Mirage (isaac asimov's robot mystery)

by Mark W. Tiedemann

"Disrupting the conference could accomplish the same thing, though. Give me something more concrete."

  Lanra shook his head. "I can't. I'm looking into it, but right now I can't. I needed to see you to find out what you intend to do."

  Ariel raised her eyebrows. "Me?"

  "Spacers."

  "We're hardly a monolith, Mr. Lanra. My own people are taking a wait-and-see approach. When and if the Terran authorities make arrests, then we can see."

  "They're likely to arrest Rega Looms. What then?"

  "It's a question of evidence."

  "Look," Lanra said. "Mr. Looms is not especially liked here, either."

  "What do you mean, 'either'?"

  "Like Spacers. See, people want stability, they want comfort, they want reassurance. They don't want disruption. Change scares them. The way things are right now, it's fairly comfortable. Both you and my employer advocate changes. Whoever is setting this up will give the people something they want-two avenues of unwelcome change closed down. Who's going to be on Rega Looms' side in this when he's been telling people for years what lazy bastards they've been because they won't peel their own potatoes or make their own clothes? He sees the average technological environment today as no better than one with positronics. People resent it -enough to not care that he might not be guilty."

  "He's the perfect scapegoat, in other words," Ariel said.

  "As you say."

  "You still haven't given me an alternative."

  "Alda Mikels."

  "Imbitek? Why would he?"

  "You should look at his finances. And you should look at your own people. This didn't happen entirely here on Earth. The black market exists to serve Spacers and Settlers as well as Terrans."

  "You're very good at making broad claims that you can't back up," Ariel said dryly.

  "There's a very, very old saying on Earth, Ms. Burgess: 'Follow the money. ' "

  Lanra stood then. "Thanks for meeting with me. I hope it wasn't fruitless."

  Mia watched him cross the dining room. Halfway toward the entrance, he did a casual turn, sweeping the room. A very professional move, one she should have seen coming, but did not. She froze in place as his gaze swept past her, then returned, briefly. She thought she saw a faint frown of puzzlement, followed by a quick smile.

  Then he was gone.

  Twenty-Two

  The embassy limo pulled into the Phylaxis garage. Derec told it to wait and ascended to the main level to see who was present. He found Rana in the cafeteria, making coffee.

  "Anyone here?" Derec asked.

  "No. Stu came by today, filed his reports, then went home. No one else. Listen, this has been quite a day so far. You received a call you will not believe and the work-ups on that stuff you found-"

  "Later. Prep Bogard's niche."

  She blinked at him, momentarily uncomprehending. Then her eyes widened. "Right."

  Derec returned to the limo.

  "Bogard, come with me."

  The robot unfolded out of the rear seat, its body flowing liquidly and resuming its standard form alongside Derec. Derec told the limo to return to the embassy. He watched it back out of the garage and drive away. The door closed and Derec led Bogard up to the lab.

  "Do you remember this place, Bogard?"

  "Yes, Derec. I was constructed and programmed here. "

  "That's correct. Do you know why I've brought you back?"

  "Debriefing and recalibration."

  "Correct. Are you aware of a gap in your primary memory?"

  "Y-yes-yes," the robot stammered.

  "Fine, Bogard, don't focus on it," Derec said calmly. "That gap represents a potential conflict. That's what we're going to fix."

  "Y -esss, Derec."

  The abrupt distortion in Bogard's speech execution worried Derec. He had expected a slight hesitancy, not such a clear sign of imminent collapse. It had been over four days since the Incident, so perhaps it was not unreasonable to expect problems like this.

  "Oh, my." Rana stood at the door to a separate chamber, staring at Bogard. "I thought-"

  "I know," Derec said quickly. "Is everything prepped?"

  "Uh, yes."

  Derec led the robot through the doorway into the small room. The space contained two workstations, cousins to those in the main lab. Against one wall stood a robotic niche, modified to link to a third console off to the left. A wide table hung from the right-hand wall; tools and half-constructed components covered it.

  Rana went to one of the workstations, Derec the other.

  "Bogard, please enter the standby module," Derec said.

  Bogard obediently backed into the niche. Derec activated the module. The niche extruded hundreds of wire-fine I/O probes and linked Bogard into the system.

  Derec relaxed then, surprised at the amount of tension he had carried all the way from the embassy. He realized at that moment that he had been uncertain of Bogard's cooperation. Perhaps Ariel was right and tinkering with absolute Three Law restrictions was a mistake.

  Too late…

  "All right," he said to Rana, "start the alignment. Bogard's buffer is holding a major conflict at bay. I think the internal barriers are about to yield to the diagnostics."

  "It's been what? Four, five days?" Rana asked, working her console.

  "Close enough. I thought we might have a little more time, but it's already showing symptoms of collapse."

  Derec watched the screens at his station. The buffer transfer was the most complicated part of the debriefing. A duplicate positronic brain received the contents of Bogard's buffer, allowing for a full assessment of its impact. Simultaneously, a simple memory cache received a verbatim record of those same contents.

  "Thales, please monitor the positronic transfer," Derec said.

  "Yes, Derec," the RI replied.

  "Alignment ready," Rana said.

  "Begin."

  Several things happened at once. All the screens on Derec's board showed sudden changes, most especially the three showing activity in the receptor brain. Where there had been the trace readings of a functioning but unprogrammed positronic net, now the scales indicated a rapidly adapting set of personality algorithms, basic memory notation, and program parameters. Within less than two minutes, the receiving positronic brain became Bogard.

  And the trouble started.

  "Derec," Thales said, "there is a rejection algorithm working."

  "What?"

  "The receptor is rejecting the contents. It carries an unassimilable paradox."

  Now Derec saw it: a discontinuity starting in the memory pathways and spreading into the personality. The two aspects were drifting out of sync with each other. The receptor brain was trying to refuse the information. Positronic brains carried certain self-protects in their initial make-up which prevented them being programmed in any way that conflicted with the Three Laws.

  "How about the memory dump?"

  "Reception and encoding nominal. "

  "Bypass the personality sectors," Derec told Rana.

  Rana nodded, her fingers dancing on her console. Gradually, the discontinuity flattened out and the transfer proceeded. By circumventing that part of the positronic brain which manifested as a robot's personality, the information could now load as simple data.

  "Once it's all transferred," Derec said, "then we'll try adding the rest."

  Rana frowned, but continued working. "Set and working. This will take some time-maybe ten minutes. Fifteen."

  "Good." Derec ran a hand over his face, feeling all the weariness from the day. Had it all happened in less than five days? Yes, and he had been working eighteen out of every twenty-four hours since the Incident. Even so, he knew he should not be this tired. Then again, arguing with Ariel always drained him.

  "Was that coffee I saw?" he asked.

  "Absolutely," Rana replied.

  "I'll be right back."

  He wanted to go upstairs and stretch out on the cot, but he walked into the cafeteria instead and poured a
cup of coffee. The past few days seemed to both contract and expand in his memory, at once too short a time and too long. He was worn from the distorted time sense.

  But he was excited, too. He felt close to an answer. Maybe not the answer, but an important one just the same, and once he had a handle on one relevant fact the rest could be dragged out into the open through sheer persistence.

  Unfortunately, right now he could make no sense of anything he had learned.

  The com chimed. Derec wandered toward it, intending only to hear who it was.

  "Mr. Avery, this is Tathis Kedder. From Union Station? I uh-"

  Derec stepped up to the com and pressed ACCEPT. "I'm here, Mr. Kedder. How can I help you?"

  "Well, I'm not sure." Kedder laughed nervously. "I was going over some old logs and, um… there are some inconsistencies in the way the RI was reporting certain things that, well, in light of everything else that's happened, they made me wonder."

  "What sort of inconsistencies?"

  "I'd, uh, rather not discuss it over a comline."

  "I see. Where would you like to talk, then?"

  "My apartment? Tomorrow afternoon?"

  "Send the address. I'll be there, Mr. Kedder."

  "Thank you, Mr. Avery. I, uh, I appreciate this."

  The connection broke and Derec grunted. What was this all about now? Reminded, he touched the reconnect for Joler Hammis. The line still came up UNAVAILABLE.

  "How come Kedder isn't looking for new work?" he wondered aloud. "Maybe he is."

  "Derec," Rana called from the main lab. "I need to show you this."

  Derec returned to the lab. Rana was leaning over a workstation.

  "Those flakes you gave me the other night? Look." She pointed to one of the screens.

  The image showed a six-sided lattice structure. The pattern spread over the entire screen… except in three places, where the hexagonal form splintered around an octahedron.

  "What…?" Derec said.

  "The vertices," Rana said, "are oxygen atoms. They're bonding aluminum atoms throughout most of the matrix except here-" she pointed to the octagonal forms "-where they're bonding faujasite analogs."

  "Analogs… you mean they're synthetic. "

  "As far as I can tell, the whole thing is synthetic. What I mean is, the faujasite molecules are composed of similar components, except instead of electrons in the constituent atoms, these have positrons."

  Derec felt his scalp ripple. "Positrons. You're telling me this is a brain construct?"

  "It's a construct, but I wouldn't call it a brain. The basic shape is a zeolite."

  "Zeolites… filters, industrial filters." Derec shook his head. "Huh?"

  "I said the basic shape," Rana explained. "Those faujasite analogs have one other component that I don't recognize. The positrons are interacting with the aluminum atoms and transferring themselves like an electrical current from octahedron to octahedron. The aluminum ends up 'borrowing' electrons from the oxygen atoms. The resultant oxide sort of follows the current, passing the positrons along. No normal atom wants to keep the positron, so it just travels."

  "Ending up where?"

  "It's looking for another positronic matrix."

  "Why?"

  Rana shrugged.

  Derec studied the screen. "Industrial filters… zeolites are used in food processors, for reconstituting certain molecules into different combinations… they're used in gas exchangers. All they're really designed to do is pass other molecules and recombine them or strip out electrons to make isotopes. What would this be used for?" He chewed his lip. "This is incomplete, isn't it? Were there any other atoms?"

  "A few scattered ions, nothing coherent."

  "Like what?"

  "Platinum, a few pyroxenes, stray carbons…" Rana's voice trailed off.

  Derec looked at her. "And?" he prodded.

  "Well, there were a few large fragments of long chain carbon atoms-I can't swear to it, but it looked like a fullerene."

  "A buckyball?"

  "No, buckytubes."

  "Superconducting?"

  "There wasn't enough of one left to test, but that would be my bet."

  "Buckytubes… with positrons instead of electrons?"

  "No, but the fragmenting looked like it had occurred at that level, like the binding electron shells had been disrupted."

  "As if a positron had been passed through it?"

  Again, she shrugged, but now there was a small grin on her face.

  "So what we're looking at," Derec mused, "is a material designed to find and link with a positronic matrix and pass material into that matrix. A conduit that-what?-attaches parasitically and sets up a single point feedback loop?"

  "Fullerenes grow under the right circumstances. If this material permeated the RI"

  "There'd be no way to tell without examining the RI itself." Derec shuddered. "Clever. Somebody has created what amounts to a positronic parasite."

  "But all it could do would be to pass positrons into the system. The charges are opposite for anything else and if it's a positronic matrix, then it's still functioning as its own brain."

  "Unless this thing can be used to feed it new information."

  "What kind?" Rana asked.

  "Perceptions?"

  Rana's eyes widened. "The game."

  Derec nodded. "The RI took itself off-line during the assault to playa game. The game was loaded into the system to begin with, but it knew it was a game."

  "But if it came through a secondary matrix that substituted one set of sensory parameters for another-"

  "The RI wouldn't be able to tell which one was reality. At least not right away. It might have reset itself."

  "Or this might have just switched off."

  "Either way, it wouldn't be able to tell that the false information was coming from outside. This would appear to be just another branch of its own system."

  "Damn."

  "Absolutely damn. I-"

  A chime sounded. Rana peered at another console. "Bogard's finished transferring." Derec put Bogard on standby before he brought the receptor brain up. "Thales, I want you to run monitor. Keep the receptor brain from collapsing till we get a complete picture."

  "May I remind you, Derec," Thales said in its calm way, "that a conflicted positronic brain on the verge of collapse is a chaotic system? I will do what I can, but I guarantee nothing."

  "Do your best, Thales." Derec touched a contact and watched his screens.

  "Would you like me to run a recalibration on Bogard?" Thales asked.

  "Can you handle both?"

  "Of course."

  Derec glanced at Rana, who smiled at the hint of injured pride in Thales' voice.

  "Go ahead, then." He studied the readouts. He keyed a set of commands. "Bringing up the surrogate… now."

  All the realtime graphs warped radically.

  "What? What? What?" came sharply over the speakers. Derec turned down the decibels.

  "Bogard," he said.

  "Y-yes. Who are-what?"

  "This is Derec Avery, Bogard. Pay attention to my voice. Center on my voice."

  "D-Derec, yes. I acknowledge-I know-I-yes-"

  "Calm down."

  "I am. I-am."

  "Listen to me. Are you listening?"

  "Yes, Derec."

  "I require a report. Can you give me a full report of the operation at Union Station?"

  "Yes, I-will."

  "Begin report."

  Several seconds passed in silence. The fluctuations displayed on the screens continued.

  "Thales?" Derec asked.

  "The brain continues nominal for the circumstances," Thales said.

  Derec nodded. "Bogard, report."

  "I cannot!" The response came as a shriek.

  "Bogard, center on my voice," Derec said calmly. "Pay attention to my voice."

  The robot paused. "Yes, Derec."

  "I require your report."

  "Yes."

  Again, the
silence stretched. As Derec was about to make his request again, Bogard's voice finally responded.

  "I failed!" it shouted.

  "Report, Bogard," Derec insisted.

  Suddenly, the chaos on Derec's screens seemed to settle down slightly.

  "Report on security operation," Bogard said. "Subject: Eliton. Theater: the Gallery at Union Station, Washington, D. C."

  Derec looked at Rana, who seemed surprised.

  "Continue," Derec said.

  "All telemetry reports optimal. Crowd control is in effect. Communications and sensor telemetry established realtime through Resident Intelligence. Surveillance reports zero infiltration of threatening subjects. Police have blocked admission to several protestors who appear on their trouble list. Robotic security maximum. Crowd density acceptable, assessment acceptable, the word from One is Go.

  "The limo stops at main entrance. We are met by Eliton's field security team. I am assigned operational control to Agent Mia Daventri. She indicates that the situation, while apparently chaotic, is acceptable. I allow Senator Eliton to emerge from the limo first per prearranged program. I follow immediately and perform an on-site scan. The crowd is noisy and hostile, but belligerence is kept at the level of verbal protest. No indication of immediate threat. Per scheduled conditions I uplink to Resident Intelligence for optimal security coordination. The security team moves ahead. I stay one meter behind Senator Eliton all the way to the ceremonial platform.

  "I-mission parameter amendation-tier four, level B-nine-proceed sublevel sixteen-"

  "Bogard, stop," Derec ordered. "Clarify last sentence."

  "Mission parameter amendation."

  "Understood. What is the nature of the amendation?"

  "Circumvention tactic. Request movement to tier four-' "

  "Bogard, stop. Clarify. Circumvention of what? You are performing observe and protect duties for Senator Eliton. What circumvention?"

  Bogard paused. "I do not know. Missing modules, data incomplete."

  "Very well, Bogard. From whom have you received this amendation?"

  "Source-direct-link, Resident Intelligence, Union Station."

  Derec leaned forward. "Proceed with report. You followed Senator Eliton to the ceremonial platform. What happened then?"

  "I continue monitoring security channels. Everything is continuing optimal. There is movement in the audience, but floor security indicates that everything is acceptable. RI reports everything under control. The assembly is informed that the Spacer legations are arriving. Senator Eliton takes his prearranged position to greet Ambassador Humadros. I-"