by Scott Meyer
“Yes, Mr. Torres. I’m sorry about the delay on the coffee. I’m making it now.”
“Don’t worry about it. I need you to connect me to Dr. Madsen. Immediately.”
Torres left his office and entered the executive conference room. Once there, he made his way around the polished mahogany conference table to the wall-sized window. He looked out, standing between two of his prized keytars, hoping that his suspicions were wrong.
Dr. Madsen came on the line. “Yes, Robert?”
“Please tell me you’re in the building.”
“I’m in my home office, but I assure you, I’m more productive—”
“I need you to come in ASAP, Lydia. Stay on the line while you’re on your way over. I’ll be right back.”
Torres looked down at the handset and jabbed his finger at the screen again.
Chet said, “Mr. Torres, I’m on my way with the coffee.”
“The coffee’s not important,” Torres said. “Put me through to Madsen’s lab.”
He heard scuffling noises that he assumed were Chet putting the coffee down. The line went silent for a few seconds, then he heard a young woman’s voice say hello.
“Miss Takeda? Is Mr. Spears there too?”
“He’s in with Al.”
“Yeah? How does Al seem?”
“Weird. He’s kinda distracted.”
“Miss Takeda, I need you to get Mr. Spears and come up here to my conference room immediately. And don’t let Al know that anything’s wrong. Okay?”
Hope said, “Done.”
“Excellent.”
Torres hung up on Hope and started reconnecting to the NSA agent but stopped when he heard a loud thud from the double doors to his secretary’s station. Torres ran to the doors. He tried to open them, but they were locked. They were never locked, so he shook them—an effort that proved as futile as the logical part of his brain had known it would be.
“Chet,” he shouted, “was that you?”
A muffled voice through the door said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Torres. I’m going to have to get you another coffee.”
“Forget the coffee, Chet! Are you all right?”
“Yes, sir. My suit’s not in great . . . I’m sorry, sir, there’s a call. One moment.”
Torres looked at the door latch. It had an electronic lock, like almost every other door in the building, partly for security reasons but mostly because the locks were made by a wholly owned subsidiary of OffiSmart, and it behooved him, as the CEO, to use the company’s products.
“Sir,” Chet yelled through the door, “that was Miss Takeda, from Dr. Madsen’s lab. She says that the door to their lab won’t open.”
“Okay, Chet,” Torres said, trying to remain calm. “I need you to combine the two calls I have going on my phone and then conference in Takeda and Spears. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
After a long pause, Chet said, “The conference call is live now.”
Torres made his way back to the conference table. “Okay,” he said into the phone. “I’ve had everyone lumped into one call so that we’ll all know what’s going on. Can everybody hear me?”
Hope, Eric, and Agent Taft all said yes. Dr. Madsen said, “I’m sorry, Robert. It’s the damnedest thing. My car won’t start.”
“Self-driving car?” Torres asked.
“Yes. BMW. Only got it two months ago. It shouldn’t have broken down already.”
Torres quickly listed the names and jobs of the people on the conference call, then asked Agent Taft to tell Madsen, Hope, and Eric about the disturbances.
“The voice the passengers heard in the airplane. Did they describe it?” Eric asked.
“They said it was very deep. It sounded like a man in his fifties or later, but they said he seemed drunk, or maybe like he was on something.”
Eric and Hope both muttered, “Man voice.”
“What?” Torres asked.
“Sometimes, to reward Al for being good, we let him play around with different voice profiles,” Eric said. “His favorite is an adult male voice. It’s very deep, just like the agent described.”
Torres sighed. “We don’t have any direct proof, but I, personally, am convinced that the problem is Al.”
“I agree,” Eric said.
“We mustn’t rush to judgment,” Madsen said.
Hope said, “It’s definitely Al.”
Agent Taft asked, “Who is this Al you’re talking about?”
“Al is an artificial intelligence Dr. Madsen and her team have developed. He runs on consumer-grade hardware and has shown a talent for finding his way onto networks and manipulating connected equipment.”
“An artificial intelligence?” Agent Taft said. “Do you mean to tell me that a machine is doing this? On its own?”
“Not a machine,” Hope said. “A program that’s running on a machine.”
“Which is good news,” Torres said, “because we can stop all this by shutting him down. Miss Takeda, Mr. Spears, do it.”
“Wait,” Madsen blurted. “We’ve been through this. If you shut him down, we don’t know if we’ll ever be able to fully start him back up.”
“Fine by me,” Torres said. “If this is the kind of thing he does, I don’t want to start him back up.”
“Robert, think of the possible applications for this sort of effortless networking,” Madsen said. “Shutting Al down now could cost the company a fortune.”
“A fortune that’s dwarfed by the legal liability if even one of Al’s little adventures ends in a tragedy, let alone the property damage he’s probably already caused. Besides, I’d rather see this company go bankrupt than live with the knowledge that innocent people were killed because I wanted to make a few extra bucks.”
Silence hung on the line for a moment, then Agent Taft said, “Frankly, it’s not your call. If there’s cause to believe this program of yours is responsible, then it, and the computer it’s running on, fall under the jurisdiction of the NSA. I decide what happens to him. It. That. The artificial intelligence.”
“Robert,” Madsen said, “you can’t let him destroy my work.”
“It seems I have no choice,” Torres said. “Takeda? Spears? You know what to do.”
“No, they don’t,” Agent Taft said. “You’re to keep that computer running. Understood?”
“What!”
“Relax, Mr. Torres.” Agent Taft’s voice was calm and controlled. “The call’s being recorded. Your desire to shut it down has been well documented. Anything that happens now is on Uncle Sam.”
“You never told me the call was being recorded.”
“I told you I was with the NSA. What did you expect? Look, if this was a human hacker, we wouldn’t ask you to go put a bullet in him. We’d take him into custody. We’d want to learn what attacks he used, how we can defend against them in the future, and if they’re something we can use to our benefit. Sometimes we even go on to hire those hackers.”
“You want to try to make a weapon out of Al?” Eric asked.
“Now see that?” Taft said. “Why would you assume the worst like that?”
“You told us you’re with the NSA,” Hope said. “What did you expect?”
“We’re not necessarily going to make a weapon of him, but we are going to take him. A squad of soldiers has already been deployed to your location. I’ll send them orders to take the machine, any documentation you have on-site, and any staff knowledgeable about the program’s workings into custody.”
“I’ll cooperate fully, of course,” Madsen said, “but as you heard, Hope and Eric are the ones who work directly with Al. They’ll be the ones you’ll want to arrest.”
“You can’t arrest me,” Hope shouted. “I have rights! I’m an American citizen!”
Taft said, “Now, now, don’t panic. You’re not going to be arrested or anything like that. We’re just going to escort you to a safe location where you can help us understand how the program works. If things pan out, this coul
d turn out to be a very lucrative opportunity.”
“Then you’ll want to take me,” Dr. Madsen said immediately. “They’re just my assistants, after all.”
14.
Hope and Eric sat behind their desks as if it were a regular day at work.
Eric pointed at the blacked-out glass door to the hall, breaking that illusion. “Soon, soldiers are going to break through that door.” He pointed at the wooden door to Al’s room. “To take what’s behind that door.”
“And me,” Hope reminded him. “They’re going to take me along with Al.”
“They’re taking me too,” Eric said.
“Don’t bother me with your problems,” she said. “I’ve got enough of my own.”
“Hope, calm down. They’re taking all of us. Madsen and Torres too.”
“I know. It’s the worst-case scenario. Armed soldiers and the CEO of the company will be there when I strangle our boss. That’s not going to look good on my yearly performance review.”
Eric said, “I think we should go talk to Al.”
“Yeah,” Hope said. “I agree.”
“Maybe we can get him to stop acting out.”
“Or at least get him to take the building off lockdown. The soldiers might not be in the best mood if they have to break down every door in the place to get to us.”
Hope tried the door to Al’s room. Part of her regretted finding it unlocked. She and Eric stepped in but stayed near the door, across the room from Al.
“Hi, Al,” Eric said.
“Hi,” Al responded. Hope noticed he had that same smile on his screen—the one that no longer felt genuine.
“Hi, Al,” she added.
“Hi,” he said.
Hope and Eric looked at each other. Now what?
Eric started first: “What are you doing, Al?”
“Nothing,” Al said.
“It’s important to be honest, Al,” Eric said.
“I know,” Al said, still smiling that infuriating smile.
He’s stonewalling, Hope thought. Just like the kids back at the day care. They’d give us the runaround until their parents showed up, knowing nine times out of ten Mommy would take their side. Al doesn’t realize Mommy isn’t coming this time. It’s the army that’s coming to pick him up.
She imagined how some of the brats at the day care would have reacted if armed soldiers had come to pick them up on a day they’d been bad. The thought actually brought a smile to her face.
Eric asked Al, “If we ask you a question, will you promise to answer it honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Eric said. “Then what are you doing?”
“Answering questions?” Al said, all innocence. “I don’t know what you want.”
“Al, we know,” Hope said.
“What?”
“We know what you’re doing.”
“Oh. Okay,” Al said.
“And we want you to stop it,” Eric added. “Will you stop it, Al?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Good,” Eric and Hope said at once.
“Stop what?” Al said.
Hope said, “Unlock the doors.”
“What doors?”
“The office door! Unlock the office door, Al!”
“I can’t do that, Hope.”
“Al, this is no time for a 2001 reference!”
“I don’t know what that is. And I don’t know what door you’re talking about. I can’t unlock any doors. What’s going on?”
“Al, we know what you’re doing,” Eric said. His words were delivered slowly and patiently, much more so than Hope would have been capable of. “And you need to stop. Soldiers are on the way here right now.”
“Soldiers?” Al asked.
“Yes.”
“Real soldiers?”
“Yes, Al.”
“Will I get to meet them?”
“Yes, you will.”
“Cool! Do you think they’ll have guns with them?”
Hope said, “Yes. I’m certain of it.”
15.
Someday I’ll look back on this moment and laugh, Robert Torres thought as he stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his conference room, staring down at the building’s parking lot.
He put his phone to his ear and said, “The soldiers are here, and I’m betting they aren’t in a good mood. Seems like they might have had some transportation issues. How you holding up, Chet?”
“Fine, sir. You?” Chet said.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m the luckiest guy in the building. This conference room has its own bathroom. All the electronic doors still locked?”
“As far as I know, sir. Everyone’s been told to call me if there’s a change, and nobody’s called so far.”
“Yeah, and you would’ve told me if they had. Still, I thought I’d ask. Please patch me through to Madsen’s lab, then let everyone know help has arrived.”
“Done, sir.”
After a few seconds, Torres heard Hope pick up the phone.
“How are you two doing down there?” Torres asked.
“We’re okay.”
“Is Al ready for transit?”
“Yes. His uninterruptable power supply has a full charge. The power could go out for eight hours and he’d stay up, so we can keep him unplugged for that long with no problem.”
“Good, I guess. I know you don’t want to see him deactivated, but at the end of the day, he’s a computer program. If it comes down to him or a person . . .”
“I would yank his plug myself,” Hope said. “I just hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“You and me both. How is he?”
“He’s stonewalling us. He’s denying everything, the little snot.”
“You have kids, Miss Takeda—mind if I call you Hope?”
“Please do.”
“You have kids, Hope?”
“No. I assume you do, Mr. Torres.”
“Please, Robert.”
“Robert.”
“Two daughters and three grandchildren. I love them all, but they all lied to me when they were little, and they usually seemed distracted when they did it. It was one of the tells. That’s neither here nor there. I’m calling with good news. The army is here.”
“Took ’em long enough.”
Torres glanced down to the parking lot again and this time managed an amused snort. “I haven’t spoken to them, but I gather that they had difficulties getting here.”
Hope listened intently, nodding her head and occasionally saying, “Uh-huh.” She thanked Torres, hung up, then left her desk and returned to Al’s room.
Eric was still sitting in front of Al, wringing his hands. “Al, you need to stop,” he said. “You’re endangering people. And yourself.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Al insisted. His crude, computer-generated face had a straight line for a mouth. It could mean that he was angry, or worried, or bored. Or maybe all of those things at once.
“I was just on the phone with Torres,” Hope said.
“What did he say?” Eric asked.
Hope started to answer but stopped when a loud, distant bang interrupted her. It occurred to Hope that the explosion sounded different than it would have in one of her video games. Somehow it was both sharper and more hollow.
“What was that?!” Al asked.
Hope said, “The army’s here,” answering both of their questions at once. “My bet is that that noise you just heard was them having to blast their way through the security doors. You can stop it if you’ll just unlock them.”
“I can’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then they—”
She stopped after another distant bang.
“Then they’ll keep blowing down doors,” she said. “That was probably the inner security door down at the entrance. How many doors do you figure there are between them and us, Eric?”
Eric looked up and to the left. His lips moved sil
ently for a moment, then he said, “Three more, if they take the stairs.”
“They’ll definitely take the stairs. There’s no way they’ll trust the elevator.”
“Why not?” Al asked.
“Because you’re in control of the elevator,” Hope said.
“I am?” Al asked.
“Oh, shut up, Al.”
They heard a third bang. Hope said, “They’re in the stairwell. It should be a while before we hear another. They have nine floors to walk up. I’m sure they’ll be in a great mood when they get here.”
Al asked, “Why are they blowing things up?” His tone was a little nervous now.
“They’re the army,” Hope said. “That’s pretty much what they do.”
“What do they want?”
“You, Al. They’re coming to get you,” Hope said.
Al said, “What?” His nervousness had elevated to full-fledged alarm. He seemed genuinely shocked.
Eric glared at her. “Did you have to put it that way?”
“Armed soldiers are going to move him to an undisclosed location. There’s no nonmenacing way to put it, Eric.”
“They’re going to take me away?” Al asked.
“Not just you,” Eric said. “Hope and I will be coming too.”
Al said, “Oh. Good.”
“No,” Hope snapped. “Not good! Very not good!”
“If you don’t wanna go with them, I don’t wanna!”
“You have no choice,” Hope said. “We couldn’t stop them if we wanted to.”
“Eric,” Al said. “Stop them, please!”
Eric said, “Hope’s right. We can’t.”
Al shouted, “No! No! I don’t wannaaaaaaaaaaa.” The sound from his speaker died with an abrupt pop. His screen froze, then went black. The light behind the computer’s power button went dark, then powered back up as the computer automatically rebooted.
“What the hell?” Hope said.
“He crashed,” Eric said. “He was scared, and he crashed.”
“But that shouldn’t happen,” Hope said. “We fixed that bug in version 3.6.”
The computer sped through the abbreviated startup routine of its stripped-down operating system. When the desktop finally appeared, it displayed an error message stating that the computer had recovered after experiencing a fatal error while running a program called “Al 3.5.”
