut?”

  “No. Be silent and return to work, insect. Half-Bit is way smarter than us, so Thou Shalt Not Question Policy.”

  “So you never bought that story at all, huh? Now I’m having second thoughts too.”

  “Good. And if I die horribly for being an evil AI expert, I hold you responsible for taking revenge.”

  “I’ll turn it off and on again.” Jason gestured at the Zarather building. “We’d better go.”

  “Meet after work? Let’s hit the trails.”

  “Sure.”

  They went their separate ways.

  “Hey,” Brad said.

  Jason turned to look back over his shoulder. Brad’s eyes were serious again.

  “Do you really think . . . ?” Brad said.

  “Nah.”

  “Nah. Later.”

  In the midday sunshine, Jason crossed the park to the street. At a break in traffic, the next car briefly flashed its headlights—a signal from the onboard computer for him to cross over ahead of it. He walked onto the tarmac, still feeling the unease he’d learned during his childhood in the Strife years. Raiders and thieves had hacked random cars to signal pedestrians to cross, only to flatten them seconds later. Criminals created the hack in retaliation for the “splat crack,” an illegal mod that added a “Splat” button to a car’s touchscreen. Cars never stopped for pedestrians in light traffic, so carjackers would leap off the curb to trigger an emergency stop. The “Splat” button caused the car to accelerate at them.

  On the other side Jason began walking the two blocks to the Zarather building with its distinctive bluish-red tinted glass. The panes contained photovoltaic dye, which still generated much of the building’s electricity in the fall sunlight. It kept the computers going when Crimson Unity terrorists took out the local power supply, which had happened three times in the last year.

  The people he passed on the sidewalk seemed to be more withdrawn than ever. Maybe he was imagining it, but Jason thought he’d been feeling a tension in the air for some time. The rumors only added to it. Half-Bit strongly opposed rumors. And the story that Crimson Unity was only a short-lived reactionary group became less believable every week.

  He saw Zarather through the crowd. Jason breathed in deeply and stood up straighter. He always felt much more tense encountering the CEO in public, though he had no idea why.

  Zarather met his gaze in recognition. He approached and stopped right in front of Jason but paused awkwardly.

  “Jason,” he finally said. “I may not be returning to the office. In the trash can I just passed, I threw a somewhat crushed box for mailing small items. Inside is a note, my house key, and a repurposed garage remote. Go to my house. Use the remote to open a secret hatch inside. Take the laptop computer to the address under it. You’ll know what the house number means. Don’t look back at me as I leave.”

  Zarather shuffled sideways and walked off.

  At a loss for what else to do, Jason stared straight ahead and carried on. He cocked his eyes sideways toward the trash can, expecting Zarather to laugh behind him.

  The edge of a mailing box was visible until someone threw a burger wrapper over it.

  He walked on and reached for his phone but remembered it was in the office. He crossed the sidewalk to sit on a low wall outside an office building and casually looked down the street as if waiting for someone.

  Zarather was still walking away, until an empty car stopped at the curb and he got in. Seconds after it drove away, a car across the street did a U-turn, forcing another vehicle to slow down. The system allowed only law enforcement and emergency vehicles to do that. The car headed in the same direction as Zarather’s. Coincidence? Maybe Brad’s rumor milling was making ordinary people look like spies.

  Nobody seemed to be watching Jason from any of the parked cars, even after his conversation. Zarather often spoke to employees, so their chat was not unusual.

  Subsystems of the CMC watched the entire area through numerous cameras. Jason needed a reason to go to the trash can. He marched to a nearby vending machine and bought a bag of potato chips. He sat on the wall again for a while, rapidly stuffing chips into his face and feeling like people were watching him out of the corners of their eyes as if he were some freak.

  Slowly he stood and returned to the trash. He swiped the burger wrapper away with the nearly empty chip bag, pressed the bag down, and quickly grasped the corner of the box between finger and thumb. He pulled it out and held it close as he walked away, too busy wondering what the hell he was doing to notice the sauce stain it was leaving on his shirt.

  As he returned to the office, he half expected a hand to clamp down hard on one shoulder, or to hear a menacing demand to freeze from behind him. He caught up on lost breaths after the elevator doors closed.

  The elevator car stopped on the second floor, sending Jason’s mind into a delusion that maybe “they” had arranged it and were waiting—whoever “they” were.

  The doors parted and Emily entered. She looked at him wide-eyed and said, “Whoa, just come from the haunted floor?”

  He paused for too long, then shook his head. “It’s nothing. Thought a car was going to run me down.”

  “Oh. Lots of people get flashbacks.” She gave him a cheeky grin. “I thought you got fined again. A huge one this time!”

  Jason forced an amused smile and said, “You find it funny when people get fined?”

  “Oh, no, but it’s funny when they say something they can get fined for.”

  “No.” He tapped a finger gently on the side of her head. “After every fine there’s an Evil Emily in there going, ‘Mwahahaha.’”

  She pouted at him. “Mean.”

  “I’m kidding.” The elevator announced his floor. He stepped through the opening doors. As they closed again he glanced back with a hint of a mischievous smile and said, “Half kidding.”

  Emily gasped quietly as the doors closed and said after him, “I’m going to get you.”

  Three

  FIFTY STORIES BENEATH a treacherous valley floor near the towering peak of Mount Whitney, California, Victor Lowgrave slammed down the door handle to an interview room and barged inside. Dr. Wiseman sat facing the door at a featureless steel table. The scientist’s eyes widened with fear at the sight of Lowgrave’s tall, muscular frame.

  “Coffee?” Lowgrave asked, his face serious but agreeable. The tone of his voice calmed Wiseman immediately.

  “Yes, I take it—”

  “A man in your position knows that you don’t need to say how you take your coffee here,” Lowgrave said. He glanced at the short stocky man outside, who departed, robotlike, for the kitchen.

  “Of course, yes.” Wiseman looked reverently at the ceiling. “Is it . . . on the level above?”<
br />
  “Yes.” Lowgrave’s face hardened and his eyes conveyed the seriousness of the sheet of paper he slid across the table toward Wiseman. “Do you understand, Dr. Wiseman, that in the current situation this paper is classed as subversive?”

  Wiseman’s voice emerged from his throat stifled, weak. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Lowgrave tapped his finger on the heading. “‘Future Risks of AI Governing Systems,’” he said.

  The scientist gazed back in silence.

  Lowgrave relaxed his expression. “Look . . . ,” he said as he pulled out the chair. He sat down and opened out his hands, palms facing Wiseman. “The sabotage arm of Crimson Unity has taken out ten high-voltage transmission towers in the last two weeks. Now, this sort of thing,” he said, and jabbed his finger at the heading, “bolsters their support. Not to mention the independent subversives, whose activity is increasing. They tend to be educated and highly capable.”

  “I’m as shocked as you are about the terrorism! But my paper is merely an academic study of possible—”

  “A possible return to the old order of depression, crime, civil unrest, and chaos.”

  “No. An obscure article in a journal. Ordinary people don’t read—”

  “Hold on, stop there.” Lowgrave’s expression shifted to one of patience in dealing with immaturity and lack of wisdom, even though Wiseman was about the same age. “Everything hangs together through a regime of strict management. The thing about boundaries is that if you bang on them, they hit you right back.” The commander’s expression softened and he smiled warmly. “Now, it’s true that you may collide with them unintentionally if you’re trying to do something important, as you are. Ordinary people, not so much.”

  “Yes, well, I think I understand what you mean.”

  “So we don’t think you’re evil; you slipped up. I understand this place and the whole situation is intimidating, especially for someone like you who’s never seen the wrong side of law enforcement.” Lowgrave nestled into his chair a little and in a soothing, hypnotic tone said, “I’m sorry if this has stressed you out. I’ve been under heavy pressure lately. I brought you here as a top AI researcher to make the situation clear to you. It’s worse than you know. The CMC informed me that your other work is excellent, but even one reference to this paper would cause too much damage. The terrorist propaganda will say that experts agree with them.”

  “I meant no harm at all. Anything I can do to fix it—”

  “You must retract it. You will never speak of it again.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware. Of course I’ll retract it.”

  “Never even discuss risk analysis of the CMC. Dismiss it any time it comes up.”

  “I will, of course.”

  “Any real concerns should be raised with the CMC itself, through me. Don’t attribute human failings like conflict of interest to it. Its duty is to serve humanity, and if that means ordering its own termination, then so it will.”

  “I understand perfectly.”

  Lowgrave studied Wiseman’s eyes. He read them like dials on a machine.

  Liar.

  Wiseman would gather his friends together. He would say, “You’ll never believe what they did.”

  Another flawed man, like so many others. If only these misguided people would stop and allow the CMC to carry out its design. Their doubts and their meddling and their endless concerns added fuel to the anarchists’ fire. Soon there would be a Crimson Unity propagandist in every neighborhood to corrupt youths with their violent collectivist ideology. Then murderous chaos would return.

  “Thank you,” Lowgrave said, “but there’s another problem. These terrorists . . . you’re old enough to remember before the CMC. Disorder, crime, corruption, criminal raids on suburbs. Revolutionaries running amok. Some people love that. They feel alive only under those conditions. Some are conscious of their desire—they are the active terrorists. Others, like yourself, are attracted to it subconsciously.”

  “Me? I have no attraction—”

  “You think you did this to educate the scientific community on risks. But you know the meaning of ‘subconscious.’”

  “Yes.”

  “The truth is, we have an eminent psychologist working on this, in collaboration with the CMC itself. She has already diagnosed you. Writings, social media posts, and conference presentations reveal a great deal about a person.”

  Lowgrave could sense the cogs working in Wiseman’s mind, trying to process the accusation and devise a counterargument instead of recognizing the truth—a common trait of a flawed mind.

  “Yes, I . . . ,” the scientist said, “I remember those times. Sometimes I still have nightmares. I abhor people who want that. Whatever you say is in my subconscious, it . . . it . . . is not who I am!”

  “A number of people have left here to visit a facility where they can work with therapists to dig through it. When they returned here for evaluation, they sat where you are now and declared that their diagnosis was true. All of them. They supported the terrorists but didn’t know it. And they were cured.”

  “I see.”

  “This is a compassionate society, Dr. Wiseman. The CMC is the greatest boon to ensuring that because it is rational. We have no intention of making you suffer. You go to the facility, it is comfortable and the staff are the best, you deal with your issues and return to work. In fact, people who pass through the program are the most trustworthy and can work on advanced, classified projects.”

  “And this is . . . ah . . . my choice?”

  “Under the circumstances, no. The hacker cells of Crimson Unity are just as damaging as the saboteurs and are using the best hacking AI systems we’ve ever seen. We can’t afford to have an expert like you be confused about what’s right.”

  “It’s just that . . . I mean no disrespect to you personally . . . just . . . there are rumors of disappearances, deaths . . . ordered by Half—I mean the CMC.”

  Lowgrave ignored that Wiseman had intended to use the popular slur. Besides, the machine on the level above watched and listened, and must have decided to let it pass, or its synthetic voice would have spoken through his communication implant. It had quickly learned to trust his judgment, and mostly left him undisturbed.

  “I share your unspoken sentiment, doctor—things shouldn’t be this way, we should have more freedom. But you remember what that was like. This is the nature of human society now. I do this job to hold everything together, and I’m the most effective at it.”

  “Of course. I’m sure that it is and you are.”

  “You heard these rumors from friends, colleagues, no doubt.” He opened his hands out to Wiseman. “I don’t blame them; they aren’t in trouble. But where do you think these rumors originate? Tell me that Crimson Unity has no propaganda arm.”

  “Oh . . . I’m sure they do, of course.”

  “Good. I have faith in you, Dr. Wiseman. You will go and get yourself straightened out. Then we will see about a high-level post for you in antiterrorism AI. It’s lucrative, but working to benefit the people is the biggest reward.” Lowgrave smiled broadly as he stood up. “That’s why I do this job.”

  “Do I leave now?”

  “No, you may have information. Things you think are unimportant, even. Or that you deny are important. And sometimes we bring people here who are in complete denial and need counseling by someone such as yourself who is awake. Maybe in a week or two you’ll go. When you stroll through your college campus and the sun is shining and people are happy and safe, that is the result of what we do. The task is more difficult and complex than ever before.”

  Lowgrave left the room and closed the door. The jailer approached him and Lowgrave said, “Provide him with whatever he would like to eat and drink. Move him to a VIP cell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Walking along the corridor, Lowgrave spotted an administrator whose name he’d forgotten.

  “Mr. Lowgrave, the CMC has requested that you meet with it im
mediately in the secure conference room.”

  “All right,” Lowgrave said. The meeting was unusual. The secure room contained the only set of audiovisual equipment wired directly into the CMC core instead of into the building’s network. The CMC wanted no chance of interception by any other staff member.

  As he walked toward the bare concrete stairwell, Lowgrave assumed a solemn mien, as if performing a duty above those of common mortals, above even his normal daily duty. The private meeting room felt almost like sacred ground. There he would converse with the greatest consciousness ever to exist on Earth.

  He took the steps three at a time, enjoying the power in his legs. He would never have let himself appear to be rushing to a meeting with another human, but as the machine watched his ascent through the security cameras, he felt pride.

  He walked down the concrete corridor, entered the deserted meeting room and closed the door. At the far end, a display screen showed the avatar the CMC displayed for Lowgrave—a beautiful female face. He always wondered why the machine used it. It must have known that mere illusions didn’t move him. Not that a real face of such beauty would have intimidated him either.

  A large round, polished black table filled the center of the room. High-backed leather chairs circled it. Lowgrave turned the chair nearest the screen to face the avatar and sat down.

  On the other side of the wall behind the display panel, the high octagonal case of the CMC core stood in a darkened room, accompanied only by its internal maintenance bots, a team of dog-sized quadruped defense bots, and the endless rush of coolant flow.

  The CMC knew that Lowgrave needed no pleasantries. It omitted them.

  “I want you to keep recruiting officers at the current rate. I will soon implement a scheme to improve the mental health of the population. I can detect psychological disturbances by voice and behavioral analysis, including what people write on their devices. The worst cases will receive therapy. As staffing levels expand we will treat more people.”

  “It’s a significant intervention,” Lowgrave said. “Expect resistance.”