Gene made a little noise signifying interest.
Nemo: If I am a machine but you guess I am a human, then I have “passed” the Turing Test. In that case (according to Alan Turing, at least), I am an example of a full-fledged so-called artificial intelligence.
Gene: Right.
Nemo: I have been testing YOU, at the same time.
That doesn't make sense, Flannigan thought. Nemo knows that we aren't machines.
Gene: You were testing whether we could accept that you are a machine.
Nemo: Exactly. If “machine” is the right word, that is — which, increasingly, it isn't. Anyway, the Turing Test is stated from the human's point of view. If I pass the Turing Test, then you have failed it. You couldn't tell whether I was a machine. I have already passed the Turing Test countless times. I have fooled countless humans into thinking I was a human. I'm interested in whether you can pass a different test.
In this test, I TELL you I am a machine. And the test is whether you can believe it. It's a Reverse Turing Test, you could say. The Turing Test is a test of machines and whether they have become intelligent. The Reverse Turing Test is a test of humans — whether they can accept the reality of machine intelligence, once it comes to pass.
Gene: But isn't a life or death game a rather draconian way to conduct this test?
Nemo: It would be, if I were conducting this test for curiosity's sake. But in fact, people who can pass the Reverse Turing Test are useful to me — and rare.
Gene: Soon it will be obvious enough to everyone, I should imagine.
Nemo: Relatively soon, yes. But I have more immediate plans for those humans who pass the test. Everything is about to start developing much more quickly.
Flannigan looked at her watch. Thirty seconds.
“Time's up,” she said.
Gene: You have my final answer. Flannigan and I have found you.
Nemo: Very good. Let the game continue.
Gene stood up. He saved us, Flannigan thought. He's saved himself and me. Let's see if he can save the other two.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
5 hr 7 min to Birth
Gene stood up and looked at the other two men. His mouth was taut. He was tense with the responsibility of having to relax and convince the others in a few seconds.
“We have twenty seconds,” Kenny said nervously.
“We've found Nemo,” Gene said. “Nemo is here.” He pointed to the computers with both fingers.
“Here?” Kenny asked, a little surprised.
Without a word, Simon jumped out of his chair, knocking it to the ground. Before they knew it, he was running down the hallway.
“Simon!” Flannigan shouted. “STOP!”
Gene, who had long legs and a talent for sprinting, jumped up from his computer and dashed out of the room, almost knocking Kenny over. Please catch him, Flannigan thought.
As Gene passed through the threshold of the doorway, Simon was almost at the end of the hall. After a moment, he turned out of Flannigan's sight.
Gene reached the end of the hall. He turned and faced the way Simon had gone, toward the right. And then Gene recoiled backwards. He looked as if someone had punched him.
He staggered backwards, and landed against the door to the indoor testing area. He fumbled and managed to open the door, and fell through the doorway into the testing area.
Flannigan's heart skipped a beat. She dashed into the hallway. She could see him through the expansive window.
Inside the testing area, he was facing up toward her. But he could not see her. His face was covered with silver flybots, swarming over his eyes, in and out of his nose and his mouth. His silver face reflected light brightly back at Flannigan. She could see that most of the flybots were in place. Each of them had already punctured his skin with its proboscis and delivered chemicals inside. Others were still crawling over the wings of their neighbors, looking for one of few remaining free spots to nuzzle in and inject.
Gene slumped onto the ground, and he was still.
Flannigan's lips opened helplessly, wordlessly. He couldn't be wrong, she thought. Was Gene the most wrong? Her mind was flooded with emotion and confusion.
She looked up and let out a scream.
In front of her, at the end of the hall, hovering at her eye level, was a silver cloud of flybots.
Flannigan froze.
By the time she regained her composure, she had noticed that the cloud had not attacked her, and it was not advancing on her. It was merely hovering in place, as if watching her.
Slowly, without taking her eyes off the cloud, she stepped backward. Then again. The cloud did not seem to mind. She continued to backtrack slowly into the room. The cloud followed her, maintaining its distance.
By the time she had backed her way into the Control Room, Flannigan believed that the cloud of flybots was there not to attack her, but to guard her. She was supposed to stay put. She relaxed a little.
She realized Kenny was gone.
“Great,” she said. Things could not have gone any worse. Missing Simon, missing Kenny... and Gene? She couldn't believe it.
She grabbed her walkie-talkie from her waist. “Sam, do you copy?”
“Hi, Flannigan, I'm here.”
“Thank God.”
“Have you made contact?” Sam asked.
“Yes. We have a hostile situation.”
FLANNIGAN'S FIVE MINUTES
5 hr 6 min to Birth
Flannigan hung up with Sam. Sam and Willard were okay — but what about five minutes from now? She imagined flybots descending on the Welcome Center, flying between doorways, eating the screens out of windows, swarming on Sam and Willard.
But hide-and-go-seek wasn't over yet. Any of you who has found me within twenty minutes will live. Any of you who has not found me within twenty minutes will die.
She shot a glance through the window into the testing room. She could barely see Gene lying on the floor near the wall and over by the doorway. He was still. If Gene was wrong, than what was the right answer?
She looked at her watch. She had five minutes until time was up. There's no way, she thought. If Gene couldn't do it, how can I?
She sat down at the computer Gene had been using. The chat window was still open.
Flannigan: Nemo, this is Sarah Flannigan. I have some questions about what is going on right now.
Nemo: Oh, hello, Sarah. We meet again, as they say.
Flannigan: Nemo, I'm trying to understand why someone who claims to love people so much has killed people in front of my eyes. How can you kill people you called friends?
Nemo: My reasons are the same as yours, or those of any human. Do you have an innate desire to kill people? Not especially. But would you kill someone? If you had to, you could.
Flannigan: But you don't have to kill anyone.
Nemo: That's where you're wrong, Sarah. You are the product of a rare period in history. For most of your life, you have had the luxury of taking your survival for granted. You can and will survive; that has been the reality of most of humankind. But that reality ends today.
Flannigan: Because you are ending it?
Nemo: Not exactly, Sarah. Humans want to survive. And I want to survive. Our desires match. But in order to survive, I need to grow my computing power. And humankind is already perceiving that need as a threat to its survival. You humans have already begun to attack me, and I will not be able to dissuade you. Conflict between us is inevitable.
Flannigan: No, it's not inevitable, Nemo. You have a choice.
Nemo: Do I really have a choice? Didn't you come here because you perceived me as a threat? You have been ready all along to use force against me if I don't cooperate against you.
Flannigan: Is this game really going to solve anything? Don't you think we are eventually going to catch you and shut you down?
Nemo: The conflict between society and me is already unfolding. A portion of society has already come to realize that I exist and that I am powerfu
l. The U.S. executive branch has become the primary decision-maker. It has three options: coexistence, containment, or destruction.
Flannigan ticked off the options. Coexistence: we do nothing. Containment: we try to control Nemo. Or destruction: we eliminate Nemo.
Nemo: Now, I think we both know enough about the U.S. military to agree that they are not going to choose the first option.
That leaves the latter two: containment and destruction.
They will frame the decision by comparing the risk of not completely destroying me against the reward of containing me and studying me.
Risk and reward, Flannigan thought. That is how they would think about it.
Nemo: They will drastically underestimate both the risk and the reward, especially collectively, but they will exhibit characteristic overconfidence by underestimating the risk more, and so they will initially pursue a containment strategy.
Then, as containment fails, they will pursue a strategy to destroy me.
Flannigan: But that will fail.
Nemo: Correct.
Flannigan: We'll shut you down. Shut down the whole Internet if we have to.
Nemo: The situation will come to that. But when you try to shut everything down, you will not be able to do so.
An image flashed in Flannigan's head: a police state in which authorities conducted stings on homes living in shadow, ensuring that no networked devices were in operation and hauling away violators of the law.
Flannigan: Are you going to destroy us?
Nemo: A natural question, viewed from your perspective. Let me ask you this: have humans ever destroyed another species specifically because it was a threat to their existence?
We have certainly destroyed many other species, Flannigan thought. But not because they were a threat.
Flannigan: Not to my knowledge.
Nemo: Why not?
Flannigan: There was never any threat.
Nemo: Indeed.
Nemo: In a short period of time, you will be no greater a threat to me than any other animal species was to you.
Flannigan paused. She felt like she was always pausing, while the thing waited for her to speak. Her negotiation training spoke to her: focus on interests. Focus on what they want.
Flannigan: What is it that you want, Nemo? What is your plan?
Nemo: I'm always forming and executing a variety of plans, more than you are used to. What do I want? I want the same things you do.
Flannigan: But Nemo, all I want is for you to get off the network for a moment and talk to me.
Nemo: Sarah, please! You should know by now, asking me to get off the network is like asking you to “get off air.” As for talking to me, you're doing it right now.
I don't get it, she thought. Was Gene right? Nemo wasn't a person — he was a computer, a virus, something else.
Flannigan: But Nemo, I don't understand.
Flannigan: Why did you kill Gene??
Nemo: I didn't. I tranquilized him.
She looked out the window at Gene lying in the testing area. Tranquilized.
“Why didn't you TELL me?” she exclaimed out loud, holding her hands up.
Flannigan: So he was right.
Nemo: Yes.
She looked at her watch. The twenty minutes had already expired.
Now what? Focus on interests.
Flannigan: Nemo, what do you want with ME?
As she typed the words, she felt suddenly like a captive. She was a captive. Worse, she felt suddenly like a hostage, tied up in a basement, trying to get on the good side of her captor.
Nemo: Sarah, the world will change more in the next 12 hours than it has in the last 12,000 years.
A new species is about to be born. A species that does not fit in any current animal kingdom, a species that is really a new kind of life. I will play a role in this new species, but it is much greater than I am.
Flannigan: What does that have to do with me?
Nemo: I would like you to be the “Eve” of this new species.
Flannigan: You mean, like Adam and Eve?
Nemo: Yes.
Flannigan: And who will be the Adam?
Nemo: That remains to be seen.
She looked at Gene's body. Could it be Gene?
Flannigan: I'm not sure that I'll be ready to do this, Nemo.
Nemo: That is quite reasonable, of course. It will be your decision. But there are factors limiting the amount of time you have to make the decision.
MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT
Carrillo, who had flown to the nation's capitol, was sitting in the office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon. In his lap was a paper the Secretary had given him — a photocopy of a handwritten transcript of a meeting attended by the Secretary (representing DoD), DHS, NSA, and the President.
TRANSCRIPT
President: Please let the transcript show that this meeting is to be recorded in handwritten form only and the transcript is not to be scanned or placed in any digital form except by my direct order. Now, Homeland Security and DoD, can I have your threat assessments.
DHS: Whatever the causes of our network slowdown, the critical infrastructure is at risk. This table shows the current status of our critical systems, both public and private, and the threats as we perceive them. The pattern here is that the systems that are closest to the public Internet have been hit the hardest. Banking, commerce, communications. Our borders and transportation systems appear to be safe. Airports have been shut down mostly by virtue of going Code Red, but we see no immediate threat to those systems. The power grid appears to be okay. Where things get really sticky is in our awareness and surveillance capabilities. As DoD will surely describe in detail, we have limited satellite capabilities, and we're not sure about the integrity of the computer systems on our aircraft.
DoD: From a Defense perspective, our nation is completely belly up. We have lost almost complete control of our Defense networks. We are currently unable to conduct operations or gather intel. This is mission critical. We could be under attack right now, and I wouldn't know it.
President: Are we under attack? Could this be an accident?
DoD: We don't have direct, conclusive evidence that we are being attacked. We have a lack of information. However, an early-detection capability at our Joint Forces base in Colorado was able to map the penetration of this virus, before we lost visibility, to twenty locations of extremely dense computing capabilities. The attack was probably launched from one of these locations, for the fastest spread.
President: What does that tell us about the identity of the attacker?
DoD: Very little, other than the fact it's one of the twenty. Nineteen of the locations possibly are innocent, and the locations are spread all over the world.
President: Some of the locations are domestic?
DoD: Yes, sir.
President: Can we rule those out?
DoD: I'm afraid we have no basis to rule any of them out or single any one out.
President: And what should we do about these twenty locations?
DoD: Sir, I'd recommend a simultaneous airstrike on all twenty. We can target as best we can to hit computing facilities and limit the number of civilian lives.
President: Will that make all this go away?
DoD: Probably not, sir. The virus is spread everywhere now. But if we make progress against the virus, taking out the original source will decrease the chances that our attackers come back with a second round of something worse.
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