“Come on!” she yelled. “Let’s get out of here.”
Jake glanced left and right. Was she talking to him?
“Jake,” she urged, “let’s go!” She pulled off her helmet and stared at him.
It took Jake a second to recognize her. That bar in Guangzhou, all those years back when he’d visited Sean before his wedding. “Nuggets?” came out of Jake’s mouth before he even knew what he was going to say.
“That’s right, remember the nuggets.” The girl smiled. “Come on, we gotta go!”
Jin, Jake remembered, that was her name. She’d worked with Sean on banking contracts in Hong Kong. What was she doing here? But Jake didn’t have a lot of time to think about it.
Tolliver groaned.
A crowd of people had formed around them, and Jin pushed her bike through. From the corner of his eye, Jake saw NYPD officers run across Rockefeller plaza, heading in their direction.
“Come on!” Jin jumped on her bike, kicking down on the starter. Its engine fired up and she revved it, starting down the street against the traffic.
People yelled at her to stop.
Glancing at Tolliver on the ground, Jake watched him open his eyes. He got up onto his elbows and looked around. Jake realized he was searching for his gun.
Something buzzed by Jake’s ear, followed by the loud crack of a rifle shot. The marble façade of the building behind Jake exploded in a shower of fragments.
He ducked down.
Somebody was shooting at him. Somebody besides Tolliver.
The people who’d gathered around started yelling and screaming, some running, some falling to the ground. Turning on his heel, Jake took off toward Jin.
Another crack of a rifle shot.
Sprinting, Jake wound his way through the cars and jumped on the back of Jin’s dirt bike. She gunned the throttle and they peeled out onto 5th Avenue, skidding around the corner.
35
Two Bridges Housing Project
New York City
“Who’s this?” Jake asked.
He was still shaking.
He’d been brought to an empty apartment, about ten floors up in the Two Bridges housing projects in lower Manhattan. The view out of one wall of windows was the Brooklyn Bridge. They were so close he saw people chatting in their cars as they waited in the rush hour traffic. From the other set of windows there was a view of a windowless monolithic forty-story building with ‘Verizon’ stenciled near its top.
A young man helped Jin clean a nasty scrape on her left shoulder. The way he fussed over her, it was clear he was more than a friend. The guy put down his tube of antiseptic cream and turned to Jake, outstretching his hand. “My friends call me Wutang.”
Jake shook his hand. “I’m Jake.”
“We know who you are,” said another young man, entering the empty living room of the high-rise apartment. He put out his hand. “My name’s Sheldon.”
“And you’re the expert in artificial intelligence?” Jake said, reaching to shake his hand as well. Jin had filled him in a little on the subway ride over. She’d flown in from Hong Kong the previous day, specifically to find him, but she hadn’t explained the details yet.
“That’s right.” Sheldon wagged his head back and forth. “Well, chatbots and automated agents, that sort of thing, but close enough.”
“He was the first person to beat the Turing test,” Wutang said, turning his attention back to Jin’s shoulder, carefully applying a bandage. “Or I mean, the first person to build a chatbot that beat the Turing test a couple of years back.”
The Turing test? Jake had heard Sean talk about it once. “A way to test if something is a person or not?”
“Sort of.”
Sheldon sat in front of three large flat screen displays arranged on a long table along one wall of the living room. Below the table was a mass of wiring, several desktop computer boxes and routers and an assortment of other flashing equipment. Apart from four folding chairs, it was the only furniture in the room. It smelled like a fresh coat of white paint was just applied to the walls.
Jake looked down at the scuffed parquet wooden floors.
Events had taken a bizarre turn. An hour before, Jake thought he was about to ensure his family’s security and have the FBI start searching for his little girl. Now his life hinged on three hipster kids in an empty apartment overlooking NYPD headquarters.
After knocking Tolliver over, they’d torn down 5th Avenue, winding through the traffic on the bike. They dumped it in Union Square, then melted into the crowd and ducked into the subway station. Jin had orchestrated a wild goose chase, leading him from one subway car to the next at stops, eventually getting off at the Chambers Street stop in the financial district. Jake jumped back down the stairs when they came outside. It was at 1 Police Plaza, the headquarters of the NYPD, right next to the Metro courthouse he’d only been released from two weeks before.
“How did you find me? Why did you find me?” Jake asked from one of the chairs.
With Jin’s wound bandaged, she and Wutang sat in chairs facing him.
“Sean sent me an email before he died—Remember the nuggets—that got me thinking about that night we met, you remember?”
Jake nodded.
“And like I said,” Jin continued, “we found you through social media. We’ve had a facial recognition search going on openly posted images in the New York area. You must have been in Rock Center all day. We had seventy-two partial matches from pictures people posted today. It’s why I went there looking for you.”
“And how did you know that guy was”—Jake searched for the right word—“a bad guy?”
Sheldon tapped on his keyboard and brought up an image of Jake at the table in Rockefeller Center. “When Jin found you sitting and talking in the plaza, we did a pattern match on the guy you were talking to. We expected it to return nothing—at least not right away—but boom!” He brought up another image, this one of a blackened and burned man walking down a forest trail. “This is from Bear Mountain in Canada. We know you were up there—we found pictures of you posted online—and this guy, too.”
“How did you know he wasn’t my friend?”
“From the way you were talking to him,” Jin answered. “Seemed too suspicious. I hung back, then I saw him take your gun and pull one on you.”
“That was crazy,” Wutang whispered to Jin. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”
Jin shrugged. “I didn’t think, I just reacted.”
“Thank you,” Jake added softly. “That was brave.”
“And that is one very bad dude,” Sheldon said, bringing up more images. “I’ve done more searches on him in the past hour. His real name is Cormac Ryker, he's ex-Special Forces, and there are rumors of discharge for the Al Anbar incident.” He brought up images of a newspaper article. It was undeniably him. “Went into private security for a while, then disappeared off the map. Probably a hired killer now.”
Jake’s skin prickled at Sheldon’s description. Hired killer. The Assassin Market. “And how do you know each other?”
He needed to know everything they knew before he told them more. It was still possible this was part of an even more elaborate trap. The feeling of being stuck in a mirror maze was stronger than ever.
Who to trust?
An hour ago he’d put all of his trust into Agent Tolliver, who was apparently an assassin, Cormac Ryker. Should he trust these kids? Sean had trusted Jin. And she’d saved Jake’s life—that he was sure of.
“We’re friends.” Jin adjusted herself on her chair while Wutang packed up the first aid supplies. “But I only met Sheldon in person yesterday when we flew into New York after one of our gang turned out to be a plant for the Chinese army, or some splinter group.”
“The Chinese army?”
Jin nodded. “We discovered evidence of a hacking program that was spoofing people, a network of digital corporations linked to the Assassin Market.”
“Not just spoofing,�
�� Wutang added, “masquerading as people in phone calls, infiltrating the human network. Impersonating Chinese officials, buying political influence. At first we thought it was a program of the PLA cyber division, but now…” His voice trailed off. Obviously he wasn’t sure how much he should say either.
So it was happening in China as well. “And that’s why you came to find me?”
The hint of a sad smile tugged at the corners of Jin’s mouth. “I like you, Jake. I know we only met once, but I followed your social media. Felt like I knew you. That’s why I had a feeling you were being set up. But that’s not why we’re here.”
“Then why?”
Jin looked Jake straight in the eye. “Because whoever is behind this, they killed my cousin to cover it up.”
Jake returned her stare. “They killed my friend Sean.”
“I know, Sean was my friend, too,” Jin said softly.
“I don’t have time for this.” Jake got up and stared out of the front windows, at the NYPD headquarters across the street. “I need to do something. They’ve got my daughter.”
“Who does?” Jin asked.
“Bluebridge, it kidnapped her. That’s why I was meeting with Tolliver…Cormac, whatever his name is.”
“My God, I’m so sorry,” Jin whispered. “We had no idea. Why did they kidnap her?”
“To stop me.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know!” Jake slammed the window. “No demands. No ransom. They just took her.” He turned to them. “Why did you drag me here?” It didn’t seem like the best place to hide out. Exposed. Up in the air. Only two central elevators and a staircase down on this wing.
Not many ways in or out.
Jake felt trapped.
“Because of that.” Sheldon pointed out of the front windows at the windowless tower before them.
“And what’s that?”
“Intergate Manhattan, the biggest high rise data center in the world. The entire facility is within the perimeter of 1 Police Plaza, guarded by NYPD and Homeland Security. Bluebridge leases the top ten stories, nearly half a million square feet of server space. There are a couple of city blocks of computers up there. We want to know what it’s being used for.”
Jake had a pretty good idea. That was Bluebridge. It had to be its brain. “And it helps to be close to it?” What were these guys planning on doing? Scaling its walls in the dead of night?
“I’ve got some equipment inside Intergate, and”—Sheldon pointed at a mass of gear piled near the corner of the room, partially hidden under a paint-speckled bed sheet—“we’re sniffing the microwave transmissions from the building.”
He cocked his head to one side. “At least, we’re trying. Those five-degree beam width dishes there”—he pointed at a collection of covered circular objects fixed to the side of the windowless building—“can be heard across a diameter of eighty-eight feet at this distance. We’re at the edge of that here. They’re using standard point-to-point tunneling protocol with WPA encryption on the data. We haven’t had much luck figuring out what Bluebridge is up to, not yet. This is as good a center of operations as any.”
Jake nodded as if he understood. It looked like they were gearing up, but for what?
“Why are they chasing you?” Wutang asked.
“Because I’ve got a copy of the Bluebridge core, and copies of the automated agent systems for half of the banks in Manhattan.”
Sheldon whistled. “That would be worth chasing.”
“But that’s not the real reason.” Jake stared at them. “You don’t know, do you?”
“What?” Jin asked.
“Vidal Viegas has been dead for more than a year.”
Sheldon didn’t look the least bit surprised. “So that’s why Montrose is spoofing him? He’s taking over Bluebridge for himself? That makes sense.”
Jake shook his head. “Not Montrose.”
“Then who?”
Jake pointed at the building ahead of them. “Bluebridge has taken over itself.”
36
Two Bridges Housing Project
New York City
It was dark now, and the lights of Manhattan spread a glittering carpet below their windows, the Freedom Tower shining like a beacon in the middle of the Financial District. Wutang and Jin slept on mattresses on the bare floor of the single bedroom off the main living area.
There was no way Jake could sleep. Not until he found Anna.
Sheldon sat in front of his computers, while Jake stared out the front windows at the high-rise data center in front of them.
Now that he knew Bluebridge inhabited the structure, he felt like he could feel its presence, like a malevolent spirit towering above them.
“So is this thing”—Jake took a moment to choose his word—“alive?”
Sheldon sucked in a mouthful of air. “That’s a tricky question. One thing I can tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“Bluebridge is the DAC daddy, this thing has been spawning digital autonomous corporations like little baby Blues.”
“So it’s reproducing?”
Sheldon shrugged. “In a way, I guess. The problem we’re really facing is that humans might be the last step in a billion-year biological bootstrap for digital super intelligences. A lot of people think intelligent machines are more dangerous than nuclear weapons.”
“And what do you think?”
Sheldon stared out of the window at the Verizon Tower. “I think we’re about to find out.”
Getting up from his wall of monitors, he went to check the locks on the front door. He did it every twenty minutes, like clockwork. He went to the bathroom a lot as well, but Jake saw he was washing his hands.
The kid was OCD, but every psychological disorder had a pay-off. Obsessive-compulsive? Hey, you won’t leave your doors unlocked. Paranoid? Don’t worry about not reading the small print. Psychopath? Hey, at least you won’t be worried about anything too much.
Any disorder could be useful in the right moment.
Before Wutang and Jin went to sleep, they’d exchanged stories about everything that had happened to them. Now they could piece together a timeline of events, paint between the lines.
It was a frightening picture.
Bluebridge had spread around the world, growing and spawning. A machine, but also part human as it embedded people into its web, empowering and employing the sociopaths of the world. Now they knew the pattern, they saw it emerging everywhere they looked.
“The tricky part is,” said Sheldon as he returned from checking the locks, “what do you mean by ‘alive’? Intelligent machines already surround us. Machine learning is built into everything from stock trading to the fuel injector in your car. You name it, it’s programmed with intelligent software.”
Sheldon sat at his computer station.
He was creating their own private darknet. What that meant, Jake wasn’t sure, except that they’d use it to connect a direct link to the Mohawks up north. Dean said that pressure from the federal authorities was stepping up. Getting over the border to Canada wouldn’t be possible anymore. No more escaping.
Every two hours Jake checked in with Elle. Nothing new on Anna.
Jake rubbed his temples, a headache thumped inside. “What I mean is, does it think?”
“You mean, is it self-aware? Conscious?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Sheldon tapped away on his keyboard, responding without looking at Jake. “That’s an open question. Alan Turing proposed a test back in the 1950s—”
“The Turing test you were talking about?”
“That’s right. Mr. Turing thought that if we could build a machine that could fool a human into believing it was a person, then maybe it was a person.”
“And do you believe that?” Jake asked. “They said you built chatbots that beat the Turing test. Do you think you built people?” He had a hard time imagining that this slender neurotic kid was playing God, but then, the whole world see
med to have been turned on its head.
“Not that simple,” Sheldon replied. “Thing is, I could build a feed-forward zombie—totally without any consciousness or self-awareness—that could fool you into thinking it was a person. You’d have no way of telling the difference.” He turned to Jake and smiled. “I mean, how can I know that you’re conscious and self-aware?”
It wasn’t meant as a question.
“You can’t.” Sheldon returned his attention to the computer screens. “I think we’re only going to understand consciousness when we build machines that have it, just like we only really understood flying by building flying machines. Personally, I think consciousness is an accidental by-product, a feedback loop to conserve resources.”
“So then you think this thing is self-aware?” Jake asked.
“Maybe,” Sheldon replied, “maybe not.” He shook his head. “But it doesn’t matter. One thing I can tell you—Bluebridge is a person.”
Jake was confused. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because it’s embodying a corporation. Bluebridge is an incorporated entity under Delaware law, and this thing is Bluebridge. You can get hung up on self-awareness, but what really matters is that a corporation is a person.” Sheldon scowled. “And a dangerous one.”
“I realize that.”
“No, I don’t think you do. When a human person kills someone, they get prosecuted, thrown in jail. Guess what happens when a ‘legal’ person in the form of a corporation kills someone?”
Jake didn’t hazard a guess.
“They pay money,” Sheldon continued, “that’s pretty much what happens. When a corporation kills people, it pays fines. Ironic, isn’t it? Pure capitalism, taken to a new level.”
Jin appeared from the bedroom, stretching.
“So if Bluebridge is a person, then what sort of person is it?” Jake mused, leaning back in his chair.
“If we did a personality test,” Jin replied, coming to sit down with them, “my guess is, it would come up as a psychopath.”
Darknet Page 23
