by Hammond, Ray
Deakin extracted the inner sections and threw them onto the bed. Then he unfolded the front page and scanned the headlines.
Eight Inches of Rain Falls on Ethiopia in 12 Hours – Appeal Raises $187 billion.
A picture of drenched local children dancing in the rain in the town of Awasa illustrated the story.
The next headline on the right-hand side of the page was: Tye Marries Former Miss World.
This time the story was illustrated by a photograph of Thomas Tye kissing his bride on the lips.
Below was a story headlined: Tye Corporation Leases 1.5 Million Square Miles of Siberia. Climate-Engineering Technology Announced.
At the bottom ran a story: Existence of Thomas Tye’s Son and Heir Revealed.
Below this was a picture of a cute little boy in a blue suit and bow tie waving at the crowds on Hope Island.
At the bottom right of the front page was a different story: NYT Prints Extra Copies This Weekend To Overcome Network Distribution Failures.
Then Deakin scanned the NIBS column – the news in brief that trailed stories elsewhere inside the paper.
World Bank Re-Certifies Cash Lost in Global Settlement Network Failure. World Liquidity Assured.
ATM Union Calls for All Commercial Air Traffic To Be Grounded.
City Transport Systems Reduce Traffic Speeds to 20 m.p.h.
Gigantic Solar Eruption Blamed for Network Failures.
Ron Deakin dropped the newspaper on the bed and picked up the phone. He ordered breakfast and then sat down to study the news more carefully. There was a lot of reading to do. For the thousandth time he worried in case the UN might have left it too late to make their move. Even with the gravity of the accusations they would be levelling at Tye over his corporation’s illegal and murderous genetic experiments, Deakin wondered whether public opinion would be sufficiently outraged to support the prosecutions. It was as if Thomas Tye had sensed that a move against him was being plotted and had mounted a global publicity campaign so powerful that most of the world’s populace would decry the UN’s drastic actions. In the end, only the public would decide his future.
*
They had transferred to the main Solaris Control Center – once again in use as the Network Control Center. On their arrival shortly before six a.m. Stella Witherspoon had refused Raymond Liu entrance, but Theresa herself had gone in ahead to persuade Thomas Tye to admit him.
The scene they had found was one of total despair. The global satellite networks – both Tye Networks’s own and those of its competitors – were only functioning intermittently. After hours of wrestling with the problems, the engineers gathered in small groups debating in hushed whispers. Thomas Tye himself was circling in front of the dark holo-pit as they descended the aisle.
‘You think you’ve finally found a fucking answer, Liu?’ spat Tye by way of greeting.
‘Just show him, Raymond,’ advised Theresa quietly.
Tye stared at Theresa, then at Liu. He nodded agreement and the engineer took a seat in one of the control chairs. He first pulled up the holo-image of current network activity. Although the level of transactions burned brightly in some parts of the satellite networks, elsewhere the image was peppered with huge dark patches that represented areas of network failure.
Then Liu slipped the storage card into the data slot in the arm of his chair and, as the tired group reassembled around the holo-pit, he demonstrated the deployment of the Solaris energy reflectors over the previous two weeks and explained the correlation between the reflected sunlight and the sudden increases in processor switching and the resulting failures. They watched in silence as Raymond Liu developed his theory of the damage being caused to the Earth’s magnetic shield by concentrated plasma radiation.
‘Those Solaris stations reflect so many photons that the networks are suffering from a massive bombardment by WIMPS – weakly interacting massive particles – that produce massive amounts of energy,’ he concluded. ‘Essentially, they are cosmic rays, elementary particles, the nuclei of atoms discharged by ancient supernovae. Being all electrically charged, they are destroying this planet’s protective force field. Theoretically, they could even invert our polarity so that the magnetic North Pole moves to the south and vice versa.’
When he had finally finished, one of his former team mates started to clap, but the sound died away quickly when nobody else joined in. Another leaned forward to squeeze his shoulder.
‘Thanks, Ray,’ acknowledged Tye. ‘I’m sorry I doubted you. We’ll shut the Phoebus Project down for the time being.’
He looked up at the whole team. ‘If we could keep this absolutely quiet for the moment?’ There were nods all round.
‘How long will it take you to get the repairs done?’ he asked Liu, obliquely confirming the man’s reinstatement.
‘There’s something else,’ added the engineer.
Tye’s eyebrows shot up.
‘Tell him, Theresa,’ prompted Liu.
She rose from her seat. ‘It’s about the Descartes experiment,’ she began hesitantly. ‘But I’m not sure about clearance . . .’ She gestured at the large group of people in the room.
‘Just say it,’ ordered Tye, weary and drained.
Theresa nodded. ‘An emergence of some sort has occurred – the massive increase in processor transactions has caused it. There’s an independent consciousness existing in the networks now.’
Tye stared at her, desperately trying to assimilate this new information.
‘Congratulations,’ he said at last. ‘Perhaps we can meet next week to talk about the implications.’
‘But we can’t turn it off,’ warned Theresa. ‘We’re going to have to start shutting down all the networks to deprive it of processing power. At the moment the emergence is triggering most of that processor activity – and causing most of your network failures by itself, even without the photon bombardment.’
‘OK, do it fast,’ nodded Tye. ‘But I want the networks back up the moment you’ve got rid of this thing.’
‘Tom?’ It was Connie, who was closing her VideoMate. ‘I’ve just had a call from Ebrahimi at LifeLines. He suggests we all remove our LifeWatches. They’ve started to malfunction. They’re killing people.’
*
‘It’s down to three fifty-one and I’m still getting huge offers,’ said Joe Tinkler, his fingers flying across his keyboard. Standing in front of his desk were Alexander Dibelius, Dr Yoave Chelouche, Jan Amethier and Ron Deakin. It was early on Sunday afternoon and, as the situation had progressed, they had arrived independently to station themselves in Joe’s office – the war room – to monitor their attempt to assume control of the Tye Corporation.
‘Keep buying,’ rumbled Chelouche. ‘This is a godsend.’
As Joe worked at his screens, his connection to the outside networks was being personally managed by Al Lynch in the basement. Since early morning, Tye Networks had been shutting down one after another of their satellite networks. As a result, the world’s purely terrestrial networks were close to overload. In every part of the world, humans had resumed control of air traffic movement and all pilots were once again flying their planes manually.
The volume of Tye Networks stock being offered for sale had become a flood, but few outside the war room realized the extent of the sell-off Joe had spread the word globally that he was in the market for all Tye stocks and every broker – automated and human – was offering to him first. As Chelouche watched, Joe was buying everything that appeared on his screen, but still the world’s investors seemed keen to bail out of Tye Corp as fast as they could.
‘It’s coming up to CNN’s Money Hour,’ said Chelouche. ‘Is that feed OK?’
Joe nodded. ‘It’s cable in New York, sir,’ he replied and, without looking up from his central screen, he swivelled his left-hand screen around so they could view the channel.
‘There has been a massive surge of trading in Tye Corporation stocks this Sunday,’ began the financial news presenter.
‘Markets around the globe report unprecedented levels of trade in all their core stocks, and analysts point to the recent failures in the company’s key communications networks as the reason behind this sell-off Let’s take a look at the numbers.’
They watched as the price points of Tye stocks on the six main stock markets of the world were displayed with graphical representations.
‘Perhaps the most astonishing thing is the resilience of these Tye shares,’ continued the presenter. ‘Such levels of trades would normally suggest a massive slump in prices, but there seem to be as many buyers as sellers. Perhaps this is thanks to the Tye Corporation’s incredible feat of bringing rain to Ethiopia and to the blaze of personal publicity surrounding Thomas Tye this weekend.’
‘Ease off, Joe,’ advised Chelouche. ‘It’s starting to look unnatural. Let the prices slide a little further.’
*
‘That’s all forty-two sat-nets and ninety-six terrestrials shut down and rebooted,’ reported Liu. It was past eleven a.m. and they had been reconfiguring the networks for five hours. Like many of them, Raymond Liu had himself not slept for thirty-six hours and he had spent much of the day trying to persuade his counterparts in other companies to restart their networks in order to cleanse the world’s systems of continuing failures.
‘There’s been another solar storm,’ he had told Chomoi Ltupicho, a spurious explanation that nevertheless contained a literal truth, and fortunately most network authorities were cooperating with their largest competitor.
As the team members sat slumped at their control panels, Theresa Keane and Robert Graves were forced to watch helplessly as the engineers tried to deny processing power to the virtual consciousness now in the network. Thomas Tye had meanwhile returned to his diplomatic meetings.
‘We’re done,’ announced Liu finally, swivelling in his chair to look up at Theresa. ‘Let’s see what your René is doing now.’
Theresa pulled up her control screen and accessed the Descartes project. The holo-pit was filled with gentle swirling blue light. Robert leaned across her to touch a control. The transaction meter appeared above the swirling image.
‘We’re back to where we were,’ he confirmed.
Liu turned to face them both.
‘Perhaps you would now be kind enough to remove every element of that experiment from my networks,’ he ordered coldly but politely.
Theresa nodded. ‘It will take a few days, Raymond, but yes, of course. We couldn’t have anticipated that the Solaris stations would cause such an increase in processor switchings.’
The network director managed to produce a wan smile of understanding. ‘Thanks, Theresa,’ he said. He turned back to his team.
‘Now, let’s see how we’re doing for normal data throughput. Bring up the network display.’
*
‘I’m having trouble making trades,’ complained Joe. ‘I’ve already got nearly forty per cent of the core stock, but I can’t complete a deal I need in Seattle because the network keeps going down.’
‘They’re trying to stop us,’ fumed Chelouche. ‘They know what we’re doing and they’re trying to stop us trading!’
‘What does Al say?’ asked Deakin.
Joe touched his screen and they saw Al Lynch at his console, typing furiously. He noticed their access icon appear and looked up into his cameras.
‘They’ve been rebooting their networks all day,’ he explained, ‘But it’s still getting worse. I’m trying to consolidate your packets and re-route you via Buenos Aires, Melbourne, Tokyo and back to Seattle. Give me a moment.’
‘I’ll lose my trade,’ insisted Joe. ‘It’s the last one we need and the stock price will rocket the moment people realize what’s going on.’
Lynch’s fingers flew as he selected the new master routing for Joe’s conference call. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Try now.’
*
The feeling of despair in the Network Control Center was almost palpable. The image of the globe’s networks turned slowly in the holo-pit in front of them. Parts of the network glowed white, other sections showed gaping black holes where large-scale failures were still occurring.
‘We’ll have to start rebooting and cleansing over again,’ admitted Liu, exhausted. ‘I’ll start contacting everybody again, but I don’t know what I’m going to tell them this time.’
Robert Graves was monitoring Professor Keane’s experiment. ‘It’s not Descartes,’ he confirmed. ‘Activity has been dropping all afternoon.’
‘Doctor Liu?’ It was a woman seated high up at the back of the room. She was a mathematician and a junior member of the network management team. Raymond Liu swivelled his chair to face her.
‘A couple of weeks ago you asked us to look for patterns in these outages?’
Liu nodded.
‘Well, take a look – the patterns resemble classic game theory, a win-win scenario. There’s an outage, then a recovery, a foray, then another, then a block that causes another outage. Over and over again. It might be a coincidence but . . .’
She tailed off – she didn’t have to say more. Liu was at his controls. ‘I’m going to re-run the last hour at high speed,’ he announced.
They watched as the replay appeared. Dark holes appeared in the networks, were repaired and then appeared elsewhere. It was if the northern and southern hemispheres were in opposition. But there was now no Solaris output that could provide the cause.
‘Oh shit!’ Liu slumped back in his chair.
Theresa walked down to stand in front of the holo-pit. She stared at its image of the struggles in the networks for a few moments. Then she turned to face the room.
‘Show me the Anagenesis server,’ she said loudly and clearly to Robert.
He killed the current image, then pulled up from the mother server those data for the reproducing software robots.
‘Jesus – look at the number of males!’ exclaimed Robert.
‘Show present distribution,’ ordered Theresa.
A flat Mercator-atlas image of the world materialized and then two large clusters of red lights appeared, one in the north, one in the south.
‘Show the females,’ said Theresa.
Robert touched his controls and two tight clusters of green dots appeared at each pole.
Raymond Liu jerked upright where he stood as a thought struck him. ‘Overlay the network monitors,’ he urged.
Robert superimposed the network images in two dimensions again and they saw the black lines of network failures spread like wartime trenches on a military map between the two large groups of red Anagenesis males. At the poles each of the two clusters of females was encircled by a group of red males.
‘The males have formed into groups – they’re not courting the females, they’re fighting each other!’ shouted Liu. ‘They’ve formed armies and they’re fighting wars in the networks over the females. Very human, Theresa. That’s what I call FUCKING EMERGENCE!’
*
Thomas Tye was in a deep, dreamless sleep, a state ensured by his DreamDial module. It was shortly before midday and he had cancelled his final meeting with the president of the United States. He hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours and intended to waste no more time listening to Wilkinson’s entreaties for Tye to repatriate his corporation. The concept of a global corporation being subject to any one national jurisdiction belonged to another age.
Somewhere in the distance he heard his VideoMate trill but ignored it. When it kept trilling he eventually pulled himself out of the unfathomable depths of unconsciousness. Only one person in the company had access to him while he was sleeping.
He took a sip of water, rubbed his two-day beard and touched the insistent device.
‘What?’
‘I’ve got Marsello for you,’ said Connie sharply and stood aside as the counsellor’s grim expression filled the small screen.
‘Someone’s buying our stock, Tom – and in massive amounts. We didn’t know before because of network communications problems,
but it looks like we’re being raided!’
For a moment Tye stared at the screen, uncomprehending. He hadn’t given reciprocal video access. Instinctively he glanced at where his LifeWatch should be but saw only a white strap mark. He swung his legs out of the bed and thought for a moment.
‘Fantastic!’ He laughed and turned his cameras on. ‘Who are these idiots?’
‘We don’t know for sure, but maybe they’re not such idiots,’ warned Furtrado. ‘They’ve already acquired over forty per cent.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of our core stock, the Tye Corporation,’ answered Furtrado.
‘Impossible. Absolutely impossible. Do you know how much . . .?’
‘I think it’s someone very, very big,’ broke in Furtrado. ‘There’s an SEC regulatory notice on its way to us, but apparently the network problems are delaying it and we won’t know the buyer’s identity until that arrives. I’ve started buying against them but there’s almost nothing available on the market and the prices are rising fast.’
Tye was silent. In shock.
‘Looks like they’re going to take us over, Tom,’ Furtrado continued. ‘Shall I request suspensions of the listings?’
‘I’m on my way,’ snapped Tye.
*
Jed reviews the situation. ‘He’ senses but does not ‘see’ as humans do, yet in some ways he absorbs more.
He transfers from the Earth’s fizzling, crackling, failing networks, first out to the orbiting telescopes, then on to a multi-wavelength observatory in station above the planet Mars.
From here, at a distance of eighty-seven million kilometres, the entity looks back at its own planet, enveloped in a cocoon of bright synaptic switches, neural pathways and ganglia. Seen from the right distance, from the corner of the eye of an extraterrestrial visitor, it might seem like a single creature clinging to a round, warm stone that is turning slowly in the sun.
