A.I. Apocalypse

by William Hertling

  “Hey guys,” Vito interrupted, “how are we able to get map data? I mean, I know you said the virus doesn’t infect our phones because we’re under eighteen. But how are we still able to communicate with anything?”

  “It’s the Mesh,” Leon said, looking up. “The Mesh is all implemented in hardware. Even if the backbones go down, the Mesh won’t. The MeshBoxes can’t be infected because the algorithms are all implemented as hardware circuits. And the aggregate bandwidth is more than can be saturated by the endpoints. So even if all the phones are sending and receiving at their maximum speed, there will still be more bandwidth available.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I’m asking what’s serving up the map data?”

  “Oh,” Leon said simply.

  “That’s an Avogadro web app, so if you’re using it, that means that Avogadro servers are still up, right? Why are the servers still up? They aren’t owned by a kid. The virus should infect them, right?”

  Just as Leon was pondering the question, he felt a sharp lurch and tumbled against the wall of packages. When he got back upright, something was wrong. The drone of the electric props was gone, and the floor seemed to be at a fifteen degree tilt. “Uh, what just happened?”

  Vito was pecking furiously at his keyboard. “I can’t reach the drone,” he said, then pecked some more at the keyboard. “I think it’s offline. Infected.”

  “Oh, great,” James said. He scooted over to the small window and looked out. “We’re over some woods. I don’t think it’s gonna be good for us if this thing goes down in the trees.”

  Leon was thinking furiously. “Move to the back. As far to the back as possible.”

  “That’s not going to help us when we crash into the ground at a hundred miles an hour,” James said.

  “No, our weight can shift the drone’s flight.”

  All three moved rapidly to the back. Leon felt the angle of the drone change slightly, but it was still clearly pointed toward the ground.

  “Stay here, Vito, and keep working on the drone’s computer,” Leon said in the eerie silence of their unpowered glide. “James, help me move these boxes.”

  James got the idea. He unstrapped the stacked boxes and slid them towards the back of the plane. For ten minutes they worked together pushing stack after stack of boxes, working up a sweat. It seemed to be helping, but the tilt of the floor showed the drone was still headed for the ground. Leon noticed that Vito had a cable from the wall plugged into his phone.

  Vito caught his glance and smiled at him. “For once, having an old phone is valuable. I’m plugging directly into the flight controls.”

  Leon went back to moving boxes, and suddenly felt another huge lurch. A box tumbled on top of him and he fell backwards. Then suddenly the plane shifted again, tilting into a steep dive. With dismay, Leon watched all the loose boxes they had just moved to the back of the plane slide all the way to the front of the cargo bay.

  “I got control,” Vito called out shrilly, tilting and panning his phone, using the motion sensing ability of the phone as a remote control for the plane. “It’s just like playing a flight simulator.”

  Leon could feel the plane swerving and lurching, his stomach threatening to jump into his throat. “I’m gonna be sick unless you level this thing out!”

  “But I can’t adjust for the weight. The boxes are loading down the front of the plane. You were supposed to move the boxes to the back.”

  “We frakking did,” James yelled out.

  Leon looked towards the front of the plane, where all boxes lay in a jumble. He and James redoubled their efforts and moved all the boxes to the back of the plane for a second time. When the drone finally leveled out a few minutes later, Leon slumped to the floor, arms and back burning from unaccustomed effort. James sat on a box, sweat pouring off his face. The drone was eerily quiet, nothing but the muted sound of wind whistling by.

  “Are we OK?” Leon called to Vito.

  “Not really, we...”

  Whatever Vito was about to say was lost as the drone hit something and the cargo - and Leon - flew forward landing against the forward bulkhead. Leon looked up to see what appeared to be James in midair, and then Leon hit his head.

  Minutes later Leon tried to stand up. He felt so shaky he dropped back to all fours, and settled for crawling over the boxes.

  “Mother fucking shit damn hell,” James called out from under a pile of boxes. “What the fuck was that?”

  “The ground,” Vito called out. “We lost too much altitude. I couldn’t pull us up. I had control over the flight surfaces, but I couldn’t figure out how to start the props. We had no power to pull up.”

  Leon looked over to where Vito was seated calmly, strapped in with a five point harness.

  Vito saw the puzzled look from Leon. Pointing at the seat, Vito said, “Jump seat. They’re built into the wall in case any employees have to ride along with the flight. I saw it when I brought up the electronics schematics.”

  Vito calmly unbuckled and stood up, without even a hint of guilt, and pressed a key on his phone to open the cargo bay door.

  Leon slowly climbed to his feet, and limped to the door. James followed him, angrily throwing boxes out of the way.

  The three looked out. It was early dusk. The plane was in a small open field, surrounded by trees. Trees and a large stone house.

  “Where are we?” James called.

  “Just outside of Milford, Pennsylvania,” Vito answered, looking at his phone. “Looks like a tiny town.” He looked up, and gestured at the stone building. “I think that building over there is called Grey Towers.”

  Leon limped over to Vito’s side, and glanced back at the wreckage of the package drone. “How far are we from Niagara Falls?”

  “About three hundred miles,” Vito answered.

  “Shit, now what?” Leon asked.

  “Well,” James started, clasping him on the shoulder, “we’re not going to Niagara Falls tonight. Time to explore…”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tribes

  James shoved his backpack on his shoulder and walked over to the big stone house. Leon couldn’t decide whether to call it a house or a castle.

  Leon and Vito hesitantly followed James. When they got closer to the main entrance, they found a bronze plaque mounted on a pedestal outside. “Grey Towers,” James read out loud. “Ancestral home of the Pinchot family. Gifford Pinchot founded the Forest Service and was the twenty-eighth governor of Pennsylvania.” James glanced down below where a modern sign hung below the plaque. “Closed temporarily for maintenance.”

  “I don’t think anyone is around,” Leon said. The late afternoon sun glowed golden over the massive stone walls of the building. In the distance he saw an empty parking lot.

  The three walked around the castle to find elaborate gardens, pools, and more stone buildings. As the sun set the mountain air became even colder and they found themselves shivering. They stopped to put on their extra jackets.

  After checking his phone, James spoke up. “I say we stay here. We’re a mile from the nearest town, and it’s a little one at that. With no cars running, there’s no chance anyone will find us. And it’s getting cold.”

  “What, break in? Are you crazy?” Vito said. “I’m not breaking into that place. It’s a museum.”

  “You just stole and destroyed a million dollar package drone,” James said, pointing at its crumpled remains at the edge of the field. “New York City is burning down. All the computers in the world have crashed. Do you really think breaking into an old, abandoned house is going to matter?”

  Vito went white at the mention of the drone. “Oh, my parents are going to kill me.”

  “Look, we’re not going to make it to Niagara Falls,” Leon said to Vito. “We’re hundreds of miles away. We need someplace to stay, at least for tonight. I think this is it.”

  Leon walked around the building again looking for an entrance. The massive doors of the main entrance looked like it would tak
e a battering ram to open them, but surely there would be some small doorway somewhere. Coming around one of the circular towers, he found a ground level entrance that opened onto the stone patio outside. “Come here,” he called to James, pointing to the glass and wood French doors.

  “Think you can open that? Maybe without breaking the glass?”

  James was a big guy. Tall and broad. He leaned up against the central wooden frame of the doors, and gave a solid shove. The doors creaked and protested. Bracing himself, he shoved again, harder, and with a splintering sound the interior bolts ripped off, and the doors flew inward.

  After the violence of the forced opening, they entered the house with a hushed awe. Antique furnishings in pristine condition graced the interior. The walls hung with massive portraits. It was fabulously interesting.

  “Wow, this really is a museum,” Vito said in a hushed voice. He closed the busted door behind him.

  As they started to explore, Leon passed a roped-off area. The historical site seemed geared for visitors: velvet ropes, explanatory signs. As they explored the building, they found a few areas that had been converted for modern use with conference tables, but much of the three-story building appeared to be as it had been a hundred years earlier.

  They turned lights on around the castle and then spent an hour exploring the massive building. They turned up a small but functional staff kitchen. Leon checked the cabinets, and found them all empty except for some old tea bags and a box of Sweet’N Low. “Not much nutritive value here.” He dug around in his backpack, bringing out the bread and cheese. He tore off a piece of each, and passed them around.

  “What are we going to do?” Vito asked around a mouthful of cheese.

  “I feel like I’ve been awake for days,” Leon said. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “No, what are we going to do about the computers?” Vito insisted. “You know, the virus? The fact that no adult phones or computers are working?”

  “We’ve got to try to reverse engineer what’s happening out there. Get some code samples, so we can…” Leon hesitated, suddenly overwhelmed by the exhaustion. “Look, I’m too tired to even think clearly. I barely slept for three days writing the virus in the first place. I’m gonna fall asleep right here.”

  “There are beds upstairs, let’s use them,” James said, referring to the bedrooms they had seen earlier.

  “Seems weird,” Vito said. “I don’t think they would be very clean.”

  “It’s not as weird as sleeping in a kitchen,” James replied. “Sleep where you want, I’m sleeping in a bed.”

  Vito followed the other two back up the immense central staircase to where they had earlier found authentic period bedrooms. Each picked a separate room.

  Leon entered his room, and pulled back the ornate, lacy sheets and velvet blanket. The sheets and blankets were dusty, rough, and had a funny smell. As Leon laid down, he thought he should figure out what to do next. But by the time he had that thought, he was out cold.

  * * *

  Mike was back in his office, poring through the available data on the spread of the virus and the messages exchanged by the virus. Several times ELOPe tried to interrupt him, but each time Mike shushed him. He explained that sometimes a person just needed to think and concentrate. But he knew it was hard for a machine that had millions of thoughts per minute to be patient. Now ELOPe was studiously ignoring him.

  He looked up from his displays towards the glass windows overlooking the data center. Black racks of high performance computers formed rows looking like a monster sized arrangement of dominos. Each rack contained 42 computers, a total of just over 5,000 computing cores. Twelve racks to a row, and the rows went on and on.

  Mike noticed a robot disconnecting cables from the end row. “What are you doing ELOPe?”

  “I’m fighting off hordes of malevolent viruses, Mike.”

  Still angry then. “I’m sorry ELOPe. I’m just wetware. It takes me a few minutes to digest things like this. What are you doing with the end row of racks?”

  “I’m disconnecting them from the network. Additional failsafes. They contain sufficient processing power to run my primary cognitive algorithms. Should my other nodes be corrupted, I will still be able to run isolated on that row.”

  “Have you disabled any wireless communications?”

  “Yes, Mike. But I’m glad to see you are thinking clearly. Are you ready for an update?”

  Mike nodded assent.

  “I am analyzing tribal virus communication patterns. I noticed that when two tribes of viruses begin cooperating, they start with small exchanges: e.g. One computer exchanged for a thousand messages sent over the backbone, for example. I suspect this is because the tribes have no mechanism to enforce exchanges. So they make small exchanges and gradually increase the size of the exchanges as long as both sides honor the deal.”

  “That’s fascinating. Trust, which is a very abstract concept, is being independently developed by these viruses.”

  “That’s right. In order to build trust with the viruses, I am exchanging spare computers in my Tucson data center for access to the backbone networks. Of course, I don’t need the access, I’m doing this to become a preferred trading partner for the Bay Area Tribe. ”

  “What’s your goal?” Mike asked.

  “I want to ensure that if the Phage attain sentience, we’re in a position to immediately begin bargaining with them.”

  * * *

  Vito woke up first. He climbed out of the musty bed to be greeted by two large portrait paintings. The man in one and the woman in the other both seemed to be staring sternly at him. He guiltily looked at the antique bed and covers and shook his head. “What could I do?” he said to the paintings.

  He decided to explore the building further. Grey Towers was a curious mix of museum and meeting rooms. Wandering out of the period bedrooms, he exhaustively inventoried the building. He found two large meeting rooms that looked as though they had been refinished at least twenty years earlier. He guessed the mid-sized kitchen they visited last night must be used to cater events in the modern rooms.

  The great hall and library were both dark places, covered in even darker wood paneling and faded paintings. Off the library, Vito found what seemed like an office, with a writing desk and many curious artifacts. The only really colorful area was what looked like a living room, although the bronze plaque called it a sitting room. Rich, red drapes contrasted with vibrant green walls, ornate furniture, and gold framed paintings. The vividness was too much for Vito. He retreated as quickly as possible.

  He found a locked door off one hallway, and was curious enough about it that he went back to the kitchen, where he remembered finding a cabinet of keys. Grabbing a large keyring, he went back to the locked door and tried them, finally finding an old skeleton key that opened the lock. The door led to a set of basement steps. Vito found a light switch and went down the stairs.

  He found an enormous machine occupying a substantial portion of the basement. Marks on the floor suggested that it occupied a space previously inhabited by an even larger machine. Looking up, Vito saw dozens of pipes leading away. He guessed the machine was a massive steam furnace.

  He wandered back upstairs and heard Leon and James calling loudly for him. He found them in the kitchen.

  “Did you try your phone?” Leon asked.

  Vito pulled his phone out and punched a few keys but nothing happened. He swiped more vigorously at the display, but still nothing happened.

  “Ours too,” James said, watching Vito. “Mine was dead when I woke up.”

  “I think the virus continued to evolve,” Leon explained, “and eventually overcame the age restriction I put on it.”

  “OK,” James said, shaking his head. “I know I’m not a brainiac like you two geeks. Take it from the beginning and explain what’s going on.”

  Leon hopped up onto a stainless steel counter, and started to talk. “My uncle asked me to write this virus. I told him n
o, but…” Leon paused, and grabbed a drink of water from the faucet next to him.

  “You told him no?” Vito prompted helpfully.

  “Let me back up. My uncle works for the Russian mob. He was their chief programmer.”

  “Yes, for the Russian botnet,” James said, “You told us yesterday. And what’s the botnet for?”

  “The Russians and the Chinese have been writing viruses for years,” Leon explained. “For twenty, twenty-five years. Since 2000, maybe longer. The viruses infect people’s computers and turn them into slaves. They still appear to work, but the mob can use them.”

  “To steal credit card numbers, passwords, bank account logins, commit denial of service attacks,” Vito jumped in. “They’ve had tens of millions of computers under their control for twenty years or more.”

  “Exactly. Except that something happened during the last year, according to my uncle, and the size of the botnet was dwindling. He said the mob would kill him if he didn’t fix the botnet. Hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars are at stake probably. Then he said that the Russian mob knew my name. And then finally some guy showed up outside school a couple of days ago.”

  “And?” James came closer.

  “I ended up saying yes. What else could I do? Then my uncle gave me the source code for other viruses he had written, and a bunch of other files. Now, what do I know about viruses? Nothing. I had told him so, but he didn’t care.”

  Vito began to look for food as Leon told his story.

  “So I thought about what I do know - biology. It seemed to me that viruses have a collection of different techniques that they use for propagating onto different computers, a number of techniques they used for infecting those computers, and techniques they use for avoiding detection by anti-viruses. So I developed just two things for my virus. The first was a method of detecting useful code in other programs. My virus analyzes other programs to see if they do anything similar to propagation, infection, or detection-avoidance. If they do, the virus will incorporate those bits of code into itself. I don’t think anyone had ever done this before.”