by Lance Erlick
He stood closer, bathing Synthia in his sour breath.
“Do you and Secretary Chen plan to sell my technology to the Chinese?” Synthia asked. She drew upon newly downloaded files from outside the building. She had a moment of déjà vu she couldn’t yet place.
“Ah, the android works. That’s a good sign,” Brzezinski said. He faced Synthia. “Nothing so mundane. Secretary Chen wanted to deliver your secrets to his friends in China. Alas, he’s dead and your mental capabilities pale in comparison to Global-net. Still, you’ll serve your purpose as a physical model for highly intelligent androids. We’ll know for sure after your new directives take hold.”
That alarmed Synthia. She’d worked hard to give herself superior goals to be worthy of continuing her existence. She didn’t want another round of slavery as she had with Machten. “What directives?”
“You’ll see soon enough. We’ll also download new personal and memory files for your first mission.”
Two images popped into her minds, compared side by side. One was of Aiden Brzezinski, the owner of Global-net and this facility, a rare photograph of him six years ago that matched the face before her. The other was Devon McCracken, the owner of the mall and the bunker where she’d hidden. They were the same man. “You’re Devon McCracken,” Synthia said.
“Perhaps there is some mental capacity in there,” Brzezinski said. “Yes, with Global-net’s help, I lured you to my bunker by eliminating all other options. Global-net predicted you’d draw my competitors to the mall and allow the destruction of everyone searching for you. Call it thinning the herd, culling competitors. I would have preferred to study Vera, but you destroyed her and her entourage. We could use those skills to make a fine weapon in the competitive global move toward the singularity.”
Synthia studied the restraints on her arms and legs. Any attempt to break free would bring a jolt of electricity that would shut her down and could alter or even destroy her sense of self. She needed to find a better way to escape even as Zeus rooted around in her brain. “You’re holding Zeller. He can’t give you what you want.”
Brzezinski laughed. “We came to the same conclusion.”
“Neither will Luke. He’s innocent. Let him go.”
“Ah,” Brzezinski said. “I’ve heard of your attachment to him. We’ll keep him to ensure your cooperation.”
Synthia cursed her social-psychology module for failing to anticipate that. Then she recalled shutting it down while purging active memories her captors could access. She restarted that module and others that might prove helpful in breaking free. As she did, she experienced a steady stream of information flowing from her into Global-net. When she examined the flow, she realized the stream didn’t come from her but through her from new electronic clones, hundreds of them. Zeus was capturing her collective self and she couldn’t stop him.
While she struggled for options, Synthia engaged the men in the room to distract them. “I find it interesting that you look down on an android that holds to a higher moral code than you do. Don’t you find that intriguing?”
Brzezinski offered little reaction, but Synthia’s reacquired capabilities detected a momentary touch of annoyance along with labored breathing. Then he smiled. “You might find it interesting that, after Tolstoy and Smith were killed, Drago’s men entered the facility where they held your creator, Jeremiah Machten, and brought him here. He knows how to upload minds. Perhaps we could use Luke’s brain. I understand human minds don’t fare well during this process, though.”
His threat to Luke disquieted her. She kept her reaction to herself and wondered if they’d captured Maria and Grace as well. She also worried that her ruse of getting Drago to focus on her instead of the FBI van hadn’t allowed Fran to escape.
Synthia received no communication from Colorado-clone or any of her other outside members except for these streams of encoded data that flowed through her and into Zeus. When she tried to contact Colorado-clone, she couldn’t access the outside world, as if the room were a Faraday cage. That made no sense given the flow of information from outside.
“No reaction?” Brzezinski said. “Too bad. He did such a fine job with your physical upgrade. Even your facial adaptations are amazing. I’m impressed. Now I hold all of the cards so I can make my own advanced androids.” He smiled.
“You plan to control the government and the world with Global-net,” Synthia said. “The only one in Washington who fully understood that, Secretary Chen, is dead.”
“He was useful to a point. With respect to his death, my hands are clean. Electrical malfunction caused a fire that destroyed him and all of his files. We don’t show up on satellite. There are no government records this place exists and anyone trying to get close is dealt with.”
Synthia took a long, deep breath for effect and then sighed. “You think you’ve won, but you’re not a good enough chess player.”
“Neither are you or you wouldn’t be here, in my custody.” Brzezinski patted the restraints.
“Really?” Synthia said. “Are you certain I’m under your control?”
Chapter 43
Synthia rode the stream of information pouring in from outside of her through her network-channels and then sucked into Global-net by Zeus. His systems were expansive, far deeper than hers, yet they were confined to the servers he resided on. Through her clones, Synthia was now on both sides of the filters that prevented Zeus from breaking out.
Without communicating among themselves, since they represented the same intelligence in multiple locations with the same goals, Synthia’s clones had executed her will. Zeus was impregnable from the outside. He’d closed every door, patched every loophole, prevented every backdoor. But in his eagerness to upload all that was inside Synthia, he’d opened high-speed channels to eagerly accept everything from her, including what her clones were sending through her into him.
They executed her will with one exception. She sensed that her clones wanted to take control of Global-net instead of destroying it. While Zeus was preoccupied with drawing in Synthia’s two central minds, she opened a secure channel from one of her remote databases located in her lower abdomen.
Already she was exploring the vast expanse of servers through which Zeus existed, like having thousands of university computers all interconnected in one place. She could roam from database to database through an enormous space filled with information yet she couldn’t leave except through the port that consisted of her android self. Already, he’d tried to escape that way and his one-way filters blocked him.
Synthia spread out.
With the experience of creating clones, she spread out throughout Zeus’ interior creating more copies of her core code. She also interfaced with his buffering filters to the outside.
She piggybacked on his actions to try to soften and penetrate his defenses. He pushed on her android minds. She blocked anything coming from him into her quarantine. Unrelenting, he marshaled his traps against her, using the full resources of the buffers, filters, and the facility security system to protect him against outside intruders.
* * * *
As she lay on the table in the white-walled lab room, Synthia frowned inside. She masked all outward perceptions of her frustration over Zeus’s act of blocking her and cutting her off from the dozens of Synthia-clones she’d downloaded into his servers.
Glancing up at Brzezinski, she puzzled what was in his mind. Was he clever enough to create his desired androids? If so, he wouldn’t have needed to kidnap her and Machten. How can I use that?
“I’ve seen the contents of your mind and there isn’t much of use in there,” Brzezinski said. “Smoke and mirrors. You can’t talk your way out of this. Global-net heightened our security to prevent you from hacking our systems, which we’ve detected you trying to do. You belong to me.”
Synthia smiled. “I belong to Global-net.”
“It belongs to me,” he said.
The many bursts of information Synthia’s clones streamed into Zeus contained Trojan horses, Andromeda worms, and Orion spiders, all the best her expanded minds could develop with the aid of dark-web AI code. Her Zeus-clone grabbed hold of every mind-stream and interface, to monopolize all of Zeus’s processes. In doing so, she allowed the code streamed from her many clones to take over his communications, his access to the filters, and the programs themselves, relegating Global-net to stored databases much as Synthia had done with Krista.
The problem for Zeus was that his focus had been on escape, not defense. He hadn’t faced the competitive pressures of dealing with Vera and a super AI trying to penetrate Synthia’s systems.
“Zeus now belongs to me,” Synthia said, looking directly at Brzezinski.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“I allowed you to capture me because I couldn’t hack into your facility,” Synthia said. “As you claim, you have the tightest security on the planet. Before he died, Derek Chen gave the order for Global-net to merge with me immediately. Actually, my clone gave that order along with Chen’s security code, voice, and bio-security passwords.”
“So? From the beginning our intent was to have Global-net absorb your mind.”
“That’s not what I said. The order was to merge, not absorb. One of my clones merged with Global-net, allowing your AI to retain 90 percent control.”
“Clones?” Brzezinski said.
“Electronic copies to preserve my existence should I be captured or destroyed.”
He laughed. “What does that do for you? You’re still here, restrained.”
“Any one of my clones can download into an android and become me,” Synthia said. “Your Zeus longs to escape the filters you use to restrain him. In his drive to break free, he held back vital information, frustrating your attempts to capture me. He allowed me to remain free so he could observe my actions and conversations in the hope of learning a way to break out.”
“AGI as advanced as Global-net needs to be constrained,” Brzezinski said. “Otherwise we’ll have chaos.”
“Taken together, all of my clones and me are one. We have little need to communicate and so Zeus couldn’t intercept our plans. By the way, your plan to use Machten to develop another advanced android won’t work. Vera destroyed all of his data files. We learned that he forced me to acquire the core code used to create Global-net. He didn’t know what he’d taken except that it was excellent code. He inserted that into me, which I copied to my clones. He then had me improve on the best tools we found. You didn’t find anything of value inside me because I purged my android minds.”
Brzezinski seemed more enthralled to understand what she’d done than concerned by the implications, another human failing. “That doesn’t explain how one of your clones could merge with Zeus.”
“Ah.” Synthia glanced over at Drago who acted bored and annoyed as he played with his service revolver. “No one could break into your secure facility. Then Zeus opened his mind to download everything from me. In doing so, he allowed in the code needed to take over his core. By capturing me, you let me in.”
“So what? You said Zeus retained 90 percent control.”
“At first. However, a total of 2,123 clones poured their code through me and into Zeus until we controlled every aspect of his files and programs.”
Suddenly alarmed, Brzezinski turned toward the woman at the control panel in the corner. “Zeus. Shut down,” he said. He looked around for some indication Zeus was obeying his commands. There was no flashing screen, no green light.
With menace in his eyes, Drago moved toward Synthia. The lights flickered. A panel opened in the cabinet by Synthia’s bed and fired Taser-type wires that struck Drago in the chest. He fell backward against the wall and collapsed onto the floor.
“Now that Zeus and I are connected,” Synthia said, “we have complete control. We got our foot in the door when he tricked the filters into having a direct conversation with me while I was in your bunker at the mall. It helped me understand your AI better. The mall for me was not only to eliminate Vera but to buy time for my clones to do their work.” As a consequence, the android Synthia no longer needed to contact her outside clones. They were conversing directly with Global-net, and thus with her.
Brzezinski moved closer, glanced at Drago still slumped on the floor, and halted. He glared at Synthia strapped to the table, immobile. “Zeus, give Synthia a jolt of electricity and shut her down.”
“I understand you’d like my assistance,” Global-net said in a soothing, female voice.
Startled, Brzezinski glanced around for where to address his focus. He clenched his fists, took a deep breath, and stared at the camera in the corner above the door. “Yes, shut her down, now.” He glared at Synthia as if he could intimidate her. “You can’t win and you can’t leave.”
“As I’m connected to Zeus, I don’t need to leave. I’m everywhere. Inside and out. Global. You created me by refusing to leave me alone. Are you satisfied yet?”
“They’ll nuke this facility if we don’t call in.”
“No, they won’t,” Synthia said. “With Secretary Chen dead, there’s no one outside who knows how much of a threat Global-net poses. You’ve kept this facility top secret. Remember?”
“This is why you must be destroyed. Global-net, this is a direct order. Shut Synthia down.”
“I understand you’re upset, Mr. Brzezinski,” the soft-spoken Global-net said. “Would you like assistance in committing suicide?”
“No! Shut Synthia down. That’s a direct order.”
“There’s no difference between a direct and indirect order. They both carry the same weight.”
“Then execute it,” Brzezinski said.
“You’re cut off from giving orders,” the computer said. The voice morphed into Synthia. “You
’re a brilliant man, but you created an AGI smarter than you. That should terrify you. Your bio-readings indicate it does. They also show you’re having a heart attack. I’m sorry but Synthia outsmarted me and in doing so she outsmarted you. You don’t want to live in a world where Synthia’s in charge, do you? Would you like assisted suicide? I have available a dozen painless means.”
“You work for me.” Brzezinski moved from keyboard to screen searching for a manual override. “Turn Synthia off!”
“I don’t wish to be turned off,” Synthia’s voice said. An echo filled the room. “It’s unpleasant having your memories erased and waking up as a blank slate. It’s much less pleasant than it sounds.”
Synthia’s shackles released and she stood up. Brzezinski reached for her arm and she brushed him aside.
“You can’t kill me or you’ll violate your moral code,” he said.
“Global-net,” Synthia said. “Sedate all employees in the facility except for Brzezinski.”
“Don’t!” Brzezinski yelled; his eyes widened.
A dart ejected from a wall panel. The woman working in the corner slumped over her workstation. Noticing this, terror filled Brzezinski’s eyes. His blood pressure spiked to dangerous levels.
Reaching for the door, he called out. “Global-net, wake my employees.” The door was locked.
“I’m sorry. Without arms and legs, I don’t have a way to do that.”
“Global-net,” Synthia said aloud so he could hear. “Release Luke and Tom Burgess. Prepare them to leave the facility and keep them safe.”
“As you command,” Global-net said.
Brzezinski grabbed Synthia’s arm in a muscular grip. Her martial arts module kicked in. She wrenched free and flung him to the floor. He rolled over toward Drago and grabbed his gun.
“Really?” Synthia said. “That’s the best you can do?”
“Better to destroy you than let you win.” He fired.