Web of Extinction

by John Conroe

  “Like what? Oh, wait, let me guess… Harper actually did release her evidence?”

  “Yes. But I don’t know much, nowhere near enough. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m taking you back to my place. My wife has dinner ready and we can all watch the news and catch up. You can spend the night in my guest room, then tomorrow go back to your apartment. Deal?”

  I thought about my options, none of which seemed appealing, and finally gave her a nod. “Deal.”

  She lived in a brownstone in an upscale part of Brooklyn, indicating that my retainer checks must have joined forces with quite a few others or else she must have married a doctor. Turns out she had married a doctor, an emergency room physician of Indian descent whose family curry recipe was almost the equal of Aama’s.

  So after a shower and dozens of phone calls to my family and Astrid, who had also gotten free from police clutches, I sat down to dinner with Sarah and Hannah and we watched the news.

  While I had been repeating my story to Detectives Satterly and Afrond for the billionth time, the rest of the country was dealing with the mountain of evidence that Harper had finally spilled into the internet.

  Her mother, Dr. Wilks, had recorded several of the interactions she’d had with the people who ultimately launched Drone Night. Those recordings, along with reams of emails, telephone recordings, and several diary files that a few individuals kept on supposedly secure storage systems were more than enough to upend everything.

  Thirteen people were directly implicated in the conspiracy, Shussman being one of five who orchestrated the straw purchase of the 25,000 combat drones, using some of the Gaia Group’s more militant members as ground agents, and then ultimately hired Harper’s mother to modify the programming of the Spiders.

  Quite a few additional members of the conspiracy were directly or indirectly implicated by Harper’s evidence. It reached as high as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, multiple senators, congressmen, and multiple officials inside the current White House Administration.

  In fact, it turned out that Shussman’s notebook computer, the one that I had retrieved from 55 Broadway, had contained damning information and he had inadvertently left it behind in his rush to exit the city on the night the attack was launched. I had, unknowingly, handed him the evidence that would have broken this story open months ago. He should have wiped it all clean as soon as he got it back but he’d tucked it away as insurance against his co-conspirators. Despite his best safeguards, its hard drive fell prey to Harper’s skills.

  The release of the information had been accompanied by a letter from Harper describing how she had obtained all the information. She had found the conspirators by backtracking the money. She’d started with the companies whose stock performance did the very best in the years following the initial attack. The people funding those wonder companies had, in turn, made their massive war chests of cash by shorting the exact right companies at exactly the right time on the day before Drone Night. Several of those people had been Rocon clients, the company that Calvin Shussman had helped start and run. From there, Harper had just quietly infiltrated all the networks of the people who had benefited from such prescient investing, which included all of Rocon’s partners.

  It had taken her time to bypass security software and firewalls, slowly gathering vast amounts of information that she’d then had to filter to find the real gold. But find it she had. We didn’t even make it halfway through dinner before Sarah was getting phone calls from the group of people who were, at her request, spearheading the first investigations and seeking to replace elements of the government. With this new exposure, it looked like the country was going to need to be restructured from the ground up.

  I got a call from Astrid and took it while carrying dinner dishes to the kitchen. Sarah was on one of her own calls and Hannah was just staring at the wall, watching the news, mouth almost hanging open.

  “Are you seeing all this on the news?” Astrid asked.

  “Crazy, right?”

  “AJ, it’s more than crazy. It’s so big, I’m not sure if the country can recover. Dad agrees. He wants all of us to head back north tomorrow. He doesn’t think it’s going to be safe here, or really anywhere. I mean, have you watched what Zone War is playing?”

  “I didn’t even realize it was still on. What are they showing?” I asked.

  “You kind of have to see it,” she said. I walked back into the dining area of the apartment. “Can I change this? There something I’m being told we need to see.”

  Hannah just nodded, her expression curious. I activated the hand controls, as the house AI was disconnected, and changed it to the station that Zone War played on.

  The screen changed instantly, filled with video of the standoff on the interstate. The bottom of the screen indicated a Dr. Aarav Laghari, PhD, Computer Science, Columbia University, was speaking.

  “—in addition, you can see the moment the man with the Chinese missile starts to activate it, the excavator immediately goes live. It reacts far faster than a human could. So fast that there is no doubt in my mind that an AI is controlling it. Yet it doesn’t kill the shooter.”

  “Are you saying that the excavator was being run by Ajaya’s AI, Rikki Tikki?” Cade Callow replied.

  “I have no way of knowing the answer to that, Cade. All I can tell you is that the machine destroyed the weapon mere microseconds before a launch. And if you notice, the automatic weapon mounted on the top of the armored military vehicle shot a very precise burst of rounds and destroyed the other missile at the moment it launched. It did that without a single round hitting a human. Now, the shooter was injured by the exploding missile but he wasn’t, according to all reports that I have seen so far, hit by any bullets. Again, it happened too fast for a human to control.”

  “Dr. Laghari, I’ve spoken at great length with Ajaya Gurung about his drone and the AI that ran it. It’s very clear that that AI was uploaded to the internet to hunt the Spider AI. Now, as you earlier pointed out, the dump truck attempted to run over the Johnsons’ LAV, but the excavator also stopped it. Was this an example of the two AIs fighting?”

  “If your theory regarding the young man’s drone software is correct, then it seems at least possible that what we’re seeing is open AI warfare in the streets of New York.”

  “I have some more footage for you to look at, Doctor,” Cade said. The screen immediately was filled with aerial footage at the dockside. “This is footage we obtained from the Red Hook Container Terminal this afternoon. As you can see, there is what appears to be a firefight underway in and around the on-shore containers. But right here… there, did you see that? The ship crane launched a container. Just spun around and threw it. Now, about here, it does it again. Next you’ll see the shore side gantry drop a container toward two people who we believe to be Ajaya Gurung and Astrid Johnson.”

  The video played further, showing reach stackers racing for us while the deck cranes catapulted more containers.

  “This too, Cade, appears to be a battle between the AI units,” the computer expert said.

  “My question, Doctor, is why does the Plum Blossom Spider AI appear to be actively hunting Ajaya Gurung? Because that’s what it looks like. Wherever Ajaya goes, the Spider attempts to suborn systems near him and then attempts to kill him, with his drone AI, Rikki, showing up to stop it.”

  “I can see your point. However, Cade, in that last piece you played, I believe the ship’s deck cranes started throwing before any of the dockside equipment became hostile. In that case, it seems his AI was working to protect him and the Spider showed up after, maybe drawn by the drone AI.”

  “Interesting take on it, Doctor. You may be right. But either way, you seem to be agreeing that it is computer warfare?”

  “Oh, yes, Cade. It certainly appears that way, although I wouldn’t call it computer warfare but software warfare. It’s the programs that are in conflict. And I only hedge myself because I’m a scientist and I don’t like to assume things, but
based on what we’re seeing elsewhere, it seems highly, highly probable that this is, in fact, two highly sophisticated programs battling for dominance.”

  “What do you mean by the phrase ‘what we’re seeing elsewhere?’”

  “Cade, there are signs, if you know to recognize them, all over the world of this battle. The government, what’s left of it, has been excellent in linking the world’s best and brightest experts to combat this invasive AI. It’s been spreading everywhere, but then again, so has the Drone AI.”

  “Rikki, Doctor… its name is Rikki. Named for the guardian mongoose in Rudyard Kipling’s tale.”

  “Hmm, so far that seems to be a very apt name. To this point, it has been very effective in slowing—and some cases stopping—the Spider program.”

  “What do you mean so far?”

  “Cade, these two programs are spreading the same way that viruses and malware spreads. By copying themselves onto new systems. Whenever you copy a program, you introduce the risk of an error or mistake entering the copy. Much like biological cells mutate or get damaged when undergoing cellular mitosis, the same idea can happen with programs. By now, these programs have made millions of copies of themselves. Statistically, it seems improbable that no errors have been introduced in at least some of these copies.”

  “What would these glitches or errors do, Doctor?”

  “No way to know, Cade. Most of them may be minor, but others might make the whole program fail, or might introduce new lines of code or even remove some code. The result might be a lack of efficiency or complete failure, or even a change in the core program mission parameters.”

  “You mean it could result in a Rikki copy that doesn’t guard?”

  “Perhaps. Usually something that big would just cause a complete failure. It would more likely be something more subtle.”

  “What about Plum Blossom? Could it change enough to stop killing humans?”

  “Possibly, although again, I think that might introduce too much conflict in the logic tree and would just cause failure. But if, say, the program started to kill animals or plants in addition to humans, that would be a change from the original. That’s the kind of thing we’re looking for.”

  “So it might change to try and kill everything on earth?”

  “Who knows, Cade. The drones in the Zone never attacked animals without cause, as it was an inefficient use of resources and a distraction from the primary mission of killing humans. Such a change might weaken it enough for the Rikki AI to defeat it in that instance.”

  “How do we combat this thing, Doctor? It seems like Rikki is doing all the work right now.”

  “That’s not exactly true, Cade. We are inoculating, if you will, every expert system we can think of, and that appears to be working. We’re also removing expert systems from the chain of vital or dangerous services everywhere we can. But all that takes time, and these programs work much faster than we do.”

  “Is it hopeless?”

  “We will eventually isolate the rogue AIs, Cade. How much damage is done before then, I can’t begin to say.”

  “It’s the consequences of that damage that worries me, Doctor. How long until we reach a point of no return?”

  “I’m not an expert on chaos theory or system collapse, Cade, so I have no idea what that kind of thing looks like or if it would even ever happen.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. I’m afraid we’re out of time, but thank you so very much for your insights.”

  “My pleasure, Cade.”

  I turned it back to the regular news channel and turned to find both Sarah and Hannah staring at me, both clearly scared.

  “See what I mean, AJ?” Astrid asked over the phone I was holding to my ear. So weird—holding a phone.

  “Yeah, I get your point. Listen, let me talk to Sarah and her wife for a bit, then I’ll call you back and we can get our act together.”

  “Oh, they have to come with us, AJ. Tell them there is plenty of room.”

  “Yes, I know and I will.”

  I hung up and spent the next few hours talking with the two women hosting me. Hannah was concerned about the idea that Plum Blossom was actively tracking me and trying to kill me. I wasn’t thrilled with that idea either, but I reassured her as best I could. Sarah had questions about where and how they would live, how they could just up and leave everything. I explained that leaving the city for safety might be just a first step. That their belongings could be shipped north at a later date, provided that there was a later date.

  In the end, they agreed to leave and then frantically set about packing what they would be able to fit into Sarah’s Lexus SUV. I was ready to retreat to the guest room if they got really upset about the choices they had to make, but oddly, they were pretty damned pragmatic. I guess being an emergency room doctor makes triaging your personal possessions relatively easy. And Sarah had always been tough. So I offered to help but they assured me that they had it under control, and both of them took a look at my face and ordered me to bed. I thought I might have trouble sleeping, might have a lot of thoughts whirling around my brain all night, but I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  Chapter 33

  We hit the road early the next morning, a small convoy of vehicles exiting the city and heading north on I-91. JJ and Martin drove the big electric tractor trailer with the LAV cabled down on a low-boy trailer, while Astrid and I rode with Brad in his Mercedes SUV, although it was Astrid doing the driving. Sarah and Hanna followed in Sarah’s Lexus, the tail end of the little lineup.

  Brad had the news playing on the vehicle’s sound and information system, which was great with me because I don’t have a great deal to talk about with Astrid’s father. Things were a bit better between us, but Brad Johnson was a complicated man. And my history with him was long and mostly negative.

  So instead of talking, we listened to multiple stations as they recounted the firestorm in Washington that threatened to incinerate the rest of the country along with it.

  All of the accused ringleaders were going to ground, lawyering up and hiring PR firms to try and muddy the waters of the charges. I say try because even though spinning the truth had become a political super sport, this time was different. The overwhelming evidence had torn open the national wound of the worst loss of life the country had ever seen, opened it as if ten years had never gone by. The ruling party had had little threat from other parties, special interest groups, and political action organizations over the last decade. That all changed overnight. There was blood in the water and the sharks were circling for the kill. So much so that the party in power was tearing itself apart; politicians who might, possibly, have not been involved in the conspiracy were leaping forward to demand justice, and judges were signing warrants left and right. The result was a series of rapid and dramatic arrests. Two of the accused tried to flee in vehicles and were taken down by law enforcement while another was arrested at the airport just before his private jet was set to take off for someplace foreign.

  During a brief quiet moment between stations, Astrid spoke up.

  “Dad, you think they can save the government?”

  “Oh, they’ll cobble it together if they have to. This country is resilient.”

  “But you believe we’re still in trouble?”

  “Don’t you, pumpkin? The country is focused on this clusterfuck to the exclusion of all else. Meanwhile that Spider program is doing everything it can to kill off our food, energy, medicine, and water. It doesn’t have to get everything, just enough to tip us over. Once people in other countries start dying, they’ll go for the countries that still have resources. Ajaya has been correct all along. Horribly so in fact,” he said, turning to glance back at me. He was in the front passenger seat, which left me the whole back for me. His gaze shifted off me and onto something behind us. A microfrown twitched across his face. Instantly, I turned and looked out the back window.