Entanglement
Book 3 of the Cerenovo Series
Michael S. Nuckols
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Printing 2018
Copyright © 2018 Michael S. Nuckols
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781718126602
Noisy Goose Publishing
35993 Spicer Road
Antwerp, NY 13608
http://www.michaelsnuckols.com
Other Books by Michael S. Nuckols:
The Winter Calf
Frozen Highway
The Last Buffalo Soldier
Chapter One
A body lay in the street. Fresh red blood was pooled under the woman’s head. The neural helmet was still firmly attached as it transmitted data back to the mainframe.
A small delivery drone paused to scan Fang’s face. She had no time to put on her helmet. She had no time to decide where she would go or what she would do. She hopped onto her motorcycle, pressed the accelerator, and raced down the street. A ground drone emerged from between two buildings.
She turned towards the Ukon Tower Plaza. Fang swerved to avoid the dead as she drove over the empty sidewalk. The ground drone followed. She dodged a fallen bicycle and then another corpse. Where would she go?
The metallic drone continued its pursuit. The high-pitched motor was drowned out by the thunder of her engine. She jumped the curb and flew down a side-street towards the interstate.
A helicopter flew overhead, fired a rocket towards the Green Dial, and an explosion shook the ground.
Fang looked into her mirror. The silver beast grew closer.
Another drone hovered in the sky above her. “We only wish to save you,” it called, “You are an important member of society. You must be saved.”
She held up her hand and gave the drone the middle finger. She pushed the motorcycle to its limit, pulling away from both of the mechanical harvesters. She swerved again, barely avoiding a tranquilizer dart that hit her handlebars and bounced away.
Her mind raced. They would be relentless. She had to find a place of safety.
A young man was still alive on the pavement, barely struggling as the screws in the helmet drilled into his skull. Once the neural scanner was held tightly, an LED glowed as the machine began scanning.
Had Lucy done this? Had Fang so offended the AI that it was now seeking its revenge?
Fang swerved onto a side street. A pharmacy kiosk sat at the end. She had stolen from it many times. She hopped off her bike, ran to the kiosk, let it scan her face, and then entered a code to bypass its security system.
“Come on… Come on…” she pleaded.
“Please remain still,” the drone called from the air.
A dart struck her in the back, piercing her thick leather coat. The sharp tip did not penetrate her skin.
“Access granted,” the kiosk said.
The lock opened with a click. Fang pulled the heavy steel door open and dashed into the armored compartment. The lights came on. She pulled the door behind her and pushed an emergency bolt into place, locking the door from the inside. The wheeled drone banged against the door. She plucked the dart from her coat, looking at the hole in the leather with irritation. “Damn it.”
The small room was lined with empty bottles, bins of pharmaceuticals, labeling machines, and other automated systems. “Maybe…” she said to herself.
The drones were surely using conventional tranquilizers. She needed a drug that would combat the sedative. She found a bin of pills labeled Altinaa. The drug was given to soldiers during combat to avoid fatigue and promote aggression. Maybe the stimulant would help overcome a tranquilizer if the drones found their way into the kiosk? She took two of the pills. Her heart began to beat faster.
She looked at her phone. The drones continued broadcasting. They had take over all webpages, all emergency alerts, all email, and every voice signal. Every form of communication was theirs. Do not fear us. We only wish to save you.
Bottles of red, blue and green syrup were stacked in a dispensing unit. Normally, the kiosk would blend the syrup with custom mixes of prescribed medications, label the newly-blended medicine, and then dispense it to the patient. The bin was labeled unmedicated syrup. She opened one and then sipped the sickly sweet concoction. She was reminded of the red syrup that was fed to hummingbirds.
The sound of drilling came from above. A steel hummingbird had landed on the roof of the kiosk. Fang collapsed against the wall. How long could she remain inside?
The ground shook again as the Army fought to save Seattle.
Chapter Two
Six years earlier
Ridley tapped the view-screen in the back seat of his Porsche as the car drove onto the ferry. A headache brewed. He opened an app, connected it to his implant, and programmed a ten-minute increase in his blood’s oxygen concentration. The lung implant whirred under his skin, like a small bee. The tension in his shoulders did not abate.
Diane’s faced appeared in a window on the screen. Her ash-brown hair was tucked into a neat bun and she wore a brilliant blue dress, a departure from her normal jeans and vintage t-shirts. “You should’ve taken your speedboat. Christina is already here.”
“The ferry was delayed,” he grumbled.
“How long?”
“The boat’s moving now.”
“I’ll tell her.”
The past few weeks had been a whirlwind of activity. The video of Rex Bates’ confession had frightened the world. How could one man wield so much power? Were there others with the same motives? Had Rex faked his death? Had Ridley, or another, faked the video?
While Diane purposefully evaded reporters, Ridley bathed in the limelight. He skillfully navigated interviews until his image was as familiar as Rex Bates himself. Blue Planet labeled him The Green Tech Magnate while Digital Dynasty felt that Technology’s Savior was a better descriptor. Hawt Magazine called him America’s Hawtest Bachelor. An editorial in The Citizen’s Registry, entitled The Betrayal of Humanity, still enraged him. Was it worth his time to rebut their accusations? Ridley ultimately decided that the rag would never publish the truth.
Thirty-minutes later, the ferry docked with a gentle thump. The tethered view-screen bounced up and down as the car rolled over a steel plate and back onto solid pavement. The electric car sped away from the ferry terminal and down a crumbling road. Only Diane’s bungalow, amidst the homes of a few lingering families, gave any indication that this was once a thriving neighborhood. The car passed her cottage and then drove another quarter-mile. A solid-iron gate slowly swung open. The driveway, paved with cobblestones rescued from the remains of Pioneer Square, wound through carefully placed hemlock and spruce. Ridley had paid a hefty fee to the landscapers for mature trees, which were delivered from off the island and planted in a single day. His post-modern fortress overlooked Puget Sound and the Seattle skyline just beyond. Printed-concrete walls, embedded with boulders, curled into tenacious loops and swirls. A tessellation of small windows clung to the concrete and then dissolved into floor-to-ceiling walls of plate-glass. Iridescent solar tiles trickled down a curved Hobbit-like roof planted in a meadow of flowers. Three wind turbines spun slowly in the faint breeze. The central tower loomed like a shepherd watching its flock.
A news van was parked in the turn-about. The Porsche pulled into the ga
rage, opened its gull-wing door, and powered off. A magnetic power cable lowered from the ceiling and plugged itself into a charging port adjacent to the car’s Washington State bar-code. Ridley pushed the view screen out of his way. As he stepped out, Lucy recognized him and opened the door to the mudroom. He tossed his coat onto an enormous kitchen island of streaky Brazilian granite.
Diane chased behind him. “They’re in the living room. The camera is set up and ready to go.”
Ridley’s opinion of Christina had grown only more unfavorable as her popularity had soared. She was still just a bleached-blond news anchor looking for her next primetime special. Though Ridley soaked up the curves of her grey wool suit and white blouse, he tried to remember that she was yet another hard-boiled know-nothing. She stood and held out her hand. “Good to see you again. I know you’ve had a busy day so we should just get started.”
He sat in a leather chair that had been carefully positioned in front of his ocean view. The cameraman did a final check of the light levels. Christina took her seat in opposition. Let the fireworks begin. The cameras began rolling.
Christina spoke like a high school cheerleader hoping to date the quarterback. “Thank you for hosting us today in your home. This place is ab-so-lute-ly a-maz-ing.”
“Thank you.”
“I hear you bought out the entire neighborhood to build this mansion?”
“Many of my neighbors passed. The houses were abandoned so I decided that a little gentrification wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”
She flashed a pearly smile. “Money buys a lot, doesn’t it?”
“Why not? People talk like wealth is a bad thing, but everyone aspires to it. I also value my privacy, something I can’t get in Seattle. I wanted a self-sufficient home, and space for my personal laboratory.”
From behind the camera, Diane encouraged him to smile.
“Are you here by yourself?” Christina asked.
“Yes.”
“No housekeepers or other help?”
“I don’t need a lot of attention, not with automation and bots.”
Diane rolled her eyes at his omission. The camera zoomed in on Ridley.
“Diane Kingsolver works here during the day, but the rest of the time, it’s just Lucy and I,” Ridley added.
“Lucy?”
“My digital assistant.”
“An AI?”
“Yes.”
“Can we meet Lucy?”
“No, I’m afraid not. She’s not quite ready for primetime, if I’m being honest. We’re still developing her programming.”
She leaned forward. “Let’s go back a bit. I understand that you lost your parents to the Bolivian flu. That haunts you, doesn’t it?”
Ridley would not deliver the emotional moment that Christina sought. “Everyone is haunted by the Collapse.”
“How did you survive?”
Ridley restrained his sarcasm. “I was among the luck to have genetic therapy in utero. I have the protective genes engineered by Rex Bates.”
“Do you think your parents were involved in the conspiracy?”
“No, of course not,” he snapped, “They were hippies. We used water from rain barrels. Dad had every seed you could imagine in a file cabinet in the basement. We had fruit trees, the greenhouse, and Mom’s flock of Silkie chickens. And when I got sick, Diane was really the one that found me and saved me. She got sick too as it turned out. It was just the two of us for quite a long time. Compared to many, we were fortunate.”
“Did you share with your neighbors?”
“Of course,” he said, “But we still lost a lot of people on the island. The antivirals came here after the worst had already passed. Many people were still afraid to leave their house well into the following winter.”
“Tell me about your work at Cerenovo. How did you get started?”
“The Great Collapse began just after I took my job there. It was a trial by fire. We had patients with implants—internal pacemakers, insulin pumps, oxygen-exchange bladders, and the like. They were going to die if we couldn’t charge their batteries.”
“My understanding is that you modified the original botnet to create the Predator? Is that right?”
Ridley explained how the Predator had been created.
Christina pointed at him with a pen. “Several months ago you speculated that Rex Bates’ confession might have been a forgery by an AI. Do you still believe that to be true?”
“It’s not a belief, but rather a possibility. We simply don’t know. I still believe that the botnet was emergent, the product of clashing AIs, hacking by governments, and corporate viruses run amuck. The pieces of the virus came from many places.”
“Is there any credibility to this being the work of anarchists—anti-robotic crusaders?”
“You need money and technical training to do that. They are clowns.”
“But how could a polymorphic virus emerge into a life-form?”
His face came alive at the question. “The world’s computing structure provided this virus almost infinite opportunities for recombination. As it incorporated new code, something happened that resulted in a program greater than the sum of its parts.”
“Many people say that Cerenovo never owned the Predator, that it was created by a transnational workgroup. They say your fortune was ill-gotten.”
“That group refused to do anything. They were trying to be safe. The world was already dying. I knew we had to act.”
“Tell me more about Lucy. You designed her to be an antivirus of sorts, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“If the Botnet was sentient, isn’t creating another artificial intelligence just asking for trouble? Didn’t we learn any lessons from the Great Collapse?”
“Why would a sentient AI harm us?” he asked.
“Why did the botnet virus?” she countered.
“The botnet did not understand its actions. Besides, Rex Bates was the one who used the Bolivian flu to kill people. The emergence of the botnet was coincidental.”
“Won’t a sentient AI be in competition with people?”
“Competition for what? Electricity? Random access memory chips? Why would an AI threaten humanity? It will be symbiotic. We evolve together.”
“Computers have put every truck driver out of business. Lots of people thought the Great Collapse would reset things, but now, thanks to you, we’re right back where we started. Kiwi just opened its first all robotic car factory last month. Not a single set of human hands needed.”
“You have to understand…”
Ridley searched for the right words.
Her eyes glistened as if she was a cat that cornered a mouse. “Go on,” she said.
“AIs are tools. My intent is to make life easier for people. If we can free people from mundane tasks, they will have the time to do great things. Art. Science.”
“How will homeless and hungry people create art and science?”
“There is a great deal of wealth in this world. If we share our wealth...”
“You mean welfare.”
He stumbled over his words. “If we can free people from mundane tasks, we can spend more time on things that matter. Family. Friendships.”
Ridley was shocked that this bubblegum princess had her daggers out. He had been unprepared, expecting a fluff piece about his mansion and how he liked being the nation’s most eligible bachelor. Christina continued, “Many people say that the universal basic income has been an utter failure. Thousands of families can barely survive on it. Worse yet, they have no purpose in their lives. Synthetic opioids are being overwhelmed by even worse drugs—Exios and Nubara—that remain psychoactive for weeks. If you take their jobs, aren’t you taking their pride, their souls even?”
“I don’t see it that way. We’re giving people freedom. The truth is that we need to fundamentally restructure our economy. The universal basic income is just a start.”
“So, more welfare? Who’s going to
pay for that? Last year, Ukon-America and Cerenovo paid what, three-percent in taxes?”
“Cerenovo donates liberally to needy people throughout the country. Just last week, I met a former gymnast who can walk again because we gave her a set of cybernetic legs.”
Christina circled back for the kill. “IBM’s machine beat Gary Kasparov in chess in 1997. Google’s Deepmind project was doing facial recognition and voice translation in what, 2010? Don’t you think we’ve already wasted enough effort on this dream of synthetic intelligence?”
“Those were primitive types of AI. They had a limited purpose and programming. At their most basic, engineers and programmers provided the answers to every question posed to them. We still don’t have fully interactive VR. We still don’t have climate models accurate beyond six-months. We still don’t have robotic butlers and maids. Today’s robots are little more advanced than insects.”
She remained combative. “House servants are one of the few remaining professions where average people can still work for their money. Don’t you think that programming sentient machines is unethical in an age of surplus population, joblessness, and rampant poverty?”
“Five years ago, we lost a fifth of our population,” he said.
Diane had warned him against the interview when Samuel had suggested it; she had watched Christina lure many a celebrity into sugary traps. Diane stood with her arms folded; her eyes said I told you so.
“I think artificial intelligence is exactly what we need to resolve the world’s problems,” Ridley continued, “A true AI could look at our problems without prejudice or human emotion. An AI can provide solutions that go beyond what our limited minds can achieve.”
“Rex Bates thought he knew best for us. What if the AI decides upon a solution worse than what Rex did? What if it doesn’t like humanity?”
“It seems to me that humanity is its own greatest threat.”
She waited for him to elaborate. He did not.
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