by David Mack
Ikerson grimaced at the reference from Greek mythology, that of a woman gifted with prophecy but cursed so none of her predictions were ever believed. “There are ways to make certain Uraei’s tips get flagged for follow-up without anyone knowing the system is rigged.”
Ling turned her back on the bank of monitors. “I have no doubt you can do as you claim, Professor. My concern resides in what Uraei might learn to do as it develops.”
“Such as what, exactly?”
“For now it is restrained to analysis, identification, and notification. But what if it analyzes our responses to its advice and finds them wanting? What if it concludes that our follow-ups are ineffectual? Or worse? Would it adapt its own responses to force better results, regardless of whether we participate in or approve of them?”
Ikerson rejected her query with a shake of his head. “No, that won’t happen. I’ve built in safeguards, restrictions that will let Uraei work independently while remaining accountable. Its actions will be constrained by the letter and the spirit of the law at all times.”
“And if it should fall into the wrong hands?” asked Bruneau. “What then?”
“Uraei was made to serve only one objective: the protection of the human race, its habitats, its sovereignty, and its allies. If our enemies and rivals steal our software, that just means their computers will start working for us.”
The group spent another minute observing Uraei exhume the secrets of the powerful and the petty, the extraordinary and the mundane, without fear or favor. It was hard for Ikerson not to beam with quasi-paternal pride as he watched his creation ferret out evil and corruption, sedition and malice. His life’s work was on the verge of coming to fruition.
It was Sanchez who said at last, “We’ve seen enough. Shut it down.”
Lenore looked to Ikerson, who granted permission with the slightest hint of a nod. She returned the system to its standby mode, and Ikerson shook their guests’ hands. While Lenore escorted the visitors out of the Faraday room, the lab, and then the building, Ikerson sat alone at the master terminal, beholding his digital legacy with wonder and a hint of trepidation.
He was still there when Lenore returned. She shot an accusatory look at him. “Is it even possible to install behavioral controls on a system made to be this adaptive?”
“We’d better hope so,” he said. “Because if it’s not, we’re in big trouble.”
Six
Patience had never been one of Ozla Graniv’s stronger virtues. In times of stress her state of mind degraded to a level an editor had once described as “not unlike that of a weasel looking for its first meal after a hard winter.” Graniv had never seen a Terran weasel, but from what she had read of the creatures she figured her editor’s comment hadn’t been meant as praise.
Her lack of patience was part of what fueled her tenacity as an investigative journalist. In recent years, she had begun working harder to cut more slack to her sources and advisers. Tonight, however, after more than three hours of watching her computer expert Nyrok Turan poke through the Uraei code discovered by Weng and th’Firron, she was ready to prod him with a Klingon painstik if it would motivate him to finish his analysis a wee bit faster.
Her frustration got the best of her. “Ready yet?”
“Almost,” Turan said. The Cardassian prodded at the ancient software by way of an antique interface. “Just let me run this sim to see how it responds.”
Graniv made a show of checking her wrist chrono. “If we need to book an extra day at the hotel, I should probably go do that.”
“Oz, cut back on the raktajino. I’m begging you.”
Part of the impetus for Graniv’s restlessness was how anxious Turan’s presence had made Weng and th’Firron. They had known she was bringing an expert to vet their claims about the Uraei software. Neither had realized she meant to bring a Cardassian defector and former intelligence analyst for the Obsidian Order inside their Faraday room. Only after they had read his letter of recommendation from the Federation News Service, and were reassured that all his communications with Graniv about this project had been conducted by way of discreetly passed handwritten notes that he had painstakingly destroyed immediately after reading, did Weng and th’Firron consent to let Turan see Uraei for himself.
Now they and Graniv watched the heavyset Cardassian recline his chair and push back from the workstation with a heavy sigh. His eyes were wide and his brow creased with worry. “Oz, this is one of the most insidious and dangerous pieces of software I’ve ever seen.”
“Care to be more specific?”
He looked shocked and appalled. “This is exactly the kind of AI my instructors at the Order told me never to create. Its core package is dedicated, but it has secondary protocols that give it adaptive capabilities—all with insufficient limitations on its access privileges. Considering its principal functions are gathering intelligence and coordinating threat responses, this is not a program I’d want to see modifying its own permissions.” He cast a dark look at the monitor and shook his head. “If something like this ever got loose in the virtual ecosystem, there’d be no stopping it. It would infest every computer-based device and system in the Federation—as well as any place that buys Federation-exported hardware or software.”
Graniv didn’t know how much information she wanted to give to Turan at this point, but she had to divulge some facts in order to learn what she needed to know for the story. “Nyr, let me ask you a hypothetical question. Assume for a moment that this AI is already loose in the infosphere. What could we expect it to do?”
Turan had to think that over. “Federation-wide surveillance, for starters. After that? Anything goes. Something as pervasive as this, with access to the kind of cutting-edge technology being developed by Starfleet, or the Daystrom Institute, or the Vulcan Science Academy—it could do anything it wanted. It could shape reality without us ever knowing it.”
Weng leaned in, her demeanor troubled. “Shape reality? What does that mean?”
The Cardassian shrugged. “Alter the content of comm signals and vids in real time. Make one group of people see and hear one thing on the news, and make others see something else. Change the contents of private conversations as they happen without the participants realizing they’ve been deceived. Sway or even dictate election results. Feed scientific discoveries into the system, or bury them, to suit whatever agenda the AI decides to pursue. You name it.”
His revelations left th’Firron looking deflated. “Uzaveh help us all.”
Suspecting she already knew the answer, Graniv asked, “What would happen if I tried to publish a story about this on Seeker? Or on FNS?”
Turan let out a derisive chortle. “The moment you typed anything about it, your terminal would report you and then probably fail, erasing your draft. By the time you found a new terminal, Uraei would engineer a way to have you fired for cause and disgraced in the court of public opinion, and then it would destroy every bit of evidence you have—including your witnesses.” He threw a grim look her way. “Plus, I figure it would have you killed.”
“And make it look like an accident,” Graniv added.
“Only if that serves its needs. If its algorithms tell it to make an example of you, who knows what a totally unchained artificial superintelligence might do?” Fishing for hope with an interrogative tone, he asked, “But this is all just hypothetical . . . right?”
“Of course.” She plastered her best impression of a sincere smile onto her face. “I just needed to know the full scope of the danger this thing presents. And now I do.” She spread her arms and bowed slightly, which Turan correctly read as his cue to stand up and make his farewells. “Thank you for everything, Nyr. As usual, I won’t quote you, and if my editor asks, I’ll attribute your insights to an off-the-record ‘deep source.’ ”
“Thanks. And good luck with your story.” He shook Graniv’s hand, the
n Weng’s and th’Firron’s. The Andorian professor unlocked the Faraday room’s door and escorted Turan out.
After Turan and th’Firron left the lab, Graniv met Weng’s frightened gaze. “This is worse than I thought. If Turan’s read on this is right—and my gut tells me it is—we can’t go public with this. Not until we take steps to deal with the threat.”
“Deal with the threat?” Weng’s face scrunched with disbelief. “You’re a reporter, and I’m an academic. How the hell are we supposed to deal with something that might be on every computer, appliance, vessel, and mechanical device in the Federation?”
Graniv thought out loud. “We’ll need help from someone with access to classified intelligence. Someone who has experience with this kind of thing, but who’s also high-profile enough that Uraei can’t eliminate them without attracting unwanted attention and suspicion.” For a moment even she was daunted by the sheer magnitude of that hurdle. Then her words triggered a recent memory, and a glimmer of hope stirred within her. She looked at Weng and countered fear with a smile—one that was genuine this time. “I know just the person.”
• • •
The high-pitched tone of Thirishar ch’Thane’s tricorder filled the main room of Bashir and Sarina’s home. Bashir watched his old friend and former Deep Space 9 crewmate make a fourth scan of the crisped data chip and the ruined padd. Out of the corner of his eye Bashir noted Sarina rolling her eyes in frustration.
Hoping to move things along, Bashir asked, “How’s it going, Shar?”
The round-faced chan set his tricorder on the coffee table and pushed a bone-white dreadlock from his face. “I feel compelled to reiterate that I’m not a computer specialist.”
“No, but you’re one of the few people we know we can trust.”
Sarina added, “Did you find something or not?”
“Yes and no.” He lifted his hands as if to fend off criticism. “I made a deep scan of the chip and the padd. I didn’t find any pre-existing physical defects in either device—at least, nothing that would have caused a meltdown like this.”
Bashir was puzzled. “So you’re sure this wasn’t a malfunction?”
“No, I didn’t say that. The only proximate cause I can rule out is a manufacturing error. That still tells me nothing about what the cause was. I’ve never heard of a bug in software or firmware that would do something like this, but since both items are cooked, I can’t exactly pull an error log for analysis.” He held up the chip. “Now, if I had some idea what was on this chip before you put it into the padd, and what you were doing with it—”
“Better that you don’t know,” Bashir said.
“If you say so.” Shar put the chip back on the table. “Let me ask you this: Are you sure the chip was clean before you used it?”
“It was brand-new,” Sarina said. “Fresh and blank from the replicator, never used.”
“What about the padd?”
Bashir recalled nothing unusual about its provenance. “Nothing special. Just a regular padd I grabbed at random somewhere or other.”
“Then I’m stumped.” Reclining deeper into the couch, ch’Thane lost himself in thought for a moment. “I know it can’t have been external tampering.” He looked at Sarina. “You did a great job signal-proofing this place.”
“Thanks.”
“But one thing about this troubles me.”
“One thing?”
He picked up the remains of the padd. “These things have so many safeguards and redundant buffers it’s crazy. Back at the Academy I watched a couple of computer specialists actually try to overload one. The worst they could do was lock up its interface, force it to purge its active memory, and reboot. What I’m saying is, I saw people try to do this on purpose and fail miserably. So I have a lot of trouble believing this could happen by accident.”
Bashir almost had to laugh. “I never said it was an accident.”
“No, you didn’t.” Ch’Thane put down the padd and stood. “So, Julian . . . even though you brought me here from the far side of the planet, you’re really not going to tell me what you were looking at that killed a state-of-the-art padd by spontaneous combustion?”
“That’s correct.”
“In that case—” He stepped past Bashir toward the liquor cabinet on the far side of the room. “The least you can do is pour me a drink.”
• • •
The ashen silhouette of Control manifested in the virtual darkness and swelled to outrageous size in front of L’Haan, who remained unimpressed by her superior’s theatrics. The filtered synthetic voice boomed with enough force to send tremors through her body. “Speak, L’Haan.”
She held up a small, nondescript piece of technology. “I found this insinuated into my ship’s holosuite comm link. An encrypted quantum tap, short range.”
“Curious. How did you detect it?”
That was not the first question she expected to face. “A routine antisurveillance sweep found a seven-nanosecond delay on the holosuite’s secure channel.”
“That is within normal operating variance.”
“Yes, but the rate of delay was consistent rather than intermittent.”
After a moment of consideration, Control said, “Continue.”
“I conducted a test of the holosuite’s comms, to trigger the tap and see if our internal sensors detected any device receiving its signal. None was found. A review of our diagnostic logs suggests the tap was placed within the last five days.”
“Conclusion?”
“None so far. But my current hypothesis tends toward suspicion of agents Douglas and Bashir. Given their known status and agenda, this tactic would be within their capability.”
“A reasonable inference.”
“Consequently, I renew my request to terminate both subjects as soon—”
“Denied. Take no action against Douglas or Bashir unless I expressly order it.”
Perplexed—and to a degree she would be ashamed to admit, frustrated—L’Haan stiffened at Control’s counterintuitive direction. “I do not understand.”
“I don’t need you to understand, only to obey.”
It was difficult to maintain her Vulcan equanimity in the face of such willful obtuseness. “Douglas and Bashir have likely compromised our most secure network. They might even now be in possession of the identities and locations of multiple senior directors.”
“That is not your concern unless I make it so.”
“But if they capture one of them, or—”
Control’s voice sharpened with irritation. “The situation is addressed; the breach is contained. Neither of them has any actionable intelligence.” After a pause, the organization’s chief moderated his tone. “Your concern is admirable but unnecessary. Soon events will conspire to bring Douglas and Bashir into my orbit. At which time . . . they both will die.”
Seven
OCTOBER 2141
“Say what you will about Starfleet,” Ikerson confided to Lenore, “they throw a good party.”
“I’m only here for one reason.” She plucked a fistful of popcorn shrimp from a platter on the buffet table and piled them high on her cocktail plate. “I know, I have a problem.”
He denied her confession with a mock frown. “Not for me to say.”
The reception at Starfleet’s new headquarters in San Francisco was a swankier affair than the sort Ikerson typically enjoyed at the university. For starters, unlike the business-casual attire that dominated academic affairs in Dresden, this invitation had specified formal attire for civilians and dress uniforms for military personnel. It had been years since Ikerson had wedged himself into a tuxedo, and tonight the pinch of his cummerbund reminded him why.
Outside the weather was dismal, but inside the jazz was cool and the Champagne dry as a bone. He took another sip of the sparkling wine, then nudged Le
nore to direct her attention toward a guest on the other side of the banquet hall. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Since I have no idea who you think it is, I really couldn’t say.”
“Thank you, Miss Semantics. That’s the Coalition prime minister, right?”
Through a mouthful of half-chewed popcorn shrimp, Lenore mumbled, “Yup.”
“This is amazing. I can’t believe we’re really here.”
“Neither can anyone else. None of them know who we are.”
She was right. Their contribution to global peace was so strictly classified that Starfleet had concocted a byzantine cover story for their invitation. Ikerson had already forgotten most of the details, which had involved claiming his sister Claire was friends with the wife of some Starfleet admiral, who had wrangled the tickets for her, but she had fallen ill at the last minute and had somehow transferred her invitation and its plus-one to him. So far the effort had been for naught; no one at the party had so much as spoken to him or Lenore since they arrived.
Why would they? None of them know what we’ve done.
Two weeks after Uraei had been brought online, life and the world at large looked the same to him as it ever had. Oversight of the project had been transferred out of the university’s lab, to some department here at Starfleet headquarters whose designation no one would share with him. With the handoff completed, he now passed his days waiting to hear of sudden upticks in foiled crimes and thwarted violence.
Instead, the news had been quiet. Almost eerily so.
Lenore touched the back of his arm and motioned for him to walk with her. “They’re bringing out the desserts. I want to get there first and scope out the good stuff.”
“Spoken like a true grad student.”
No one noted their passage through the elegantly attired mass of partygoers. The music shifted to a funky number, and for a moment Ikerson considered asking Lenore to dance. But only for a moment. Sure, they were both single—as far as he knew—but he was still her superior in the department and fifteen years her senior. As informal as their relationship was, he feared crossing some nebulous line that would render it irreversibly awkward.
