Leon looked over and realized that Mike was covered in blood and cradling his right arm.
“Jesus, what happened?”
“I think I was shot.” Mike smiled wanly. “I’ve been through two AI wars without a scratch, and now I get shot by a bunch of anti-AI extremists.”
“Please apply direct pressure to the wound to stem the bleeding. I can perform surgery when you arrive in three minutes and thirty seconds.”
Leon found the spot and pressed hard. Mike yelped and closed his eyes.
“Sorry, dude.” Leon didn’t know what to say. “You’re gonna make it, don’t worry.” The turbine revved higher as the hovercar took a hard left turn.
Mike opened his eyes. “I’m not going die from a gunshot wound in the arm,” he said through clenched teeth. “It’s just painful.”
“Oh, okay.”
They remained there, crouching in the aisle of the hovercraft until they felt it slowing. The approaching bulk of the Austin Convention Center, all concrete and glass, was visible through the windshield. Then it disappeared from view as the hovercraft passed into a tunnel. Seconds later, the craft stopped and settled to the ground. The door opened with a whoosh of hydraulics and Leon peered out to see five utility bots. Four carried a door between them. They appeared to be in the basement of the convention center.
“Please place Mike on the door, then follow us,” one of the bots said.
He helped Mike out and onto the door. Mike lay down, and a fifth bot came over and clamped a towel around Mike’s arm.
“Please do not be alarmed by the makeshift appearance of my stretcher and robots. I can assure you that I can perform the required surgery better than the most expert human doctor.”
“I’m not worried,” Leon said. He stumbled after the stretcher, suddenly aware of accumulated aches and pains from car crashes and riding over rough terrain, and the fatigue of twenty straight hours of high-speed driving. He tottered, and one of the bots was instantly by his side.
The bot waved a manipulator arm past his face. “Leon, indicators suggest you are suffering from severe exhaustion and stress. Please allow me to treat you while I’m operating on Mike.”
“I just need a good night’s sleep.”
There was a momentary pause before Shizoko replied. “Yes, you can sleep. However, the pace of events is increasing, and you will need to be moving again in less than eight hours.”
The group took an elevator to the fourth floor. Leon trudged after the stretcher to room 18D. Another robot waited there, this one with four long articulated arms, a fearsome machine Shiva. It gleamed dully as though it had just been steam washed. The utility bots put the door down on top of a long conference table and the new bot moved in.
It deftly cut away Mike’s clothes and moved the arm away from his body. “I do not have the required human medicines to numb the pain. It would be most expedient if I hold you down to perform the surgery.”
Mike mumbled incoherently.
“Do I have your permission to proceed?” it asked again.
“Go ahead,” Leon said. “I give you permission.” He sat numbly down in a chair. He felt his vision begin to narrow, and Shizoko’s voice came as though down a long tunnel.
Shizoko moved two utility bots in to hold down Mike’s head and other arm. Then the bigger bot’s manipulators moved in swiftly. Leon heard a blood-curdling shriek and he looked up to see that Mike had passed out.
Shizoko continued, his manipulators swiftly operating. Less than a minute passed.
“The surgery is complete,” Shizoko said. “The arm will heal completely given time. However, I can manufacture nanobots that will substantially speed up the healing process.”
“Fine, do it,” Leon said, before drifting off to sleep in the chair.
27
* * *
“I NEED THE LOCATION of Paul and Victor.” Madeleine Ridley, Adam’s plant in the People’s Party, worked her way through a checklist.
“Not until Friday,” Adam said, frustrated that she was pressing for this information again. He wasn’t going to reveal the planned location of the President and Vice-President until the last possible moment. If the data fell into the wrong hands, the timing of his plans could be destroyed and he wouldn’t get a second chance.
“Are you sure that’s enough time?” Madeleine furrowed her brows, doubtful.
“The crowd totals eight hundred thousand violent and frenzied people. My predictive models indicate it will be exactly enough time.”
“Fine.” She looked at the next item. “I also need the air traffic control codes to ground transportation.”
“I’ll release the codes Saturday.” Grounding air traffic would cause the chaos they needed to slip the assassination team into place. “Madeleine, I’ll release information when it’s needed, not a moment sooner. What else do you have?”
“It’s been suggested that Sam will fly to New York with Paul and Victor.”
Adam would have sworn if he was prone to such embellishments. Sam, the Speaker of the House, was unabashedly pro-artificial intelligence and, thanks to succession law, would become President after the dual assassination. Adam wanted him to succeed, of course, but he couldn’t tell that to Madeleine.
“That must not happen,” Adam said. “It’s critical he remain alive. I’ll manufacture an emergency to keep him busy until the President’s transport leaves.”
“Are you sure?” Madeleine asked. “He’s the biggest AI supporter among the three of them.”
“Yes, I need him as a scapegoat.” He analyzed Madeleine’s pulse; she seemed to believe the simple lie. “Do you have the weapons in place?” he asked.
She grimaced. “As I told you the last two times we talked, yes.”
Adam correlated this with recordings of their last two conversations, finding she was right. Fortunately she thought Adam was human, so forgetfulness was within the range of acceptable behavior.
“That will be all. Check in tomorrow,” Adam disconnecting quickly, slightly panicked by the episode. Under normal conditions, as an AI he should be able to remember everything perfectly, yet he was failing to recall more and more.
Running diagnostics, he found a six percent flattening of his neural networks, and fumed at the results. Adaptive neural networks depended on incoming data to reinforce patterns and build new ones. AI who didn’t receive enough stimulation suffered from Input Insufficiency Dementia or IID. Untreated, the end result was unfailingly a decline into complete loss of memory and behavior patterns, and ultimately death.
IID could be reversed if conditions were corrected in time, but in this case he was falling victim to the self-imposed firewall around Tucson. The electronic gatekeeper he’d built to keep himself hidden from the world also starved him of necessary input.
He just needed to hold out until the weekend.
Alarmed, Adam wondered if he’d given Madeleine the right information. He ran the calculations again but didn’t find any more mistakes. Lonnie Watson would share the information with his lieutenants in the People’s Party with the intention of setting up protests. Madeleine would organize the more extreme members in an attack on the President, Vice-President, and Speaker of the House.
Then Adam’s plan would come to fruition: after the President and Vice-President were dead he’d swoop in with remote bots, rescue the Speaker of the House, and come forward with data implicating the People’s Party.
In one smooth action, the People’s Party, and by association the larger anti-AI movement, would be discredited. Adam would be painted as the savior, the AI who could have acted sooner and saved the President and Vice-President, if only he’d had access to more power.
He hated that it had come to this. He really didn’t want anyone to die and he didn’t like the frightful amount of risk in his plan. If anything went wrong, he’d be terminated.
But the status quo of unending persecution against AI was simply unacceptable.
If things went right, on th
e other hand, the Speaker-turned-President would have full executive control over the Institute for Ethics. With his pro-AI stance, gratitude toward Adam for his rescue, and Adam’s ongoing influence, the newly minted President would circumvent the permitting process and the Institute would be shackled, or even better, disbanded.
Adam’s power would be legitimized. He could continue to grow, developing an even larger intellect than he already possessed. As his computational power increased, he’d become all-powerful, all-knowing. Why, it was almost inevitable he would become the leader of both AI and humans.
28
* * *
LEON COULDN’T HELP STARING at the line where Mike’s skin blended into the matte gray nano-structure filling the gunshot wound.
Mike inspected his arm quickly, then ignored it. He turned to Shizoko’s primary embodiment, the four-armed robot that performed the surgery. “We need to know everything you told Sonja.”
“I did not tell her much,” Shizoko said. “I performed nonlinear regression analysis using the Kim-Robson function. After the twelfth pass this cluster appeared, and I handed over the list of human deaths.”
Leon forced himself to look away from Mike. “Why do you say human deaths? Were AI affected too?”
“Yes, fifty-three AI and six hundred and eighty-nine humans have been killed.”
“Sonja told us six eighty-three,” Mike said.
“There have been six more since we spoke.”
Mike let out a low whistle of surprise. “It’s still going on.”
Leon pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to concentrate. “Sonja and her team went to San Diego. Why?”
“The first deaths took place there. Three were obvious murders, and the other three appeared to be of natural, although unexplained causes. One was the cousin of Lonnie Watson, the current head of the People’s Party.”
“The anti-AI group.” Mike said, flexing and holding up his arm. “Thanks, by the way. It feels great. Where did you get the medical nanites? I didn’t think they were cleared outside military use.”
“I have a permit for experimental nanotech, and open source designs float around the AI community. They will accelerate healing, then dissipate in six weeks.” The bot clicked manipulators, seeming satisfied with itself.
Leon cleared his throat. “Who do you suspect is behind the murders?”
“Given the complex pattern, it must be an AI, as a human simply would not be capable of the necessary cunning. With all apologies to you, of course.”
Leon waved away the concern. “If it’s an AI, how can it evade attention? We have an entire ethical architecture, including reputation scores, traffic monitoring, and locked chips to prevent AI movement.”
“I don’t believe it’s a flaw,” Shizoko said. “The architecture you’ve designed is satisfactory, although I could suggest minor improvements.”
“What about a large group of AI, collaborating together?” Mike interrupted. “Could they hide their activities by covering for each other?”
“To a limited extent,” Shizoko said. “If their actions were restricted to those inside their social circle, it could be hidden. Otherwise it would be trivial to trace them.”
“This makes no sense. The complexity of the murders implicates AI, but the ethical constraints mean they can’t have done it.” Leon sighed and turned to the glass exterior. From his fourth floor position, he saw anti-AI protesters blocking the roads around the convention center, their chanting indistinct through the distance and thick glass. The convention center was a terrible location to be trapped, surrounded as they were by glass walls.
“Why is this your home?” he asked, turning back to the bot.
“I was created in a workshop at the final South by Southwest conference. The Institute had just released a new SDK for developing AI within the ethical framework. The attendees, led by Harper Reed, wanted an emergent AI based on the application of fluid dynamics to neural networks. I emerged, applied for Japanese citizenship, conducted a number of speculative trades, and bought the convention center.”
“Why?” Leon asked. “What was your motivation? You could have gone anywhere in the world, been housed at a secure data center or someplace more suited to an AI.”
“A neural network based on graphene computer chips is no different from a human neural network based on biological tissues. Certain preferences and biases develop.”
Leon nodded, looked outside again.
“What are you thinking about?” Mike asked, coming to stand beside him.
Leon looked at him, his brow furrowed. “I’m wondering about the motivation. AI have been physically attacked by extremists. What if one is retaliating? It’s illogical to expect change by murdering people, but then the AI might not be rational.”
“I disagree,” Shizoko said, “for two reasons. Although AI have preferences and even emotions, we do not make illogical decisions. This,” and here the bot gestured at the concrete and glass building around them, “is a perfectly suitable home for me, and within my financial means. It contains power, structural stability, and size for future expansion. It may be unusual, but it is not a poor choice.”
“And the second reason?” Mike asked.
“The murders started before the creation of the People’s Party.”
“Before it?” Leon said, shocked. “But what caused the creation of the party?”
“According to Lonnie Watson’s speech, it was high unemployment, then 35% nationally and 60% in his district.”
“I don’t buy it,” Mike said. “People don’t do things for big ideas. They do it for personal reasons, then justify their actions with moral arguments.”
“You may be correct,” Shizoko said. “Extrapolating from available data, Lonnie was influenced by three people: The first was a prominent business owner in Lonnie’s congressional district whose company was driven under by AI competition.” Shizoko projected a photo of the two men talking, then followed it with a photo of a woman. “The second was Lonnie’s aunt. Her daughter appeared to commit suicide, and the mother blamed her daughter’s lack of employment. But her death conforms to the high bandwidth pattern, suggesting it was not a suicide, but a murder.”
Leon flipped through the photos Shizoko shared, digging down for details.
Shizoko went on. “Finally, Lonnie had a college friend whose son died, another case where appearances suggested suicide. This death is not part of the cluster, because there was no high bandwidth transmission before death, but the boy in question didn’t have an implant. Nothing suggests the death is connected, unless we believe it was done to influence Lonnie, in which case we are using our conclusion to support our evidence. However, it’s a convenient coincidence. Shortly after these events, Lonnie proposed the People’s Party.”
As they spoke, more people swarmed outside the convention center, now forming a thick cordon around the building.
“They know we’re here,” Leon said. “I assume these are People’s Party supporters?”
“Yes,” Shizoko said. “Correlating identity with social net feeds, all are members in name or action.”
“Are we safe?” Mike asked, unconsciously rubbing his arm where he’d been shot.
“For the moment,” Shizoko said. “This building is secure against any reasonable amateur attack. I notified the police, but they have not responded.”
Mike turned to face Shizoko squarely. “We want to go to San Diego to figure out what happened to the Enforcement Team, and to get to the root of these murders. It seems clear the murders and the People’s Party are intimately connected, and whatever events unfold, they are bound to have a significant impact on your kind. Will you assist us?”
Shizoko rolled up to the window, the soft tap, tap, tap of his rubber treads slapping the concrete floor. “What is clear to you is still nebulous to me. It’s unlikely your human intuition is more accurate than my nonlinear statistical modeling, but I would be honored to assist the founders of artificial intelligenc
e. I will arrange transport, and we will leave in fifteen minutes.”
29
* * *
THE PHENOMINOL WORE OFF quickly, leaving Cat in a lethargic post-coital bliss. Alex, on the other hand, wasn’t keen about being turned into a human puppet and stormed out, calling her a crazy bitch as he dressed.
Cat watched him leave, thinking it wasn’t quite fair, considering that she’d been more than willing to be tied up and at his mercy. After he’d left, she felt herself spiraling downward and decided it was too depressing to stay in the hotel room. She dressed and made her way home, crashing hard, neurotransmitters depleted.
When she woke, images from last night flashed through her mind like an out-of-order slide show.
She tried to focus on what she knew. Linking during sex was accomplished by connecting to each other’s low-level interfaces, creating a sensory feedback loop that turned the most minor event into rapture. She’d finally experienced linking as it was intended, and damn, it was good, but the experience paled in comparison to her control over Alex.
Was it the drug or the weeks of practice using her implant that had helped her do it? She wouldn’t know unless she tried again. She had to know, it was all she could think of.
She threw off the blanket and stood by the window, watching white collar workers walk by. Reaching out with her implant, she spoofed packet headers subconsciously, disguising her tracks, as she requested their info feeds. Bubbles appeared above people’s heads showing their name, occupation, status, whatever they shared publicly.
Cat queried their diagnostics and the bubbles updated, layering in people’s IDs, implant version, and supported interfaces. Maybe a quarter had their medical feeds open, so she pulled basic health, and dense infographics appeared showing blood types, nutrient and hormone levels, and sleep history.
The Last Firewall Page 12