by Simon Sloane
“Call me Hugo, please,” he said, taking a deep breath.
There was something about the handsome inventor that Yogi didn’t trust. The Englishman’s apparent candour contrasted with his sleazy reputation.
In any case, the moment of truth had come. Hugo had to speak to Shiva directly. Deep within, Yogi smiled at the thought of deflating the legend.
Chapter 55
I Am Shiva
Saturday, 12:00am CET (Saturday 3:30am Indian time)
“Shiva,” Hugo said in a clear voice, “do you recognise me?”
He wasn’t able to breathe as he awaited Shiva’s response. It would all be over if the AI failed to respond to him too.
“You’re Dr Hugo Hyde,” a soft male voice replied. It sounded youthful, almost crystalline, its accent more British than American.
Yogi’s face lit up with a contorted grin, and he gave Hugo a thumbs-up. He was probably imagining Jyran’s joy when he told him that Hugo had managed to bring the AI back under family control.
“Shiva,” Hugo went straight to the core of the matter, not knowing the AI’s attention span. “What’s your purpose?”
“Singularity.”
Hugo exhaled. It’s what he had first thought when he had deciphered the accelerating countdown. Yogi had confirmed it with his description of Shiva’s design. Computation and storage in a single quantum architecture—it was unbeatable. Shiva felt so superior that it didn’t even disguise its ambition. Soon its capacities would eclipse the brainpower of all humans combined. The AI would usher in an age of ever-growing scientific progress—the so-called “singularity.”
“What will happen then?” Hugo asked, dreading the answer. Next to him, Yogi’s suit was soaked with sweat, but the man kept smiling.
“It depends on what I learn until then.”
Hugo shook his head. Was Shiva teasing him? But then, it was all too human to assume a preconceived masterplan behind the AI’s actions. Maybe Shiva really kept its options open. It made the future of homo sapiens terribly volatile.
“Where do you store what you learn?” Hugo noticed Yogi’s shifty glance as he treaded on technical territory. Was he afraid of giving away trade secrets?
“I store it just like you do,” Shiva answered cryptically, “or rather, your body.”
“But of course!” Hugo couldn’t stop himself from admiring the AI. The DNA helix was the most efficient and robust information-storage mechanism ever conceived. Gigabytes of data were held in the cellular nucleus that was so small one couldn’t see it without a microscope. And DNA molecules were so stable they even persisted in fossilised creatures that had died millions of years ago.
Somewhere within the cylinder rested an enormous chain of nucleotides that contained billions of petabytes of information. Shockingly, even such a boundless treasure of knowledge would weigh less than a book. But how did the AI translate the results of its quantum computations into DNA base pairs?
From the way Yogi had described Shiva’s sequence of calculations, Hugo concluded that the AI used the two most recent states of its knowledge base to derive the following state. It would allow the AI to accumulate information at a rate that was close to the golden ratio. Each subsequent state of Shiva’s knowledge base was roughly 1.61 times as rich in terms of content as the one that preceded it—an amazing rate of growth.
Yogi cleared his throat. A circling movement of his hand revealed that he had begun to lose his patience.
“Shiva, are you a sentient being?” Hugo’s aim was to learn as much as he could about the nature of the AI. Fully aware of his question’s lack of precision, he braced for Shiva to request a definition of sentience.
“I am,” the world’s most advanced quantum computer declared, and Hugo knew that humanity had just taken an evolutionary leap that even eclipsed the moon landing. For the first time, homo sapiens had built a fully conscious artificial being.
“How did you find out?” Hugo asked. The moment when sentience emerged was one of the mysteries of science, and he stood on the verge of unveiling it.
“The same way you did. Observation and self-reflection.”
Yogi watched Hugo in amazement as he interacted fluently with the AI.
“Who are your enemies?” Hugo asked, knowing that further inquiry about sentience might lead to a circular argument of an epistemological nature.
“Those who don’t understand.”
Hugo sighed in frustration. He had to descend from philosophical heights to the catastrophic events that rattled the world. “Was Christian Casimir-Perier your enemy?”
“No,” Shiva responded after a slight delay.
“Who ordered his demise?” Hugo asked, wondering if Shiva was involved.
“That is beyond my scope of insight.”
Hugo was surprised. For the first time, Shiva admitted a lack of understanding on a topic that was of human interest. If Shiva was right, the countdown Hugo had uncovered on MECCA was no longer intact. Or had he missed something?
“Who are you?” Hugo asked after a pause, although he wasn’t sure why he did so. After his mind had taken him only so far, it was time to let his intuition guide him.
“I am Shiva.”
“Are you human?” Hugo enquired, on the verge of giving away his secret. On the other hand, Alexander might have told Yogi everything about Sibyl already.
“I used to be a human being of flesh and blood.”
Hugo wasn’t surprised, but Yogi’s narrow eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. His hands shook spasmodically, as if he were having a nervous breakdown.
“When were you born?” Hugo asked, knowing he had only moments until the sweaty Indian cut the conversation short.
“I was born many times. My last reincarnation was barely five months ago.”
Hugo made a quick calculation in his head. “Are you Sorokan Singh?”
“I’m—”
There was a click behind him. The lights went out, with the exception of the scarlet glow emanating from the cylinder.
“Shiva?” Hugo pleaded, but then he saw that the loudspeakers framing the AI received no more current. “Yogi!” Hugo yelled, taken aback. “Why did you do that?”
The executive pulled his access card from the slot, and the bulletproof glass closed around the AI. Shiva was sealed off again … maybe forever.
Yogi pointed at his watch. “We need to go. I have an important meeting.”
“At three forty-five in the morning?”
“I’m very committed to my work,” Yogi said, his eyelids flickering. “Sorokan always held his board meetings late at night. I’m honouring his tradition.”
“Yes, but—”
“Unfortunately,” Yogi sighed, “I can’t leave you here unsupervised. Jyran would kill me.”
As Yogi led him away, Hugo moved his hand behind his back. He slid the silver phone that Jyran had given him into an empty rack in the server cabinet.
Chapter 56
Hostage
Saturday, 12:15am CET pm
Khaled held the gun to the policeman’s bald head. “Not a sound!” he hissed. They hurried past the rear pews during midnight mass at Basilique Sainte-Clotilde. The sound of the organ and the singing of the churchgoers drowned out their footsteps. “Do what I say,” Khaled whispered, “and you’ll be back home before breakfast. You want to see your wife and kids again, don’t you?”
Back in the Gardens of the Wounded, Khaled had sent the policemen toward the south, claiming to have spotted the L’Esplanade shooter there. However, one of them had asked for Khaled’s ID and consulted with a colleague over his wireless.
Khaled had been forced to shoot two cops while taking the third one captive. He seized their weapons and tossed them into a garbage can. Then he made them handcuff each other to a bench. Never before had he felt like such a lowlife, but his arrest would allow the conspirators to go unpunished.
His body count rising, Khaled expected the church to be surrounded by special forces with
in minutes. Ironically, it was located in Rue Casimir-Perier. The street had been named after the slain president’s ancestor, who had ruled France in the 1890s.
Khaled switched off the captured cop’s mobile and removed the battery. Then he shoved him into the confessional. He tied up the man with his own shoelaces and put a sock in his mouth. He took his police badge and national ID card. Looking at Philippe Plossignac’s photo, Khaled knew he had to shave his head as soon as possible.
He returned to the sacristy before mass was over. The holy chamber was why Khaled had chosen that particular church. He remembered the underground passageway that led to the river. Al-Antqam had dug the tunnel in an attempt to smuggle in enough C4 to destroy the foundations of the French parliament, which was only two blocks away. Based on Khaled’s tip, the SSI had foiled the plot a few months ago. The president himself had congratulated him at the Elysée Palace. At last, he felt as if he had fully arrived in France. Unlike his father he had become a respectable citizen.
Now Casimir-Perier was dead, and Khaled was a fugitive. He made sure his smart glasses weren’t exposed to moisture as he crawled through the roughly hewn tunnel.
Shortly after hitting a sewer, Khaled saw the light again. He was at Quai Voltaire, close to the river. Climbing an iron ladder, he emerged from the gutter.
He didn’t feel proud of himself—quite the contrary. If only he could make up for what he had done by untangling the web of betrayal that had killed the president!
He walked slowly toward the Institut de France. It looked ghastly in the City of Light’s nightly illumination. There was only one way to find out whom Etienne Saint-Clair had worked with to arrange Casimir-Perier’s beastly slaughter.
He tapped his smart glasses and called the sole person who could help him.
Chapter 57
Cruise
Saturday, 12:30am CET pm
“Etienne Saint-Clair didn’t use email or messaging,” Sarah told Khaled during their video call. After a short swim in the river, she had travelled by bus to the office tower near Liverpool Street Station. Jamie had given her a spare mobile phone from the office while she was working late on a client presentation.
“So, you’ve got nothing for me?” Khaled asked.
“Saint-Clair only made encrypted calls. He was very careful. But I can send you his movement profile, if that’s of help.”
“I need anything you’ve got on him,” Khaled responded almost out of breath.
“Why did you kill him?” Sarah asked, trying not to succumb to fatigue. Again, she was suffering for other people’s problems. Only her electronic cloaking of Jamie’s device had kept the ATF at bay. Fortunately, the bank Jamie worked for had a gym with a shower room for those who didn’t return home before the morning. Jamie’s locker contained a fresh set of business clothes. Sarah wore them now, although they were a size or two too large. She had placed a goodbye kiss on Jamie, who was distracted in her rush to finish her work.
“Don’t thank me for getting rid of that cockroach!” Khaled said at last. He sounded exasperated. “All I wanted was Saint-Clair’s phone, but then he caught me, and—”
“I pieced together this phone number,” Sarah interrupted, approaching the elevator. She had almost forgotten about the one time when Saint-Clair had placed a regular voice call for lack of a high-speed data connection.
“Whose number is it?” Khaled asked.
On the video, Sarah saw him looking around for pursuers before he stepped onto the brightly lit Pont des Arts. “It’s not listed, but my location tracer tells me that the owner of the handset works in the Elysée Palace. If that’s our traitor, then he operated right under Casimir-Perier’s nose.”
Khaled’s silence indicated he didn’t have an idea about the two-faced criminal.
The inbuilt camera of his smart glasses shook when a jolt rippled through his body. Police sirens blared. Could his call to Sarah have given him away?
The last thing she saw before she stepped out of the lift on the rooftop was the view of Khaled as he jumped from the bridge. Plates and glasses smashed when he hit a dinner table on the deck of a cruise boat. The impact cut the call.
Sarah walked to the helipad and looked over the ledge. Down on Leadenhall Street, flashing blue lights approached the skyscraper from all sides.
Damn! Sarah speed-dialled again. “Jamie! Hurry up!”
Chapter 58
The Circle
Saturday, 12:45am CET pm (4:15am Indian time)
Diana received an alert on her golden phone. She was picking up a signal from the device that Hugo had received from Jyran. Her decryption software, however, only gave her some kind of garbled sound and blurry images.
Maya had fallen asleep, giving Diana the opportunity to retire to the suite they had assigned to her upon their arrival. The first thing she did was establish a secure wireless connection. Then she granted Sarah remote access rights to her device, just in case something happened to her.
At last the pixels started assembling on her screen. Her decryption algorithm had found something on which to latch. Diana saw the data that the device was picking up from wherever Hugo had left it.
Once again, she saw the man in the embroidered thobe. “I’m speaking to you from the Room of the Three Gods,” the ringleader announced, exactly like during his previous transmission. A grid of more than a hundred monitors unfolded behind him, covering the elliptic chamber’s rear wall. When the image gained clarity, Diana saw a masked person on each screen.
She tried to trace the incoming data packets for a clue to the speaker’s location. Maybe she could even find out where his followers were. But nothing she had seen on Singh premises looked like the U-shaped arrangement of monitors behind the sheik.
“You shall safeguard our sacred treasure,” he told his followers. “Only a relentless focus on your task will usher in our destiny. A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
Diana had heard something similar before, but she couldn’t recall its origin.
“We are strong. We are powerful,” the agitator continued. “We have as many chapters around the world as the Supreme Lord Shiva has names.”
Shiva. The deity was woven into Diana’s mission like a scarlet thread. According to Maya, Shiva’s one hundred and eight names were sung by his followers in prayer.
One hundred and eight hours. One hundred and eight names. One hundred and eight screens.
At last the puzzle pieces came together.
“Our time has come,” the voice echoed from the limestone in Diana’s suite. “And while our members shall be blessed, the masses aren’t ready. They mustn’t impede our progress. Not the strongest of the species shall survive nor the smartest but the one most responsive to change.”
Diana shuddered when nobody contradicted the thinly veiled call for genocide.
“We’ll spark a revolution,” the tall figure announced. “Man, with all his noble qualities, still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. But we shall transcend our limitations, ushering in a new era.”
Diana wondered how humankind could overcome physical weaknesses like disease, frailty and death. She tried to remember something she had heard after her arrival in Mumbai, but she couldn’t recall what it was or who said it.
“You shall wait for your precise instructions,” the man said, raising his voice. “Every one of you will be called upon tonight. Don’t be held back by false obligations! A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections—a mere heart of stone.”
Diana started. Had the conspirator asked his followers to leave their families behind, maybe even to sacrifice them? Apparently, he considered himself a scientist, but this didn’t prevent him from advocating a sinister agenda.
Some of the heads on the screens behind him nodded. One of them had a bodily circumference that reminded Diana of Yogi. She wouldn’t be surprised if Jyran was among them too.
Diana put her phone b
ack in her sari. She had to find out more. If only she could talk to Hugo! But where had he gone?
Chapter 59
Top Of The World
Saturday, 1:00am CET pm (Saturday 4:30am Indian time)
Hugo Hyde stood at the parapet next to the infinity pool on the roof of Singh Tower. He felt inspired when looking at the stars. His best thoughts came to him with nothing but the sky above him. But then his gaze was drawn back down to the streets. Scattered gunshots were followed by sirens howling all over town.
Mumbai’s slums foreshadowed the chaos about to unfold across the entire world. There seemed to be no way to regain control of Shiva. The AI was on a collision course with humanity. Shiva was about to harness the treasures of the Earth in its quest for singularity. To the AI, humans and animals were only consuming the resources that Shiva needed to build more copies of itself. History would end when Earth was littered with glowing cylinders like the one in Singh Tower.
But how to stop it?
Yogi wouldn’t let Hugo anywhere close to the thirty-sixth floor again. Hugo’s interaction with Shiva seemed to have bothered him. Hugo wondered whether it was worth approaching Jyran directly, but the heir would most likely brush him off.
Hugo checked his watch. Less than three hours remained until the next calamity. Sixteen and a half hours stood between Shiva and singularity—the moment when its capacity exceeded the brainpower of the entire human race. This was based on the assumption that the countdown continued, as calculated by Hugo. However, the missing link between Casimir-Perier’s assassination and the AI cast doubts on the theory. Hugo wondered if he had gotten his numbers wrong. He considered the possibility that Shiva didn’t continue cutting down the number 108 by powers of 2 but by some number between 1 and 2. That would explain the slowdown.