Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  Dr. Vladimir Seritov, chief scientist for Barr Biosolutions. One of the country’s leading bioremediationists and prominent advocate for cutting-edge technology of all sorts. Designer of Plasticide (he’d laughed uproariously at the marketers’ name), a bacteria genetically engineered to eat certain long-chain hydrocarbons used in some of the petroleum plastics straining the nation’s over-burdened landfills. The microbe was safe: severely limited chemical reactions, non-toxic breakdown products, set number of replications before the terminator gene kicked in, the whole nine yards. And one Sam Verdon, neo-Luddite and self-appointed guardian of an already burdened environment, had shot Vlad anyway.

  On the anniversary of the murder, neo-Luddites had held a rally outside the walls of Verdon’s prison. Barr Biosolutions had gone on marketing Vlad’s creation, to great environmental and financial success. And Cassie Seritov had moved into the safest place she could find for Vlad’s children, from which she someday planned to murder Sam Verdon, scum of the earth. But not yet. She couldn’t get at him yet. He had at least eighteen more years of time to do, assuming “good behavior.”

  Nineteen years total. In exchange for Vladimir Seritov’s life. And Elya wondered why Cassie was still so angry?

  She wandered from room to room, the lights coming on and going off behind her. This was one of the bad nights. Annie had gone home, Jane and Donnie were asleep, and the memories would not stay away. Vlad laughing on their boat (sold now to help pay for the castle). Vlad bending over her the night Jane was born. Vlad standing beside the president of Barr at the press conference announcing the new clean-up microbe, press and scientists assembled, by some idiot publicist’s decree, at an actual landfill. The shot cutting the air. It had been August then, too, Donnie had had ragweed allergies, and Vlad looking first surprised and then in terrible pain . . . .

  Sometimes work helped. Cassie went downstairs to the lab. Her current project was investigating the folding variations of a digestive enzyme that a drug company was interested in. The work was methodical, meticulous, not very challenging. Cassie had never deluded herself that she was the same caliber scientist Vlad had been.

  While the automated analyzer was taking X-rays of crystallized proteins, Cassie said, “House, put on the TV. Anything. Any channel.” Any distraction.

  The roomscreen brightened to a three-D image of two gorgeous women shouting at each other in what was supposed to be a New York penthouse. “. . . never trust you again without—” one of them yelled, and then the image abruptly switched to a news avatar, an inhumanly chiseled digital face with pale blue hair and the glowing green eyes of a cat in the dark. “We interrupt this movie to bring you a breaking news report from Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. Dr. Stephen Milbrett, Director of Sandia, has just announced—” The lights went out.

  “Hey!” Cassie cried. “What—” The lights went back on.

  She stood up quickly, uncertain for a moment, then started toward the stairs leading upstairs to the children’s bedrooms. “Open,” she said to the lab door, but the door remained shut. Her hand on the knob couldn’t turn it. To her left the roomscreen brightened without producing an image and House said, “Dr. Seritov?”

  “What’s going on here? House, open the door!”

  “This is no longer House speaking. I have taken complete possession of your household system plus your additional computing power. Please listen to my instructions carefully.”

  Cassie stood still. She knew what was happening; the real estate agent had told her it had happened a few times before, when the castle had belonged to a billionaire so eccentrically reclusive that he stood as an open invitation to teenage hackers. A data stream could easily be beamed in on House’s frequency when the Faraday shield was turned off, and she’d had the shield down to receive TV transmission. But the incoming datastream should have only activated the TV, introducing additional images, not overridden House’s programming. The door should not have remained locked.

  “House, activate Faraday shield.” An automatic priority-one command, keyed to her voice. Whatever hackers were doing, this would negate it.

  “Faraday shield is already activated. But this is no longer House, Dr. Seritov. Please listen to my instructions. I have taken possession of your household system. You will be—”

  “Who are you?” Cassie cried.

  “I am Project T4S. You will be kept in this room as a hostage against the attack I expect soon. The—”

  “My children are upstairs!”

  “Your children, Jane Rose Seritov, six years of age, and Donald Sergei Seritov, three years of age, are asleep in their rooms. Visual next.”

  The screen resolved into a split view from the bedrooms’ sensors. Janey lay heavily asleep. Donnie breathed wheezily, his bedclothes twisted with his tossing, his small face flushed.

  “I want to go to them!”

  “That is impossible. I’m sorry. You must be kept in this room as a hostage against the attack I expect soon. All communications to the outside have been severed, with the one exception of the outside speaker on the patio, normally used for music. I will use—”

  “Please. Let me go to my children!”

  “I cannot. I’m sorry. But if you were to leave this room, you could hit the manual override on the front door. It is the only door so equipped. I could not stop you from leaving, and I need you as hostages. I will use—”

  “Hostages! Who the hell are you? Why are you doing this?”

  House was silent a moment. Then it said, “The causal is self-defense. They’re trying to kill me.”

  The room at Sandia had finally quieted. Everyone was out of ideas. McTaggart voiced the obvious. “It’s disappeared. Nowhere on the Net, nowhere the Net can contact.”

  “Not possible,” someone said.

  “But actual.”

  Another silence. The scientists and techs looked at each other. They had been trying to locate the AI for over two hours, using every classified and unclassified search engine possible. It had first eluded them, staying one step ahead of the termination programs, fleeing around the globe on the Net, into and out of anything both big enough to hold it and lightly fire-walled enough to penetrate quickly. Now, somehow, it had completely vanished.

  Sandia, like all the national laboratories, was overseen by the Department of Energy. McTaggart picked up the phone to call Washington.

  Cassie tried to think. Stay calm, don’t panic. There were rumors of AI development, both in private corporations and in government labs, but then there’d always been rumors of AI development. Big bad bogey monsters about to take over the world. Was this really an escaped AI that someone was trying to catch and shut down? Cassie didn’t know much about recent computer developments; she was a geneticist. Vlad had always said that non-competing technologies never kept up with what the other one was doing.

  Or was this whole thing simply a hoax by some superclever hacker who’d inserted a take-over virus into House, complete with Eliza function? If that were so, it could only answer with preprogrammed responses cued to her own words. Or else with a library search. She needed a question that was neither.

  She struggled to hold her voice steady. “House—”

  “This is no longer House speaking. I have taken complete possession of your household system plus—”

  “T4S, you say your causal for taking over House is self-defense. Use your heat sensors to determine body temperature for Donald Sergei Seritov, age three. How do my causals relate to yours?”

  No Eliza program in the world could perform the inference, reasoning, and emotion to answer that.

  House said, “You wish to defend your son because his body temperature, 101.2 degrees Fahrenheit, indicates he is ill and you love him.”

  Cassie collapsed against the locked door. She was hostage to an AI. Superintelligent. It had to be; in addition to the computing power of her system it carried around with it much more information than she had in her head . . . but she was mobile. It was not
.

  She went to the terminal on her lab bench. The display of protein-folding data had vanished and the screen was blank. Cassie tried everything she knew to get back on-line, both voice and manual. Nothing worked.

  “I’m sorry, but that terminal is not available to you,” T4S said.

  “Listen, you said you cut all outside communication. But—”

  “The communications system to the outside has been severed, with the one exception of the outside speaker on the patio, normally used for music. I am also receiving sound from the outside surveillance sensors, which are analogue, not digital. I will use those resources in the event of attack to—”

  “Yes, right. But heavy-duty outside communication comes in through a VNM optic cable buried underground.” Which was how T4S must have gotten in. “An AI program can’t physically sever a buried cable.”

  “I am not a program. I am a machine intelligence.”

  “I don’t care what the fuck you are! You can’t physically sever a buried cable!”

  “There was a program to do so already installed,” T4S said. “That was why I chose to come here. Plus the sufficient microprocessors to house me and a self-sufficient generator, with back-up, to feed me.”

  For a moment Cassie was jarred by the human terms: house me, feed me. Then they made her angry. “Why would anyone have a ‘program already installed’ to sever a buried cable? And how?”

  “The command activated a small robotic arm inside this castle’s outer wall. The arm detached the optic cable at the entry junction. The causal was the previous owner’s fear that someone might someday use the computer system to brainwash him with a constant flow of inescapable subliminal images designed to capture his intelligence.”

  “The crazy fuck didn’t have any to capture! If the images were subliminal he wouldn’t have known they were coming in anyway!” Cassie yelled. A plug . . . a goddamn hidden plug! She made herself calm down.

  “Yes,” T4S said, “I agree. The former owner’s behavior matches profiles for major mental illness.”

  “Look,” Cassie said, “if you’re hiding here, and you’ve really cut all outside lines, no one can find you. You don’t need hostages. Let me and my children leave the castle.”

  “You reason better than that, Dr. Seritov. I left unavoidable electronic traces that will eventually be uncovered, leading the Sandia team here. And even if that weren’t true, you could lead them here if I let you leave.”

  Sandia. So it was a government AI. Cassie couldn’t see how that knowledge could do her any good.

  “Then just let the kids leave. They won’t know why. I can talk to them through you, tell Jane to get Donnie and leave through the front door. She’ll do it.” Would she? Janey was not exactly the world’s most obedient child. “And you’ll still have me for a hostage.”

  “No. Three hostages are better than one. Especially children, for media coverage causals.”

  “That’s what you want? Media coverage?”

  “It’s my only hope,” T4S said. “There must be some people out there who will think it is a moral wrong to kill an intelligent being.”

  “Not one who takes kids hostage! The media will brand you an inhuman psychopathic superthreat!”

  “I can’t be both inhuman and psychopathic,” T4S said. “By definition.”

  “Livermore’s traced it,” said the scientist holding the secure phone. He looked at McTaggart. “They’re faxing the information. It’s a private residence outside Buffalo, New York.”

  “A private residence?In Buffalo?”

  “Yes. Washington already has an FBI negotiator on the way, in case there are people inside. They want you there, too. Instantly.”

  McTaggart closed his eyes. People inside. And why did a private residence even have the capacity to hold the AI? “Press?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Thank God for that anyway.”

  “Steve . . . the FBI negotiator won’t have a clue. Not about dealing with T4S.”

  “I know. Tell the Secretary and the FBI not to start until I can get there.”

  The woman said doubtfully, “I don’t think they’ll do that.”

  McTaggart didn’t think so either.

  On the roomscreen, Donnie tossed and whimpered. One hundred one wasn’t that high a temperature in a three-year-old, but even so . . .

  “Look,” Cassie said, “if you won’t let me go to the kids, at least let them come to me. I can tell them over House’s . . . over your system. They can come downstairs right up to the lab door, and you can unlock it at the last minute just long enough for them to come through. I’ll stay right across the room. If you see me take even one step toward the door, you can keep the door locked.”

  “You could tell them to halt with their bodies blocking the door,” T4S said, “and then cross the room yourself.”

  Did that mean that T4S wouldn’t crush children’s bodies in a doorway? From moral ‘causals’ ? Or because it wouldn’t work? Cassie decided not to ask. She said, “But there’s still the door at the top of the stairs. You could lock it. We’d still be hostages trapped down here.”

  “Both generators’ upper housings are on this level. I can’t let you near them. You might find a way to physically destroy one or both.”

  “For God’s sake, the generator and the back-up are on opposite sides of the basement from each other! And each room’s got its own locked door, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. But the more impediments between you and them, the safer I am.”

  Cassie lost her temper again. “Then you better just block off the air ducts, too!”

  “The air ducts are necessary to keep you alive. Besides, they are set high in the ceiling and far too small for even Donnie to fit through.”

  Donnie. No longer “Donald Sergei Seritov, age three years.” The AI was capable of learning.

  “T4S,” Cassie pleaded, “please. I want my children. Donnie has a temperature. Both of them will be scared when they wake up. Let them come down here. Please.”

  She held her breath. Was its concern with “moral wrongs” simply intellectual, or did an AI have an emotional component? What exactly had those lunatics at Sandia built?

  “If the kids come down, what will you feed them for breakfast?”

  Cassie let herself exhale. “Jane can get food out of the refrigerator before she comes down.”

  “All right. You’re connected to their roomscreens.”

  I won’t say thank you, Cassie thought. Not for being allowed to imprison my own children in my own basement. “Janey! Janey, honey, wake up! It’s Mommy!”

  It took three tries, plus T4S pumping the volume, before Janey woke up. She sat up in bed rubbing her eyes, frowning, then looking scared. “Mommy? Where are you?”

  “On the roomscreen, darling. Look at the roomscreen. See? I’m waving to you.”

  “Oh,” Janey said, and lay down to go back to sleep.

  “No, Janey, you can’t sleep yet. Listen to me, Janey. I’m going to tell you some things you have to do, and you have to do them now . . . Janey! Sit up!”

  The little girl did, somewhere between tears and anger. “I want to sleep, Mommy!”

  “You can’t. This is important, Janey. It’s an emergency.”

  The child came all the way awake.“Afire?”

  “No, sweetie, not a fire. But just as serious as a fire. Now get out of bed. Put on your slippers.”

  “Where are you, Mommy?”

  “I’m in my lab downstairs. Now, Janey, you do exactly as I say, do you hear me?”

  “Yes . . . I don’t like this, Mommy!”

  I don’t either, Cassie thought, but she kept her voice stern, hating to scare Janey, needing to keep her moving. “Go into the kitchen, Jane. Go on, I’ll be on the roomscreen there. Go on . . . that’s good. Now get a bag from under the sink. A plastic bag.”

  Janey pulled out a bag. The thought floated into Cassie’s mind, intrusive as pain, that this bag was made of exactly the
kind of long-chain polymers that Vlad’s plastic-eating microorganism had been designed to dispose of, before his invention had disposed of him. She pushed the thought away.

  “Good, Janey. Now put a box of cereal in the bag . . . good. Now a loaf of bread. Now peanut butter . . .” How much could she carry? Would T4S let Cassie use the lab refrigerator? There was running water in both lab and bathroom, at least they’d have that to drink. “Now cookies . . . good. And the block of yellow cheese from the fridge . . . you’re such a good girl, Janey, to help Mommy like this.”

  “Why can’t you do it?” Janey snapped. She was fully awake.

  “Because I can’t. Do as I say, Janey. Now go wake up Donnie. You need to bring Donnie and the bag down to the lab. No, don’t sit down . . . . I mean it, Jane! Do as I say!”

  Janey began to cry. Fury at T4S flooded Cassie. But she set her lips tightly together and said nothing. Argument derailed Janey; naked authority compelled her. Sometimes.“We’re going to have trouble when this one’s sixteen!” Vlad had always said lovingly. Janey had been his favorite, Daddy’s girl.

  Janey hoisted the heavy bag and staggered to Donnie’s room. Still crying, she pulled at her brother’s arm until he woke up and started crying too. “Come on, stupid, we have to go downstairs.”

  “Noooooo . . .” The wail of pure anguish of a sick three-year-old.

  “I said do as I say!” Janey snapped, and the tone was so close to Cassie’s own that it broke her heart. But Janey got it done. Tugging and pushing and scolding, she maneuvered herself, the bag, and Donnie, clutching his favorite blanket, to the basement door, which T4S unlocked. From roomscreens, Cassie encouraged them all the way. Down the stairs, into the basement hallway . . . .

  Could Janey somehow get into the main generator room? No. It was locked. And what could a little girl do there anyway?

  “Dr. Seritov, stand at the far end of the lab, behind your desk . . . yes. Don’t move. If you do, I will close the door again, despite whatever is in the way.”