by Peter Riva
“Okay Cramer, let’s pretend that’s so, but I doubt it. So then, listen carefully. Either it is or will be self-determining, the first thing it will do is breach that firewall when it knows it’s there, the moment one of the arms of programming is breached and it loses functionality there, it will go in search of what stopped it. The firewall will be transparent to it, even if impenetrable—and you’d better hope it is bulletproof—for it will be able to ascertain the Asimov firewall criteria from its library. Either it will solve them and become omnipotent, DefenseShield and all, or it will fail and trigger a meltdown leading, no doubt, to a level 1 event. Either way the Nation is doomed.” I paused, almost shouting now, “You’ve built a doomsday device whether you knew it or not.”
Cramer stood there, hardly listening. He cast a glance down at his sleeve, waiting for consensus or reaction, I didn’t know which. Meanwhile, something else was bothering him: “You want us to protect your son, and that’s underway, but never once have you mentioned your wife and kids. Why’s that Bank?”
He had me there. In times of emergency, as Freud had noted, the veil of caring is pared away to the essential. Maybe it was because I had put Fred in danger with my message. Maybe because it was that She would manage. She always did. But the SynthKids, why didn’t I think of them? Because they’re not real, in the end, not real. Part of my reality, were they dear? Irreality more like. I wasn’t about to give Cramer that satisfaction.
“I put Fred in danger. And I assume you’re keeping all the good citizens of the city safe, aren’t you? Or were you trying to undermine my confidence for what I still need to do? You’re not really very good at your job, are you Cramer?”
“Ah, the counter-offensive, a bit weak and petty, but then that’s you.” Touché. “Well, good, at least you’re beginning to strategize and not merely reacting to events around you. We’ll protect your wife and kids, and Fred by now, so put all that energy and focus to work on the problem at hand. What exactly do you plan to do?”
“When do the people and things from my list get here?”
“In about 10 minutes, 15 tops.”
“Bring them in the mechanical emergency door. Make them take the stairs unless you can be sure you can isolate the elevator. I have a sense that it knows we took the elevator.”
“Damn, Simon. Hadn’t thought of that.” Good of him to admit it and to call me by name. I went to the toilet for a bout of throwing up. Cramer stood by my cubicle and mumbled something about the benefits of chocolate cake and an empty stomach. I retched again.
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Okay, we were all assembled in the hallway. Cramer had disabled the cameras and System access portals before the people I had asked for arrived. It was a novel use of the sitting area chair, made quite a mess. Why he didn’t use his weapon puzzled me. He saw the look on my face and said “Stun signature, may be detected, give away a clue. This way there’s a mechanical failure, not electronic and not spiked.” He went about smashing things. Crude but effective. He looked quite happy in a way.
As I said, we were all there, a group of people who mostly didn’t know why they were there, but had been brought in a hurry. No one looked happy or welcoming. Mary was definitely not smiling. Her greeting was a quick “Thanks loads, genius.” And I guessed she was taking a roasting for the piggyback. Interesting she never reported it. Or maybe she did but said that curt greeting to pretend to be angry with me. Either way Mary was more of an asset than ever. She was either angry at having been caught out (which meant she might help me secretly again) or she was playing the double spy game, making them believe she was fooling me when the word “genius” could not possibly have been anything except a compliment. It always was between us. Hopefully, Mary was telling me she was still the Mary I knew.
Tom Makerman was pissed, and showed it. He hadn’t changed clothes for a while. Still being billeted on a Control couch no doubt. Tough cookies.
In an attempt to wrest control from Cramer, before he could speak up, I called out, “Who’s got the first spot on the list?” A guy in yellow ’jamas with a SND patch, standard Control issue for sleeping cops I presumed (we all knew orange is for felons, but yellow for cops?) raised his hand like at school. He was 1st on my list: A Personnel Evaluator, grade 1.
“That’s me, Sergeant Todd.” He looked at Cramer for permission. Cramer nodded. “Okay, what are you looking for, what do you want me to do?”
“I need three things sergeant. Take a table, use Tom Makerman’s, he can’t use it anymore.” A giggle from Mary and a low growl from Cramer. “Have Cramer patch it off System into Control, into your files, and find these people. . .” I raised a hand and raised one finger at a time, “The earliest codifier to do my job with the System files. The last two codifiers to do my job. Find them, bring them to Control, keep them safe. If I’m right the System may,” I looked at Cramer to stop his objection, “I say may, be busy reaching out to them and, if they won’t play, eliminating them. We need clues only they may have.”
Cramer still stepped in: “Look I told you to only solve things that you experienced. . . .”
“Agent Cramer,” I thought maybe I should be polite in front of all these people, “I experienced sentience there. They may have too. I need them to help me qualify the level of sentience; qualify my experience to better know how to tackle it. Can you do that, did you sense anything? No? So, get me someone who did, maybe. If they’re any good they sensed it.”
“But Bank,” he was back to formal name-calling, if a little rude, as usual, “why the first codifier? There was no awareness back then.”
“True, but what do you want me to measure against, where’s the control sample of nothingness upon which I can spot changes?” And a little dig: “Simple science really, Agent.” I saw Mary smile, a little. Ah, Mary, you’re still with me, good. Sergeant Todd was already going over to Makerman’s desk waiting for Cramer to unhook it from the System and hook it up directly, off-System, to Control.
Cramer pushed past me, and I had to catch my balance. The hall wasn’t that crowded. He just wanted me to remember his power over me on his way to hook Sergeant Todd up. Time for the fifth item on my list: “Who’s got the electronics kit?”
“Me, Tech McVay.” A small thin girl stepped forward out of the pack, very nervous but steady. I was watching her hands.
“Look, here’s what I need you to do. I need a patch between domes one and two to be able to link a third dome. You brought the third one? Good. Now, and here’s the tricky part, before you do that I need you to cut through the wires from the overhead lines, cleanly, one clip. Then, when your third dome is ready and we’re in position—with the domes on—I want you to splice the wires back. Can you do that?”
“Look there’s no need. I can disconnect each dome . . .”
“No, do it my way, I want it to go off as one and then all three to come up as one . . .” I turned to Cramer, “What’s the level of knowledge here? Or security?”
“Tell them any damn thing you want but get going, will you?”
“Okay, splice the way I want, got it? I don’t want three domes coming on separately. Three as one, that’s critical.”
“Aye aye. Got it.” Girl must have been Navy trained. “Now?”
“Now.” As she moved past me into the office towards my door, I sang out “Open wide Meg” and “Yes Simon” the door opened. I got a few looks. “Later” I said in way of explanation. I turned to the group and went for my seventh item: “Okay, who’s the child analyst here?”
The bearded man stepped forward. Why is it they always have a beard? Was it a stroking thing, something to occupy their hands as they look solemnly at you? What was unexpected was the voice, pitched high and with a definite affected accent, quite pompous yet somehow to be taken seriously. “Doctor Rence at your service. Just what do you have in mind Simon? Anything I can do,” and a pause while he looked around at the activity, “to help?”
I laughed. The seriousness of his job was c
ompletely in contradiction to his manner. He couldn’t care less what he was doing here. A child shrink dealing with, what, a computer? I needed to win him over and get answers, fast. “Look, good doctor. If you’re here I have to assume you’re the best damn child analyst there is, or there is available anyway.” He stood a little more erect. “What we may have here is an infant with tremendous power who may, or may not, recognize the consequence of that power and may, or may not, be developing into childhood and then on to young adulthood and so on. He, it, controls everything the Nation provides, including defense against our enemies. He has a bad day, we could all die. That clear enough for you?” He nodded, now looking worried. If he reaches to stroke the beard I might yell at him. “What I need is an evaluation of the process of those stages, what are the cognitive signposts you would expect to see. I am not expecting you to understand the System computer programming, but you know the stages, the capabilities as an infant moves from one stage to another. I need to identify where he is and, say, one or two stages after that, so I can measure progress if there is any. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sure, for a human. Even for most animals, but a computer program? Impossible, my profession is all measured in feelings, cognitive ability, not bytes and processing.” He thought for a while and, to his credit, never touched the damn beard once. “How’s about this? Cornell University calculated the mathematical computational capabilities in cognitive thought with an overlay of aging criteria. I can access that data and perhaps you could watch for the floating decimal point manipulation criteria as an indicator of equivalent development. You won’t have accurate data, but you should be able to get a sense of what’s what.”
“Done, good solution. Get that now please but doctor” he paused as he turned to go, “when you’ve given me that data, stick around, I will need your input constantly.”
Okay then, number eight: “Who has brought the Motorola scuba implants?”
A 30-ish female technician in a lab coat stepped forward and held up the wiring harness. At the end of the ultra thin wires dangled a small gold dot. This was the node she would implant behind my ear, a thought-to-voice, 2-way, transmission device used by very deep sea divers, below 200 meters all the way to 1,500, the deepest man has ever been in a free swim. I should know, for I was, in my college days, part of that team, number 2 in fact to almost reach bottom. The node is very painful at surface pressure, it’s designed to stop hurting below 100 meters. This was going to ache, badly. Putting it in was easy, but the pain would come on quickly and stay there. That’s why you put it on just before you dove, to minimize the time on the surface.
“Okay,” I said, “stand here next to me and get ready to insert the node just before I don the helmet.” She never said a word but stood by my side.
On to nine: “Who is the architect, is he or she here?” This was the one I was sure they would not provide. The System architect’s office has many people who know parts of the System and its sub-systems. There is no one we ever heard of, like the Master Coder myth, who knew it all. But I had to try.
“I am your architect. I wrote and constructed, with my team, the matrix of the main library and the egress points as well as the pass doors to the Asimov screens and traps; the System is faultless. Name’s Isaac, Doctor Isaac.” He was a little over my age, stuck up, sure of himself, the ex-child prodigy no doubt, and already wore a tired smile, like this was all a waste of time.
“Name change?”
“Yes.” That was it, no explanation, nothing. Idolatry of Asimov, I had seen it before. Faultless logic Isaac Asimov had, but then he wasn’t thinking about Nature or humans for that matter. The Three Laws of Robotics . . . just junk on the shortcuts of life. I jumped to the bottom line.
“Look Asimov junior, you want to kill everybody? Well, your asshole System design is doing just that unless we stop it.” I could see several of the people here hadn’t known that. “It has become sentient to some degree and I expect the first place it will go, when it finds out there are fail-safes, is to the level below the library to disconnect the Asimov commands or, worse, to take control of them and make everybody suffer. I need your full connect, pass doors and design, to be able to move about in there, in ways it will not have learned yet.”
The doctor chimed in from Mary’s desk where he was downloading data ready for my connection: “If it’s an infant, it won’t know there is an everybody. Infants think of mother and, sometimes, father. Brother and sister at around 6 months. The rest come into its sphere of recognition slowly after that.”
“Your point doctor?”
“If it thinks it’s punishing someone, pursuing someone, it will be after mother or father. Standard analytical psyche material here. It will not have the concept of mass-punishment. It’s personal, very. Doctor Isaac may be the first one it strikes at.” Doctor Isaac blanched. The psychologist continued, “How do you propose to control it?”
“That brings me to number ten. Is Freddie’s kindergarten teacher here?” A lady stepped forward. Overweight, with no discernable neck, just a slope from ears to shoulder, with a faint mustache and too much pink lipstick. She was intimidating, until she smiled, and then she became intimidating and hungry looking as well.
“Mrs. Ronneburg. Present. What, how do I fit in?”
“Mrs. Ronneburg, somehow you instilled a level of fear in my son when he was in your class—so strong that fear of teachers lasts to this day—that his behavior was never going to get out of hand. You knew when to punish and when to reward. You knew when to give in and when to deny. The kids all lived in fear of you, all his classmates. And yet you’re the only teacher he sends notes of his life’s progress to, all the kids do. I need you out here when I’m in there, ready to give advice. That may be critical.”
“I can do that, but I’m not sure there is anything scientific I can offer you. Children are each different. I establish solid barriers beyond which they dare not to tread. Punishment is called for, or at least the notion of it. How will that help you in there?”
“I’m not sure. I do know I want the option. Is that okay with you?” She nodded.
I had seen my brother William lurking at the outer edges of our little group. It was exactly like him to hang back and see what sort of trouble I had gotten myself into. Once, aged 12, I had managed to thwart Dad’s rules about taking the car, even managed to re-code the security system. He went along for the ride of course, but never took a share of the blame. On that occasion he hung back and waited to see if his admission of guilt would change anything. It wouldn’t have, we both knew it. He escaped punishment. I never resented him for escaping punishment, but I always regretted the lack of camaraderie. Brothers should share. We never did after that.
“William, time to stand and be counted.”
“What for, little brother? Seems to me you’re in control here and my presence lends little to the proceedings.”
“Ah, but William you have something I want to get from you, something only you can provide. While I deal with the preparation, I want you to take Mrs. Ronneburg and Doctor Rence and tell them—really tell them everything William—everything about Dad’s crackpot tales of God’s pernicious little game of hide ‘n seek, or altered reality.”
“What possibly for?”
I smiled. “Because if you don’t, Agent Cramer will kill you where you stand.” No indecision now, he was practical, he joined up.
“Now?”
“Yes William, now. Good doctor, is the information there on the table? Ah, thanks. Thank you for that. Would you and Mrs. Ronneburg go over to the tables down the hall and listen carefully? You have about 10 minutes to get back here.” They all trooped off. One SND cop, who had arrived as escort, went with them
Cramer was inspecting the tech’s handiwork on the domes. “Okay, I give. Who’s the third one for? Mary?”
“Agent Cramer, sorry to disappoint you, no. Mary is my voice control while I’m in there.” I turned to her. “Mary, listen to me. I’ve us
ed this node transmitter before. It is very quick and very powerful. In real time, not inside the System, you can hear my voice clearly because the cadence is normal although it will sound tinny, not really me. I suspect in there, dealing in fractions of a second, it will sound like a gnat’s wings. Here’s what I need you to do: sit at your desk, set the mode to record and playback. As soon as I’m in there I’m going to send the same message three times. “Mary’s a genius.” Find out the transfer speed, slow it down and let Control have a copy. Then answer my questions in real time and convert those to gnat speed, then relay to me. I’ll hear you fairly clearly.”
“Simon that will seem like a long lead time to you.” Mary was speaking calmly, clearly relieved not to be going in with me. Obviously she had also thought that being stranded in there was a fate much worse than death, although that was a distinct possibility as well.
“I know. I hope to have all the answers from out here, in there, open for us to see. What I will also need from you is the full transmission of the doctor’s data off your desk through the node.”
“But Simon, it’s not audio, it’s data, you can’t absorb it that way.”
“Mary, we used to, in deep dives. We used to pass decompression data to each other. You sort of hear it, say it and then see it as code streaming down in front of your eyes, transparent numbers and text. I can see it, and absorb it, I think, left brain. I’m pretty sure anyway, I’ve done it underwater before.”
“But that’s dangerous, it’s against medical law, you could have a stroke doing that!” I shook my head, then nodded. She hesitated, shrugged and went to her desk, fingers ready to go popping, no doubt.
I turned to Cramer, “Are the codifiers in Control yet?” He looked at his sleeve and nodded to me. Good, I need to speak with them, secure screen, off System, for 5 minutes while everyone gets ready. Okay?”
Even though he nodded, all the while Cramer was watching me, my eyes. He saw the glint of humor there, I am sure. He didn’t miss a trick. Duh! So Mary isn’t going in and yet I needed three domes? He rightly assumed he was going. Damned right. If I die, he can too, serves him right. But I saw he was now calculating who the third dome was for.