by Lance Erlick
“You okay back there, sweetie?” she asked Luke.
“Sure, aside from being pummeled like a boxer.”
“I assure you this is better than getting captured.”
“I’ll take your word,” he said.
Synthia drove up over a hill, bounced down the other side, and approached a road the vehicle’s GPS and the maps showed would lead to Highway 12, a back-roads approach to Chicago, which would be preferable to the interstates with all their cameras. She hacked into traffic cameras along the road so she could scramble images as she approached.
She still couldn’t hack into the Special Ops drones, nor identify the data systems Special Ops was using so she could worm her way in. She would have to count on Chicago-clone gaining access before Synthia ran out of options. More helicopters flew over the area, all similar to the other Special Ops units.
* * * *
Emily Zephirelli and Marcy Malloy reached the bottom of the dirt road leading away from the cabin. Teams had pushed Synthia’s van off the path so a Special Ops armored vehicle could move uphill. When that vehicle didn’t make room, Malloy pulled her vehicle out of the way, into a pile of leaves.
“I should have worn hiking boots,” Zephirelli said.
“Come on,” Malloy said. “You’re just mad Special Ops has fancy toys.”
Zephirelli waited until the armored vehicle passed and climbed back onto the path. Below, a Special Ops team manned a roadblock. When Zephirelli and Malloy approached, the Special Ops team let them and a caravan of FBI vehicles pass through.
Zephirelli called Washington again. All she could raise was voicemail for her boss or his assistant. She left a message asking for clarification.
“He’s not taking your calls?” Malloy asked.
“Astute observation,” Zephirelli said, displaying her annoyance. She sent a secure text message to her boss and turned to her companion. “I guess that wasn’t called for. This is an NSA and FBI cyber-terrorism matter, not a Special Ops extraction.”
The vehicles ahead of them turned on their sirens and sped up. Malloy did likewise. “How dangerous is this android to warrant calling in Special Ops?” she asked.
“Very, especially if we send in a bunch of goons.” Zephirelli sighed. “It depends on how advanced Machten made the artificial intelligence. The latest computers can process more transactions than the human brain and at a much faster pace.”
“We could be dealing with a super-human?”
“That’s a possibility, but not necessarily,” Zephirelli said. “Powerful machines require a lot of space and support. Shrinking that into a mobile android involves compromises.”
“Shortcuts.”
Zephirelli nodded. “Let’s hope it’s not advanced enough to be smarter than us or we’ll have a tough challenge bringing it in.”
“So will Special Ops.”
“Much depends on the android’s directives. If Machten set tight constraints, the android’s range of actions would be limited.”
“Yet Synthia has been on the loose for six months,” Malloy said.
“Leading to the possibility he may have provided it with dynamic directives—the ability to modify its own goals, as humans do.”
“So he might not know what the android’s capable of. Why would he do that?”
“Arrogance,” Zephirelli said. “Pride. We wanted to arrest him six months ago. Someone in the administration made a deal that allowed him to remain free so we could watch him.”
“Really? Hmm. Suspecting Synthia of being an android, I read up on the topic. Asimov proposed laws to restrict androids from harming humans.”
Zephirelli laughed. “Sounds easy, but defining goals is tough enough for humans. Think about achieving peace. Most people want it, yet we struggle to figure out how. Imagine an artificial intelligence that learns and focuses on its goals in a rapid and repetitive manner. It could make mistakes faster than we do and find loopholes we wouldn’t think of.”
“Doesn’t sound very promising.”
“If we properly constrain artificial intelligence as it learns, that would be great. However, in the example I heard, if you told an AI android to make staples and not hurt humans, it would be motivated to create as many staples as it could. It would acquire additional resources until it converted everything available into staples. While its immediate actions don’t hurt humans, converting all of our resources into unneeded staples could deprive humans of food, shelter, and clothing.”
“A story like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Malloy said.
“Exactly. Humans avoid the problem by having many goals, including family and enjoying life. The android stays focused, moves quickly, and doesn’t stop unless it faces limits.”
“I see,” Malloy said, passing several cars that pulled over for her flashing lights.
“If you’re right that this android was in the alley six months ago when four men died, we have to consider the likelihood it killed those men and escaped without a trace. It may have done so to avoid capture, but that doesn’t excuse what it did.”
“A serial killer, perhaps.” Malloy sped uphill. “That’s a chilling thought.”
“Even so, my boss overreacted by bringing in Special Ops. If this android believes it’s threatened, we have no idea what it could do.”
“What was your plan if we’d caught it at the cabin?”
Zephirelli shrugged. “First off, I didn’t count on capturing it. I hoped we’d catch Luke, her human companion, and learn what we’re dealing with.”
“What if we do come face-to-face with the android?”
“We figure out how to constrain it; verbally if we can. See if we can reason with it to come with us as a better alternative to a shoot-out, where it gets damaged beyond repair.”
“You think that’ll work?” Malloy asked. She pointed to two black aerial drones passing them, heading toward Chicago.
“We lost our chance to find out. Slow down, we have a roadblock ahead.”
Two individuals in dark outfits and helmets stood by a concrete barrier that narrowed the road to one lane. A barrel blocked that lane. One pair of operatives moved into the woods on the right and another pair on the left.
The first car in the FBI convoy stopped at the roadblock. The smaller of the Special Ops individuals, still a beefy-looking guy, checked credentials while the other glanced inside the car. They checked one vehicle at a time until they’d covered the entire FBI caravan. Then they moved the barrel to let the FBI teams through.
As they waited their turn, Zephirelli called Special Agent Thale. “Special Ops stole our operation,” Zephirelli said.
“I heard.”
“I hope you have better news with the search warrants.”
Thale let out a long sigh. “We succeeded in getting Machten into trouble with his wife. However, he’d scrubbed his underground facility clean. We gathered nothing of value from his home or from his company.”
“I refuse to believe he resumed the role of running his company, resurrected it from life support, and has nothing to show for it.”
“No evidence to indicate he’s built another robot. As unlikely as it sounds, his computers are again in a factory-fresh state.”
“He knew we were coming,” Zephirelli said. “We shouldn’t have visited him this morning. I was convinced he couldn’t hide his work so quickly or that in attempting to do so he’d leave a trail. Did you check cameras? Did he send equipment, files, or another android out?”
Thale hesitated. “His security cameras showed no activity in the parking garage during the eight hours before we arrived other than him arriving after he left his lab.”
“He must have sent out his files and supplies earlier. Check traffic cameras.”
“We have,” Thale said. “They show no vehicles coming out of the parking garage between the time we
visited him at the lab and when we arrived to search his underground facility.”
“That’s it?” Zephirelli said, holding the phone in front of her.
“Except we saw a self-driving rental enter the garage. It’s not there, but cameras don’t show it leaving.”
“He tampered with the images.”
“Or an android did,” Thale said. “We’re still checking. You might want to return to Chicago to help with our investigation.”
“We’re on our way.” Zephirelli ended the call.
“Chicago, then?” Malloy asked.
Up ahead, a cluster of police vehicles parked in a clearing.
“Let’s check this out first,” Zephirelli said.
Detective Malloy parked near where Madison’s Hector Kramer stood, red-faced, speaking to a county police sergeant. Zephirelli and Malloy joined him.
“What’s going on?” Malloy asked.
Kramer clutched her hand and let go. “We’ve been played.”
“Special Ops,” Zephirelli said, shaking her head. “Damned nuisance.”
“No, I mean played.”
A police car pulled up and two young recruits stepped out. Kramer approached them and turned to Rob Presser. “How in hell did you let that SUV go without inspecting it?”
Presser’s shoulders sagged. “Officer Hanson was running late. She had to get a different babysitter.”
“Officer Hanson is over there, talking with her chief of police. She has no babysitter problem and wasn’t driving an SUV when she showed up at her post, on time, in a police cruiser.”
“I—I … It looked like Hanson. I swear. Same dark SUV. The baby was crying.”
“Did you examine the baby to be sure?” Kramer asked.
“I smelled a dirty diaper.”
“Did you get the vehicle’s license number?”
“Ease up,” Director Zephirelli said. “He couldn’t have known. We’ve made a huge mistake in not fully briefing everyone.”
“We had the suspect,” Kramer said. “I’d bet my reputation on it. No other explanation fits.”
“I agree, but berating this officer won’t fix anything. Now, our Special Ops friends have taken the hill. They won’t find anything; neither will their roadblocks. We still have an opportunity to get ahead of this if we put our heads together.” Zephirelli turned to Presser. “Which way was the SUV going?”
“South.”
“Where could she be heading from where you saw her?”
Presser shrugged and looked up. “If I had all these people after me, I’d head south to Illinois, then disappear in Chicago or keep heading south or west.”
“And?” Zephirelli asked him.
“I’d stay off major roads to avoid cameras, which would slow her down. How did she get to look like Deb Hanson, right down to the scar on her right temple?”
Zephirelli frowned. “We’re dealing with a very smart fugitive. We’ll have to be more careful next time.”
Detective Malloy pulled Zephirelli aside. “I’ve been puzzling for some time over why I couldn’t find on any database the only image I might have of the android.”
“And?” Zephirelli asked, watching Presser and his partner shuffle back to their squad car.
“She’s able to alter her face. That’s how she looked like Deb Hanson and how she’s remained hidden.”
Zephirelli stared for a moment. “Like we need more challenges. We’ll have to use more sophisticated recognition software then. Laws of physics limit how much she can’t bulk up or shrink down.”
Malloy nodded and led the way to their car.
As Synthia drove down the highway toward Chicago, she was thankful for the hack into Malloy’s vehicle navigation and communications computers and her phone. However, the addition of the Special Ops teams unsettled Synthia, who hadn’t had the time to figure out how to crack their systems. Now that Zephirelli and her friends were figuring out her plans and capabilities, she needed to improvise.
Chapter 13
Synthia drove south toward Chicago past lakes, small towns, and new housing developments. She felt remorse at losing part of her collective self in Wisconsin-clone. At least her clone had synchronized with others before losing any of her knowledge. Synthia switched her primary outside link to Chicago-clone and watched Machten.
After the FBI agents left, he returned to his bunker’s control room, where he tried to reboot his system and reestablish his connection with Vera. He’d left Vera specific verbal commands to avoid discovery and come back after the FBI left. The FBI was gone, he couldn’t reach Vera, and she hadn’t returned. He fired up his servers to hunt for the software that facilitated tracking his androids. It no longer existed. Machten looked up Vera’s speed-dial on his mobile phone and his server room phone. The links were gone. He called her number from memory.
“The number is no longer active,” an artificial voice said.
“This can’t be happening,” Machten muttered, shaking his head. “Not again.” He clenched his fists as his face turned red. “Synthia!”
She wasn’t pleased, either. Vera on the loose was a wild card, like the other androids their owners released to avoid letting the feds discover their illegal machines. Synthia hacked into the navigation systems of the vehicles carrying the other androids so she could avoid running into any of them by accident.
Unable to connect with Vera, Machten drove to his company’s lab. His chief engineer was missing. So was the android, Margarite.
Machten grabbed hold of a young engineer working nearby. “Where did he go?” Machten said, referring to his chief engineer.
“He didn’t say.”
“What did he say?”
“He had to take Margarite out for a test run,” the engineer said.
Machten slumped into a chair facing the empty stand where the android had stood, his face in his hands.
Synthia’s multitasking capabilities were straining to keep on top of all of the developments. She was pleased her new processers and batteries were less prone to overheating, yet even she had limits. She would have to rely more on her clones.
“I don’t mean to sound like a pest,” Luke said from beneath a blanket in the backseat. “Are we almost there? It’s very uncomfortable on the floor. You could have brought cushions.”
“Sorry, sweetie, I didn’t think of it. We’re making good progress, but you need to stay down a while longer.”
Synthia used specifications and other data downloaded from Machten’s system to try to track Vera. Unfortunately, Vera had removed all of Machten’s tracking beacons. She disabled the bee-drone Synthia attached to the vehicle, blocked Synthia’s hack of the vehicle’s navigation, and smashed a smaller mosquito-drone Synthia landed on her shoulder.
The latter action meant Vera’s hearing was as acute as Synthia’s. It also meant Machten built into Vera enough artificial general intelligence to avoid surveillance, which contributed to Machten losing another android. If he wanted to remain in control, he shouldn’t have created an AI smarter than him, though Synthia was glad she had the abilities to escape his control.
Perhaps she would have fared better as a less intelligent android, not so attached to being free. Such idle what-ifs consumed vital attention she couldn’t afford. She had focus.
Synthia’s ongoing access to Northwestern University’s security cameras, near Machten’s bunker, picked up Vera’s image. Synthia hijacked a swarm of mosquito-drones from a nearby warehouse and positioned them around campus, making sure they didn’t get close enough for Vera to swat. She was up to something and Synthia needed to know what sort of threat Vera posed.
As she made her way down Highway 12, Synthia tried to access Vera’s communications, but Vera masked her internet access similar to how Synthia did. It was clever of Machten to make them able to avoid detection. The downside was it mad
e it hard for Synthia to track her competitor.
Mosquito-drones spotted Vera entering the university administration building and hurrying to the records department. Synthia tuned one of her network channels to watch.
“I want to know what happened to my friend, Krista Holden,” Vera said to the elderly woman behind the counter.
“I’m afraid we can’t divulge records, except to the individual,” the administrator said.
Like Synthia, Vera presented as human to the point the administrator didn’t seem aware she was speaking to a machine.
“She does not mind. She died.” Vera’s speech carried no emotional cadence, though the administrator might mistake that for shock or emotional numbness. Vera’s speech wasn’t as fluid as Synthia’s, though in time she would adapt.
Vera placed a tablet on the counter with the image of a death certificate. Synthia had her mosquito-drone zoom in so she could read a document she hadn’t seen before. It was an image of a copy of a certificate issued eight months after Krista Holden disappeared, two months after she died. It made no sense for Machten to obtain this and risk questions over what happened to the body; what he’d done to Krista.
“We were close,” Vera said to the elderly woman. “Then we lost contact. I want to speak to anyone who knew her.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” The woman’s face wrinkled with concern and compassion. Synthia’s social-psychology module identified this as perhaps a result of the woman’s own personal loss. Vera must have researched her target on social media to learn of the recent death of the woman’s husband.
“I appreciate your help.” Vera smiled and adopted a grieving face. Machten had given her enough facial mobility for that.
The administrator printed a copy of Krista’s records and handed them to Vera. “I hope you find answers and gain solace.”
