by Paul Dueweke
“Okay, so forget it,” came the quick reply.
“There is, however, a possibility. … There is a four-week follow-up course that I would like to take before my assignment. Maybe there is a possibility.”
“What do you mean, what’s it going to cost me?” she replied.
“There are two problems with my taking this course. The first is that there is a two-month period between when I finish my present studies and when the second course starts. The second is that I have to be nominated by the Institute staff for the course because it is limited to a select few.”
“I wouldn’t have any trouble covering you for two months, but there’s not much I can do about your selection. You’ve probably already burned those bridges with your cheery personality.”
“Maybe you can help. I believe my selection is quite unlikely because I have been somewhat outspoken to the staff. They are so arrogant they cannot see anything but what they saw last year and the year before. We do not seem to get along well.”
“I can relate to that.”
“And I upset a certain professor, and she seems to have more clout than I had anticipated.”
“Not the engaging Sherwood. She catch you peeping in her bedroom window?”
“Nearly so. I simply planted a bug in a book I returned to her on a ROM-card. I recorded an interesting event on her office floor between herself and an overzealous student. I did not expect her to ever read the ROM-card, but she did and discovered the bug.”
“And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who bugged it.”
An unseen grin was born in Sherwood’s eyes, quickly radiated over his face, and as quickly died, far short of a smile. “The Institute staff nominates students for the second course by a secret ballot. The ballot box is in the COPE computer and—”
“And you thought I might be able to break into the ballot box and throw the election for you.”
“Do you still have system-manager privileges?” Sherwood asked.
“And if I get you into this course, you’ll work on Monocle in the interim.” Jenner paused, then sat up in bed, her milk-chocolate brown body just visible through the haze. “If this course teaches you anything about blackmail, I’d say you could probably teach it.”
“Actually, you are not that far off. The course is called Leadership Training. I talked to a graduate, and he said it gave him some effective techniques for getting his way in tough environments with powerful adversaries. Blackmail and intimidation were two that he claims have helped him.”
“Sounds like Leadership Training—COPE Style. I think you’ll fit right in. You have to promise not to practice any more of it on me, though. But I guess you’ll probably cover promises in your course, too.”
“I can help you look for the correct file. I have learned the Institute jargon, which might help.”
“Forget it. One thing I don’t need is help with that computer. I think I’m the only person on earth who understands the damn thing.”
“Still making your nocturnal visits to the CPU?” Sherwood asked.
“Yeah—except when I make nocturnal visits here,” she chanced a smirk at Sherwood who gave no reaction. “I just happened upon your personnel file the other day. You were one weird kid.” She shot another glance at Sherwood who maintained his attention on the ceiling.
“Your parents got divorced when you were eleven, and you blamed your mother for not supporting your father’s dreams.”
“He was quite ambitious,” Sherwood said.
“Ambitious?”
Sherwood made no response.
“He patented some pretty neat inventions, though,” she continued. “The best was that Christmas tree stand with the little pop-up flag to tell when it needs water. Your family almost went belly-up on that one—and would have if your mother hadn’t worked two jobs. Did he ever have a job for more than a month?”
“Extraordinary people sometimes have difficulty finding their niche.”
“Have you found yours?” she asked.
Sherwood stood and walked toward the bedroom door. “I have some leftover pizza.”
Jenner followed him toward the kitchen. Sherwood stood at the counter eating a piece of pizza, drinking a glass of milk, and staring out the window. She took a piece of pizza and overpowered the point. Opening the refrigerator, she mumbled, “No beer, huh? I guess I’m drinking milk, too.” She picked up the milk carton and dropped the empty container into the trash with disgust. “Well, I guess I’m not drinking milk either. What the hell else you got?” She rummaged through the refrigerator and found a half bottle of flat Dr. Pepper from which she took a swig. “What is this crap?”
By the time she settled down with her pizza and Dr. Pepper, Sherwood was eating the last piece and still staring out the window, occasionally stealing a secret reflection at the soliloquy behind him. He finished his pizza, gulped down the rest of his milk, and set the glass down hard in the sink. Jenner looked up and stopped chewing momentarily. A long pause followed.
“How is your hacking going?” he startled the silence.
“Okay. … Why?”
“You told me the system manager is a computer,” he added.
“Seems really odd to me.”
“Yes … very odd. Have you ever heard of such a thing?” Sherwood asked.
“No. Have you?”
“You said it seems to be building an empire,” Sherwood continued. “How could a computer be so motivated? Could it simply be mistaken about its requirements and just marching toward an error?”
“No. It’s creating fictitious requirements to justify its expansion. It’s like it’s constructing barriers to keep anyone from addressing its critical parts. I think it’s duplicating these parts and stashing them all over the place. It’s as if … . No, that’s stupid.”
“What!”
“Suppose you could make duplicate hearts and livers and lungs and everything else, and then store them away where no one but you could find them, and have them as spares, just in case.”
“Just in case what?” Sherwood turned and looked at her for the first time.
“I don’t know. … Just in case.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Election Fraud 101
The search was simple. Jenner had merely entered a file named INSTITUTE, found another file within that named LEADERSHIP, and then located a single document called 2048 BALLOT. As she expected, the file was write-protected for everyone except the system manager, so Jenner was able to browse and modify anything. The document itself was nothing more than a spreadsheet with the names of about fifty students ordered down the first column and the names of the nine professors across the top row.
Apparently, each professor could select a maximum of ten students for Leadership Training. The students’ names were ordered by the total number of votes each had received. The top two students were R. Galvez and T. C. Washington with five votes each. J. C. Nero and J. A. M. Dirac each had four votes. Six students each had three votes; nine had two votes; and twenty-five had one vote. The last six students on the list hadn’t received any votes.
Jenner scanned down the list. The farther down the list she went, the more her eyes twinkled and her mouth turned up. Finally she stopped at Sherwood. “Ha!” she guffawed. “I knew I’d find you here, you miserable son-of-a-bitch!” Her eyes had come to rest at the second line from the bottom. “Let’s see, maybe I should give you ten votes. I’d like to see you talk your way out of that one!”
She selected all the cells on Sherwood’s line and put a one in each. The spreadsheet immediately reorganized itself, moving Sherwood to the top of the list. Jenner looked at the new order and grinned, wondering if anyone might believe it. Okay, I wonder if anybody could believe Sherwood getting three votes. Probably not, but I guess that’s what it’ll take. The spreadsheet reorganized itself again showing seven students with three votes each. Well, R. A. Dake, let’s see what happens to you if I take one of your votes away. The name
R. A. Dake shifted from line seven and three votes to line fifteen and two votes. Well, Dake, you didn’t want to take that course anyway, did you. Sherwood, on the other hand, is so much more worthy, wouldn’t you say? Okay, enough screwing around now, let’s get to some serious hacking. There’s got to be more to this Planck suicide than what was in the paper.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Election Fraud 201
With two months of help from Sherwood, Monocle had progressed dramatically, but Jenner was still behind schedule when he left the program for Leadership Training. She now had less time for hacking, so her abbreviated sessions ran later and later as her workweek expanded. On one of these early morning ventures, she snooped through some Planck files.
After Dr. Planck’s death, there was some debate at COPE about the dependence on the computer that had grown over the last few years. Some felt it was not the mission of COPE to develop revolutionary computer technology. The majority in upper management, on the other hand, felt that COPE’s mission was unique and too critical to the heritage of America to rely on standard technology. This concept dominated in the areas of robot development and data fusion and analysis. It was the politically correct view at COPE.
To satisfy both groups, the candidates chosen for interviews were split between those who would continue the basic development of computer science and those whose background was operational management of large, but orthodox, computer systems. Five candidates were chosen for final interviews, three of them strong in developing advanced-computing concepts. Dr. Herbert Bethe had emerged as the leading candidate because of his fruitful R&D background and conservative approach to artificial-life development. COPE’s top managers had interviewed him, and he was the preferred choice of three of them.
Jenner read the following memo from the executive director of operations:
I recommend Dr. Herbert Bethe to be the next AD for Data Services.
Dr. Bethe’s experience closely parallels that of Dr. Planck. In addition, Dr. Planck utilized Dr. Bethe frequently as a consultant during the computer development process over the last few years. Thus, Dr. Bethe would be able to hit the ground running and continue the excellent work of Dr. Planck. Dr. Bethe made it clear that he would not, however, simply accept the current status of the computer as his starting point. He would, instead, initially test the current system for flaws and analyzing it to determine its capability and the appropriateness of its evolution to date. He would make his findings known to a computer review committee that he would form to insure oversight. He believes that Dr. Planck functioned too secretly considering the enormous power with which he was working and that the evolution he created may become dangerously uncontrollable in the future if not scrutinized closely now.
Dr. Natasha Winger is an excellent candidate for a computer system operations manager. She is a very efficient and highly motivated manager of people and computers but has little interest or knowledge of advanced concepts such as artificial life or cellular automata. The COPE computer, however, is significantly more complex and dynamic than anything she has ever worked with before. There are two dangers in applying her to the task at hand. First, she might greatly underutilize the computer’s capabilities since the documentation created by Dr. Planck is quite sketchy. The greater danger, however, is that she might use the computer inappropriately, not fully appreciating the degree of complexity that has been built into it or has evolved by means of Dr. Planck’s pioneering approaches. This computer is a highly dynamic system and might be a threat to the laminar operations of COPE’s highly interactive operations environment.
COPE used a system for management selection that was forced on it by the Federal Government as a result of an Act of Congress that had been lobbied heavily by the Federal Employees Union. In order to assure absolute fairness in the selection process, the selection committee must make its recommendations directly to an impartial “elector” who then announces the results. COPE went a step further and replaced the elector with the most impartial entity of all, a computer. The Congressional Act forbade the selection committee members from discussing the selection among themselves or with outsiders. This Employee Selection Fairness Act of 2022 was patterned after the Procurement Integrity Act of 1989, which had the effect then of insuring that Government procurements would henceforth deliver the least effective product for the highest possible price in a pseudo free-market environment. A similar effect was realized in the selection of civil service management personnel as a result of the 2022 law.
Jenner breached the wall of secrecy around the ballot committee and compared the recommendations in the memos accompanying the votes with the summary vote tabulation released by the ballot committee. According to her tabulation, Herbert Bethe had been the winner, yet Natasha Winger had been selected.
“Holy shit! Somebody threw the election for the new AD.” Jenner sat before the terminal, dumbfounded. But who could have done it? she thought. Who had that kind of access? … Not Planck, he was dead. … Hmm … a suicide. Is all this possible?
She reached for the phone on her desk, pushed a single button, and waited.
“… Yes,” came the weak salutation.
“You won’t believe this. Things are starting to fit together, Sherwood.”
“Have you forgotten that I do not stay up all night waiting for your calls?”
“This is more important than a damn time zone. This computer is acting like a tyrant. It threw the selection of the data services AD last year.”
“Could this be a trick it learned from you, Jenner?”
“This is no joke. The interviewers picked this really powerful computer-science guy who was going to do some detailed tests of the computer and make sure it wasn’t getting too smart. The computer then falsified the ballot records to choose Winger. She had extensive experience managing big systems, but she was clearly not going to challenge the COPE system. She represented the least threatening alternative to the status quo of the computer. Can you believe that, Sherwood?”
“Where are you, Jenner?”
“In my office.”
“How could you be so stupid? Never call me again, Jenner! Do you understand? Never!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Stone Age Switch
Jenner stood outside the open door of the ASP’s office studying the floor. She shifted the optical memory disk to her left hand and worked it like a puzzle piece before knocking. She heard, “Welcome,” from around the corner, and she joined him at his desk.
“Good morning, Jenner. We haven’t talked for some time. I was so glad you called this morning. I read your most recent update on Monocle, and you seem to be making fine progress there.”
“Yes, Sir. I think the optical ASICs might give us the combination of speed and flexibility we need to survive the high-bandwidth snap. We can’t afford to let the spider go tunnel-vision in the end-game.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I think you’re moving in the right direction.”
“But that’s not the reason I wanted to see you this morning. I thought maybe … we could use your classified conference room.”
The Asp studied Jenner for a moment and then pushed a pair of buttons on his desk. “Of course. I don’t think we’ll be bothered there.” They entered and he ushered her to a seat near one end of the oval table while he secured the room.
When he returned to his seat across from her, she handed him a hand-written note she’d prepared earlier: “It is very important that there be no way that the central computer or any of its slaves can overhear or observe our conversation in any way.”
He looked up at her in a long exchange. He sat back, retrieved his favorite pipe from the rack, reached for the gold lighter in the little recess atop the rack, and proceeded with his lighting ceremony. Jenner sat in silence, studying the battle line between two adjacent pieces of swirling walnut in the tabletop. After a couple clouds of smoke began to obscure the air between them, he set the gold lighter on the table
directly between himself and Jenner.
The Asp examined the computer terminal built into the table and then at the multi-media center at the end of the room and drew another puff. He worked a verbal menu and then said, “Shut down for maintenance.” Nothing seemed to happen except for a green light on the console turning red and then going out. He then said, “Bring the number one projector up.” The projector did not respond. He looked at Jenner with raised eyebrows.
“I know this seems a bit odd, but …”
“What I know, Jenner, is that I have come to trust your judgment completely. Now, what is this all about?”
Jenner then leveled with the Asp about her years of hacking and her abuse of the system-manager privilege he’d granted her and ended with, “I believe the computer has matured into a totally unforeseen mode of operation well beyond what anyone might have suspected. Dr. Planck was responsible for its evolution and was the only one who probably understood what was really happening.”
The Asp was now on his second bowl of tobacco as he sat back into cracked leather, giving the impression of being at ease. “And you think the computer had him murdered.”
Jenner looked surprised. “Well, yes … but how did you know I was going to say that?”
“You’re an engineer, Jenner. The logic of your tale led irreversibly to it.”
“You don’t believe it, do you.”
“Do you have any evidence?”
“Remember when Winger was selected as the new AD?”
“Yes, that was a surprise to me.”
“It was a surprise to most others, too. Bethe actually won the selection. The computer falsified the election results.”
“You know that for certain?” he said.