by John Akers
Chapter 54
Slowly, Pax approached the window. The first thing he saw was the blue water of the ocean. Then the far side of the island came into view. One more step and he saw the empty plains far below. There was something odd about it, however. It looked slightly warped, the way heat waves coming off hot pavement distorted objects in the distance.
“What the…“ he said, just as Alethia made a series of gestures. Suddenly, a massive sand-colored cable materialized where the distortion had been, underneath the window. It was 10 feet in diameter and curved downward to form a perfect quarter-circle, connecting with the ground as far away as the tower was tall. To the left and right he could see two other cables, each 100 feet away from the one directly underneath them. Pax put his face right up to the glass and looked down. He saw dozens more emanating from the tower at different heights and different radial positions.
“Invisible support arms,” he said. “How silly of me not to have figured that out.”
“Each cable contains millions of translucent, high-density muscle fibers wrapped in a thick clearskin,” said Alethia. “The arms instantly adjust the force they exert on the building based on the real-time sensory data that measures windspeed and its direction to keep the tower perfectly upright. Despite its great height, the Story of Man is far more stable than any skyscraper in the world.”
“What makes the arms invisible?” asked Pax.
“Their biochemical properties were modeled after jellyfish and other marine animals with largely transparent bodies. Also, the electromagnetic field surrounding each arm is manipulated in a way that causes nearby light waves to bend around it. This invisibility effect weakens the closer you are to one of the arms, which is why it looked warbled when you looked there before.”
“And how are we able to see it now?”
“The inside surface of the exterior sheathing contains special pigment cells called chromatophores. Normally, they are so small as to be invisible to the naked eye, but when they are enlarged they give the arms a sand-colored tint.”
Pax shook his head in amazement. “How long did it take to build all this?” he asked.
“About three months.”
“Oh, fuck off!”
“Actually, to create this particular version of the tower took one month,” said Alethia, ignoring his outburst. “The cables and the exoskeleton of the tower itself are made from synthetic biological materials with cells programmed at the genetic level to reproduce and shape themselves into their present form. They also leverage some of the genetic principles that allow some forms of bamboo to grow up to three feet per day.”
“That doesn’t get you to 10,000 feet in a month!” said Pax.
“It does if you stack multiple levels of the material, say 100, on top of each other and have each grow independently to 100 feet. The whole thing accordions upward and outward very rapidly. If you watched closely you could literally see the building growing before your very eyes. It only took one month to grow the tower and the arms. We constructed several prototypes of increasing size, so the Infinet could learn to manipulate the genetic sequence of the different materials to control the shape, size, and growth rate, and to integrate the holographic display system and the platform. If you count the entire development process, including prototypes, it took about three months.”
Pax looked at her with a mixture of horror and awe.
“Wait a minute—you said ‘genetic sequences.’ Do you mean to tell me this thing is—alive? A synthetic life-form?”
“Not really, although it does have many biological properties. But it isn’t self-sustaining or self-replicating. By the same rationale that viruses aren’t considered a life form, the Story of Man would not be considered a living organism.”
Pax shook his head in disbelief yet again. Alethia looked at him intently, as if expecting him to say something. But when he remained silent, she said, “So what do you think of our proposal?”
“I think the problem you’ve identified is real. There are many ways our technology may be getting away from us. But giving the Infinet superuser access to every Univiz in existence is something I absolutely can’t do. Making mistakes at that level would be catastrophic for Omnitech’s business. We don’t—“
“Your business?” Alethia said sharply. Her eyes were suddenly wide, her face contorted in anger. “Are you serious? Have you completely missed the point of everything we’ve shown you? How is your business going to matter, if you have no more customers? We’re talking about the survival of the human race, Mr. Pax! We’re talking about an all-hands on deck, how-do-we-stop-from-crashing-into-the-giant-iceberg moment that’s staring us in the face! Do you really not believe, after what you’ve seen today, that humanity could self-destruct at literally any moment?”
That was it. “It’s a possibility, all right?” he yelled. “But we’ve lived under the threat of nuclear war for almost a century and we’re still here! You’re acting like we’re guaranteed to blow ourselves up tomorrow!”
Alethia rolled her eyes. “Woo hoo! We’ve made it 100 years without unleashing a nuclear firestorm! Yay for us!” Her eyes blazed as she looked at him. “How about the next 100, Mr. Pax? The next 1,000? The next 10,000? Don’t we want a system that will guarantee our existence not just beyond next week, but indefinitely? Do you really think we’ve got that sort of system right now? Look who’s been getting their grubby little fingers on the button the past couple of decades? Narcissistic, sociopathic whackos! And that’s just the most obvious risk.
“A hundred years ago, a small group of people invented Freon and almost burned out our stratosphere! Thank goodness environmental science developed enough in the intervening years to detect the problem before some of us started sprouting second heads and third arms!
Now, we’re tinkering with our very genome, the elemental building blocks that evolution has validated for literally billions of years as the best way for species on this planet to adapt and survive. But we know better than dumb old evolution, right?”
She began pacing back and forth with a rapid, agitated gait. But when she turned to look at him again, her eyes were no longer angry. Instead, they were worried, pleading.
“Please, Mr. Pax,” she said. “Can’t you see? 10,000 years ago we were living off the land with just sticks and stones for tools. Those people are us! Genetically, we’re a bunch of cavemen tinkering with technology we barely understand, much less control.
“Somehow our own evolution has spawned the creation of a new entity—externalized knowledge—that has a life and evolution of its own, separate from our biological evolution. But the knowledge we’ve gained doesn’t care about us. It is indifferent to whether the truths it contains are toxic to the entities to which it is exposed. If we open Pandora’s Box and destroy ourselves in the process, the box won’t care.”
Pax said, “Look, I get it. And I think you might be right. It might be possible we’re going to cause a cataclysm sometime in the near future. But for now…”
“You are content to do what almost everyone does,” Alethia interrupted, sounding dejected. “Hold your breath, plug your ears and close your eyes and hope it turns out to be nothing.
Pax sensed she might be about to capitulate. “Look, I can take what you’re asking under advisement. I’ll put it before our board of directors, see what they think and…“
“No,” Alethia interrupted. “It’s your decision to make, Mr. Pax. Yours, and yours alone. If you don’t agree, the Infinet will pursue a different approach, although it won’t matter, because there isn’t enough time for a Plan B, even for the Infinet.”
“What are you talking about?”
The reason we brought you here the way we did was that the sort of existential threat we’ve been alluding to has already begun, and is underway as we speak.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Pax irritably.
“The Infinet continuously maintains tabs on all human activity,” said Alethi
a, “particularly any activity that could lead to a major destructive event. Rogue governments or radical military organizations with access to weapons of mass destruction are the most obvious examples, but there are thousands of less obvious threats. About two weeks ago it uncovered one that began just a few days before we brought you here.”
Ten feet away, a hologram of a shadowy figure took shape in front of them. A moment later, thousands of devices began appearing behind it. Thermostats, showers, stoves, washing machines, toasters, printers, sinks, water heaters, HVAC systems, vacuum cleaners, doors, windows, lights, computerized clothing, pacemakers, insulin managers, cars, traffic routers, computerized shopping carts, checkout terminals, elevators, escalators, motorized walkways, all filled the platform behind the dark swirling figure. Beneath it, a single word appeared:
M3k@n!k
Chapter 55
As Pax looked at the dark figure, he remembered Angelo’s comment on the sub. “I overheard Angelo say something to Elena about a mechanic on the sub. Something about releasing a virus.”
“Yes, the Infinet learned you’d overheard their conversation as soon as the submarine had come close enough to the surface for the ship to transmit its activity log.”
“So what the hell is it?”
“We don’t know exactly,” said Alethia. “Given what you’ve seen of the Infinet, I’m sure you recognize the significance of that admission. What the Infinet does know is that a tightly coordinated network of computer viruses was recently activated by an entity that goes by the hacker nom de guerre ‘Mechanic.’ The Infinet believes it is a very small group of people, perhaps even just one individual. Essentially, it is a meta-virus that coordinates a broad network of existing viruses in service of a common goal.”
“How can it tell that?”
“The Infinet created a decompiler and reverse-engineered the executable code it found on infected devices. It detected several subtle digital fingerprints in how the code was assembled that were perfectly consistent across the entire codebase. This suggested a very small, well-coordinated group, or just a single person, was responsible.”
In front of the shadow, images of newspaper articles about a man killed by a self-driving car were displayed. Pax recognized one of them as the article he’d skimmed while flying to Cevis’ house. “Did you happen to hear or read about a man in Los Altos who was killed last Friday by an automatic car?” she asked.
“I did. Some sort of freak accident. A car went haywire and ran over some guy in front of a hospital.”
Alethia nodded. “That man, Jerry Cunningham, was the first victim of the Mechanic’s viruses, now known collectively as ‘Chaotica.’ In the months preceding Mr. Cunningham’s death, the virus had taken control of billions of devices, primarily older internet-connected consumer products, by exploiting a wide range of vulnerabilities going as far back as the early 2000s, when the internet of things really took off. In less than a decade, more than 20 billion devices, most of them lacking even basic security protocols, got connected to an already insecure internet backbone. The Infinet estimates the Mechanic now has somewhere between 3 to 10 billion devices at his disposal.”
“Shit!” Pax exclaimed. “It hasn’t infected any UVs, has it?”
“No, there’s no indication the virus has compromised any UVs or the Omnitech network. It appears to primarily affect specific-function devices, such as the ones you see depicted here,” Alethia replied, waving her hand to dismiss the articles and show the objects behind them again.
“The other good news is the Infinet has already developed an antivirus program. Ever since it discovered the existence of the virus, the Infinet has been accessing every open network around the world, searching for infected devices. It has already found and developed antivirus programs for thousands of different infected devices. If it can connect to the worldwide Univiz network in the manner I described earlier, it will be able to instantly access almost all password protected networks as well, and develop antivirus programs for the rest of the devices. The Infinet estimates it would be able to quarantine 95 percent of devices within 48 hours, and achieve 100 percent containment within a week. This will keep subsequent deaths to a minimum and…”
“Wait—deaths? More people have died than just this Jerry Cunningham guy?”
Alethia hesitated for a moment. For the first time, she looked unsure of herself.
“Many more, Mr. Pax. More than 100,000 people have died, and more than a million have been injured.” Alethia’s voice wavered as she spoke. Headlines from several major newspapers proclaiming a global digital pandemic appeared in front of the image of the Mechanic.
Pax glanced wide-eyed at the headlines, then at Alethia. “What the hell? You’re telling me all this has been going on since you kidnapped me?”
“Yes. I know it is hard to absorb, especially on top of all we’ve already shown you. But ever since the day we took you from your home, this virus has been spreading around the world. It is tearing human society apart at the seams as we speak.” Alethia quickly explained the mechanics of how the virus worked. At the end she added, “Essentially, it has spurred a network effect of violence all over the world.”
When she was done, Pax stared at her for a moment, before he smiled and waved his hand dismissively at her. “You’re full of shit. You’re just making this up to get me to agree to do this thing with the Infinet, because you realize your earlier pitch wasn’t convincing enough.”
Alethia did not smile or blink. “This isn’t a joke, Mr. Pax. This is really happening, all around the world. Right now, as we speak.”
“Sure. After all you’ve shown me the Infinet can do, you expect me to believe it can’t fake a few newspaper headlines?” Pax said.
Suddenly, Alethia swung the small pouch Elena had given her off of her shoulder and opened it up. She pulled out a distinctive cobalt blue Univiz and handed it to him. “Have a look for yourself. You’ll need to accept the standard prompt to use the Story of Man as your internet access point.”
Pax didn’t immediately reach to take it from her, much to his own surprise.
“Is something wrong?” asked Alethia.
“No. It’s just—” Pax paused. He felt a strange, almost physical reluctance to take it. Although he wouldn’t admit it to Alethia, the forced break from Gabe and the time he’d spent in the sub’s quiet room had left his nervous system feeling better than it had in years. But he had to see if what Alethia was telling him was true. He reached out and took the Univiz from her, then turned it around in his hands to examine it. It looked and felt like Gabe. Nonetheless, he asked, “How do I know this isn’t one of your replicas?”
“To create a replica you couldn’t distinguish from the original, the Infinet would have had to hack into your UV. Even the Infinet can’t defeat the Univiz SQUID validation, at least not without more time.”
Pax slid the temples down the sides of his head and over his ears. He felt the familiar gentle click and tightening at the back of his head. Everything about it felt exactly the same. He heard the default system voice say, “Please verify your ID.” Pax held his palms up in front of his face and said his name. Two seconds later the augmented reality display began to overlay on the surroundings. “Alethia Exley” displayed across Alethia’s torso. She was telling the truth about herself.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Gabe began. Then he said, “Wait, we’re not connected. I’m only seeing one access point. Here, you’ll need to accept this so I can figure out where you are.“ In the middle of Pax’s display a prompt appeared:
“Story of Man” is the only available internet access point.
Do you wish to use it? (yes/no)
“Yes!” said Pax.
“There, that’s better,” said Gabe. “Now let’s see…“ There was a pause, then Gabe said, “Where in the world…Socotra Island? Mr. Pax, what—“
Pax cut him off. “No time to explain, Gabe. Is there some sort of digital virus happening in the world
?”
“How should I know? You haven’t worn me for four days and…”
“Show me the New York Times front page!” Pax shouted.
Gabe grumbled something about irrational human overlords, but a moment later an opaque white background hid the outside world and the front page of nytimes.com was displayed. The title for the lead article, “Digital Virus Death Crosses 100,000,” spanned the full width of the page. Pax scanned the first couple of paragraphs, then yelled “Good God!” He whirled on Alethia, “You mean to tell me thousands of people have died just since we’ve been talking?” he yelled at her.
“Yes,” said Alethia.
“I don’t—what the fuck is the matter with you people?!” he hollered. “All this has been happening while you’ve brought me here to go through some crazy holographic museum?”
Suddenly, he began to feel dizzy. He reached out for something to steady himself and felt Alethia’s arms catch him. As soon as the dizziness passed, he thrust her hands away and yelled, “Get away from me! You people are insane!”
“What should we have done differently, Mr. Pax?” Alethia yelled back at him. “How else were we going to convince you? The Infinet only discovered the Mechanic's virus a few days before Mr. Cunningham’s death. Should we have knocked at your door last Monday and said, ‘Hey, you don’t know us, but we’ve got a quantum supercomputer telling us about a computer virus that’s preparing to destroy civilization! But good news, our computer can stop it, as well as supervise the human race afterward so something like this can’t happen again!’ How well do you think that would have gone over?”
“So, I’m supposed to think all this just happened?” Pax yelled. “Don’t you think the timing of this is rather coincidental? Doesn’t it seem possible, even highly likely from my perspective, the Infinet is behind the virus?”