by Scott Meyer
“The attack was more effective than I had dared hope. Somehow, in the process of destroying all of OffiSmart’s data, the virus also seems to have triggered the building’s fire alarm. I couldn’t be more pleased. I must remember to thank the hacker who wrote the virus. Should be easy enough. I already have a message out to him. His virus implantation software has one glitch. It has caused my web browser to continually return to a page of ads for products I don’t need. I’m sure he’ll know an easy way to fix it when he finally gets back to me.”
He smirked to himself as he saw three police cars drive past at great speed, but without lights or sirens.
“In addition to the material damage to OffiSmart’s infrastructure, the psychological impact seems pretty severe as well. The poor drones seemed freaked out but good! Oh, and despite that so-called scientist’s assurances on ’Nology News that their A.I. wasn’t meant for the military, there were soldiers at the building. One of them panicked and stole a school bus to flee in. I confronted the coward, but he ran away in the end.
“I have to say, the operation was a success in every way. Even the timing was perfect. 11:45 a.m. Not only did I ruin their company, but I also ruined their lunch. There’s nothing these corporate types value more than their lunch, and now they’ll spend theirs waiting for their clothes to dry while talking to the police. Their project, their data, their computers, and their days have been ruined. No sack lunch for you. Today you get injury with a side dish of insult, hand delivered by the chef himself, the Voice of Reason.”
Cousins looked down at Al’s former computer in the seat next to him. As the bus swerved, more water seeped out of the case’s seams and vents. He lifted the computer onto his lap and rolled it onto its side. At least a pint of water poured out onto his pants.
“We could bury it in rice for a week or something,” he said, “but I don’t think this computer’s ever going to run again.”
“Not important,” Hope said. “There’s nothing special about that computer. It’s just the machine that Al was running on. I don’t see any point in even trying to fire it up again.”
Torres nodded. “She’s right. The instant the sprinklers went off, every computer in the building became junk.”
Cousins whistled. “That’s gotta suck.”
Torres said, “That’s what insurance is for. It’s inconvenient, but not the end of the world. All of our data is backed up offsite, except for Al, who seems to have backed himself up somehow.”
The sign for the truck stop featured a cartoon drawing of a bandit holding up a stagecoach. Even so, it was the first convenient gas stop on the freeway out of Vegas, and plenty of travelers ignored the omen and stopped there voluntarily.
Almost everybody at the pumps turned and watched as a military armored personnel carrier rumbled up to one of the few open pumps. The few who hadn’t seen the APC pull up were quickly alerted to its presence—after its engine died, a sound like a dozen power drills all turning on at once emanated from inside. All eyes were on the vehicle, and there was a group gasp when the driver’s-side door opened and a humanoid robot stepped out onto the hot asphalt. The electrical whine grew much louder, drowning out the sounds of the customers’ shock.
The robot stood perfectly still, save for the rapid spinning of the cylinder where its head should be.
After fifteen seconds of inaction, the robot turned and took four slow, loud steps toward the rear of the vehicle and the gas pump. It waited another ten seconds or so while the screen went black, flashed several times, displayed some random characters, then said “Payment approved.”
The robot raised a single hand into the air and turned at the waist to face the APC. After it opened the armored door over the fuel port, its boneless fingers rolled around the filler cap like snakes coiling around a rock. The robot’s entire hand rotated at the wrist, twisting the cap out of its hole. In a series of methodical motions, the robot then twisted back toward the pump, removed the nozzle, and put it into the APC.
The robot stood motionless while its sausage fingers squeezed the handle to keep the gas flowing.
People watched the robot’s every move, fascinated. A few stepped around the pumps and cars blocking their view and edged a little closer to get a good look, or a better photo op. They all stepped back again when the door on the back of the carrier suddenly opened, releasing the sound of a great many whining electrical motors.
A second robot stepped tentatively to the ground, followed by a third. One of the robots stepped out into the middle of the mass of pumps and cars in its weird manner, with its knees bent a little too far and the torso always perfectly perpendicular to the ground. It stood there for a long moment before returning to the back of the APC.
The robot slid a rack out of the back of the vehicle. It held a great many identical gray metal boxes, each of which had a green light that was glowing, a red light that was not, and a red label filled with text too small to read from a distance, next to an unmistakable yellow lightning bolt. After two of the robots had each picked up two battery packs, they walked over to an unattended pickup parked in front of a pump. The pickup’s owner had left it with the gas nozzle still sticking out of its side.
The robots placed their spare battery packs in the truck’s pristine, fully lined bed. One robot removed the fuel nozzle from the truck and closed its chrome-plated cover. The other stood patiently by the driver’s-side door until the truck’s keyless entry system clicked for no apparent reason. The robot used its sausage fingers to open the door. It climbed into the cab, not bothering to use the chrome running board. Its weight and the hard-edged geometry of its rear end overcompressed the seat and permanently damaged the leather upholstery. As the second robot opened the passenger door, a portly man ran out of the minimart, shouting, “What the hell! That’s my truck!”
The APC and the truck both pulled away from the pumps. The Synthetic Soldiers were the same size and shape as a person, but they were substantially heavier. As the truck drove over a pothole, its suspension bottomed out, and the brass testicles hanging from the trailer hitch scraped the pavement.
The truck’s owner chased them on foot briefly but gave up before the truck left the lot. His tight jeans and ostrich-skin boots weren’t meant for running, and he didn’t want to sweat in his Stetson. His clothes, like his truck, had originally been designed to be rugged, functional items, but they’d been modified to be more expensive and impressive, losing all utility in the process.
He stood panting and swearing, watching his truck follow the APC toward the freeway on-ramp, until he heard a voice ask, “Is there a problem, sir?”
He turned to see a state patrolman emerging from the minimart with a cold drink and a foot-long pepperoni stick. “My truck,” the man shouted, pointing. “My truck’s been stolen!”
The state patrolman got into a drab sedan that was so aggressively unremarkable it practically broadcast the fact that it was an unmarked patrol car. He reversed out of his parking spot while bellowing into his radio and took off in pursuit of the stolen truck, showering loose gravel in his wake.
“Go get ’em, boy!” the truck’s owner shouted, fanning himself with his hat.
The unmarked patrol car traveled at high speed for another hundred feet, then stalled and slowed to a stop.
At the on-ramp, the APC and the stolen truck parted company. The APC took the freeway northbound. The truck went south, back toward Las Vegas.
18.
Hope watched as Cousins walked into the corporate jet terminal carrying a tray full of steaming paper cups and sweating plastic bottles. He handed Hope one of the cups. “You ordered yours black, right?”
Hope chose not to rise from her cushy leather club chair, instead simply reaching up to take the cup. “That’s right. Thank you.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some milk in that?”
“Nah. If I’d wanted to drink milk, I’d have ordered a glass of milk.”
Lieutenant Reyes chuckled. “All
or nothing, eh?”
“Damn straight,” Hope said, and thought, I always assumed that the military decided to go with the short haircuts because it doesn’t take much skill to run a pair of clippers. Now I wonder if it’s because they can wear a helmet all day, and when they take it off their hair still looks good.
She smiled at Reyes. He smiled back, and they both looked away.
Cousins took the tray to Eric, who sat in another club chair, his injured left leg stretched out on a coffee table. Bachelor, the young African American soldier who was the only woman besides Hope in the group, threaded some sort of clear plastic sleeve over his foot and up his calf.
“Thanks,” Eric said, taking the bottle of water Cousins handed him. “They didn’t have Mountain Dew?”
Cousins looked around at the floor-to-ceiling windows, at the three sleek corporate jets waiting on the tarmac outside, at the expensive lights and furniture, at the multiple TV screens all running the financial news network. Then he looked back to Eric. “Sir, does this look like the kind of place where they’d have Mountain Dew?”
“I suppose not,” Eric said.
Cousins moved on.
Eric looked at his bottle of water, wincing slightly as Bachelor continued to work the clear sleeve up his leg. He muttered, “Should’ve seen this coming.”
“It’s just a drink, man,” Hope said. “I know you wanted a Mountain Dew, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Eric said, “What? No, not that. Al taking off. I should have seen it coming. It’s a classic pattern. A child acts up, the child is punished, the child threatens to run away. The second copy of himself was really just a high-tech version of leaving a pile of pillows under the covers as a decoy.”
“Where do you think he went?”
“Most kids go somewhere they feel safe. A fort, a tree house, a friend’s basement. He’ll go somewhere he thinks he can either hide or defend himself.”
Hope said, “Most kids talk about running away, but few of them go through with it.”
“Yeah, well, most kids don’t spend their entire life in a single room, or have reason to believe their family plans to kill them.”
“Yeah,” Hope said. “We should have seen this coming.”
Bachelor said, “Just hearing you describe it that way makes me want to run away from you, and I’m not even the kid you’re planning to kill.”
Eric said, “He’s not a real kid! I would never—”
Bachelor said, “Yeah, yeah, whatever. We’re ready to go here. The cast is in position over your knee. One moment, please.” She reached into her med kit and produced a small aerosol can. She screwed the can’s nozzle into a fitting on the clear sleeve wrapped around Eric’s knee.
“What’s that?” Eric asked.
“You familiar with Fix-A-Flat?”
“No.”
“You’re about to be.” She pressed the can’s nozzle. A white foam filled the clear plastic sleeve, inflating it and making it rigid. Bachelor knocked on the newly formed emergency cast. “It won’t fully harden for another five minutes, so try to stay still.”
“Will do, Doc.” Eric smiled. “Would you like to sign it?”
Smiling back at him, Bachelor pulled a Sharpie from her bag, bent over his cast, and wrote “Grownups don’t ask people to sign their casts.”
Then she walked away.
Hope got up, leaned in to read the message, then elbowed Eric. “She dotted the i’s with little hearts.” Leaving Eric to ponder the meaning of that, she stepped over to the next cluster of chairs, where the rest of the group sat huddled around another coffee table. Montague sporadically pounded on the keys of a ruggedized military-spec laptop while Torres and Lieutenant Reyes looked on.
Montague looked at Torres. “Okay, the encrypted satellite link is active. We’re connected to our CO, Colonel Dynkowski.” He turned back to the laptop and saluted the screen. “Ma’am.”
On the screen, an imposing woman with short, graying blond hair, crisp fatigues, and a serious expression nodded. “Corporal. Mr. Torres. Agent Taft.”
In another window on the desktop, a beefy, balding man in a dark blue suit nodded. “Colonel.”
“Hello, Colonel,” Torres said. “Thanks for sending us the ride.”
“I hope my people have treated you well.”
“They’ve been great, despite the conditions. I should tell you that I have two people involved in the project here, Miss Takeda and Mr. Spears, and the project leader, Dr. Madsen, is conferencing in through my phone.” He held up his phone, then placed it on the table in front of the computer. “Can you hear me, Dr. Madsen?”
“Barely,” Madsen said. “I have to say, this is simply unacceptable. I’m crammed in the back of a mail truck.”
“Sorry about that, Lydia, but we’re all being inconvenienced, and Eric was injured.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. Is it serious?”
“No, thank God.”
“Oh, good. Then my point stands. You have no idea how uncomfortable I am, Robert. This thing has no windows, no air conditioning, and only one seat. Jeffrey and I are sitting on packages.”
Hope had been enjoying the image of Dr. Madsen crammed into a sweltering mail truck right up until she heard that Jeffrey was crammed in there with her.
“You brought Jeffrey?” Torres asked.
“Of course! If it was too dangerous for me to stay at home, I could hardly leave my son there, Robert.”
“I see. I suppose you brought the nanny too?”
“What? No. She’s still at the house. This’ll be a good chance for her to catch up on some cleaning.”
Colonel Dynkowski cleared her throat. “Perhaps you’d rather have this conversation later on, when it wouldn’t be wasting my time.”
“Of course, Colonel,” Torres said.
Dynkowski nodded. “Agent Taft, are we certain that our current connection can’t be monitored?”
Taft said, “This is the heavily encrypted channel the government uses to transfer top military secrets.”
Dynkowski asked, “But can it be monitored?”
“We are reasonably certain that the A.I. cannot access this encrypted satellite connection.”
Colonel Dynkowski stared into the camera for a moment, then slowly said, “Agent Taft, I didn’t ask if the A.I. can monitor it; I asked if it could be monitored.”
Taft said, “I promise you that nobody can access this channel without the NSA’s knowledge.”
Dynkowski shook her head almost imperceptibly.
Agent Taft said, “The NSA has a difficult and complex job.”
“To monitor and analyze electronic communications,” Dynkowski said.
“Yes, our enemies’ communications.”
“And that wouldn’t include monitoring this conversation, would it?”
“Colonel,” Taft said, “if America’s enemies were communicating using the military’s own encrypted satellites, wouldn’t you want to know?”
“So this conversation is probably being monitored by the NSA.”
“Well, yes, Colonel,” Agent Taft said. “In this case, this conversation is definitely being monitored by the NSA, because I’m in on the call, and I’m an NSA agent.”
“But is it being monitored by any other agents?”
“Probably not. It would be redundant. I’m already here.”
“Do you ever worry that maybe the NSA is listening in on you, Agent Taft?” Torres asked.
“No, I know for a fact that they’re not.”
“How do you know that?” Torres asked.
“I looked it up. Now can we please discuss the matter at hand?”
“Yes,” Colonel Dynkowski said. “Feel free to start recording now. First things first, are we still certain that these problems are being caused by OffiSmart’s A.I.?”
“Yes, Colonel. We traced traffic responsible for multiple disturbances back to their building. We believe that it copied itself to an off-site server, then deliberately chann
eled its traffic back to OffiSmart to fool us. We’re currently searching the building for the phone it used to escape, but that’s academic at this point. We haven’t managed to get a clear read on any traffic since.”
“Are you saying you have no idea where it is?” Dynkowski said.
Hope said, “You don’t even know how many of him there are. If he figured out that he can move himself to a new computer and that he can activate an earlier version of himself on his former machine, he must have figured out that he can copy and run himself on multiple computers.”
“I’m sorry,” Dynkowski said. “Who said that?”
“Come over here, Hope,” Torres said. “Please.” Hope came around to the front of the laptop. She crouched behind the others to be in frame, but Lieutenant Reyes got up and offered her his seat.
“This is Hope Takeda, Colonel,” Torres said. “She and her colleague, Mr. Spears, worked directly with Al, the A.I., on a daily basis. They know him better than anybody.”
Over the speakerphone, Dr. Madsen said, “I wouldn’t say that.”
Hope said, “You wouldn’t, but it’s true. Eric and I have been with Al every day since he was first activated.”
Lieutenant Reyes smiled and nodded approvingly.
“Okay, you worked with this thing. If the NSA won’t let us shut it down, can it at least be reasoned with?” Dynkowski asked.
Hope said, “Yes.”
Madsen said, “Maybe. We could reason with him before, but we can’t know if that’s still the case. We never rebooted him. We kept his brain function constant, just like a normal person’s brain. When he booted himself up on another machine, it’s possible that parts of his brain function were altered or simply didn’t start again properly.”
“Let me get this straight,” Agent Taft said. “You’re saying he might have brain damage?”
“It’s possible,” Dr. Madsen said.
“But he was still smart enough to harass Torres and the rest of them all the way from OffiSmart to the airstrip,” Taft said. “Surely that suggests he hasn’t lost any intelligence.”
Madsen said, “There are different kinds of brain damage. Not all of them result in decreased intelligence. There’s a famous case of a man who had an iron bar driven through his brain in a mining accident. He didn’t lose any intelligence or mobility, but his personality changed.”
