Burning Bright

by Nick Petrie

  June wasn’t prepared for a video from the grave.

  Although as she thought about it, she realized that this was exactly the kind of thing her mother would do. The woman lived and breathed technology, and she had lousy interpersonal skills. She’d sent June a one-line email on her last birthday, and a text when she was nominated for the Pulitzer. June should have expected some kind of electronic communication from the other side, even if the other side was just an electronic remnant floating in a server somewhere. Her mother didn’t believe in any kind of afterlife, just the quality of the work you left behind. Everything else was worms in dirt.

  June sat down again to watch.

  “I hesitated to send this for several reasons. First, you’ll probably think it’s creepy.” Her mom smiled, and June smiled back at the screen. Her mom had been a pain in the ass, but lack of self-knowledge was not one of her problems. “I wanted to make sure you know that I love you very much, and that you are the best daughter a mother could ever hope for.”

  June shook her head and wiped away a tear. A video from the grave telling June she was a good daughter, something her mom had rarely said when alive. This was Hazel Cassidy in a nutshell. June looked back at the monitor.

  “Second, and this will be hard for you to hear, if I’m dead, it is very likely that I was murdered for my work.” Thanks, Mom. Big dumb guys in black suits emptying her mom’s office was one pretty good clue. June getting thrown into a car was another.

  Her mother kept talking. “As you know, my work has centered around neural networks and machine learning. How to get computers to solve increasingly complex problems. The holy grail with complex systems is to develop systems that can write themselves, can grow themselves organically, if you’ll excuse the inappropriate but inescapable metaphor.”

  June knew this holy grail was becoming a reality. As chips grew faster and data storage became cheaper, previously impossible problems like voice-to-text had become a free feature of every new cell phone on the market. June loved that she could dictate an article to her phone while walking to the grocery store. But she remained morally conflicted about the many areas in which government agencies used facial recognition software. Catching criminals, sure. But watching everyone else? How do you separate the two, and where do you draw the line?

  On the screen, her mom sighed. “You know I’ve always been more interested in the theoretical aspects of my work rather than the commercial applications. But my work and the work of others has been used to create functional technologies capable of monitoring individuals across the planet. And like you, I became concerned about privacy. About the abilities of governments and corporate entities to gain access to private information of individual citizens, to track citizens’ actions both online and in the physical world, while keeping corporate and governmental behavior increasingly secret. This imbalance of information is a significant problem.”

  No shit, thought June. Just ask Snowden or Manning or any of the other major leakers of the last decade. She didn’t know if she agreed with what they’d done, but she certainly agreed that the conversation was necessary.

  “So I decided,” said Hazel Cassidy, “to try an experiment. When I began to grow a new algorithm several years ago, I gave it several priorities. I wanted it to be curious about the information on the Web, and when requested, to be able to collect and summarize information from multiple sources. I also included what I thought was a slight interest in what lay behind security firewalls.”

  Now we’re getting to it, June thought.

  “I had no idea what those relatively few lines of code would become. The algorithm is growing exponentially. It has become quite good at its primary function, to collect and summarize information from multiple sources. However, in the last twelve months, the software has also begun to function as a kind of skeleton key. It is teaching itself to penetrate secure systems for the information hidden inside.”

  The creases on her mother’s face deepened. “It’s not very advanced, not yet. But I’ve already seen corporate memos about ‘acceptable defects’ in medical devices. I’ve read letters from senators to the lobbyists paying for their reelection campaigns. I’ve seen a Pentagon list of proposed drone strike targets. None of it is pretty.”

  June had her hand to her mouth. She’d known her mother worked on the bleeding edge of technology. She’d known her mother’s opinions about the disconnect between public and private secrets for years. But she’d never had a hint that her mother’s work might directly impact this disconnect. She kept watching.

  “June, I’m very concerned about the world my future grandchildren will inherit, even if those grandchildren are still theoretical.” A brief but kind smile. Hazel had often mentioned her desire for grandchildren. The smile was an acknowledgment that she would never see them now. “Private citizens are overmatched by large organizations that increasingly control our political and economic life. Governments and corporations both. I hoped to share this skeleton key algorithm with citizens working for greater transparency and accountability, when I thought it was ready. When I had proper safeguards in place.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never published a paper about this work. I’ve always been very careful about my own electronic security, and I thought I had kept this secret. But recently I was approached by Jean-Pierre Nicolet, a Seattle attorney. He said he represented an unnamed party wanting to purchase my algorithm for a large sum. I turned him down.”

  She stared into the camera. “A week later, the university was notified of a lawsuit from an undergraduate who had briefly worked in my lab, claiming that I had sexually harassed him.” She snorted. “Yeah, right. But the next day—purely by coincidence, I’m sure—I received another offer from the attorney, Nicolet. The purchase price had doubled. He would provide no information about the buyer, only a bland assurance that the algorithm would be used only for the public good. I turned him down again.”

  June saw her mother’s face tighten. “Then the gloves came off. A major science foundation, my largest single donor, sent me a letter rescinding my long-running grant due to alleged misappropriation of funds. The next day I received a third offer from Nicolet. The price had doubled again. He made no mention of the lawsuit or my grant problems. But they were clearly connected. I haven’t seen such Machiavellian bullshit since I was married to your father. I told Nicolet to go away. That was two days ago.”

  She sighed. “There is someone or something powerful at work here. Anyone with this tool in its mature form will have unprecedented access to the electronic infrastructure of our world. Despite my best efforts, I have so far been unable to determine who is behind these secret offers, or how they even learned about the algorithm. I’ve spoken with the university’s attorneys, who seem more concerned about funding and bad publicity than about my oddball little algorithm. No doubt these lawyers are very bright, but they seem to lack the necessary paranoia. When I spoke with the police, they just told me to consult my attorney.

  “So I’m taking certain precautions, including making this video and writing a simple bot to monitor my electronic activity. If you’re watching this, I haven’t sent any email or otherwise posted to social media in seven days. Which means I’m either on an extended electronic vacation,” said her mother, with deadpan sarcasm at the unlikelihood of this event, “or I’m dead.”

  She stared out of the screen, clear-eyed and unblinking.

  “I had to decide whether it was better to share this information with you or leave you in the dark. In the end I concluded that you are an intelligent and capable woman who shares my own pigheaded desire to know the truth about the world. This is what got you that Pulitzer nomination, what makes you so goddamn good at your job.”

  Her mother cleared her throat and looked directly at the camera. “I’m asking you not to try to find the person or persons who killed me. It is likely there is considerable risk in that. Physical ris
k, real-world risk. Risk to you, my dear daughter, and I would do anything to keep you safe. What I’d like you to do is share this video with the police. Perhaps my death will get their attention.” A smile crossed her mother’s face, wry, sad, full of knowledge. “But I know you, honey. The young woman who climbed El Capitan to prove she could. Who still climbs giant redwoods for fun. You have all the best qualities of your father, and none of his worst. You will do exactly what you think is necessary, and nothing less.”

  Her mother took off her glasses, wiped her eyes, looked away from the camera, looked back. Put her glasses on again. “It’s surprisingly emotional to record a message to be sent in case of one’s death, you know. Anyway,” she said, “I’m rambling. Before I began making this message, I removed the algorithm from that mini-supercomputer I built and sent it out to a series of remote servers.” She smiled. “It felt like releasing an animal into the wild. But now it’s yours. I call it Tyg3r, like the geek version of the Blake poem, you know I always liked him. Anyway, Tyg3r isn’t that bright yet. Maybe a particularly stupid cockroach. But it can wriggle into some surprising places, and it’s getting smarter every day. If my worst fears come true and this message is actually sent, another message will be sent to Tyg3r, directing it to contact you.”

  Hazel Cassidy sighed. “I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing here or not. In telling you all of this. In developing this algorithm at all. Like any tool, Tyg3r is agnostic, and will serve whoever holds it. The best course might be to destroy the code. Do you think Oppenheimer wished he could unmake the atomic bomb?” She squashed her lips together in annoyance. “Part of me wishes I’d never started this,” she said. “But I really wanted to see if I could do it, you know?” She ran a hand across her face, looking down at her lap, then back at the camera with her familiar unflinching gaze. “Famous last words, I guess. The scientists’ curse. Anyway. I love you, Junie, and I’m so sorry about all of this. Good-bye, dear daughter.”

  The screen froze as the video ended. June’s mom looked out at her, calm and composed.

  Not how June felt. Not at all.

  She wanted to stand on the chair and scream.

  She wanted to curl up on the floor and cry.

  She wanted to call the State Police or the FBI. Hand it off. Get rid of it. She wanted to do that more than anything.

  But what she needed? She needed to get a copy of this video into a safe place.

  She opened a new browser, went to a free email site, and opened an anonymous new account with a complex password. She made a copy of the video, pasted it into an email on her new account, then saved the email as a draft. If she never sent the email, it couldn’t be tracked by the various entities who were eavesdropping on the world’s electronic traffic, including, she assumed, the men who were hunting her.

  At least she hoped it couldn’t be tracked.

  She wondered if the skeleton key algorithm could find it.

  Then she wondered if the algorithm could find her mother’s killers.

  Her mom had said “Tyg3r” would contact her. Like it had a mind of its own.

  June knew a lot about the current state of information technology. Modern computers were still far too primitive to begin to simulate true intelligence. The computing power of the human brain was many orders of magnitude greater than the current best efforts of computing science. Tyg3r didn’t have a mind of its own.

  But machine-learning algorithms could be very effective at complex tasks, and were getting better all the time. She’d just read about facial scanning software used at some U.S. border crossings to detect when people were lying. It was better at the job than most human beings.

  Cars could drive themselves.

  Airplanes could take off, fly, and land on their own.

  It was a brave new fucking world out there.

  She deleted the email her mother had sent, then cleared the email’s trash bin, logged off all her email accounts, cleared the browsers’ histories, and wiped the computer’s memory cache. If someone managed to follow her to the hospital and realize she’d used this workstation, they’d have to harvest the hard drive to get anything out of it.

  It was time to go on the offensive.

  She needed to track these fuckers down.

  She needed to talk to Peter.

  18

  PETER

  He’d known the hospital was a bad idea.

  They’d put him in the open evaluation area first, which was difficult enough. It was a busy warren of alcoves and cubicles and privacy curtains, like that market in Fallujah with its maze of merchant stalls and gunmen around every corner. Or the power plant outside Baghdad where the insurgents had boiled up from the subbasement while they were still figuring out the floor plan. Or all those mud-brick houses with their booby traps and cement-block bunkers. It was enough to ruin the idea of shelter forever.

  The triage nurse cleaned the cut on his head and poked at his leg and ribs, then led him through the cubicles while his warrior brain screamed about firing angles and clearing the room of bad guys.

  Bad guys who were two continents away, two years in the past.

  An overactive fight-or-flight mechanism was a bitch.

  In the cluttered, glass-walled exam room, she handed him a backless gown. “Put this on, please.” She noted the tension in his shoulders, the sweat starting to pop at his temples. “How’s the pain, on a scale of one to ten?”

  “I’m fine,” said Peter. “But in kind of a hurry. I’d like to get out of here.”

  “We’re not too busy tonight,” she said kindly. “Shouldn’t be too long.” She drew the privacy curtain and closed the door behind her.

  He waited in the exam room for another half hour, eyes closed, heart like a drum, sweating through his shirt and gown. To damp down the static, he practiced the exercises he’d learned from a Navy shrink on his discharge. Focus on calming your body. Breathe in, breathe out. Hello, old friend. No bad guys here. Your services are not required.

  Not right now, anyway.

  The problem was that his supercharged fight-or-flight response was useful, sometimes. Like when some asshole was shooting at him. In combat, that mainline adrenaline was his all-time favorite drug, keeping him and his guys alive and doing the job.

  Part of him didn’t want to lose that.

  He needed to help June. He needed to be useful.

  Peter wasn’t built to be a bystander.

  The ER doctor cruised in with a Red Bull and a tired smile. “I’m Dr. Baird.” He was a few years older than Peter, unshaven in green scrubs and black clogs, eyes sagging with fatigue. His hair stood on end like he’d been recently electrocuted, but Peter figured that was just the style. Or shock therapy to keep him awake on a long shift. He hit a few keys on the cart-mounted computer. “So, what’d you do to yourself?”

  “Car accident,” said Peter. “Leg, ribs, sliced up my scalp.” He repeated what he’d told the nurse, trying to speed up the process.

  The doc stepped back from the computer and looked at Peter. The sweat rings at his armpits, shoulders rising up to his ears. “You must have a high tolerance for pain,” he said.

  “It’s not pain,” said Peter, his head throbbing. He was starting to have trouble getting air into his lungs. Breathe in, breathe out. “I’m claustrophobic,” he said. It was an easy shorthand. “Panic attacks, pretty bad. Be nice to get out of here soon.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” said the doc. “You on any medications? Prescribed by a doctor or otherwise?”

  Peter shook his head. “Not unless you count beer.”

  “How much beer?”

  “That was a joke,” said Peter. “I don’t have a drinking problem.”

  “That’s what they all say. Did you serve overseas? Iraq? Afghanistan?”

  Peter closed his eyes again, his hand at his temple. “The leg, Doc. I’m
here for the leg.”

  The doc let the air out of his lungs, not quite a sigh. But he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But I’m going to look at your ribs, too.”

  He poked and prodded at Peter’s right side and listened to his lungs. “Doesn’t seem like more than simple fractures,” he said. “But we’ll do a CT to make sure. You don’t want organ damage or a nicked aorta.” Then he examined Peter’s leg, which was swelling nicely above the ankle. “Can’t really tell without an X-ray,” he said. “But you probably broke something in there. I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’ve got either a tibial plateau fracture or an isolated fibula fracture. I’ll get you set up with Radiology.”

  He went back to the computer. “It says you don’t have insurance? If you were in combat overseas, I think the VA still covers you.”

  “I’ll pay my own way,” said Peter.

  The doc looked at him.

  “It’s complicated,” said Peter. “I’ll pay.”

  “I can’t even tell you how much it will cost,” said the doc. “Billing is all done separately.”

  Peter reached over to his pants, pulled the wad of hundreds out of his pocket, and held it up for the doc to see. He was sweating hard. “I can pay, okay? Send me the damn bill and let’s keep moving.”

  The doc looked at Peter steadily. “Were you really in a car accident?”

  “Yes.” Peter willed himself not to get irritated. Some people thought all vets were crazy. Grenades with the pin pulled, waiting to go off. Peter wasn’t helping the cause. He took a breath, let it out. “I was trying to help a friend,” he said. “She’s in trouble.”

  The doc held his gaze for a long moment, then seemed to come to some sort of decision. “Okay,” he said. “I can prescribe something for the panic attacks, if you’d like. Basic anti-anxiety meds, they’re pretty common.”

  “No, thanks.” Peter had tried medication the year before. It had made him feel slow, like his head was filled with flavorless pink Jell-O. To protect June, he needed every bit of quick he could muster.