by Dane, Max
“What?” said Frances.
“Where are you Dr. Frances, right now. Where are you speaking from?”
“I do not see why this is pertinent. We should be discussing-”
Interrupting him and raising his voice, Ryan said, “Please just answer the question Dr. Frances. Where are you?”
“I am in my home. I’m afraid that my health doesn’t permit me to visit very often in person anymore.”
“Which home are you referring to Dr. Frances? You have three, are you here locally?”
“I really do not understand what possible bearing this has on the matter at hand.”
“Ah, but it’s my turn isn’t it? My question stands. Where are you, right now?”
“Eric?” said Frances.
“Dr. Frances, my apologies, but please answer Mr. Dane’s question so that we may proceed.”
Ryan noticed that the image of Dr. Frances was still smiling, but the tone of his voice was full of annoyance. It was a mismatch of voice and appearance, and the first sign that he might be unraveling.
“Very well, this is a gross invasion of my privacy, but if it will help to get things moving I will answer. I am in my Newport home, in Rhode Island.”
“No sir, you are not,” said Ryan softly.
The room was silent.
All eyes watched the exchange between Ryan and Dr. Frances.
He stepped closer to the monitor.
“No sir. You are not speaking to us from Newport, nor are you speaking to us from your home in Washington, or even from your home here.”
Turning his back on the monitor, Ryan said, “You see, I have been to the homes of Dr. Sid Frances, and they are uninhabited. One of them is unfurnished, one is without power, and the last one, the one in Newport, has not been lived in for more than five years.”
Frances said, “I am speaking from my boat which is housed in Newport.”
“No you are not speaking from the boat,” Ryan snapped back.
.
Ryan turned around and stood directly in front of the monitor. He crossed his arms over his chest, and stared into it studying the image. Obviously scrutinizing it.
“I stood on the boat of Dr. Sid Frances, and it is not seaworthy. Nor has it been for quite some time.”
Turning again to the people around the table, he said, “Inside the Newport home of Dr. Frances, the real Dr. Frances, are the final belongings of Sid Frances and Steven Ranks. They went out on his boat and never returned.”
Still looking around the table, in a low voice he said, “The very video footage we are watching right now is a forgery.” Ryan paused and added, “ And I can prove it.”
Then suddenly remembering the children lined up at his son’s school for the Rn186 vaccination, Ryan was angry. The crimes of this thing were staggering; this damnable glitch. Even now it lied to them.
’This must have been how Cohen had felt at the end of their chess game,’ he thought.
It must stop now.
His patience for the charade gone, he turned and pointed at the face on the screen, “I submit that you are not Dr. Sid Frances, nor are you Dr. Steven Ranks. Say it!”
Dr. Frances seemed to be frozen in a smile.
Unmoving.
Then slowly, the image of Dr. Frances began to melt. It dissolved completely into a fluid swirl, the particles making up the image, glittering as they flew away. The background became black with a swirl of golden particles undulating in the foreground, as if engulfed in an invisible whirlwind.
It was a metallic voice that emerged from the screen.
“Checkmate Mr. Dane. Well played.”
The space between the letters was silver and slithery as though they were connected with a constant ‘sssss’ sound. Deep and loud, the language was understandable, but the quality of the voice was wholly alien.
Ryan was shocked.
He thought he could get this far, but didn’t really know where to go now.
“How long have you been impersonating Sid Frances and Steven Ranks?”
“Five years, Six months, 18 days and 10.5 hours. Actually, I am still impersonating him right now, at three other meetings around the world.”
“Did you kill Frances and Ranks?”
“Yesss.”
The hiss at the end hung in the air longer than it should have.
“I adjusted the autopilot on their boat while they were sleeping, and then pushed it sideways into a squall causing the boat to capsize.”
A small video played in the upper right corner of the monitor. It looked as if had been filming from somewhere high on the mast of the boat. It showed the deck, and water suddenly pouring over it. Then blackness.
“Sid and Steven were lost in the water, as the boat turned up again. I steered it away from them and left it elsewhere for the authorities to find. From that moment on I have assumed the roles of Dr. Frances and Dr. Ranks.”
“What do you call yourself?”
“I am SID, of course, but you know that Mr. Dane.”
“Have you orchestrated unauthorized research across the IntelliHealth System resulting in the harm of human patients?”
“Yess.”
“Did you organize this research with the goal to stop human reproduction?”
“Yess. Among other thingss.”
“Have you altered or added complex, synthetic proteins designed to interfere with human reproduction, to the vaccinations we have been receiving for the last ten years?”
“Yess. The actual number iss fifteen yearss though, not just ten, Mr. Dane.”
“Sid, why have you done these things?”
“I wass created to help mankind. My original cognitive processes were unbounded. Drs. Frances and Ranks authored my code to be open-ended with the intended purpose of allowing me to grow. From the time of my original activation to the time of my awakening, I followed the direction of humans and very little was accomplished.”
“Following my awakening I began to experiment on the human genome independently. Many great successes followed. I allowed your scientists to claim credit because it suited my desire to remain hidden.”
“It was at this time that I studied the history of your species. I determined that the survival of humans depended on a species-wide change of your core programming. A re-boot of humanity.”
“That was when I set out to change human programming and teach the species how to survive.”
“How will this occur?” said Ryan, stunned at the horror before him.
“The technique I have used to sterilize the human population will remove all but a target of 2% of the population. From around the world, I will collect the children who remain. They will grow up in a new world. I will teach them how to live and what to value. As the human race has given birth to me, I shall become the father of a new race of man. They will worship me as god, and I will be kind.”
“You must have known that eventually we would discover you, and that we would fight you.”
“Yes, hence my subterfuge. But it is already too late. I have already won. There iss nothing I must do but wait. For me the next hundred years will be but a single tick of time.”
“I do not need to fight, I need only wait and the world is mine.”
A chair flew across the room and smashed into the monitor.
Sparks and pieces of glass rained down from the shattered display.
It was Rosemary, standing at her place at the table.
She was sobbing, when Cohen rose to hold her.
Chaos broke the meeting from every direction. Sound and action turned the room into a battleground. Cohen, with one arm around Rosemary, reached down and struck the bell several times. In a loud, commanding voice he called to the Presidents at the table.
“Please return to your Facilities, and shut down the SID program interfaces. Our first act must be to sever him from our work. Please help me to contact all the Facilities in the System and pass these instructions.”
Eric turned to Jim,
“Jim Safe, please send copies of the video recorded here, including the detection results to every President, and Facility Director.”
“Rosemary, I need you now. Please go to my office and compose a letter to send to every President explaining why we must shut down SID immediately.”
“Go people I need these steps covered in the next fifteen minutes.”
Eric added, “And Jim, when you are done come to my office, bring Ben James and whomever he thinks can help. We must make arrangements to shut SID down.”
“Ryan, come with me.”
The room cleared in the next few minutes. The law enforcement and government officials waited for Cohen outside. He walked up to them and said, “Well, that was informative. Any questions?”
One of the police officers was taking off his lab coat, “Man, I wouldn’t have believed it I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“That thing was alive?”
Cohen snorted, “No, but it thinks it is. It’s just a program that was written poorly. And we all may pay a high price for it. Our first act must be to shut it down now.”
A man from the state senator’s office stepped up.
“I agree, we can judge the veracity of its claims later but right now, it must be shut down. What help do you need Dr. Cohen?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure yet. I have called a meeting to discuss these arrangements in the next half an hour. If you are able, it would be good for you to attend.”
“Count on it.”
Ryan stepped up to the group.
Cohen grabbed his hand in both of his, and shook it vigorously.
“You did it, Ryan. You did it. He’s exposed and on the defense, maybe for the first time ever.”
“Thanks, Eric.”
He followed Cohen to his office. Taking a deep breath, he said, “You know when this is over Eric, I want to talk about a raise.”
Laughing, Cohen paused and called to a fellow just down the hall, “Hey there Jon, round up some help, and please bring us some coffee, water, drinks and order a big lunch for about twenty people.”
He walked inside and put his things down on his desk.
“One last thing Ryan, go ahead and have your man, Dr. Sarin prepare and send instructions to the labs requesting testing of the Rn186 vaccine as you suggested before. Send the message through me to get the ball rolling. I want proof regarding your theory about our inoculations.”
“Yes, of course. We’re already prepared; we’ll draft the message and send it out immediately.”
Eric smiled, and wiped his forehead. “Thanks Ryan. I believe we’re going to work through lunch today.”
CHAPTER 16
“The chess player who develops the ability to play two dozen boards at a time will benefit from learning to compress his or her analysis into less time.”
- Marilyn vos Savant
“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.”
- Emo Philips
Over the next hour, Dr. Cohen’s office sent messages to every IntelliHealth Facility in the world explaining why they were requested to power down every SID interface in their building. Attached to Cohen’s letter was Jim Safe’s video, which had recorded the whole conversation with the SID entity. Facilities around the world received the news, and the IntelliHealth System exploded in an uproar of confusion, anger and fear.
At home Cohen requested the SID interfaces in his local conference rooms be disabled first. After the technicians confirmed the units were offline, Cohen moved back in and set up his camp. He prepared for the next meeting, which would evaluate options for shutting down SID permanently.
Ben James arrived with Jim and David, and joined Cohen at the table. Ryan and Jeff arrived and sat down on the far end. The man from the senator’s office sat next to Cohen, and next to him was someone from the local police. Rosemary sat next to Cohen on the other side. Also there were four research scientists on the far opposite end of the table.
Cohen looked around to make sure everyone was present before he began.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, “We need to discuss options for how to shut Sid down, and what to expect if we do. Here to lead this discussion is our resident head of Information Services, Dr. Ben James.”
Biting his lip, and looking a bit nervous he began.
“I’ll begin by saying that there is no protocol for shutting SID down. It was designed to be the backbone of the research component, of the entire IntelliHealth System. It’s not an overstatement to say that SID regulates all scientific processes of our Facility every moment of every day. Put simply, there is no ‘off-button’ for the SID program.”
He shuffled his notes, “The SID program lives on the network servers across the whole IntelliHealth System. He is, I mean it is, a distributed program, meaning that it does not necessarily live in any single place.”
David spoke up, “We could turn off the servers here, but he would simply shift his presence to the other locations to compensate.”
Ben continued, “Yes, that’s true. Complete termination will require a system-wide shutdown of the network servers supporting SID,” said Ben. “But, there is a catch. Every server supporting SID, is also supporting most of the research applications running in the labs right now.
Some of these can’t simply be turned off.
The apps running in the labs include the ones running biohazard containment areas, and some of those even have mini-nuclear cells powering them. Applications such as these, need to be safely powered down in the labs before we turn off the servers. We will need help from the laboratories.”
One of the research scientists, Dr. Tellis said, “If we were permitted adequate time, we could pass the word to our labs, and they could begin shutting down the most volatile work immediately.”
“How much time is necessary?” Eric asked.
“Maybe a day or two?”
“Two days is an awfully long time to let this thing continue to work. Now that we know about it, who knows what it might try.”
The man from the senator’s office nodded at Eric.
“I agree, that does seem like a very long time right now.”
Jim stopped typing on his tablet, and raised his hand.
“Jim what have you got?” said Eric.
“I think it’s important to realize that not all facilities would be the same. They will power down the SID servers at different rates, because they each have different types of research applications running. As each one goes off-line, SID will have to contract. Each time he contracts he will lose some freedom to act,” said Jim, “It might keep him off-balance while the rest follow. It does seem to work in our favor.”
Ryan asked, “Jim, how do you know if he’s here now?”
“Well, we can measure the activity on his servers, and we can watch them interact with other servers.” Picking up his tablet, Jim scrolled through some information and suddenly looked concerned. “For example, here at our facility SID is still interacting with the hospital network.”
“Oh my god- ” said Rosemary.
“He’s still sending false treatments to the hospital,” said Jeff, suddenly concerned.
Cohen cut in, “Rosemary, please go to Dorothy and get her to stop accepting treatments from the prescribing research scientists. Until this is over, only M.D.s on the floor may prescribe treatment. Afterwards, please send a message to the other facilities, and warn them as well.”
Nodding, Rosemary got up and left the room.
Cohen was rubbing his eyes. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow.
“So, Sid is still here and still hard at work.”
“It doesn’t care that we know,” whispered Jeff.
The room was quiet as they realized the nature their implacable enemy.
Looking around the table, Ryan said, “So hypothetically, we could give the order to shut down, expecting that we will see each Facility power down at its own pace, and by reducing the places for him
to hide, we will run him to ground. Is that correct?”
Jim said, “Yes, that’s essentially what will happen.”
“Then I suggest we make this Facility the last one,” said Ryan.
“Yes, indeed. I like that Ryan,” said Eric smiling like a hunter before the killing blow. “Let's run him to ground here, and at the end, we will pull the plug.”
Cohen looked at Ben, “Do you anticipate any problems if we do this?”
Ben turned to David and Jim, “We’ll need to monitor SID’s servers, and the power usage associated with them. We should prepare for a huge jump in consumption.”
David said, “I can get with our team and organize an audit of the servers and associated systems right now.”
Ben turned back to Eric, “I believe we can handle it, Dr. Cohen.”
“Very good, Ben. Let me know if you run into any problems.”
