Oracle's Hunt

by A. Claire Everward

  “Well, theoretically . . .”

  “Theoretically?” Donovan prodded.

  “Human-AI interface. Like, really put the human alongside the computer. Link them. The AI brings the, well, AI capabilities, the human brings the human factor, and any other information can be fed in from outside as either of the two needs it. Problem solved.”

  “That’s one hell of a human.”

  “On more than one level. I mean, the knowledge, the capabilities—the ability to receive multiple types of information from multiple sources at multiple instances within a limited amount of time, the ability to absorb and understand it all, integrate it all, to react fast enough, to understand the AI’s side of it in order to be able to intervene if the AI did something that would interfere with the ability of the humans in the field to act. And too many other factors. Oh, and the effort. The emotional strength, the physical durability.”

  “Physical durability?”

  “You try doing that for hours and hours. Alone. And with that responsibility on your shoulders. Geez. I’d die.” She shrugged. “And it still wouldn’t be perfect, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Computer limitations. Human limitations. Interface limitations. Uncertainties due to missing data, unknown parameters, incomplete intelligence info. Even a person can only deduce up to a point, deal with uncertainties up to a point. Plus,” she said, “no one can see what’s not before them, and no one can predict the future.”

  True, Donovan thought.

  “Basically, the optimal mission coordinator would be required to make the optimal decision at the optimal point and to have whoever or whatever is in the field make the optimal move at the optimal time, all in a complex situation and in suboptimal conditions. It can’t be done. We’ve got mission coordinators working in real time in groups with AIs as data, scenario and even field support and it’s still not enough,” Reilly said.

  Donovan frowned. Perhaps not, but what he was thinking of came quite a long way toward that.

  “But anyway, what you’re asking about, that’s a dream. We’re not even close. Otherwise, we’d know about it, wouldn’t we?”

  “Yes,” Donovan said thoughtfully. “I suppose we would know about it.”

  He was about to end the call and let his two brilliant techs go back to sleep when something occurred to him.

  “Wait. Everything you just told me, Reilly. You didn’t need to think about it. Not much.”

  “Well, yeah. People talk about it, about advanced AIs. What they could do.”

  “People?”

  “Her kind of people,” Sidney said. This time she received not a glare but a quick hug for the pride in her voice.

  “Yeah. You know, in conferences, virtual forums, academic and private sector and military research groups. It’s a big thing,” Reilly explained.

  “So it’s an existing aspiration. Something that is being seriously discussed out there.”

  “Right on.”

  Donovan’s eyes narrowed.

  He ended the call and made another quick one, this time to confirm something that would support his newfound theory. He then went back to the kitchen nook and sat down. Okay. Say Oracle was a technology. Artificial intelligence, for argument’s sake, human-machine link or not. How did the perpetrators learn about it? He himself couldn’t find anything about it, couldn’t even confirm its existence. So how did they? And how did they know where to look for it? And how the hell did they have the encryption key for the data they stole?

  And why weren’t they attacking yet? If they had the information they had come for, and if their target was IDSD or Oracle or both, why hadn’t they done anything yet? This part worried him most. Every day that passed since the data center break-in increased the imminence of an attack.

  This raised again the question of the perpetrators’ silence. The fact was that all the intelligence agencies—and all allies were cooperating in this—had been desperately looking for chatter, and there was none. Not even now, days later. No one was talking about the destruction of the data center, no one was updating partners or peer groups, coordinating plans, nothing. So what did that mean? That they didn’t get what they wanted after all? Did they need time to decrypt the data—was it possible they didn’t have the full decryption capabilities? But they obviously had enough to know where to go and what data to steal. Which brought Donovan back to the burning question that could be his key to identifying them—how and when did they get that information in the first place?

  Still, he had a lead of sorts now, something tangible to focus on. The data center security breach itself, the way it was done, indicated that the perpetrators were already on this almost a year earlier, at least, certainly at the time the data center’s new security system was upgraded. So whatever gave them the information they needed to know to search for Oracle and to do so in the data center must have happened before that. The encryption, whenever they had put their hands on it, would have taken a while to break, which could further pinpoint when whatever it was that had alerted them to Oracle had happened. When they gave him the data center reconstruction, Reilly and Sidney had told him that they themselves couldn’t decrypt the data seen in the footage immediately. They would need a hell of a lot more time than he had. Which meant that the perpetrators would have needed at least that much time, too. Unless someone had given them the key, which was also a possibility.

  He had a lot more information now, but he still needed to put all the pieces together. He needed more. He needed . . .

  He sat back, deep in thought, his eyes on the tall windows that dominated this corner of the house. Outside the sun was high up, autumn allowing summer a last peek at the world below. His gaze moved to the open door. Abruptly, he got up and strode out.

  Chapter Eight

  The house next door was silent, but the patio doors were open wide, and he knew she was home. This time he slowed down as he approached. She was sitting on the same couch he’d seen her sitting on the last time he was there, a patch of sun that had found its way in through the open doors on her. She was deeply absorbed in the screen she was holding, so he had a chance to watch her quietly.

  And he did.

  A flock of migrating birds screeched high above as they took off from the park, and he glanced up at them, their graceful forms dancing in the sky. When his gaze returned to her, she was watching him.

  He approached her slowly. “Truce,” he said in a quiet voice, using Donna’s way of disarming their recent clash. “Truce, for just a few minutes,” he repeated.

  She considered him, then gave a small nod. He stepped in and took in his surroundings. The house looked lived in now. She’d made it hers, he saw. A cozy-looking throw in red tones, loosely folded, was draped on the back of a soft cream sofa. A scenic painting of a forested mountain lake under clear blue skies adorned a wall, and one of sparse autumn clouds above a spring winding gently through a wooded meadow caught his eye on another. And the mantel of the fireplace set in a stone accent wall of deep, warm colors, it now had photos lined up on it. He could see one from where he stood, and it struck him. She was much younger in it, smiling happily into the camera, her arm around an equally carefree young Donna. Something that wasn’t there anymore, it seemed to him. Something in the eyes of the girl in the photo that was no longer in the eyes of the woman who was right there in the room with him.

  He focused. He only had moments, that was his truce. He turned back to the real woman, still sitting on the couch but not relaxed anymore. He read the slight tension in her shoulders. It wasn’t there when she’d been watching him before he came in. It appeared just now, when he’d looked toward the photos, and as he stood not far from her. He considered this, then moved physically farther away from her and from the photos that gave a peek into her life to the other side of the sofa, and put his hands on it, leaning. Experimenting.

  The tension in her relaxed somewhat. Distance. She wanted distance from him. And she wanted to distance him
from what was personal to her. Something Donna had said to him the other day played at the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t place his finger on it. He let it go for now, reluctantly, and came straight to the point.

  “Let’s assume for a moment that you’re part of my investigation.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and he put his hands up, palms out. “Truce, remember?”

  She settled back, waited.

  “I’m not asking you what you do at IDSD. I’m not asking you why you have access to my investigation. I am asking you to allow me to run through you certain thoughts that I have.”

  “You were assigned a liaison.”

  “I’m going above the liaison’s head.”

  Her eyebrows rose slightly and she contemplated him. But she said nothing.

  “I need to, let’s say, brainstorm with IDSD directly on this, and right now you’re the most available. I can approach IDSD through the liaison, use formal channels, but at this point I don’t think either of us can afford any more delays.”

  Lara gestured slightly for him to proceed. She was curious to see where this was going. He obviously wouldn’t be here unless he felt he had to. Still, that first time she had seen him, in the videoconference, while it had convinced her that he was sharp and thorough, that he potentially could do what IDSD—and Oracle—needed him to do, it had also made her realize that not much would escape him. He had fished then, wondered about her presence there. She had been careful not to let her guard down then, and since she wasn’t ready to trust him yet, she wasn’t going to let it down now, either.

  Donovan started with the easier question. “Is it possible there was someone inside IDSD working with whoever broke into the data center?”

  “No, that wouldn’t make sense.”

  “I assume that’s not IDSD pride talking.”

  “Anyone can be infiltrated,” she said dismissively, and he found himself smiling. So, no ego here.

  “No,” she continued, “the problem in an insider theory is the data taken.” She hesitated.

  “I was told to stay away from the data stolen, and IDSD hasn’t supplied the encryption key my techs need to decipher the frames we have in the footage you’ve seen. So I get that it’s sensitive enough to hide, even now,” he said evenly.

  She assessed him. He let her. And wanted her to know he did. He waited. Then went with truth and trust. “You were right, I tried to run a check on you. And you must have run a check on me. The difference is you would have succeeded. So you know I’m good at what I do. But I’m running into walls here. Whatever these people want, they’re going to do it whether you and I like it or not. We’ve got to stop them before anyone else gets hurt.”

  “I know,” she said, letting out a long breath. “I know.”

  Something about the way she said that struck him as worried.

  “And,” she added after a brief moment of thought, “you’re right, I did check out your professional service file. And if you expect me to trust you, you’re going to have to do the same.”

  “Okay.” So she read him as well as he read her. He would have to accept that, although he wasn’t even remotely used to it. He came slowly around the sofa and sat down. At a distance, safe not only for her. “Then tell me only what you can.”

  She nodded.

  He went straight for it. “These guys came for one thing. Not IDSD. Oracle.”

  She said nothing.

  “I initially thought Oracle was the code name for an operation. Something done against whoever it was who targeted IDSD’s data storage unit. That perhaps these guys are a group that is after whoever is behind that operation.”

  She remained impassive.

  “But the frames we can see in the footage are periodically interrupted. So that, while we cannot read them, my techs think that the pattern in which the data runs and stops, and the way it seems to be organized, indicates that the hacking medium used by the perpetrators was pulling data from different points. Since all the data came from IDSD’s unit, a likely conclusion is that it was pulled from different date clusters, or locations, or operations, or all of the above. Not many, looks like maybe three, four, although, since we can’t read it, we can’t be sure.”

  He paused. “So then I thought this meant that Oracle is a weapon. It made sense, something used on different dates, at a number of locations, in different operations. But the problem with this theory is, if there is some weapon that has been used against this group or has been seen by it in the field, why go to the trouble of working for close to a year to break into the data center and destroy it, potentially alerting us to their existence in the process—that’s the time since the disruptions began that had allowed them to track down the security signal and the time they spent since then learning the data center security and preparing to jam the signal, as you know. And add to that the time it must have taken before that to obtain IDSD’s encryption, and to even know where to go look for information. And to prepare for this entire operation of theirs, let’s not forget that. No, if it were just a weapon, like a gun or a drone or a robotic system or whatever, I’d put all the time and knowledge and resources into putting my hands on it out there in the field and reverse engineering it.”

  She was easily following his logic. He expected nothing less but found he was enjoying the mind behind the intelligent eyes focused on his.

  “So, I’m thinking it’s not just a weapon. It’s something more complex, more elaborate. Something they had to break into a data center for, because it’s not out there in the field and is too carefully hidden. Something that can foil their plans and hurt them, but does so remotely. Something that can hit—no, scratch that. Something that can be employed at any date, for any operation, anywhere in the world. Something worth all that trouble. Something like a computer. Or an AI. We do have them, after all, AIs. We’ve got the best machines in the world working alongside the best military strategists, helping them accelerate data sorting and analysis, setting out for them scenario simulations, hell, we’ve got narrow AIs controlling most of our weapons and our air, water and ground surveillance, response measures and transport technologies.

  “Except that that’s not new. These have been in use for a while, and everybody has them, even if at different levels of advancement. And if not, they’ll get them, copy or simply purchase the technology in the free market. So no, I’m thinking that’s not enough to warrant everything these guys did.” He leaned forward. “But an advanced AI that can actually oversee and guide missions, not merely provide mostly dry technical support, that’s different. Except that it’s impossible, isn’t it?”

  He watched for a reaction. There was none. He continued. “There have been countless attempts to have AIs run missions in Threat Alert Centers. But human operators are still needed, alongside military strategists and tacticians. They all have to work together, human-machine collaboration is a necessity. There’s no way around that, because no matter what the machine can do, there are too many variables and unknowns that call for what only the human mind can provide, our way of thinking which we develop in a lifetime of experiences, our ability to break beyond bounds, and our capacity to constantly evolve and adapt. And the technological factor has to be complemented by human sentience, empathy, the ability to relate to people who are fighting to survive extreme situations at critical mission points.” He was thinking aloud now, analyzing what Reilly had said, using his own experience to make it real. “And even then, even when the AIs we do have work with the people alongside them, we fail, have failed so many times over the years, because missions have too many unknowns, too many gaps in data, and nobody, nobody can deduce beyond a point. And nobody can deduce ahead more than the calculation of scenario probabilities.”

  He was good. Too good. Or good enough, Lara thought, to save Oracle.

  “Except that I’m an ex-military USFID agent with a job that touches both worlds, you see. And I’ve seen countless operations through in USFID’s Threat Alert Center. Ran quite a few, t
oo. And a while back, we had an operation go wrong. It was doomed. And in that operation, the USFID TAC was online with US Global Intelligence and with the Joint Special Operations Command TAC. And rather interestingly, at a certain point, when we’d reached a dead end, US Global Intelligence contacted someone. And whoever it was, their TAC took over. And from that moment there was nothing we were needed for, any of us. All we could do was sit there and listen as a computerized voice disentangled the situation. And it did so as if it was nothing, the easiest thing in the world. We’d spent the better part of a day working—TACs, mission coordinators, and all the experts you could want, all experienced field people. Including myself. And we’d lost. Those guys, there was no way they were getting out of there alive. They had no way out. And then I sit there, with a bunch of confused people, as our agents are saved. By a computerized voice that communicated directly with the field and that sounded impossibly capable of doing the work itself. One voice.”

  Lara remembered that day, that operation. She remembered all of them. Still, she showed no reaction. Hiding Oracle was something she was used to doing.

  “I didn’t think about it until today,” he continued. “I figured it was some TAC we weren’t cleared to know about, a bunch of brilliant experts in a dark room and an efficient computer to help them. But looking back, that wasn’t what it sounded like. People argue, have opposing opinions, give commands that sound like they came from different people. No, the way that voice sounded . . . it spoke in a single, consistent voice. It was IDSD, wasn’t it? You do have a new technology. You’ve got an AI-human link of some sort, maybe even a full interface. An AI controlling missions with a person working alongside it. Seamless operation. The coveted seamless operation none of us have managed to attain.”

  He paused again. “I made two calls before I came here. One was to my techs. One of them knows more about computers than anyone I know. A brilliant kid. She tells me it’s possible. Just not probable. Hasn’t been done yet. Otherwise people would talk about it. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this thing with Oracle, it is that even nowadays things can be hidden.”