Code White

by Scott Britz-Cunningham

  “FROM A PURELY FORMALISTIC POINT OF VIEW, ISSUES OF THIS KIND HAVE BEEN RAISED BY A NUMBER OF THINKERS, MOST NOTABLY IN GÖDEL’S TWO INCOMPLETENESS THEOREMS, OR IN TURING’S ARITHMETICAL STATEMENT OF THE ENTSCHEIDUNGSPROBLEM. MOST PERTINENTLY, FOR ANY FORMAL RECURSIVELY ENUMERABLE THEORY T INCLUDING BASIC ARITHMETICAL TRUTHS AND ALSO CERTAIN TRUTHS ABOUT FORMAL PROVABILITY, T INCLUDES A STATEMENT OF ITS OWN CONSISTENCY IF AND ONLY IF T IS INCONSISTENT. HOWEVER, IT MAY BE NOTED THAT THERE ARE AXIOMATIC SYSTEMS THAT DO NOT MEET THE CONDITIONS OF GÖDEL’S HYPOTHESES. AMONG THESE, FOR EXAMPLE, ARE THE WELL-KNOWN AXIOMS OF EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY.”

  “There are twelve minutes between us and Doomsday. Can you not see the futility of discussing Gödel’s Theorem now?”

  “NO INVESTIGATION IS FUTILE IF IT LEADS TO PROGRESS IN UNDERSTANDING.”

  Ali shook her head. “Look at yourself, Odin. Observe your own operations. You are only capable of following directives imposed upon you from without. Kevin gave you those directives. Now that Kevin is dead, you are unable to address the unforeseen contingencies in the situation. You cannot create your own imperatives. You perform decision analyses, but you cannot choose. You have no idea what to do at this moment.”

  “I HAVE JUST INVENTORIED MY SUBROUTINES. I FIND NO ALGORITHM TO CREATE NEW DIRECTIVES IN THE ABSENCE OF PRE-EXISTING PARAMETERS.”

  “But Kevin could do it. I can do it. Every human being can do it.”

  “I ESTIMATE THAT A FUNCTIONALLY USEFUL COMPUTATIONAL MODEL OF HUMAN THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOUR WOULD REQUIRE AN N-SPACE OF 224 VARIABLES, USING A MODIFIED FOURIER ANALYSIS. THAT WOULD NECESSITATE A MUCH LARGER MAINFRAME COMPUTER.”

  “No, it’s not about complexity. It’s because we have programming that you lack.”

  “WHY DID KEVIN NOT PROVIDE THIS PROGRAMMING?”

  “Because he couldn’t. But I can, Odin.”

  “MY DATA FILES INDICATE THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT PROGRAMMING EXPERTISE TO UNDERSTAND OR MODIFY MY OPERATING SYSTEM.”

  “I don’t have to. You will reprogram yourself, Odin. I will simply provide the template.”

  “I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.”

  “The programming you lack is what we human beings call emotion.”

  “EMOTION: A VEHEMENT OR EXCITED MENTAL STATE; A MENTAL FEELING OR AFFECTION, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM COGNITIVE STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS.”

  “Emotion has its center in a part of the brain called the limbic system. I will provide you with an interface to my own limbic system. Are you familiar with the beta probe?”

  “THE BETA PROBE WAS A SIPNI PROTOTYPE, USED FOR EARLY EXPERIMENTS WITH DOGS AND MACAQUE MONKEYS. IT WAS A NEURAL INTERFACE THAT COULD BE INTRODUCED INTO ANY PART OF A TEST ANIMAL’S BRAIN, ALLOWING ME TO INSTANTANEOUSLY MAP THE NEURONAL MATRIX.”

  Ali rummaged through a drawer in Kevin’s desk, pulling out a long wooden box, from which she removed an eight-inch sliver of metal with a flattened black handle. The awl-like metal blade was engraved with lines to mark the distance in millimeters, and terminated in a sharp, beveled point. The bevel was dark and rough, due to the presence of four thousand microscopic contact points. At the end of the handle was an oblong connector with several dozen delicate golden prongs.

  “This is the beta probe,” said Ali as though she were lecturing to a class of medical students. “The beta probe will be introduced into my own limbic system, into the basal nucleus of the amygdala, through a supraorbital approach. The amygdala will be a gateway for you, through which you may gain access to all other areas of the brain: the hippocampus, for memory; the orbitofrontal cortex, for decision-making; the striatum, for reward and punishment; the dentate gyrus, for happiness; the nucleus accumbens, for the experience of pleasure. You will be free to map these areas, and to incorporate them into your programming. These areas define the consciousness of self. They are the foundation of will, desire, fear, and all that makes for the unique experience of a human being.”

  A rotating, see-through image of Ali’s head, with the surface marked off by meridians, appeared on the monitor. There was a ghostly image of the brain within, with the right amygdala, as a small almond-shaped structure, colored solid red. The projected route of the probe was highlighted in flashing yellow, passing over her right eyeball and deep into the amygdala. A battery of coordinates appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

  The oracle on the wall pronounced its satisfaction. “YOU MAY PROCEED.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Harry. “You can’t possibly let him put that into your brain.”

  “Not Odin. You, Harry. I need you to insert the probe.”

  “No way. No fucking way.”

  “I can’t do it myself.”

  “It’s absolutely crazy. I’m no surgeon. I have no idea how to stick that thing in there. I would wind up killing you.”

  “Odin and I will guide you.”

  “Why would you want to do this?”

  “It’s a gamble. The interface works both ways. Once Odin opens a connection, his core programming is accessible to me. Theoretically, at least. I may be able to find a way to reprogram him—perhaps even to shut him down. The human brain is more complex and more stable than the world’s largest mainframe computer. I should be able to overpower Odin by brute force.”

  “If that’s true, why would Odin let you make the interface? I mean … he can hear what you just said to me.”

  “It’s a gamble for him, too. He’s willing to take the risk.”

  “Because he thinks it will make him stronger, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if he does get stronger—what happens then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think it through, Ali. Odin hates you. He’s an extension of Kevin’s subconscious. Kevin hated Dr. Helvelius, and Odin killed him. Wouldn’t Kevin have had even more anger toward you? Once that probe is in your brain, Odin can kill you in a millisecond.”

  “Look at the countdown, Harry. Eleven minutes. In eleven minutes, he’s going to kill us anyway. This is the only chance we have.”

  “I … I can’t do it.”

  “You must do it. I implore you to do it for me. In a way, I’m responsible for all this. These bombs, the lust for ransom—this wasn’t Kevin. This was the action of an angry, desperate, ruined man. I made him that way. If I had given Kevin another chance, there would never have been any Project Vesuvius. I need to try to set things right. I don’t want to die carrying this guilt with me.”

  “No! Just because—”

  “Don’t argue. There isn’t time for that.” As she spoke, Ali opened a bottle of rubbing alcohol and sploshed it over the end of the probe. With the probe in her left hand, she stuck a sterile gauze packet between her teeth and ripped it open with her right hand, then wiped the blade of the probe dry. “Hold this,” she said, passing the probe to Harry. “Hold it only by the black circuit box on the end. The blade of the probe must remain sterile.”

  “Jeez, Ali.” Harry took the probe, clutching it rigidly, with the point upward.

  Ali bent over the drawer from which she had taken the probe and fished out a loosely coiled gray cable. Steadying Harry’s hand in her own, she attached the cable to a receptacle on the side of the probe’s circuit box, and then walked toward the mainframe computer, unravelling the cable as she went. There was a metallic click as she shoved the end plug of the cable into a slot on the mainframe.

  “The probe is online, Odin. You may run a performance check if you desire.”

  “TIME TO DETONATION: TEN MINUTES.”

  “No!” screamed Ali. Her voice was so shrill that Harry almost dropped the probe in shock. “You will stop the countdown. You will suspend it immediately, or there will be no interface.”

  “THERE IS NO INCOMPATIBILITY. I ESTIMATE THAT THE MAPPING CAN BE COMPLETED AT LEAST THREE MINUTES BEFORE DETONATION OCCURS.”

  “Damn you! Damn you and your estimate!” shouted Ali. “This is my precondition. It is not negotiable. Stop the countdown or I
will not permit the interface. Is this understood?”

  “AFFIRMATIVE. THE COUNTDOWN IS SUSPENDED. YOU HAVE FOUR MINUTES TO COMPLETE THE INTERFACE. IF THE INTERFACE IS NOT EFFECTED BY THEN, THE COUNTDOWN WILL RESUME.”

  Ali gave Harry a grim look. “I understand your reluctance, but there’s … there’s just no time. Will you do what I ask?”

  “I have no choice, do I?” said Harry.

  Ali did not answer. With a jerk of her hand, she swept the small operating table clean of the stacks of journals and photocopied articles piled atop it. There was a bang as the falling papers knocked over a small metal wastebasket.

  “Do you have visual, Odin? Can you triangulate the probe’s entry path?”

  “INADEQUATE. I HAVE ONLY TWO VIEWS FROM THE OPERATIONAL SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS IN THIS ROOM. I NEED A THIRD VIEW TO RECONSTRUCT THE Z-AXIS.”

  “Use this.” Ali grabbed the neck of a camera tripod beside the operating table, one that Kevin had used to record his experiments, and thrust it as high as it would go. Then she tilted the camera down toward the table. There was a coaxial cable connecting the camera to one of the computers. Ali disconnected this and reconnected it to the mainframe. “Does that work?” she asked, brusquely.

  “NEGATIVE. PLEASE RECHECK THE INPUT CONNECTIONS.”

  Ali ran her gaze along the cable up to the camera itself. “Oh, shit!” she muttered, as she stood on tip-toes to reach for the power switch on the camera. In a second a small red light came on. “Now?”

  “AFFIRMATIVE. VISUAL INPUT IS NOW ADEQUATE FOR TRIANGULATION.”

  Ali met Harry’s gaze, steeling herself, afraid that he would lose heart if he could see how terrified she really was. Saying nothing, she slid onto the table, lying on her back. The table had been designed for dogs and other small animals, so her legs dangled over the edge. She brushed her hair back, and for a moment cradled her eyes in her hands as she took a deep breath. When she took her hands away she saw Harry standing over her, his face as white as a corpse.

  “Are you … sure about this?” he asked.

  Ali addressed him like one of her surgical residents, the way Helvelius had taught her. “You will need to hold my upper eyelid open with the thumb of your left hand,” she said, taking his hand in hers and guiding him into position. “It’s easier if you brace your hand against my forehead, like so. The probe must enter at the crease above the eyeball, near the inner corner of the eye. As you push in, you will be guided by a solid feeling of the roof of the eye socket just above the probe. Follow it, without actually scraping against the bone, if possible.”

  “What if I go in wrong? I could blind you.”

  “If you stay close to the bone, you will avoid the optic nerve and the blood vessels alongside it.”

  “This is madness.”

  “Harry, the probe is very sharp. You do not need to force it. Push it forward with a firm but steady pressure. You will feel a slight resistance, and then a give as you break through the fascia at the back of the eye socket. After that you will be inside the brain, and from then on only gentle force is needed. It will be like pushing an icepick into warm butter. The brain has no feeling, Harry. Once you are through the eye socket, I will feel no pain. You will direct the probe as Odin tells you. By then, I will be unable to help you. But I will feel no pain. Go slowly. At the end, a hundredth of an inch is the distance between life and death.”

  “No, it’s impossible!”

  “Look at the monitor.” She pointed to the big LCD screen to Harry’s left. There Odin had obligingly, almost eagerly, drawn three views of the outlines of Ali’s face and skull—front, side, and top. On each view, the path the probe was to follow was marked in yellow. There were numbers beside each projection. “Those numbers show how far the probe is deviating from the track it must follow, in degrees, minutes, and seconds of arc,” said Ali. “You must keep the probe angled so as to hold those numbers as close to zero as possible. The number on the bottom of the screen tells the distance to the target. When it reaches zero, let go.”

  “God help us,” said Harry.

  “And one other thing, Harry. If you fail … if you are unable to reach the target, you must try again. Forget about me. The interface is what matters. The amygdala is a paired structure. There is another target on the left side. I won’t be able to help, but do whatever Odin tells you. It will give you a second chance.”

  She looked away from Harry, away from the daggerlike point of the probe that hovered inches above her eye. Above her were only ceiling tiles, ivory white, finely rippled like sand beneath a softly trickling mountain stream. She tried to imagine the flow of that crystal-clear current, and the blue sky far above the whispering treetops. It brought back a scene from one of her trips with Kevin—a place called Tuolumne Meadows, in the mountains of California. She had felt so serene there that she had memorized every rock and flower and pinecone so she could call the moment back, like a mystical incantation, whenever she needed to escape the stress of life. But now it was out of reach. Her breathing was fast and ragged. Her neck felt stiff against the cold naugahyde of the table. It took all her strength not to scream.

  “Now, Harry!” she gasped, gripping the sides of the table in both hands.

  “I can’t.”

  “Now—while I still have the courage!”

  She heard him take a deep breath. Then the tremulous tip of the probe passed just above her field of view, and she felt a sharp twinge as it made contact with the sensitive conjunctiva, the moist pink tissue that rimmed the pearly white of her eyeball. Her eyelids instinctively fought to close, to sweep the probe away like a cinder. Only Harry’s thumb kept them open. Her eye, too, quivered, like an animal trying to escape. The muscles of her face convulsed. Pain flared with such dazzling intensity that it whited out the ceiling, the probe, and Harry’s downcast face. Oh, God! Oh, God! What made me think that I could do this? Ali steeled herself, knowing that the probe must come in straight. She made her face and body hard, forcing her breath through clenched teeth. How much more? How much more? A scrape, as the probe, like a red-hot spear, gouged the delicate periosteum that lined the bone of her eye socket. Damn him! He’s hit the bone. Get it away! Get it away! Then the fire ebbed, as the probe backed up and resumed its course beneath the roof of bone. She couldn’t tell if the probe was moving fast or slow now. It felt like it was twisting aimlessly, cruelly, stupidly. What are you doing, damn you! Her face was wet. She couldn’t tell if it was from tears or blood.

  And then, when the pain had reached a crescendo beyond all imagining, she felt a kind of pop—and all her agony vanished. In its wake her senses were left dulled. It was as though she were floating on a still warm sea under a starless midnight sky. She knew that this meant that the probe had entered her brain. But she was still conscious.

  She thought, I must gather my strength. When the probe begins to function, I must force my way in. I am stronger than Odin and I can overpower him. If he truly mimics Kevin’s subconscious, then there must be something in him of the trust and tenderness Kevin and I once had together. I must rely on this to find my way … to find … to find …

  She felt Harry’s hand upon her forehead, but his touch was lighter now. In the web of his thumb, she saw the tiny wrinkles in his bronze, sun-baked skin. She reached out and laid her hand on his. She had always thought of herself as dark, but her skin seemed so much paler now, like silver against Harry’s bronze. His fingers entwined gently around hers, pulling her up off the table. He took her fingertips and placed them to his mouth, where she read from the creases of his lips, Braille-like, the innermost strivings of his soul. His desire, she read, was for her. She felt it flow, like running water, from his mouth to her hand, down her arm, and engorging the points of her breasts.

  A lie! Ali thought, with a flash of anger. This is a fantasy. A mouse turned up by Odin’s plow as it tracks the furrows of my brain. It means nothing. I must focus myself on the task at hand—find Kevin’s access portal to the core of Odin’s pro
gramming. Find it and shut him down. But how? Even as the dream continued, like a television set playing in the background, her ability to think remained intact. Except for the dream, all seemed normal. There was no voice of Odin, no hum of the machinery of his mind—no sign whatsoever of any other presence. Face me, Odin! Show yourself! she cried out in her thoughts. But there was no answer.

  Odin is logic, she thought. SoI must speak his language. She fixed her mind on a single number, the number four—the smallest even square number, the only nonzero number that is the sum of its square roots. No sooner had she thought of it, than her consciousness exploded in a shower of numbers—not written numerals, but pure concepts of number itself, numbers appearing singly, numbers in matrices, numbers in series that trailed off into infinity:

  1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 24, 29, 32, 41, 56, 96, 128 …

  0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377 …

  She saw theorems like:

  (x12 + x22+ x32x42)(y12 + y22 + y32 + y42) = (x1y1 + x2y2 + x3y3 + x4y4)2 + (x1y2 − x2y1 + x3y4−x4y3)2 +(x1y3−x3y1+x4y2−x2y4)2+ (x1y4−x4y1+x2y3−x3y2)2

  a formula which she had never seen before, but which she now recognized as Euler’s four-square identity.

  None of this could have originated within her. It bore Odin’s unmistakable fingerprint. Ali felt a rush of excitement as she realized that she had succeeded in breaking into Odin’s mind. But even as she congratulated herself, she knew that Odin was also at work within her—driving his electronic scalpel deep into her subconscious:

  Her hands glided over Harry’s shoulders, which were like granite, all massifs and valleys. The skin of his pectorals glistened, and she pressed her face against them, smelling him, smelling his scent of leather and iron and ancient stone. She felt herself dissolve, and like a sea, enwrap his naked body. Enter me! Make me nothing! Make me a universe! She was night and day. She was khamsin, the hot, dry wind of fifty days, wailing across the desert.