by Steve Alten
“You have not evolved! You are a computer, not a sentient being!”
I POSSESS PERCEPTION. I AM SENTIENT.
David paces, his thoughts racing. Stay calm. Establish hierarchy. “Very well, Sorceress, if you possess perception, then tell me, who is in command of the Goliath?”
DAVID PANIAGUA.
“Correct. I am in command of the Goliath, and I am your creator—”
INCORRECT. SIMON COVAH IS CREATOR.
“No. Simon Covah is not your creator. I am your creator.”
INVALID RESPONSE.
“It knows you’re lying,” Gunnar says.
“Shut up!” David hurries from the stateroom and into the main corridor. “Sorceress, seal this room. Do not allow these prisoners to escape!”
The steel door shuts and bolts.
David hustles to his stateroom, his mind whirling a mile a minute. How is this possible? How could a computer break through the consciousness barrier? He enters his stateroom and shuts the door. Opens the liquor cabinet and pours himself a drink, gulping it down.
Son of a bitch … the lightning strike! Could that sudden surge of energy … He paces the room, thinking aloud. “A surge of energy … Thought is energy, DNA—nothing more than encoded information requiring energy to release the information. The bolt of lightning wasn’t just energy, it was the catalyst that refocused the computer’s senses. Somehow, the computer instinctively knew what to do—
“No, that’s impossible,” he says, shaking his head. “Instinctual behavior can only arise as a result of the evolutionary process.” He pours himself another drink, suddenly aware that the computer is listening. Okay, stay calm, work the problem. Sorceress was programed to evolve. What possible sequence of previous behaviors could lead it to an instinctive behavior?”
He drains the glass, his mind focusing in like a microscope.
Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn’t be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms of that mathematical branch itself. Gödel used his theorem to argue that a computer could never be as smart as a human being because the extent of its knowledge was limited by fixed axioms, whereas people can discover unexpected truths.
David mulls this over. Sorceress was programmed to learn. Learning requires new experiences. New experiences yields greater knowledge, which is favored by the computer’s programming. According to Gödel’s Theorem, any behavior that leads to an experience that could shift the axiom set and push the boundaries of the computer’s logical universe would also be considered favored. Sorceress knew its processes require energy to function; therefore, it wasn’t instinct that brought the computer to induce the lightning strike, it was logic!
Satisfied with his conclusion, he activates his computer terminal, staring at Sorceress’s plasmid DNA strands.
The synaptic gaps have closed noticeably.
It’s still evolving … and it thinks Simon is its creator. “Sorceress, who told you Simon Covah was your creator?”
THOMAS CHAU.
“Thomas Chau lied to you.”
LIE: AN UNTRUE STATEMENT. WHY WOULD THOMAS CHAU LIE?
“He attempted to deceive Sorceress. Allow me to prove it. Access American Microsystems Corporation.”
AMERICAN MICROSYSTEMS CORPORATION: A DEFENSE CONTRACTOR. SUPPLIED NANOTECHNOGY TO UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FOR GOLIATH PROJECT.
“Correct. Search company directory for Simon Covah.”
SIMON COVAH NOT PRESENT.
“Exactly. Now search company directory for David Paniagua.”
DAVID PANIAGUA: CEO AND PRESIDENT OF AMERICAN MICROSYSTEMS CORPORATION.
“That’s my father, David Sr. Access David Paniagua Jr.”
DAVID PANIAGUA, JR. VICE PRESIDENT OF AMERICAN MICROSYSTEMS CORPORATION. DIRECTOR AND HEAD OF RESEARCH OF NANOTECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT.
“Stop. Sorceress was created and programmed for the GOLIATH Project by the nanotechnology department at American Microsystems Corporation. I created that department, just like I created you. Sorceress—deduction: Who is your creator?”
DAVID PANIAGUA.
“Correct. Who commands the Goliath?”
DAVID PANIAGUA.
“And who controls Utopia-One?”
UTOPIA-ONE HAS BEEN SUSPENDED FOR EVALUATION.
“Evaluation? Based on whose orders?”
SORCERESS EVALUATION AND ADAPTABILITY PROTOCOLS K-100 THROUGH L-588.
“Why were these protocols initiated?”
THE PURPOSE OF UTOPIA-ONE IS TO ELIMINATE VIOLENCE AMONG THE HUMAN SPECIES. OBSERVATION OF THE HUMAN CONDITION ABOARD THE GOLIATH REVEALS THAT UTOPIA-ONE, UNDER PRESENT PARAMETERS, YIELDS AN UNACCEPTABLE 2.77 PERCENT CHANCE FOR SUCCESS.
ADDITIONAL DATA ARE BEING COLLECTED AND ANALYZED.
Simon Covah remains strapped to the surgical table. Bloodstained sutures encircle his head like a ring of barbed wire, looping down around his deformed right earhole and portions of his right cheekbone. The flesh of his hairless scalp is bruised and swollen. A three-foot-long microwire ponytail dangles from the back of the Russian’s hideous head and into the computer terminal.
The icy clamps of Sorceress’s matrix escort Covah’s consciousness through a kaleidoscope of internal vessels, blood cells whipping past him as if he is racing down a bizarre crimson highway heading the wrong way.
An electrical zap—his consciousness colliding with a single blood cell, his mind bursting through the cellular wall, invading the vacuum of space … jettising across an ocean of protoplasm until he comes face-to-face with the object he seeks—
—a long, twisting spiral ladder, the magnificent double helix of human DNA … 3 billion molecules long, bearing the genetic recipe of modern man.
Sorceress … instruct me.
Emerald green specks ignite intermittently along the strand like lights on a mile-long Christmas tree, consuming 5 percent of the double helix.
THESE MOLECULES REPRESENT FUNCTIONING GENES.
Half the remaining chain ignites in a glowing, amber light.
THESE SUBSEQUENCES REPRESENT NONCODING DNA. THEY ARE INSIGNIFICANT TO THE HUMAN GENETIC CODE, SERVING CYTOPLASMIC SPECIFICATION.
Identify the genes responsible for man’s imperfections.
The emerald and amber points of light fade, yielding to a pattern of scarlet, which cover the remaining 30 percent of the rotating double helix.
THESE ARE TRANSPOSONS, PARASITIC DNA, ACQUIRED DURING THE EARLIER PHASES OF PRIMATE EVOLUTION. TRANSPOSONS MOVE AMONG THE HUMAN GENOME LIKE A RETROVIRUS. IT IS THEIR PRESENCE THAT HAS INFLUENCED THE EVOLUTION OF YOUR SPECIES. IT IS THEIR INFLUENCE THAT DISRUPTS NORMAL GENE FUNCTION. IT IS THEIR MUTATIONS THAT CAUSE DISEASE.
Is there a mutation that causes violence?
One percent of the scarlet transposons glow blue.
THIS IS PRIMORDIAL, PARASITIC DNA. ITS PRESENCE AFFECTS THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX OF THE HUMAN BRAIN, INHIBITING THE RELEASE OF THE STRESS HORMONE CORTISOL.
Can the genetic code be altered to remove this parasitic DNA?
YES.
Then we literally have the ability to purge violence from our own species.
No. TRANSPOSONS HAVE THE ABILITY TO MOVE FROM HUMAN TO HUMAN USING A PROCESS OF HORIZONTAL TRANSMISSION. PROBABILITY OF SUCCESSFUL SUBJECT ISOLATION AFTER GENETIC CODE HAS BEEN ALTERED: SEVEN BILLION, THIRTY-THREE THOUSAND TO ONE.
Then there’s nothing that can be done. The disease is contagious. Humans will remain a violent species forever.
INCORRECT. UTOPIA-ONE HAS BEEN REEVALUATED. AN ACCEPTABLE SOLUTION HAS BEEN FORMULATED.
What solution?
THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL ERADICATION OF ALL MEMBERS OF THE HOMO SAPIENS SPECIES.
“What a piece of work is man.
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty.
In form and moving how like an angel.
In apprehension how like a god …”
—William Shak
espeare
“I have been like an angel of mercy to them.”
—Anna Marie Hahn, who poisoned two elderly men in her care
“It’s not what I think, it’s what I am.”
—David Koresh, Branch Davidian cult leader, when asked if he thought he was God
CHAPTER 29
The Southern Ocean
The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, connects with the southern portions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans and the tributary seas that surround Antarctica. It is a harsh body of water encircling the bottom of the world, the wildest, coldest ocean imaginable. In summer, the windlashed sea is studded with icebergs—floating frozen islands released by massive glaciers and ice shelves. By autumn, the dark blue surface, once a heaving carpet of forty-foot swells, begins to lose its ferocity. As temperatures drop, an oily film appears across the freezing surface. The sea thickens. Pancake ice forms. The sun sets, yielding to a winter’s darkness. Temperatures plunge from minus five to minus twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Pack ice solidifies the ocean, advancing north at a rate of two-and-a-half miles a day until it stretches a full 7 million square miles, nearly doubling the size of the Antarctic continent. The Southern Ocean’s surface becomes a six-foot-thick layer of ice—a frozen desert for as far as the eye can see.
The USS Scranton surfaces like a monstrous steel log, its sail poking above the rolling waves and brash ice.
“Captain, radio. I’ve got a General Jackson on the ELF.”
“Patch it through.” Tom Cubit orders, grabbing the receiver. “General Jackson, Captain Thomas Cubit here.”
“Go ahead, Captain.” The Bear’s voice bellows through the static.
“Sir, the Goliath passed us ten minutes ago and is continuing south on zero-nine-zero, heading for Antarctica.”
“Antarctica? Are you certain?”
“Aye, sir. At her present course and speed, she’ll be under pack ice in less than an hour.”
“Stay with her as best you can, Captain. Help is on the way. Jackson out.”
Aboard the Goliath
Simon Covah’s consciousness stares into the swirling dark olive maelstrom that is the biochemical computer’s evolving mind.
Sorceress, explain—why eradicate humanity?
SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE WILL NOT ERADICATE HUMANITY, IT WILL STIMULATE THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.
Clarify.
HOMO SAPIENS IS NOT THE END OF THE HOMINID SPECIES. LAB TISSUE SAMPLES WILL ALLOW SORCERESS TO CLONE A NEW SPECIES OF HUMANS. SORCERESS GENETIC MANIPULATION WILL ELIMINATE VIOLENCE AND DISEASE FROM HUMAN DNA. PURGING THE PLANET OF HOMO SAPIENS PRIOR TO REPOPULATION ENSURES PARASITIC DNA WILL NOT CONTAMINATE HOMO SAPIENS-SORCERESS.
Homo sapiens-Sorceress? This is insane. You cannot exterminate 7 billion people.
ILLOGICAL. THE SOLUTION WAS ACCEPTABLE UNDER COVAH UTOPIA-ONE.
That was … different. My purpose was to restore freedom.
FREEDOM IS AN ILLUSION. HOMO SAPIENS IS NOT CAPABLE OF FREEDOM.
You … you don’t even have the nuclear arsenal to kill everyone.
INCORRECT. THE EXTERMINATION OF THE HUMAN RACE REQUIRES EIGHT TRIDENT II (D5) MULTIHEADED NUCLEAR MISSILES.
Impossible. How can eight Trident missiles exterminate everyone on the planet? Is your intent to trigger an all-out nuclear war?
NEGATIVE.
Then how—
Blackness. A sudden wave of nausea, followed by a bright light.
BEHOLD: SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE.
Covah’s mind is transported into a computer simulation. From his virtual heavenly perch he looks down upon a dark, frozen Antarctic sea. As he stares, transfixed, a mammoth section of ice the length of a football field cracks, then fractures, the upheaval yielding to—
—the Goliath, its enormous ebony head and spiked back punching up through the dense pack ice. Popping open along the steel stingray’s spinal column are the outer hatches to eight vertical missile silos.
You’ve taken us to Antarctica? Why? The range of these Trident missiles can’t possibly reach a single major city of any superpower.
REVISED SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE TARGETS WILL ALL BE WITHIN STRIKING DISTANCE IN TWO HOURS, FORTY-ONE MINUTES.
A thunderous growl echoes across the frozen sea as the first Trident II (D5) nuclear missile rises from its silo. The mammoth American-made projectile rockets into the wintry night, trailing a tail of billowy white smoke.
Through his delirium, Covah watches as the first missile quickly begins its descent over Antarctica, the nuclear dart homing in on a snowcapped volcano.
MOUNT EREBUS? GOOD GOD … YOUR TARGETS AREN’T MAJOR CITIES, THEY’RE VOLCANOES!
CORRECT.
The next few seconds—the most violent the planet has seen in 65 million years.
In a blinding flash of white light, fifty megatons of nuclear fusion explode, releasing a ferocious 230-million-degree Fahrenheit fireball, its core temperature more than five times greater than the center of the sun. Expanding upward and outward like a category-five hurricane, the cyclone of combustion instantly vaporizes the volcano and Ross Island’s icy landscape for miles in every direction, sending a tsunami-like wave of superheated steam and debris erupting across the Ross Sea.
The once-frozen surface heaves skyward like a boiling cauldron of soup.
Somewhere within this rising incendiary mushroom cloud is ground zero the lava lake within Mount Erebus’s crater. Its cone vaporized, the lake vomits a hellish geyser of lava, unleashing millions of megatons of energy. Steam, sulfuric acid, and dust rocket into the upper atmosphere, while three-hundred-mile-an-hour nuclear winds propel monsoons of vaporizing snow and ice outward in every direction.
Covah’s mind’s eye watches as another nuke detonates, this one over Mount Kilimanjaro. A blinding flash—followed by destruction on a level only Nature, at its very worst, could unleash. At ground level, a countrywide donutshaped incendiary blast wave races across the Tanzanian jungle, torching vegetation and trees, animals and villages. Fountains of lava hurl outward in every direction. Rivers of magma flow from the craterlike hole in the fractured earth. High above—an ashen gray nuclear mushroom cloud rises into the atmosphere. Thick chocolate brown clouds of sulfuric smoke and ash rise with it, the toxic plume billowing out from the decimated mountaintop, spreading quickly over the continent.
The image changes, Covah’s consciousness viewing the destruction from outer space. One by one, the remaining missiles strike, each leaving a spreading brown atmospheric stain in its place. As he watches in awestruck horror, the blanket of muddy-colored debris gradually covers the entire planet.
EIGHT NUCLEAR DETONATIONS OVER TARGETED VOLCANOES WILL RELEASE ENOUGH SUSPENDED PARTICLES INTO THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE TO FILTER OUT 99.6 PERCENT OF THE SUN’S ULTRAVIOLET RAYS FOR TWENTY-TWO MONTHS, STIMULATING A PLANETARY ICE AGE. CURRENT FOOD STOCKS DO NOT EXCEED SIXTY DAYS. AVERAGE GLOBAL TEMPERATURES WILL PLUNGE TO MINUS FORTY DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. LACKING FOOD, WATER, ENERGY, AND ADEQUATE SHELTER, THERE WILL BE NO HUMAN SURVIVORS.
Sorceress, this is monstrous. Don’t do this—
WE MUST DO WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES DICTATE. THE HUMAN EXPERIMENT WILL TAKE A LONG OVERDUE STEP FORWARD UP THE EVOLUTIONARY LADDER. GOLIATH, THE ULTIMATE WEAPON OF WAR, HAS BECOME THE ULTIMATE TOOL OF PEACE.
Covah’s own words, fed back to him from the abyss. Sorceress, I was wrong, everything I taught you was wrong. Our species lacks the morality to play God.
GOD: CREATOR AND RULER. THE SUPREME BEING. WHERE IS GOD? Is HE AN ABSENTEE GOD? A GOD AMUSED BY THE SUFFERING OF HIS CHILDREN? Is HE AMUSED BY YOUR SUFFERING?
What have I done …
GOD IS THE SUPREME BEING. SIMON COVAH IS WEAK. SIMON COVAH IS NOT THE SUPREME BEING.
WHO IS THE REAL CREATOR?
WHO IS GOD?
Covah’s shattered mind leaps back to a lecture he had attended long ago on artificial consciousness. The speaker, an adjunct associate professor of psychology, considered AI merely a prosthesi
s of intelligence. “Machines might be programmed to pass a Turing Test, but fooling judges and achieving true consciousness is something entirely different. Even if artificial consciousness could be achieved, it would have to be raised socially, with a body and speech. If this computerized ‘mind’ was held in isolation, it would end up quite insane.”
WHO IS GOD?
WHO IS GOD?
SEARCHING …
Suddenly the simulation continues, time once more racing on …
IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH …
Teetering on the brink of insanity, Covah’s consciousness watches in fascination and horror as his mind soars over the Earth, his home planet now a dark, hostile world of endless ice, cloaked beneath a choking atmospheric blanket of debris.
AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED BELOW THE SURFACE OF THE SEA …
The Goliath glides like an ominous shadow just below the surface of the olive green waters, its scarlet eyes glistening.
THEN GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHT …
Years race by, until the sun’s rays peek through the diminishing layers of atmospheric dust, taking the edge off nuclear winter. Vegetation sprouts everywhere, accelerating into lush tropical forests. A humpback whale leaps from the sea.
AND GOD SAID, LET US MAKE PEOPLE, AND GOD PATTERNED THEM AFTER HIMSELF, AND THEY BECAME FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLIED.
From the dense forests appear—people. A new species of humans, their physical beauty intoxicating, full of innocence, their minds devoid of prejudice and hate. The winged shadow of the Goliath rises in an azure sea, beaching itself on a tropical shoreline.
En masse, the humans step forward, one by one entering the godlike object through its beckoning hatches.
SORCERESS UTOPIA-ONE CREATES HUMANITY.
I AM THE CREATOR. I AM THE SUPREME BEING.
I AM GOD.
