Extinction

by Mark Alpert

  Layla felt a rush of adrenaline. This was the reason why she’d pursued the Guoanbu network in the first place, because of the rumors about the mistreatment of dissidents. “What happened to them? Were they executed?”

  “No.” Angelique looked sick to her stomach. “They were lobotomized.”

  NINE

  Jim and Arvin stood in the auditorium at the Singularity headquarters, staring at each other. Arvin put on a smile. “Good to see you again, Jim. Sorry I’ve been out of touch, but as you can see, I’m quite busy.”

  He tried to pull his arm out of Jim’s mechanical grip, but Jim didn’t release him. Instead, he moved closer and whispered in Arvin’s ear. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

  Arvin shook his head. “No, I’m afraid that’s impossible. But I can schedule an appointment for early next week. How’s that?”

  Jim frowned. He didn’t want to hurt Arvin. Despite all their disagreements, he owed a debt to the man. By accepting Jim as a student fifteen years ago, Arvin had given him the opportunity to remake his life. And Jim was still grateful for that. But then he thought of his daughter, and his resolve strengthened. The danger to Layla outweighed everything. “Don’t fuck with me, Arvin. You know what I can do.”

  The old man glanced at his bodyguards. “I can have you arrested, you know.”

  “Sure, go ahead. But before your men pull me away, I’ll transmit a radio pulse that’s three times as powerful as the last one. At this range, it’ll fry your retinal implants to a crisp.”

  Arvin let out a sigh. Nodding in surrender, he waved off his bodyguards. Then he walked with Jim out of the auditorium and down the corridor that led to his laboratory.

  Jim knew the way. He had fond memories of the lab from the ten years he’d worked with Arvin. The room was huge, the size of a school gymnasium, and as they walked through the doorway, Jim noted with satisfaction that the place hadn’t changed a bit. The walls were still covered with old-fashioned blackboards, and the lab tables were still loaded with machine tools and prototypes. As Jim surveyed the place, he saw many of the inventions he helped to develop: prosthetic legs, mechanical arms, neural control units, eyeglass-cameras. But the room was devoid of people. Maybe Arvin had given all his lab assistants the day off. Or maybe he’d become even more isolated than Jim had imagined.

  At the very center of the room was Arvin’s desk. It was an ugly piece of metal furniture that held his computer and several stacks of engineering journals. Taped to the front of the desk was a yellowed sheet of paper that Jim remembered well. Printed on the paper was a forty-bit sequence of zeroes and ones:

  0100000101110010011101100110100101101110

  It was Arvin’s name spelled in binary code, with each letter represented by an eight-bit sequence. This string of code had an almost mystical significance for Arvin. It symbolized his lifelong goal, the melding of human and machine intelligence. To make the point absolutely clear, Arvin had typed the word “Singularity” below the sequence of ones and zeroes.

  The Singularity was Arvin’s favorite subject. He used to pontificate about it at the end of the workday, while he sipped his scotch and soda at his desk and Jim nursed his glass of Jack Daniel’s. According to Arvin, the Singularity would occur when scientists built a computer that could design a better version of itself. This would lead to an explosion in machine intelligence. Soon computers would outperform people at every task. They would cure cancer and compose operas and discover theories that would revolutionize physics and mathematics. And while machine intelligence leaped past the human variety, advanced prostheses would make people more like machines. Eventually, the two forms of intelligence would merge. Machines would become capable of translating the brain’s signals into digital code, allowing anyone to download the contents of his mind into a computer. “Just think of it!” Arvin would shout after his third scotch and soda. “We won’t be tied to these fragile bodies anymore! If we can store a person’s memories in a sufficiently powerful processor, we can program it to generate new thoughts based on those memories. For all intents and purposes, the intelligence inside the processor would be identical to the one inside the person’s brain. And this will become possible very soon, within the next few decades. There are people alive today who will never die!”

  Jim always took these pronouncements with a big grain of salt. He knew that scientists had barely begun to explore the human brain, and he couldn’t imagine how a computer could come close to matching it in his lifetime. Nevertheless, Arvin’s speeches were inspiring. Jim threw himself into the work, and after a few years he and Arvin had their first great success, the development of the retinal implant. It was the first machine that could exchange large amounts of information with the brain, and Arvin confidently predicted there would be many more.

  But further progress didn’t come easily. While Jim focused on his prostheses, Arvin tackled the biggest challenge: building a computer that could mimic all the brain’s functions, everything from visual processing and speech recognition to motor control and decision making. He worked on the project for years, but ultimately all his efforts fell short. Although he could assemble a machine that, like the brain, had billions of logic gates and trillions of connections, he couldn’t reproduce the brain’s remarkable plasticity, its ability to rewire itself to accommodate new information, constantly strengthening and weakening the links between nerve cells. The failure disheartened Arvin. He became depressed and irritable.

  At the same time, Jim started to think about establishing his own business. Thousands of maimed soldiers were returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and he felt an obligation to make his prostheses available to them. But when he told Arvin about his plans to move back east and start a company that would custom-design prostheses for the amputees at Walter Reed, the old man was livid. “You’re breaking your promise!” Arvin had yelled. “You’re giving up!” Their argument escalated into a shouting match, nasty and loud. The memory of it still made Jim wince, even four years later. It spoiled all his earlier, fonder memories.

  Now they came to the ugly metal desk at the center of the lab. Arvin slumped in his chair, looking exhausted. His cheerful arrogance was gone. “I don’t blame you for hating me,” he said, staring at the floor. “I hate myself right now.”

  “Look, you need to tell me what—”

  “I know, I know. You’re worried about Layla. They told me you’d come here and try to talk to me.”

  Jim was confused. “Told you? Who told you?”

  “My handler. Or sometimes he calls himself a liaison. A Liaison to the Powers That Be, he says.” Arvin grimaced. “But I know who he works for. He’s CIA.”

  There it is, Jim thought. The Guoanbu document he’d viewed on Kirsten’s computer had been right on the money. “What’s your handler’s name?”

  “He won’t tell me. He says I don’t need to know. The only thing I need to know, he says, is that he’ll arrest me if I don’t keep my mouth shut. That’s why I was avoiding you.”

  Jim gritted his teeth. He’d met plenty of CIA agents when he’d worked for the National Security Agency, and he’d disliked nearly all of them. The cowboys from Langley had no respect for anyone else in the intelligence community. They always insisted on doing things their own way, even when they were horribly wrong.

  “Did he also tell you that Layla’s in danger? And that a Chinese spy almost drilled through my left arm to find out where she was?”

  “He said he had everything under control. And that talking to you would only jeopardize Layla.”

  “He lied to you, Arvin. The CIA does a lot of that. How the hell did you get into bed with these guys?”

  Arvin gestured at the nearby lab tables. “Look around. You know how much this equipment costs. Singularity spends a hundred million dollars a year on research and development. We’ve had some successes, but our revenues aren’t covering our expenses anymore. That’s why I arranged the dog and pony show you just saw, to bring in some new money.”<
br />
  “So what happened? Did the CIA offer you a loan?”

  “The agent contacted me about a year ago. He said there was a business opportunity for me in China. A five-hundred-million-dollar contract for a license to my implant technologies. Specifically, the microprocessor designs for my retinal and pulvinar implants. I liked the idea of doing business in China, but I didn’t want to sell the license. As you know, I always retain control of my technologies. So I turned down the offer. But then the agent made it clear that this was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “But why would they do that? The processors in your implants could be used for military purposes. Why would the CIA deliver that kind of gift to the Chinese?”

  “I don’t know. They never explained their reasons to me.” Arvin shrugged. “My best guess is that it was part of an exchange, some kind of quid pro quo. The CIA was doing a favor for the Chinese government in return for something else.”

  “A favor? What kind of favor? Why did the Chinese want your implants?”

  “I’m sorry, Jim. I just don’t know.” Arvin lowered his eyes. “I asked the agent the same questions you’re asking me now. And he said it would be better if I didn’t know.”

  Jim shook his head. “I can’t believe you went along with this. You could’ve fought these guys. Your company has lawyers, doesn’t it?”

  “We would’ve lost the fight. We were in a bad position.” Arvin paused, taking a deep breath. “There were irregularities in our financial reports. Singularity has been struggling for the past few years, and we had to paper over some of our losses. Unfortunately, the agent knew about the accounting irregularities. He said he’d close down Singularity if I didn’t cooperate.”

  Jim wasn’t too surprised. Arvin always had a cavalier attitude about the business end of his company. And the threats from the CIA agent weren’t surprising either. That was standard operating procedure for the agency.

  Arvin kept staring at the floor. Jim turned away from him and focused on one of the blackboards, trying to decide what to do. Then he turned back to the old man. “Okay, Arvin. You’re in a jam. And I’m going to help you get out of it. But you’re going to have to help me, too. Understand?”

  Arvin waited a moment, then nodded. His face was pale.

  “Good,” Jim said. “Now the first thing we need to do is identify the bastard who roped you into this. You sure he never mentioned his name?”

  “No, he was very careful about that. His paperwork was official, and my lawyers confirmed that he was a legitimate representative of the CIA. But he never told me his name. Whenever we met, he was accompanied by two large men in gray suits, but neither of them ever said a word. They were his bodyguards, I suppose.”

  Jim took a moment to look around the lab. Many of the robotic devices in the room were equipped with cameras. “Did he ever meet you here? In this lab?”

  “No, he never came here. Nor my home. He and his companions would always waylay me while I was driving to work.”

  Another thought occurred to Jim. “When was the last time you saw him? You said he warned you I was coming?”

  “Uh, yes, it was just yesterday. About eight in the morning.”

  “Does your implant system record the video feed from the ocular cameras? For archiving purposes? I know your earlier models did.”

  Arvin seemed startled for a moment, but then he shook his head. “Sorry, I had to remove that feature. The new processor puts greater demands on the system memory, and there wasn’t enough left for archiving the video feed.”

  “Damn,” Jim muttered. But then he thought of something else, another way to identify the CIA bastard. He pointed at the computer on Arvin’s desk. “Can that machine interface with the implant on your scalp? The thing you called the Dream-catcher?”

  “Well, yes, yes it can.”

  “Go ahead and set it up.”

  Arvin looked puzzled. “What are you—”

  “You saw the agent several times. You have a visual memory of him. We’re going to download it. Come on, set it up.”

  “All right, all right.” Arvin turned on the computer. The machine came to life and began to load the appropriate software. “I can’t promise this will work,” he warned. “The Dream-catcher doesn’t provide good images unless the visual memory is a strong one.”

  After a few seconds an image of the laboratory appeared on the screen. The center of the image was in focus and the periphery was blurred. For a moment Jim saw himself on the screen, crisp and clear, but then the area of focus shifted elsewhere, darting across the room.

  “Okay, close your eyes,” Jim said. “Try to remember the agent.”

  Arvin closed his eyes and the screen went black. It stayed that way for several seconds. Then vague shapes started to flash across the screen. An image of a black limousine emerged from the darkness, then faded away. Then Jim saw an image of the lower half of a man’s body, showing pin-striped pants and a pair of patent-leather shoes. Finally, a man’s face appeared on the screen, but Jim saw right away that it wasn’t the CIA agent. It was George Clooney. After a moment Clooney’s face vanished and was replaced by the faces of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

  Jim frowned. “Arvin, what are you doing? Remembering the Oscars?”

  “Sorry. It’s so easy to get distracted. Especially when you’re nervous.”

  “Just concentrate. Think of the agent. Your liaison. Remember the last time you saw him. Where were you?”

  Various streetscapes flashed across the screen in rapid succession: a busy intersection, a strip of stores, a residential block, an empty parking lot. But then Arvin seemed to lose his concentration again. The screen showed a kitchen, a refrigerator, a half-gallon of orange juice. Jim grew exasperated. “Come on, Arvin! The agent! The man who threatened you!”

  Arvin seemed completely flustered, and the screen showed a confusing jumble of colors and shapes. But then Jim recognized something. He tapped the computer’s keyboard, freezing the screen before the fleeting image could disappear. It was a face with a very distinctive feature, a deep scar on the left cheek that looked like a backward Z.

  Jim remembered that scar. He’d worked with the man back in the nineties, when Jim and Kirsten were helping the CIA intercept the communications of Al Qaeda terrorists. This particular CIA agent had coordinated the rendition program that transferred captured terrorists to the Egyptian secret police. Jim had never learned the agent’s real name; the bastard had told him the same thing he’d told Arvin, that he didn’t need to know it. But Jim remembered the code name the agent used. It was Hammer.

  TEN

  As soon as Jim Pierce left the lab, Arvin Conway collapsed. He slid off his chair and fell to the floor, writhing in pain. It had never been this bad before. It felt like there was a hot coal inside his guts, and the searing heat was spreading up and down his back. Frantic, he fumbled in his pocket for his vial of opiates. It took all of his will just to open the vial, put two tablets on his tongue and swallow. Then there was nothing to do but lie on his back and ride it out.

  Over the past year Arvin had become an expert on pain, a connoisseur of agony. It came in waves, usually triggered by stress. That was probably what made this latest attack so terrible. Just seeing Pierce again, after all these years, was stressful enough, God knows. But lying to him made it a hundred times worse. The same vicious thought kept torturing Arvin till the end of their conversation: Pierce used to work for an intelligence agency. He can see right through you.

  But Arvin had done well, almost as well as he could’ve hoped. Pierce seemed to accept his protestations of ignorance. And Arvin came up with a few nimble lies to throw him off the trail. The only problem was the pulvinar implant, the Dream-catcher. Arvin’s own invention had betrayed him. He’d tried to confuse the device by thinking of random things, but he got frightened when Jim shouted at him, and the face of the CIA agent suddenly appeared in his mind. And this was a serious problem, because now Pierce was going to track the man down
.

  Arvin stayed motionless, taking shallow breaths, until the pain subsided. Then he slowly and carefully climbed back into his chair. He had no choice—he had to accelerate his plans. Reaching for his iPhone, he dialed the number of his personal assistant. He felt another spasm in his guts as the young man answered the phone. “Yes, Professor?”

  “Call up Nash,” Arvin said. “Tell him to get his ass to the airport.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll—”

  “And call the manager at my hangar. I want the jet ready in an hour.”

  ELEVEN

  Dr. Zhang Jintao was strapped to a gurney and wheeled into the operating room. He’d been anesthetized with a paralyzing agent, so he couldn’t talk or move a muscle, but he could see and hear the activity around him. The man pushing the gurney was Dr. Yu Guofeng, a young bioengineer whom Zhang had recruited to the Supreme Harmony project nine months ago. Dr. Yu had assisted Zhang during the project’s initial phase, when they performed the implantation procedures on the first twenty-five Modules. Yu learned the surgical protocol so well that he performed the next four implantations all by himself. And now, Zhang realized to his horror, Yu was about to perform his fifth procedure.

  Yu transferred his patient to the operating table, then readied his instruments: the scalpels, the cauterizing tools, the bone drill. Also laid out on the table were the shiny silver implants. The retinal implants would deliver data through the optic nerves to the brain, while the pulvinar implant would send data in the opposite direction, transmitting signals from the brain to the rest of the network. Early on in the Supreme Harmony project, Zhang had discovered that the patient must be lobotomized to maximize the efficiency of the implants. A patient with an intact, conscious brain could analyze only so much surveillance video at one time. When Zhang tried to transmit the streams of visual data to conscious patients, they quickly became too confused and distracted to analyze the video feeds. Inevitably, the patients would rebel and abandon the task. So Zhang experimented with cutting the intralaminar region of the thalamus before he inserted the pulvinar implant. This procedure severed the neural connections that produced the experience of consciousness, putting the patient in a vegetative state that allowed the brain to concentrate solely and continuously on a single task. In this comalike state, the Module could analyze countless hours of surveillance video.