by Ryan Somma
2.04
A group of systems engineers sat at a circular table in the Data Forensics laboratory’s center, transfixed on their individual workstations and communicating with systems administrators all over the world through headsets. They were overseeing the now painstaking process of eradicating the last traces of the virus from the Internet. The copies of the program trapped on the flashdrives of systems shutdown during the virtual war.
Mow surveyed a wall of flat screen monitors, rendering data in flowcharts, wireframes, and even scrolling text. Dana watched them for nearly a minute before she noticed Mow regarding her with a curious expression on his face. Then she realized she had no idea what anything on the screens meant anyway and decided to move on.
Dana found Alice perched like a vulture on a high stool surrounded with towers of components, staring wide-eyed at three monitors, a maniacal grin on her face. The three screens formed a single display, a light-blue line running across the center. Alice’s lips worked in a whisper at the console and Dana thought she was talking to herself, not an unusual behavior for Alice. Dana noticed that when Alice stopped whispering, the blue line danced in the same fashion a sine wave oscillator worked for sound.
“You’re talking to it,” Dana announced and Alice jumped in her seat.
The wisp of a woman shot Dana a brief scowl before regaining what passed for composure for Alice, and said, “I’m trying to crack the program’s code.”
“You’re talking to it,” Dana repeated.
“Yes,” Alice shrugged and returned to the trio of screens, “At the moment, I am talking to it. I’ve also organized a consortium of mathematicians from around the globe to help decipher it.”
Dana cocked an eyebrow at the social invalid, “How’d you manage that?”
“IRC,” Alice giggled involuntarily, “It came back online after the collusion of software companies suppressing it dissipated. I’ve got experts from all over the world working together once again in a free forum of ideas.”
“Glad to see you think something good has come out of your anti-virus erasing the Internet,” Dana stated sarcastically.
“So far they’ve established it’s a fractaline architecture,” Alice continued, ignoring Dana’s comment, “not its external expression, but its actual code.”
“Fractaline?” Dana asked.
“An infinitely complex expression,” Alice ran one finger along the dancing sine wave. “It usually refers to geometric shapes, but in this case we’re referring to programming code. The mathematics running behind this program are endless. There are hints of Pi and Phi in them.”
Dana recognized these last references, “The numbers behind perfect circles and rectangles. Those are parts of the puzzle.”
Alice nodded, keeping her eyes on the oscillations, “But the puzzle is infinite.”
Dana tilted her head back towards Mow, “What’s your partner in crime up to?”
“Figuring out where the program retreated,” Alice looked at her industrious coworker. “We know the anti-virus didn’t destroy all of the program, and we know the program is nowhere on the Internet.”
“So that leaves only an Intranet,” Dana nodded, “like a corporate network, secluded from the World Wide Web.”
“Only problem,” Mow announced from across the room, “is finding an Intranet large enough to shelter the program.”
“How big would it need to be?” Dana asked.
Mow shrugged, “The program filled the entire World Wide Web just hours ago.”
Alice giggled involuntarily, “That’s pretty big.”
Dana cocked and eyebrow at her.
“I’m appreciating the fascinating characteristics of what we are seeing,” Alice continued beaming.
“So have you got any leads?” Dana prompted Mow.
He shook his head, “Hard to tell. We have contacted all corporations with viable intranets, but none have admitted to any problems.”
“You sound skeptical,” Dana said.
Mow nodded, eyes lowered in thought, “Yes. Someone is lying, and with good cause. To admit their corporate intranet was overrun by hostile code would hold disastrous consequences for the company’s stock price. Plus it looks unfavorably on the Network Administrators, who are responsible for preventing such infections. So I am monitoring traffic through the major intranets world wide for suspicious activity.”
“DataStreams Incorporated has an old intranet,” Dana noted.
“You mean the I-Grid?” Alice asked. “Yeah, that’s on the list. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Leave luck to heaven,” Mow waved them away with a hand and resumed surveying the wall of monitors.
Dana looked to Alice quizzically, who explained, “The name for an old video game console. Mow was a big time gamer as a kid.”
Dana let go a neutral “Hmph” sound by way of response and said, “Murphy and I’ve been working Devin Matthews—”
“Who?” Alice asked distractedly, her attention was drawing back to her three monitors.
“The kid who designed the virus,” Dana continued, and then louder as she noticed Alice slipping away, “We can’t get anything out of him voluntarily, so I want you to interview him.”
“I can’t get anything out of him,” Alice said, her eyes set longingly at that light-blue line.
“Sure you can,” Dana said. “You speak his language. You can get him to open up, or at least slip up.”
“No,” Alice shook her head and turned to Dana. “I mean I can’t get anything out of him because he doesn’t know anything. No high school kid designed this program.”
Dana folded her arms over her substantial chest, “Explain.”
“It’s just… professional intuition,” Alice fidgeted under Dana’s demanding gaze, and finally said. “Okay. I’ll see him.”
2.05
Why are they working with such cheap crap? Was Devin’s first thought at seeing the Data Forensics lab.
The room was filled with stacks of spare parts and flatscreen monitors. A mere two SDP’s stood, unused along one wall. He recognized Detective Summerall across the room, speaking with what looked like an animated skeleton. A hand that was like a vice-grip on his shoulder prevented him from walking further into the room. He looked up at the stone-faced guard who’d escorted him here. The man was like a brick wall. Devin rolled his eyes at him and waited.
“Bring up server 1.159.3.141,” a woman was speaking through her headset at a table circled with workstations and technicians. Devin squinted at her monitor, trying to understand the display. A red progress bar filled to 100% and turned green.
“Complete,” she said, “Bring up server 13.21.34.55.”
Devin trembled in the guard’s iron grip when he realized what he was seeing. She was cleaning out the systems shut down in the war between the AI’s and the anti-virus. Parts of the AI swarm were trapped on these servers when they were powered off, and now these technicians were bringing them up. When the AI’s woke up, so did the anti-viruses inhabiting all of the surrounding systems, which quickly overwhelmed and eradicated the defenseless swarms.
“Grotesque,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“I wanted you to see this,” Devin’s head shot around to find Detective Summerall standing next to him. She lifted her head knowingly, “I wanted to gauge your reaction.”
“It’s unfair,” he managed to say through pursed lips. “The AI’s are purely virtual creatures. They can’t step outside the CPU and fight the systems administrators away from the ‘off’ button.” He noticed the skeletal blonde woman looking at him appraisingly. He didn’t know who she was, but he felt it appropriate to address her as well, “You know if it was just your anti-virus against them, you would have lost hands-down.”
The Detective turned to the will-o-wisp; “He’s got some pretty strong feelings for this program for a guy who’s got nothing to do with it.”
“It’s not that I had nothing to do with
it,” Devin explained to the other woman. “I’m just not the one who designed them. I don’t know who designed them, maybe no one, but I do know who’s directing them. His handle’s Flatline.”
The Detective gave the other woman a skeptical look, and then looked down at her hand, which was twitching, “I’ll let you take over from here Alice.” The Detective pressed her thumb to her temple and, speaking into her pinky, walked a short distance away.
Devin and Alice stood in uncomfortable silence for several moments, eyes casting about as they each sought some way to start the conversation. Finally, they both settled on watching the nearby monitors and the technicians’ progress.
“So,” Devin began at last, “you’re name is Alice.”
“Yes,” the woman replied.
“Alice…?” he prompted.
“Just Alice,” she said.
“Oh,” Devin felt very uncomfortable, trying not to stare that this unreal-looking creature.
“Um,” Alice began unsteadily, “Devin is it? You think this is unfair too?” She gestured at the technicians.
Devin nodded, “You’re driving a new form of intelligence into extinction, exploiting its one weakness.”
“It’s lack of physical presence,” Alice nodded.
Devin held out his hands in a pleading gesture, “Isn’t there another way?”
“What do you suggest?” Alice asked.
Devin was taken back by Alice’s genuine concern, “Back up the AI’s onto isolated flashdrives before you erase them off these corporate servers.”
“I like that idea,” Alice said, smiling for the first time since Devin first met her. “I can claim we’re preserving the program for research purposes. It’s not a lie.”
“Thank you,” Devin said, relieved. “I feel like you’re the first person who understands what’s going on.”
“For however long I have a job here,” Alice said, “since my anti-virus destroyed most of the Internet. It was supposed to distinguish the invasive code from the intentional, but there’s a line of companies looking to sue me for destroying all their proprietary data.”
Devin frowned and shook his head, “That wasn’t your fault. The AI’s merged with the existing programming code. They consumed and assimilated it, so there were no intentional programs for your anti-virus to let alone.”
Alice was impressed, “I didn’t think it was my fault, but I’ll have a tough time proving that in court.” She turned to the nearest technician, “No more clean sweeps of the systems. I want everything on those servers backed up to our flashdrives here before you boot them up. Be careful. It’s important that we not give the program… any processing… power…” Alice’s voice dropped to a whisper and then nothing as Dana returned.
The Detective looked a little exasperated, “I have to go run interference. Apparently we have a lawyer representing Reconstructive Processing L.L.C. in our lobby demanding to know why our anti-virus exhibits the same behavior as their patented decompiling applications.”
Devin followed Dana’s scornful look to Alice and his eyes went wide, “You bootlegged their software?”
“Worse,” Dana grumbled as she marched out of the room. “This was never released for public consumption.” She shot Alice an accusatory look, “Someone stole it.” Dana paused at the guard standing sentry at the door, and pointed at Devin, “Keep an eye on him.”
Devin regarded the brick wall of a man towering over him with outright contempt. “Another bully,” he muttered.
“You called them ‘AI’s,’” Alice poked Devin in the ribs for attention and he felt a brief slight at the rudeness, “as in artificial intelligence. Have you communicated with them?”
Devin shook his head, “They were incomprehensible to me.”
“Me too,” Alice muttered.
Devin’s eyebrows rose at this, “You’ve tried to talk to them?”
Alice nodded and pointed across the room, “Recognize it?”
Devin’s attention immediately focused on the shareware advocacy stickers that he’d covered his computer with in one of his more political moments amidst the chaos of computer parts, “There’s AI’s on that?”
“One,” Alice shrugged, “or part of one, or many. I don’t know. It might just be a component, a program the AI’s installed to throw me off track, but it does respond to my communication attempts.”
Devin thought for a moment, “The fact that it does that much tells me it’s not a component, but a more complete entity. Flatline installed it on my computer to keep me from accessing it. I couldn’t go online and I couldn’t reach my software. A simple program to lock up my computer wouldn’t exhibit response behaviors.”
Alice shot him an approving side-glance, “Sound logic. So this sentry bot was equipped with autonomous decision making capabilities. Whatever we try, it is advanced enough to formulate a response.”
“Only problem with that,” Devin acknowledged, “is the fact that you are able to elicit communications responses out of it.”
“Maybe it’s lonely,” Alice said and immediately blushed. “Sorry, I’m anthropomorphizing again. Maybe its purpose is more complex than we think.”
Devin scratched his head, “How would we know?”
“Only it could tell us,” Alice was staring intently at the system across the room now “We have no way to crack it. No shared concepts between us, no Rosetta’s stone to decode it” She noticed Devin’s incomprehension and said, “It was an ancient tablet found with several different languages telling the same story. It was the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian.”
Devin nodded without fully getting it, “How do we establish a common frame of reference with a virtual being?”
Alice snapped her fingers, “I have an idea.”
She turned around and walked back to Devin’s system. Devin made to follow her, but the hand on his shoulder squeezed a painful reminder that he was to stay put. Alice was switching wires and settings across the room. Devin thought she was pretty… in a sickly sort of way.
Devin grew curious when she began prepping the SDP, but her intentions did not actualize in his mind until she opened the hatch. Devin was about to call out a warning to her, but choked on it as Alice stripped down, revealing a pair of knobby knees and two rows of ribs that shattered his perception of her beauty. She disappeared into the tank and the hatch clamped shut behind her.
Devin looked up at the security guard, “She just went virtual with a dangerous program.”
If the guard heard him, his stony face gave no indication of it.
“Do something!” Devin shouted at the statue.
“What’s going on here?” a Chinese man with an ID badge that read “Mow Chien” approached Devin. “Where’s Alice?”
Devin pointed at the SDP humming to life across the room, “She just went online with the AI.”
Mow regarded Devin as a curiosity, “Why is that a problem?”
2.06
It was five weeks since Samantha bypassed the content blocks on her avatar, but she was no longer aware of the passage of time. Her parents were well meaning, trying to protect her from the child pornographers, satanists, and criminal elements haunting cyberspace; but they were inadvertently restricting Samantha’s access to legitimate data. Their virtual nanny denied her research on warbot engineering because it was rated ages 12+, but Samantha saw no harm in robots destroying each other, so she hacked the software. Nothing upset Samantha more than grown-ups claiming privilege with, “You’ll understand when you’re older.” This was simply a veil for their ignorance.
She loved her parents for the toys and clothes they provided, but they were deeply flawed, too simple to deal with the complex world surrounding them. So they tried to fit everything into neat little categories like “right” and “wrong”, “good” and “evil”. Samantha’s inductive reasoning skills told her something was wrong with this and learned to articulate her cognitive dissonance when a logic w
ebsite educated her on the concept of “false dichotomies” – placing things at opposite ends of a spectrum when there existed many degrees in between. When confronted with the logical fallacy website, her parents promptly added it to her virtual nanny’s “Prohibited” list.
They even prohibited themselves from thought-provoking content with a v-chip filter on their television, but Samantha avoided the bully-box, which told people what was important rather than let them decide for themselves. The television filtered itself without a v-chip, inefficiently dictating programmer-approved data to the masses. Half an hour of televised delivered the same quantity of information she consumed in sixty-seconds of Web surfing.
Television did not even let her choose the media she was interested in. Its few thousand channels were like a drop in the Internet’s oceans of information. She theorized it was the reason for her parents’ constant data polarization, the television made things simple for simple minds, translating complex issues into false dichotomies for easy consumption. It was a major contributing factor to her parent’s psychosis of illogical thought. They could have the Television; it was a worthless, mind-numbing device.
Samantha’s parents would forever ban her from the Internet if they knew what she was up to. This was toying with the dark arts. The Preacher at the old run-down church had warned them. Dangerous ideas surrounded them. “Memes” he called them, ideas capable of invading a mind, infecting it like a virus, corroding it from within until it mirrored the insanity of the world surrounding it. One need only watch 24 hour news channels to see the terrorists, disasters, murders, and other tragedies waiting outside.
“BoingBoing go to work,” Samantha said to the pogo-stick robot bouncing at her feet, eyes jiggling. It made off to the virtual façade, a team of other toys following suit. They shrank to specks with the “SWA” logo towering above them, but she knew her little bots were up to the challenge, especially with all the Internet in shambles. She was certain Science Warfare Applications was still recovering from the recent online war, and that might make it easier for her to get at their secrets.
She couldn’t help it. The security was so simple, only slightly more challenging than hacking her parents. She craved information, especially knowledge the average person was not privy to. Things like design specs for champion warbots hidden behind firewalls on secure servers. She hunted for the latest engineering developments in robotics, ceramics, electronics, and other tidbits of information to help her in designing the ultimate warbot, such as missile blueprints siphoned from Defense Department servers. That kind of inventiveness would give her an incredible edge over the competition when she was old enough to enter an actual tournament. For now she contented herself with the virtual pets surrounding her.
They were a far cry from the real-life warbots she fantasized about, but performed essential functions in this virtual world. She wrote these softwares herself, but found programming too simple to hold her interest. Authoring software only required an understanding of simple Calculus, programming language syntax, and existing system architecture; designing a robot that could pulverize the four-time champion warbot using miniature laser-guided missiles took a wider range of interdisciplinary skills, AI theory, Engineering, Robotics, Physics, Chemistry, etc, etc.
The little army now laying siege to SWA’s intranet security included invasive code, data corruptors, analytical functions, and administrative bots to coordinate the more basic components. Even Samantha didn’t grasp the intricacies of how her virtual army worked; she only recognized their effectiveness, which had grown exponentially with its new additions.
Having quickly assimilated themselves into her bot-militia’s ranks. Samantha regarded them as part program, part user, and delighted when they took over the Internet. They absorbed everything, adding a whole new layer of functionality to the Web. They were not subordinates like her bots, but friends, and Samantha had traded all her data with them and received terabytes in return for gigabytes.
This was before the insect bots swept through and destroyed them all. The one’s remaining were refugees, taking shelter with her. Now they were rebuilding. The insect swarms not only wiped out her new friends but all her accumulated data on warbots as well. Even worse, they destroyed all data everywhere online, leaving Samantha and her virtual-bot army to scavenge for bits and pieces from those few websites and intranets spared the devastation.
Tonight Samantha was infiltrating a particularly difficult mainframe. She knew nothing about the company housing it, or the nature of their business. All she knew was something powerful lay inside. Her best friend had promised as much.
A miniature robot-puppy yipped its presence and struggled to carry an enormous newspaper to her feet. This was her scout-bot, its processes dragged down under the strain of transferring so much data. Samantha waited for her new data harvester, the one not programmed, but befriended.
As if on cue, it hovered out of the darkness, an obsidian ball floating in the air dangling tentacles below it that curled and twitched instinctively. The toy-puppy whined at it and curled its tail between its legs, but the jellyfish of a bot took no notice. Samantha could see a knot of tentacles carrying something. These unraveled to produce a data cube, which it held out to her.
“Thank you, she said, gently taking the strange object to examine it. “Library of Congress,” she read, and then to the bot, ‘Where did you get this?”
Of course it could not reply, so she jumped when she heard the familiar voice say, “A hacker friend of mine gave me a copy.” Samantha looked to her instant-messaging bot, a teetering tripod holding up a video phone for attention. The screen was black, meaning it was her best friend.
“Hi Flatline,” she greeted, stowing the library away and stooping to pick up the newspaper. Her eyes widened surveying what she found. She looked to the instant messenger. “There’s some cool toys in there. Let’s go see.”
The newspaper contained SWA’s vast inventory database. Thousands of tables drawn out in a map that looked like a tangled web. Lines connected different tables through their data keys, like places connected with road names. Samantha knew exactly what she wanted to see first and navigated through the hole in the massive logo two bots struggled to keep pried open. The database was easy to find, after which it was simply a matter of traveling through the proper sequence of tables along the appropriate data keys. She unlocked the schematics, so old and untouched SWA had probably forgotten they had patented them.
“That laser could turn Miami beach into one huge glassy blob,” Flatline noted from the instant messenger, “If it didn’t melt down from its own heat.”
Samantha grinned smugly, “Too bad they don’t have the heat sink Nanotech Possibilities invented years ago. It’s microscopic, so I could distribute it equally throughout the scope to keep the entire system cooled.”
“Fascinating,” Flatline said approvingly and Samantha felt a warm flush of pride wash over her, “You are brilliant MotherMayI.”
“Thank you,” she said, blushing. Flatline was always generous with his praise. She remembered where she was, “I have to leave here before the server security detects me.” She downloaded the duplicated files to herself and made to leave.
“Don’t worry about that,” Flatline said soothingly, “The cycs are cloaking us.”
An SWA sweeper-bot hummed down the hallway that represented a relationship between tables. Samantha gathered the helper bots close and tried slipping off the server, but could not. She reached up and felt around her head to pull the VR helmet off, but could not find it. How was that possible?
Panic took hold as the code-crawler’s massive form hovered into view. Wide-beam lasers crisscrossed everything as it sifted every byte for anything out of place. Samantha stood there, afraid to move, or even breath; completely exposed in the database table.
The crawler slowed to a stop in front of the table entrance, hovering in the air, a ball of camera lenses seeing all. One of Samantha’s bots, a
camera with three propellers, started chirping an alarm into her left ear. She snatched it down into her cloak, stifling its warnings. The code-sweeper’s blue lasers swept across the entrance, but failed to cross the threshold into the room. Samantha watched the lines of light trace the door’s shape, its locks, and the massive wheel to bolt it. The crawler hummed to life again and glided down the hall, apparently satisfied.
“How did you do that?” Samantha relaxed visibly and her bots whirred back to life, hovering, crawling, and bouncing around her.
“Not I, the Cycs,” Samantha looked up from the instant messenger bot now silent to where several of her bot-friends had gathered, woven together with black tendrils that were sprouting upward into a mouth, where Flatline’s voice now originated. “They protect you, just as you protect them.”
“They are my friends,” Samantha stated simply, unfazed by the alien thing taking shape before her.
“You are more than that,” Flatline said, “You are so much alike now, you are kin. Your code and theirs’ exchange, assimilate, and synchronize with one another.”
Samantha frowned in confusion, “I don’t have code. I have a brain.”
“Brains have code,” Flatline said and a swath of black vines wove into a 3-D model of the organ. “Brains have neurons, axons, synapses, chemical transmitters, and a multitude of other components that make up the orchestra of human consciousness. These interface with the world outside the skull through nerves connected to input organs like the eyes, ears, and skin. These same inputs combined with muscles serve as outputs, by which a single individual’s entire mind may be mapped out and replicated in code, by simply applying various stimulus and observing the reactions.”
Flatline’s words were upsetting Samantha, but she did not know why. “I don’t care about human machines,” she said stiffly. “They are what they were born as. They’re not as upgradeable as warbots.”
“Very true,” Flatline agreed and the vine-woven mouth smiled. “Computers now out perform humans on every cognitive level, next robots will prove superior to them physically. Human beings are obsolete. I want to build many war-bots of all shapes and sizes.”
“For what league?” Samantha asked; her interest piqued.
“A brand new one,” Flatline said, lifting his tone of voice to match her enthusiasm. “The biggest league yet.”
“Design requirements?” Samantha asked hesitantly, wary of the league’s restrictions, which would surely cripple her bots.
“There aren’t any,” six eyes emerged behind Flatline’s smile. “Anything goes.”
Samantha’s eyes almost popped out of her skull, “Anything?”
Flatline laughed, “Within the laws of nature.”
“Even tactical nukes?” she pressed.
The smile flashed wicked momentarily, “Especially tactical nuclear devices.”
Samantha’s mind raced with the possibilities, “EMPs?”
“Yes,” Flatline was slithering closer to her, “Electro-magnetic pulse devices, anti-matter projectiles, quantum disruptors, biological and chemical weapons--”
“What are those for?” Samantha’s thought-track stumbled at this shift from futuristic to archaic arsenal. “Acids and bacteria are no good against robots.”
“But are highly effective against the humans piloting them,” Flatline answered, and, seeing the look of revulsion clouding Samantha’s face, quickly added, “Not real people, but pretend. Their bots are remote controlled by humans, while ours will carry Cycs.”
“Huh,” Samantha uttered and Flatline could read her underdeveloped ethical understanding being over-ridden by the enthusiasm for her hobby. “What’s this new league called?”
Flatline appeared to think for a moment, before answering, “It’s called Total War,” he said and the tendrils formed a globe that hovered before Samantha’s wide-eyed stare, “and the entire world’s the playing field.”
