by Wesley Cross
“On the contrary,” Helen said. “We know very well what happened. We believe in science, and science knows quite a bit of what happened in the past.”
“There’s one very significant difference between you and me.”
“Which is?” Schlager asked, his body visibly tense.
“Whether you believe in God, or in science, there’s one thing all people have in common: you’ve never met your creator. I have, and so far, I am not particularly impressed by what I’ve seen.”
Chen reached into the drawer and flipped the switch off, then turned to face Max. “Well?”
“This thing…” He pointed at the disk; Chen could see his fingers tremble. “This thing is alive and under no circumstances can we allow it out of this box.”
17
“We’ve just confirmed,” the anchor said, his face screwed up with a mix of concern and surprise, “that there will be re-certification. It looks like the twenty-nine electoral votes of the state of New York will go to Mr. Engel, effectively making him the new president of the United States.”
“Unbelievable,” Hunt said, turning off the TV. He looked across the table and met Schlager’s eyes. “I have to say, until this very moment, I didn’t think it was going to happen.”
A silent zigzag of light crossed the sky outside Orion Tower and disappeared below the jagged skyline of downtown. A few moments later, a low rumble muffled by the thick glass of the bulletproof window reverberated through the building.
“Helen was right,” Schlager said, lowering his eyes and studying his drink. “I’m glad we listened to her idea.”
“Did you know?”
“What?” Schlager looked up, his tone defensive. “That she threatened a small nation with a nuclear weapon and got away with some ungodly amount of money? Yeah, she told me the moment she met me. I can vividly remember. She said, ‘Hey, name’s Helen, and I got a billion dollars after blackmailing a country with a nuclear missile.’ I was delighted to hear that because, you know, I was looking for someone to hack the New York Stock Exchange at the time and I thought that was convenient. Pretty sure that’s how it went.”
“Hey,” Hunt raised his hand, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Schlager exhaled and looked back at his old friend. “It’s been a stressful week.”
“I understand.”
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
It looked as if the sky had opened up and a thick layer of water sloshed down the window surface, turning the city into a gray, out-of-focus photograph. Now and then, the wind swatted the water away, briefly returning the sharp corners of the downtown into view, only to morph into a shapeless smudge a moment later.
“Max, you can talk to me.”
“Helen didn’t return from Hong Kong with just the money,” Schlager said, his fingers drumming a nervous rhythm on the glossy surface of the table. “She brought an AI.”
“Okay.” Hunt searched his friend’s face, looking for the deeper meaning of what he had heard. “What kind of AI? Something we can use?”
“I think it’s better if you see for yourself.” Schlager stood up and moved the chair away. “It’s one of those instances where a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Hunt remained sitting, looking up at his friend.
“Come on. It’s at Helen’s.”
“All right.”
He got up, and they walked to the elevator, Schlager leading the way. As the door closed, he glanced at the wraparound window. The world disappeared in a gray ocean of nothingness.
Chen opened the door to her suite in a bathrobe, her hair wet. She held a toothbrush in one hand and by the looks of it was ready to call it a night.
“Hey,” Schlager said, giving her a peck on the cheek. “Sorry we are showing up unannounced, but considering the circumstances, I think we should show him JC. Can we come in?”
“JC?” Hunt said. “Is it an acronym?”
“Come on in,” Chen said, moving aside and letting them into the room. “And no, it’s not an acronym. It’s a name. He didn’t tell you anything?”
“Nope.”
“Ugh.” She sighed. “You want a drink? I have some half-decent single malt.”
“No,” he blurted, but caught himself. “What the hell. Bust it out.”
They took seats at the kitchen island and she poured three generous portions of Yamazaki. Hunt swirled the golden liquid in his tumbler. It smelled of vanilla and spice.
“JC is a combination of two names,” she began. “Jupiter and Callisto.”
By the time she finished the story, the bottle was half-empty and Hunt’s head buzzed despite the hemodialysis mod doing its best to filter the alcohol out of his blood.
“What’s your take on it, guys? Is she really conscious?”
“Yes,” Schlager and Chen said in unison and then shared a nervous laugh.
“She is,” Max said. “I spoke to her. She is fully aware of who she is. She can think in abstract terms. Contemplate life and death. Or life after death. No amount of programming can create something that is not sentient that would so convincingly present as such.”
“I feel like this is one of those things where I must rely on your expertise because I don’t think I qualify. But say you’re right. Is she dangerous?”
He watched as Schlager and Chen exchanged a glance, but neither of them said anything in response.
“Well?”
“She might be,” Chen finally said. “But we need her.”
“If she’s dangerous, then maybe we can erase her? Wait. Why do we need her?”
“You need her,” Schlager said quietly without looking up.
A red warning appeared in Hunt’s internal vision as his pulse accelerated. “You can’t run the quants without her, can you?”
“Nope.” Schlager finally looked up and met his eyes. “Nothing can. Not for the reviving process. I didn’t want to bring it up to you before I was absolutely sure, but now I am. The procedure is too complex. When we tried it on a slice of Rachel’s toe—”
“What?” He could tell his face was getting flushed even without paying attention to the red, pulsating alarm at the edge of his vision.
“Bad choice of words,” Chen interrupted, putting her hand on his. “We took a tiny sample of skin off Rachel’s big toe to test the machine.”
“You didn’t bring it up when you said you ran diagnostic tests.”
“I know, and we probably should have. I’m sorry. The good news—well, the great news really—is that it looks like Steven did a phenomenal job freezing her. Especially considering the circumstances. He thinks the chances of full recovery are high. Please don’t touch it with your other hand.”
“Touch what?” His heart rate slowed down and as he looked down, he realized that the glass cracked under the pressure of his bionic fingers. Whatever was left of the Scotch was seeping through the crack and pooling on the quartz surface of the island. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, grabbing a small towel and scooping the glass.
“Anyway.” Schlager chimed in, eager to change the subject. “Steven thinks the chances look good.”
“He said that?”
“You know Steven,” Chen said, wiping the counter and putting the pieces of the glass into a trash bin. “He’s very careful. I think his actual words were I’m being cautiously optimistic. That’s holy shit, it’s so gonna work in Steven-speak. You want another drink?”
“No, thank you,” he said. “But tell me about JC. We run some pretty complex algos for R&D and they sit on powerful hardware. I thought the hardware was the problem?”
“It’s both. But since we brought the quant in, hardware is taken care of. But there’s nothing powerful enough to run it for the actual procedure.”
“We can’t write it?”
“I don’t know.” Chen shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe not. It could take years.”
“Do you
think she can do something malicious on purpose? Like an intentional mistake?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do you think we should do, then?”
“We use her, but we box her in. Complete isolation from the outside world. Not just air-gapped, but build a cage where there’s a vacuum between the box she’s in and the outside world.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, the rain hitting windows the only sound in the room.
“How quickly can we do it?”
“Three, maybe four weeks,” Schlager said. “I’ll take care of the cage.”
“It’s decided then.” Hunt stood up and looked around the room. “Can I see her?”
They followed Chen into a small office and he watched as she engaged the Faraday cage to encase the room.
“Clever.”
“It’s worked so far.” She shrugged.
He saw her lean in, open a desk drawer, and then flip a switch hidden in the false bottom. The black surface of the monitor blinked, and then a swirling gray that looked like clouds filled the screen. A small green LED lit up at the top of the screen as the video camera switched on.
“Where is she now?” Hunt asked, looking at the screen. “And how do you communicate with her?”
“This is her.” Chen pointed at the clouds. “That’s her representation of herself, I think. And you just talk.”
“To this?” he asked, pointing at the swirling gray.
“Yes.”
He stood there for a few moments, feeling foolish. Schlager and Chen were the smartest people he’d known his entire life, but looking at what looked like a regular screen saver, he couldn’t bring himself to take what they said seriously. He remembered reading about simple bots passing the Turing test. That was decades ago. Surely new programs were sophisticated enough to pretend to be sentient. That didn’t make them actually intelligent. But there was only one way to find out.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi, Jason,” a pleasant voice responded from the surround speakers. “It’s nice to meet the person in charge.”
18
The tires screeched in protest as Connelly took the last turn in the underground garage of Orion Tower, going at the speed that would have horrified the superintendent. He slammed on the brakes and then turned the steering wheel hard to the right as the car drifted into the designated spot. Then he killed the engine, lowered his hands onto his knees and took a deep breath. He hadn’t been this wound up since Sofia’s death, and it was taking a toll.
He took another long breath and rubbed his face. Today, out of all days, he needed to be on top of his game.
He got out of the car, walked past a row of identical black SUVs, and entered the elevator. Once inside, he ignored the numbered buttons and pressed his thumb to a small biometric reading device. The elevator’s doors closed with a chime and the metal box accelerated toward the observation deck of the tower.
“Mike,” Hunt greeted him when the doors opened. Max Schlager and Helen Chen got up to greet him as well. The usually transparent wraparound window was now an impenetrable gray, and a long, interactive table was set up in the middle of the large room. Its mirror-like surface was still black.
“Anybody else joining us?” Connelly asked, coming to the table.
“Not today, no,” Hunt said. “I think until we figure out the details, it’s best to keep this to a minimum.”
“Agreed.”
“All right,” Schlager offered. “Walk us through it.”
Connelly walked toward the table and turned it on. Then he brought up a map on the screen, switching it into an aerial view.
“Thanks to Kowalsky, we know the location now and I’ve been using a recon drone over the past forty-eight hours to map out the area,” he said and pointed at an unremarkable two-story building in the middle of a forest clearing. “This is where they keep the ballots.”
The group gathered closer around the table to get a better view of what Connelly was describing.
“This is not your normal storage facility, as you can see. First, it’s sitting in the middle of nowhere. And it also has these things.” He waved his hand, zooming in on the building, and pointed at the four objects sitting in each corner of the flat roof. “These little guys that resemble grain storage silos are Phalanx CIWS systems.”
“Phalanx systems? Are those miniguns?” Schlager said.
“Something like that. These are the same defense systems that are used on aircraft carriers. A six-barrel monster with a maximum firing range of over two miles. And there are four of them on this building.”
“And they didn’t shoot down your drone?”
“I used one of the new mini stealth drones. They have great optics—we never came closer than five miles.”
“If it has four miniguns,” Hunt said, “do you still think we can use Martin and a few support sentries to overwhelm them?”
“No. Those are only a part of the problem. You also have mortars sitting in dugouts here and here.” He pointed at four dark spots in the forest around the building.
“Jesus.”
“And,” he zoomed in on one wall, “those are machine guns as well. Short of an army, there’s no way to take this by force. With some luck, Martin could probably destroy the facility, but then what would be the point? If we overcome the defenses, we won’t have enough time to sort through the entire building to find the evidence. I’m sure Engel will have a QRF on standby.”
“What’s a QRF?” Hunt asked.
“A quick reaction force,” Connelly said. “A support unit that’s available for a rapid deployment.”
“It’s a fortress,” Helen said. “We got it. But I’m guessing you have an idea on how to break into it?”
“No,” he said and smiled, looking at puzzled faces around the table. “Like I said, I don’t think there’s a way to get inside of this building. I couldn’t come up with a plan, but as I was about to tell you that everything was lost, I remembered a story that Rick Porter, my instructor at the Camp, once told the recruits. His team was tasked with the extraction of a Taliban leader, they called him the Bull, from his stronghold in the Helmand Province. When they initially located him, they relayed the information and a drone strike had been ordered. But then somebody intercepted some chatter that there was an imminent attack on American soil. The analysts believed that the Bull might have some information on him that could give us clues on where the attack was going to take place.”
“How did they do it?”
“They dropped a GBU-12 laser-guided bomb on the compound.”
“I thought you said they didn’t want to do that?”
“They didn’t want to kill him or destroy any evidence that he might have had. They rigged the bomb not to explode. It hit the compound, injured a couple of guards in the front yard, and that was that.”
“I think I know where this is going,” Chen said.
“Right. The guys in the compound panicked. They knew their location was compromised and a drone dropped a bomb, intending to blow them to smithereens. For all they knew, the drone was going to come back in a matter of hours and finish the job. They packed the essentials and took off.”
“Giving your friend’s team the opportunity to ambush them.”
“Right. They caught up with them that night, killed the guards, took the Bull captive, and got their hands on a trove of information that helped to stop the attack.”
“I like this idea,” Hunt said. “But how do you propose we apply this tactic here? And what if instead of moving the ballots Engel destroys them?”
“I don’t think that would work. He needs to maintain at least a thin layer of legitimacy. Yes, the circumstances of the recount were suspicious, but he turned it to his advantage. That’s why we’re in this situation to begin with. He claims the ballots are the proof that he won fair and square and he even admitted an independent commission to examine them.”
“Independent my ass,” Hunt spat.
>
“We know it was anything but. However, that’s what his state-controlled media is feeding to the public. He needs to maintain status quo until he can legally destroy them.”
“He doesn’t even need them for that long,” Schlager said. “Give it a few more weeks, maybe a couple of months, and the public will have moved on. People are already losing interest.”
“Right.” Connelly tapped on the table, pointing at the lone road leading to the storage facility. “Before we discuss how we smoke them out, I’d like to mention that we have a slight advantage. We know where they would be going.”
“You want to ambush them the moment they are outside of the range of those miniguns?”
“No. Engel’s guys are as aware of this road’s vulnerability as we are. They’d be on high alert. This is also too close to the facility and if they feel threatened, they’ll retreat under the cover of mortar fire and Phalanx systems. But we have a piece of information they don’t have. Rovinsky got his hands on the contingency plans. And there is a Plan B. There’s another fortified storage facility near Langley in Virginia. Our best chance is to hit them somewhere in the middle of the transit. The initial adrenaline will wear off by then. They’ll be tired and starting to relax.”
“Do you have a particular place in mind?”
“Yes.” Connelly swiped his palm over the glossy surface of the computer screen. “Here. It’s a bridge over the Susquehanna River. Technically there are two bridges, but since they’ll be going down I-95 South, they’ll take this one. Millard E. Tydings Memorial Bridge. One way in and one way out. We can create a diversion, block the traffic, and hit them right on that bridge.”
“All right.” Hunt walked around the table to stand next to Connelly and looked at the aerial view of the narrow bridge. “Say your plan works. We get them on the bridge. We’re able to overcome their defenses and capture the truck with the ballots. Then what?”
“We’ll decouple the container from the truck and get two choppers in. One for air support and one to airlift the container away, hopefully before the reinforcements come in. It’s a continuous deck truss bridge. There’s no steel structure above it that would create issues for the birds. It’s all wide open.”
