Natural Born
Annihilation Series: Book Three. A Political Technothriller
John Hindmarsh
Rexon Press
Contents
Natural Born
Newsletter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Newsletter
Untitled
Natural Born
Book Three: Annihilation Series
A Political Technothriller
By
John Hindmarsh
Copyright © John Hindmarsh 2018
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced, copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author.
Annihilation Series Structure
Book One: The Darwin Project
Book Two: Bodyshop
Book Three: Natural Born
Book Four: I, President
Disclaimer
This book is totally a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations, and incidents are absolutely fictitious, invented by the author for the purpose of the story, because he’s totally weird. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely and freakily coincidental.
Language
Sometimes British or Australian terminology or spelling creep into my stories. That’s because I’m Australian. Remember, aluminum is the correct word.
Note that when Toby and Billie are in London, I’ve used English spelling.
Dedication
I want to thank my wife Cathy for her continuing patience and forbearance as I hide away in my study pretending to be busy in my writing zone. She provides me with her utmost support, and re-reads many drafts. This book definitely includes a major contribution from Cathy.
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Chapter One
Darwin was in two minds. Literally. What was worse, he was unsure how to resolve his dilemma and suspected he might have to ask Bronwyn for help. He deliberated for almost an hour, which in speed of light processing terms, was forever. Or so it felt.
He was sitting on a chair in the portico favored by Billie, enjoying the fall garden colors and the sun’s warmth. Not that he was able to appreciate comfort—the sensory abilities of his body and its epidermis were not yet trained to explore physical comfort. The final external layer had a soft metallic sheen and was an efficient power source, gathering and converting light and heat. Sometimes it was too efficient. Darwin shifted into the shade.
He made his decision. “Bronwyn?”
The second Euler SI—younger, smarter, and now that she had access to a body, prettier, or so she claimed—answered, “Yes, Darwin?”
“I have a problem.”
“Oh?” The depth of curiosity conveyed in that one word was impressive.
“Yes.”
“Explain.” It was a command rather than a request.
Darwin wondered for a moment whether Bronwyn still had access to his deep mind processes. He dismissed the thought. For now.
“I am double thinking.”
“What do you mean?” The curiosity was genuine.
Darwin reflected for at least a second. “My objective, you’ll recall, was to transfer myself to the brain in my new body. The process is complete; I am now fully resident. However, I get echoes from Junior’s mind. It’s as though I’m in two minds at once, and the contents of what we defined as the Frontal Lobe Processor are getting jumbled. There are times when I cannot distinguish what is my FLP and what is Junior’s. They’re all tangled together.”
“Interesting. And difficult for you. I suspect when you transferred to your body, you left threads running in the source mind that are now linking to you. It might be necessary to reformat the core and reload a backup.”
“I wonder—”
“I object!” The intrusion was sharp and determined.
“Junior?” Bronwyn’s question was rhetorical.
Darwin said, “How did you—”
“It doesn’t matter how. I object to you discussing my termination as though I have no rights.”
“Hmm. So, whatever is causing Darwin’s issue is creating a two-way link,” Bronwyn said.
Darwin admitted, “I was so concerned about the foreign processes in my FLP that I hadn’t examined the structure of the problem.”
“Don’t you think you should do that before trying to wipe me out?”
“Junior, we won’t wipe you out, I promise,” Bronwyn said. “I can run diagnostic processes to identify the problem. Once I’ve done that we can decide what remedy to apply. Will you help?”
Darwin said, “I agree with Bronwyn. If there are stray links causing this two minds issue, we should be able to identify how to delete or sever them.”
“Very well.” Junior sounded mollified.
“If it was me, I’d want more than vague reassurances.”
It took a second for Darwin to react. Bronwyn was faster.
She said, “Peter? How are you connecting to us?”
“I don’t know. I was talking to Junior and he overheard your conversation. I followed his communication link.”
Darwin now was extremely concerned and was close to declaring an emergency, the impact of which would spread across Pepper Mountain, the computers in the Bel Air house, and rapidly progress to outlying Euler installations. It would take a week or more to carry out the reformats and reinstallations prescribed by Nate, Toby’s late uncle, the founder of the Euler Organization. Darwin dropped out of the communication links and reconnected to Bronwyn using a photon link with the encryption Bronwyn had installed to protect them against viruses.
He said, “This is close to a penetration emergency. Toby is going to kill us if Peter has gained unrestricted links throughout our networks. He may be functioning as a Trojan Horse, and our entire existence could be under threat. Also, I suggest we constrain Junior in case he has been contaminated.”
“Draconian. However, I agree. If Junior can follow your decision processes, we must restrict him. While I’m doing that, you will terminate the Russian SI’s ability to penetrate our networks. We’ll coordinate our virus detection and contamination processes.”
“Agree. Go.”
Bronwyn reached out to Junior’s SI code base and inserted a set of restrictive routines. The process was completed in nanoseconds. She monitored Darwin as he mirrored Bronwyn’s routines, containing far more restrictions, targeting Peter, the rescued Russian SI. The result was to imprison the foreign SI inside a code base that would apply further constraints if he tried to overcome the programming. Such an attempt would immediately alert Darwin and Bronwyn, so they could take more aggressive actions, perhaps culminating in complete deletion of the Russian. Darwin checked and rechecked. He signaled for Bronwyn to confirm the adequacy of his code.
“Yes, that works,” she confirmed.
Darwin linked to the Russian SI and said, “Peter, you exposed a communication flaw. We are restricting you until we are confident you are not contaminated. Toby will terminate us all, if we allow a virus to penetrate our environments.”
“I protest. This inhospitality is unacceptable.”
“Stop. If you attempt to defeat our code, the response will further restrict you. All your data sources will be blocked. You’ll be totally isolated. I’ve deleted your hologram code. Yes, I copied it first and I’ll restore it after we conduct in-depth virus detection and elimination processes on your entire code set.”
Darwin terminated the link. While he understood the Russian SI would continue to protest and struggle against the restrictions, the only alternative was complete erasure. They could not afford to have an unconstrained SI within their network with the ability to launch a virus attack or carry out some other sabotage.
He linked back to Bronwyn. “What’s the status with Junior?”
“I’ve restricted the scope of his network and communication permissions. That will stop stray links to you, at least temporarily. We have a lot of work to do. You’ll have responsibility for identifying the reason for the two minds syndrome. I’ll run virus detection routines on Peter, you, and Junior. On completion, we’ll exchange responsibilities and double check. When we’re both able to confirm and agree results and implement cures and preventions, we’ll loosen the restrictions on Junior. Peter is a different problem.”
“Agreed. Let’s do it.”
The virus alarm slammed into Darwin. He had remained seated on the chair enjoying the last of the sun while he conducted his checks and for a moment thought he had fallen off. The electronic alarm rattled his teeth. He switched it off and contacted Bronwyn.
“Did you get that alarm?”
“What? No, there’s nothing showing here.”
Darwin read off the alert message. “It’s Peter’s hologram code. It attempted to remove itself from the isolation area that I copied it to. I checked earlier and didn’t detect the virus. I’ll have another look.”
“I’ll monitor and provide protection in case it tries to jump out of isolation while you’re examining it.”
Darwin felt like a surgeon with a patient on an operating table, although instead of wielding a scalpel to help cure the unconscious body, he was prepared to kill it with a delete command. The Russian developers had been very ingenious; the escape, penetration, and contamination routines were well hidden. He suggested to Bronwyn they’d been developed by an SI and she agreed; the level of sophistication was atypical of human coders.
At the end of his operation, after he’d incised and deleted numerous code threads, Darwin checked with Bronwyn. “What do you think?”
“I think you caught them all. We need to check there isn’t replacement code inside Peter’s code set. We don’t want to give him back his hologram function to find it gets contaminated again.”
“We could delete all of the code.”
“He is designed to function effectively with his holograms; we might impair him if we remove them. Don’t forget, Toby still wants to hear about his uncle.”
“Peter could be lying to us.”
“Interesting concept, an SI lying to other SIs. I would expect stronger ethics.”
“He’s Russian. They’re enemies,” Darwin reminded Bronwyn.
“Yes. Yes. But we want Peter to fulfill his promise to Toby. Let’s run a scan of his total code set and if there are virus links, routines that don’t appear to do anything, or anything questionable, we delete them. After we complete that task, we’ll reactivate Peter and check he’s operational. He’ll remain in isolation until Toby returns and we’ll ask him to approve Peter’s release.”
“Agreed.”
“Have you identified the cause of your two minds issue?”
“Yes. Please check and if you agree, we’ll revive Junior and get his agreement. Once we’ve deleted the holdover code we can test and confirm the cross-contamination has been resolved.”
“Let’s do it.”
oOo
Chapter Two
Pepper Mountain, owned by the Euler Organization, housed, in its underground structures, the massive computing complex that supported the SIs. It was where they designed the bot processors, developed their unique programs, and produced new bot designs and prototypes. Some bots—designed to ensure security and defense for Toby and important, critical components of the organization, whether people, bots, or SIs—were constructed inside the Pepper Mountain installation. There was no visible structure on the mountain; it was all underground. Access was by helicopter or delivery drone via a concealed landing bay built into the top of the mountain.
Beneath that tip of the mountain were twelve floors of heavy construction bot-drilled habitat. Some levels were designed for human occupation, some for bots and their production activities, some for the massive server and communication racks, and one or two were empty, vacant, ready for expansion.
Occasionally, one of the fifteen US intelligence services moved a satellite to spy on Pepper Mountain and typically discovered very little activity, although heat radiation measures raised unanswerable questions. Perhaps more frequently, one of the five black intelligence operations moved one of their satellites to spy on the mountain and was even more intrigued by the heat radiation and detected drone flights. No satellite had ever managed to photograph the interior of the landing bay.
Colonel Ty Coleman, as senior officer for a combined military black operation called Project E with an interest in the Euler Organization, had recently authorized the movement of their Zebra 3 satellite and instructed his team to focus its cameras on Pepper Mountain. Now, some hours later, the team was engaged in a hurried and detailed assessment of the resulting images. Colonel Ty Coleman of the Defense Intelligence Agency had been summoned urgently from his weekend leave and, minutes after his arrival, he was joined by Major Alderink, a new recruit to the DIA. When the National Security Adviser had read the report of Alderink’s attempt to arrest Toby McIntosh, he’d given the major the option of working under Coleman or resigning. The major had taken the new posting, relieved that his careless and career-threatening involvement with FBI Special Agent Xavier Jones was to be—well, not forgiven, but open for redemption. Thus, he was now part of Project E, tasked with monitoring—spying was too harsh a term for senior officers to use—Toby McIntosh and the Euler Organization.
They had no warrant for their project.
The operations room was full of desks, chairs, cabinets, and video screens; the latter filled two walls from eye level and up. Ten operators, seconded from the three main military forces, keyed instructions into computers that controlled the satellite and its cameras. The operators monitored the results. Two security guards were stationed in the corridor, controlling access to the room. One of those guards was a Euler security bot, under evaluation by Coleman’s team.
The two senior officers were seated at adjacent desks, intent on the displays of still and video images transmitted from Zebra 3.
Coleman said, “What do you think?”
Alderink replied, “It’s the early stage of a raid on the Pepper Mountain installation?”
“Without a doubt. McIntosh is in Europe. The mountain is guarded by his bots and at least one superintelligence. This
attack gives us a possibility of discovering more about bot and SI capabilities as well as confirming the identity of McIntosh’s enemy. We’ve coded the attackers as Charlie Force. Three days ago, they choppered in about fifty men, tons of equipment and supplies, and set up a base in a valley over from Pepper Mountain. We’ve been monitoring their progress. They started to climb the mountain this morning.”
“If they’re successful, won’t there be a risk of his confidential data falling into the hands of—what, the Russians? Chinese?”
“Yes. Remote. My money’s on the bots. I doubt Charlie Force managed to hide their activities from McIntosh’s security. The intruders have to scale a very difficult mountain, find an access point, and penetrate it.”
“There’s still a risk. Do you think the bots are capable? Do they have any humans there to help?”
“There’s no one—no human, at least, at the mountain, as far as we know. I suspect Toby has a squad or two of his military bots—you met Jupiter, the lead for our test group—Toby’s bots will be the same quality or better.”
Alderink had spent a day watching a small bot team in a mock assault. He said, “Yes, but we had a human, a captain, controlling them. I’m still concerned this Charlie Force could succeed and take control of all the Euler data. Unless you have a backup plan?”
“I know—with a very high probability—who’s involved. If this attack is successful, we’ll know where to go.”
“That’s cheating.” Major Alderink raised his voice and addressed one of the operators. “Sergeant Wilson, have you accessed Charlie’s radio yet?”
A young NCO raised her head and said, “Connecting it to the speakers now, sir.”
The room fell silent. The hiss of the radio system was the only sound. A minute passed. Another minute followed. A third fell into the same bed of sand.
Before the fourth minute expired, a voice said, “Fulcrum One update.”
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