Brainbender

by D S Kane

  Ann nodded, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

  “No, I think not.” Laura approached Ann and studied her face. “What’s gotten to you? I’ve never seen you cry before. You’re always so steady.”

  “Yeah. Well, I think I’ve finally encountered something I can’t deal with. Laura, I’m in over my head.”

  “That’s bullcrap.” Laura sat across from Ann and reached out her hand. She touched Ann’s arm. “So, what’s the issue?”

  “The DARPA contest. I know my team has a good chance of winning. But, no matter which team wins, we might all flunk out trying. We were all hacked.”

  Laura burst out laughing. “You’re kidding. Right?”

  Ann shook her head. “Nope. And the best-case scenario is we might cause the end of humanity. Remember that movie we saw?”

  Laura nodded. “But, you told me that isn’t possible.”

  Ann shrugged. “Well, lately I’ve begun to think that I was wrong.”

  “How do you stop it?”

  Ann’s face fell. “I can’t think of any way. Once this thing is developed, it’s out of humanity’s hands. I have to decide if I want to be a party to this.”

  Laura was silent. Then she said, “You no longer have a choice. You must be a part of it. Even if you can’t find a way to stop it right now, if you work on it, maybe an idea will come to you. It might be the only chance to stop what you fear from becoming our new reality.”

  Ann cocked her head. “Thanks. I think you’re right.” But just what do I do and how do I do it?

  * * *

  Arcady examined the code his hackers had copied from the DARPA website. None of it made sense and none of it worked. He gave up and cursed.

  But when he turned on the television news, he realized the code he’d had them steal had been hacked by Indigenous. If hackers had modified the code, they might have kept a copy of its version before the hack. And, if they did, all he’d have to do is find them and hack their computers.

  He sat at the desk in his hotel room, smiling.

  CHAPTER 20

  DARPA Senior Management Offices

  October 4, 8:40 a.m.

  Harold James held a pencil between his thumb and his index finger and twirled the pencil in the air as if it were a baton stick. He envisioned his career sinking down the tubes, with nothing he could do to prevent it. At first, he thought he’d be able to blame the entire thing on Dr. Beam’s failure to secure the DARPA contest website, but when the entire DARPA data infrastructure began failing, that hope vanished. This would fall on him and DARPA would feed him to the jackals who ruled on Capitol Hill.

  I should have approved Linda’s request for additional security personnel. Then, if we still got hacked, I could blame the entire episode on her. But that train left the station several months ago.

  He decided to pack his attaché case with his most important belongings. If he took his possessions from the office gradually, maybe no one would notice. He might be able to get most of the papers he’d need out of the building before he was sacked. He also took the materials he could sell to other countries and the materials he could use to set up a consulting practice. When a small fraction of what he wanted was in his case and he could fit no more, he closed the lid and latched it shut. The sky outside was dark and rain was starting to fall. He donned his raincoat and fedora, and left the building for the night.

  * * *

  Linda sat at the desk in her studio apartment. She had backtraced the hackers who’d attacked the DARPA servers the previous night. There seemed to be eleven invasions, but only ten individual attackers. Someone had returned for second helpings. She traced every move by each hacker. The first three did almost all the damage, and the next seven found little more they could do. But the final visitor altered nothing on DARPA’s website. The final hacker copied files, tons of files. It had taken two visits to copy everything the hacker wanted, and that hacker’s location seemed to originate in Virginia.

  She made a list of everything the final hacker had copied and then wrote a report for Harold James. He needed to see this.

  Then she wrote a second report with all the information on the other nine hackers. This one she sent to one of her friends who worked at the NSA, with a blind copy to the FBI.

  * * *

  Dave sat with Stuart Ley, the manager of Ann’s C++ programming team, at the table in Nordman’s apartment. Ley’s eyes were downcast. “I’ve been trying for nearly two days, Dave. There’s a bug in there somewhere. I just can’t find it.”

  Dave tried to smile. It wouldn’t help to get angry. Ley was one of the best C++ programmers on campus, and Ann was lucky to have him on her team. “Look, this is my fault. Asking you to embed an ethics module into the AI’s main systems wasn’t a great idea, but otherwise, we’re playing with a monster. Tell you what: I’ll keep this out of my reports to Ann for the time being. But, you just keep working at it. We’re not due for an end-to-end QA test for at least two more weeks. So, take your time and get this right.”

  Ley nodded. “It’s the most complex piece of code in the entire AI. Just look at these Tensor tables. Code for what happens if a given condition isn’t met goes on for nearly three-hundred pages. Some of the hypotheticals are so complex the statements have nearly thirty subconditions. And, somewhere in there, a misplaced comma or a missing period has this thing tossing its proverbial cookies.”

  Dave shrugged. “You have enough time remaining to get this fixed. Get Sandy Elmont and her group of Tensor specialists to proofread the flow tables.”

  Ley looked as if he’d been punched. He rose from the table and gathered his notebook into his backpack. As he walked to the door, he mumbled, “Okay.”

  After he was through the door and it clicked shut, Dave sat quietly for nearly a minute. Crap on a cracker.

  * * *

  When their head-sacks had been removed, William saw that the faces of their captors were Asian, not Caucasian.

  One of the men spoke to him in Mandarin. “Greetings from Shanghai.”

  William replied in Mandarin. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Foolish question. Give us what we want and maybe we’ll let you live. Otherwise we’ll start by disfiguring your companion.”

  William shivered. “Untie my hands.” After the man did this, William took off his shoe and twisted its heel. A thumb-drive dropped into his hand. ”Check it out.”

  The captor retied William’s hands and left him and Betsy in what appeared to be the stock room of a warehouse.

  Betsy said, “Well? What next?”

  William shrugged. “Wait for the cavalry. Michael promised they’d come.”

  * * *

  Ann attended her classes the next morning, feeling exhausted. She fell asleep during her startups seminar, with only eight students in the class. When the professor clapped his hands to wake her, she became very embarrassed and had to restrain her urge to rush from the class. But she just apologized and sat through the class to its end. As she rose to leave, the professor asked her to remain.

  “Is there anything wrong, Ms. Sashakovich?”

  “Uh, no. I’m sorry. I promise it will never happen again.”

  “Yes. Be sure it doesn’t.”

  She hurried out and bumped into Dave Nordman.

  “Hey, Ann. I need to show you something.”

  Ann stopped trotting away. She turned and faced Dave. “What?”

  Dave motioned into an empty classroom and they entered. He drew his notebook from his bookbag. “Watch this.” The notebook displayed a face with no eyes or ears but it had a mouth. “What’s your name?”

  The face on the notebook said, “My name is Debby Data.”

  Dave smiled at Ann.

  Ann asked the face, “Debby, do you know who I am?”

  The face said, “We’ve not been introduced.” Then the face cracked in half and disappeared.

  “I just got it to work this morning before class. Just the I/O piece. Still has a lo
t of bugs, but it’s the first real sign of progress.”

  Ann smiled at Dave. “I’m impressed.”

  Dave just nodded. “More soon. Figure by tomorrow the face won’t crash. Oh, and I had dinner a few night ago with your roomie.”

  “Dave, I don’t want to be complicit in your personal life. Laura is a good person. Just treat her well and I’ll wish you luck. Okay?”

  Dave nodded, his face showing nothing he felt. “Well, gotta get back to work.”

  Ann watched Dave hurry away, and wondered if she would someday be forced to destroy his creation. And if that was what she had to do, would it still be even possible to destroy it? She wondered if Laura was right that Ann would have to continue work on the project in order to discover a way to end her team’s creation.

  * * *

  Arcady Kaslov punched Tranovich’s number into his cell. “Director, have you seen the report I sent you earlier?”

  “Da. The second hack retrieved the code and it still doesn’t work. This is getting tedious.”

  “But all of DARPA was hacked. When the project is completed and they have a winner, we can just hack them again.”

  “Da, da. I’m running out of patience, Arcady. And move your location from the Virginia hotel to our safe house in Washington. They may already be looking for you.”

  After their conversation ended, Kaslov began packing.

  CHAPTER 21

  Outland Airlines, Gate 41, Terminal C,

  JFK Airport, New York City

  October 5, 9:06 a.m.

  Jon Sommers found seat 18C and pushed his spinner suitcase into the overhead storage. He sat, then pulled his cellphone from his pocket. He punched in Ann’s number and hoped his call would end in voicemail. When it did, he smiled. “It’s Sommers. I’ve decided to take a long overdue vacation. I’ll be out your way and I was hoping we could spend a bit of time together. I’d like to see Big Sur and San Francisco, for starters. You’d be the perfect companion. I know you’re busy with university, but why don’t you return my call. My flight is about to take off, so call in six hours.”

  He felt sure Ann would take him up on his offer. After all, he shared her secret. But, if not, he’d follow her at a distance. He knew that Ann had never been properly trained in either conducting or detecting surveillance—she probably didn’t even know what an SDR was. And with the training he’d received when he worked for the Mossad, Jon was exceptional when it came to tradecraft. He could do what Cassie and Lee wanted, whether or not Ann was agreeable. He hoped it would be fun to keep her safe.

  Jon was twelve years older than Ann, and he was sure neither of them would see each other as potential lovers. His life was already near-perfect, with Lily Lee finally gone back to China. He was starting to enjoy being a bachelor in Manhattan, where the women he met were very rich and not desiring matrimony. Jon knew that he would have to check in on work at the United Nations by email and phone every few days, but as a former Mossad kidon, or assassin, keeping tabs on multiple projects, each one in a different stage of completion, was a fixed part of his life.

  As the flight attendants did their funny version of what to do if the worst happens, he closed his eyes and took a nap.

  Nearly six hours later, his flight’s wheels squealed against the tarmac and his eyes snapped open.

  As he pulled his suitcase from the overhead, his cell buzzed in his pocket. “Sommers.”

  “It’s Ann. So, my parents asked you to visit me to keep me safe. Right?”

  Jon’s eyes bulged a tiny bit. “Ah, so, yes. I thought they would warn you, but I guess that fell through the cracks. I am forced by the United Nations to take a month off every year so that my station can be audited. I chose to come to California. Never been here for pleasure before. Anyway, let’s make the most of this. Do you have any time to spend with me while I’m out here?”

  “My time is already spoken for, but sure. I’ll give you what I can.. And you could act as a sounding board for my concerns about the DARPA AI project I’m working on.”

  Jon smiled to himself. He exited the aircraft and headed toward the security gate. “Fine, then. I’ll call you when I’m settled.”

  He heard Ann terminate the call and then headed toward the passenger terminal’s exit.

  * * *

  Dave and his programmers sat around a conference room table at the library. The sun had set less than an hour ago and the light filtering in through the windows was still pink. Each of the six technogeeks sipped coffee or ate snacks from their own containers.

  Dave asked, “Okay then. Are we all on track? Any problems that we need to resolve?”

  Walter grinned. “My group is ahead of schedule. We’re just about finished on the software end. I’ll have specs for the hardware going forward in a few days. That’s where you come in, Dave. You’ll have to design the actual hardware after I’ve specified it.”

  Dave nodded. “Gary, I understand you’re also finished. Correct?”

  Gary shrugged. “I was finished with the Python modules almost a week ago. You won’t be needing me anymore, and besides, exams are coming soon.”

  Dave winced at the reminder that he hadn’t even started studying.

  Dave faced Stuart Ley. “So, are you back on track?”

  Stuart’s eyes flashed in anger, but he said nothing. Slowly, he nodded, keeping the lie hidden from most of the programmers. He said, “Not quite. My C++ group is debugging a few modules and then we’ll need to do an integration test. Figure it will be another two weeks at most, but at least ten more days.” Stuart looked daggers at Sandy and she nodded back ever so slightly.

  Dave faced the only female working with the team. “Sandy?”

  She said, “My group is just me. The others working for me all completed their work a few days ago. When I’m finished populating Harry’s database, I’ll run it through Tensor to ensure the prototype works with real data.”

  Dave turned to the final person at the meeting. “Are we ready to populate the database, Harry?”

  Harry nodded. “The structures are ready.”

  Dave waved his hand. “Okay, then. See you tomorrow at eight in the morning.” He could visualize what the prototype would be: a sentient face on any computer screen where it needed to be, able to move through the internet from one place to another instantly, and able to control anything connected to the internet. Able to be the master of anything connected that contained a microchip.

  He watched everyone rise and leave the conference room. He walked out from the library and entered a more rustic building. Up the staircase he went, to his first class of the day. He knew that in two weeks, when Stuart claimed he’d be done, they’d begin preparing for the end-to-end test, and if Stuart hadn’t completed the bug hunt by then, the entire team would fail and he’d have disappointed Ann. The anxiety he felt was matched by his stopping on the staircase.

  Students stumbled behind him and he heard one curse him out. “Move, asshole! We’ve all got classes to go to.”

  Dave snapped back to reality and apologized. At the top of the stairs, he moved out of the heavy traffic behind a water fountain and stood thinking. He was shocked to realize he was beginning to have feelings for her.

  He also missed Samantha Trout, but as she had told him, their only customer would be DARPA, and if they actually won the contest, then she would return to help them sell to the military.

  * * *

  When Samantha Trout’s cellphone began buzzing, she started pacing toward the hallway as she pulled the cell from her purse. She could see “Unknown Person” blinking back at her from the screen. Sam saw the time reflected on the phone’s screen. She realized she would be late for the upcoming class if she didn’t leave her apartment now. “Hello?”

  “Mou Chu. It’s Hui Wan, your mother. The state intelligence service has me under house arrest.”

  At hearing her real name, Samantha flinched. “Why were you arrested, Hui Wan?”

  “Because you promised me intel
and failed to deliver. I’ve been informed that they’ll begin to hurt me soon if I can’t deliver.”

  Samantha gulped. “But, mother, there was nothing new to tell you.”

  “They will take me apart, piece by piece. Get me something about the DARPA contestants. They might let me live. Hurry!” The call abruptly terminated.

  Now Samantha would be responsible for her mother’s life or death. She rushed from the hallway back into her apartment and found a seat at the kitchen table. Her history had been a litany of tears. “Mou Chu” had fled from China after her mother had found a forger and obtained travel documents for her to enter the United States. Her distant relatives in Oakland had taken her in, changed her name to “Samantha Trout,” and spent a ton of cash getting her educated. And now, finally, China was claiming her future as their own device.

  Sam rose unsteadily, taking deep breaths until her knees no longer wobbled. Slowly, she assembled the revisions to her plan. She sat on Ann’s board of directors, and she was still friendly with Glen. With any luck, she could gather enough of their current state of progress on the AI project to satisfy Hui Wan’s captors.

  * * *

  Sandra scanned the final page of Tensor entries. She had found multiple errors, nearly fifty of them, and any single error could have caused the problems they’d seen with the AI’s ability to function. But, as she neared the final page, she noticed something that was definitely wrong. The final line of code was short. Nearly fifteen characters were missing. She read the code and tried to imagine what the missing characters might be.

  The actual line was a conditional statement and seemed to indicate that if the AI was involved in a situation where two similar humans were each about to hurt the other, the AI should do… what? The resultant part of the phrase was missing. She read several pages that preceded this final page, hoping it would spread some light on what the missing code should cover.

  After correcting all the other errors she had found, she shook her head to loosen her shoulders. What belongs where the partial line of code is sitting? Nothing came to her. No answer, not even a guess. And what would happen if I simply delete this partial line?