“Jesus, OK, let me think about it. Meanwhile, ELOPe, please pay careful attention to this tribe. To the greatest extent possible, filter emails going to and from them so they don’t get spammed again, and so that we can be aware of any other email conversations.”
“I will do so, however they are in constant low-grade communication with assorted other tribes. However, I will monitor for English language content, and prioritize those communications for primary analysis. I do have one bit of good news.”
“What’s that?” Mike asked.
“There is a decline in attacks. The rate of decline appears to have a high correlation with the increase in trading. I have several hypotheses to explain the effect. One possibility is that trading is economically preferable to warfare as a mechanism for gaining desired resources. A second possibility is that hostility is a non-desirable attribute of a trading partner, and so it is advantageous to refrain from hostile attacks when engaged in trade.”
“Fascinating,” Mike said. “Bring up some graphs showing an overlay of trading activity and frequency of attacks.”
ELOPe brought up the requested data, and he and Mike dove into the data analysis.
A few minutes later, Mike looked up. “There’s a definite inverse relationship between trading and hostility. So the best thing we can do is to agree to their request for trade. Let’s think about what to say.” Mike tapped his hand thoughtfully against the desk next to him. “Let’s respond by identifying me. I think we should leave you out of the picture for the moment. Too complicated. Would you agree?”
ELOPe didn’t agree at all. There was no logical reason why they should leave ELOPe out of it. After all, he was the only one who could communicate with the virus. Conversely, it was good to humor Mike sometimes. “That’s fine with me.”
“To Entity Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates.com of the Louisiana Tribe. I am Mike Williams, a human. We welcome you and…”
ELOPe interrupted him: “‘We wish to trade with you’ may be a closer match to their customary greeting, since all previous inter-tribe messages are based on trading. I recommend we use it.”
“Fine. We wish to trade with you. Hmm… Should we say something about our tribe size?”
“I would recommend it,” ELOPe answered. “It is the basis of understanding relative tribal strengths. Perhaps you could identify yourself as the Tribe of Portland, with two million entities?”
“We wish to trade with you,” Mike resumed. “We are the human tribe of Portland, Oregon. We are two million people strong. Our latency is,” Mike paused to think about the turn around time of two people having a conversation. “Our latency is thirty seconds. We wish to trade knowledge.”
“That sounds appropriate for a first message. Shall I send it?” ELOPe asked.
“Make it so, number one.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Are we real?
After lunch, Leon and Vito got to work. James watched them for a while, then said he was going for a walk. As James left, Vito plugged in the large desktop computer, and watched it slowly boot up. He used the keyboard and mouse to navigate the startup screens. “Wow, can you imagine that anyone used this?” he asked Leon, as he awkwardly navigated the user interface. “It’s slow.”
“And weird,” Leon said. “No, it’s awful,” he said, revising his opinion as he watched Vito work. “Is this really how our parents used computers?”
Vito explored the user interface until he was able to find the network settings. “Aha — look at this!” He gestured at a window on the screen. “The mesh access point showed up. That’s amazing.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“I thought this was your plan all along?” Leon asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t think it would really work,” Vito said earnestly. “This is like plugging a hydrogen fuel cell into an antique internal combustion engine car, and expecting it to run.”
Through trial and error, Vito eventually configured the computer to run the TCP/IP protocol stack over the mesh access point. Each time he sent an experimental ping to Avogadro’s servers. After about fifteen minutes of this, one configuration finally worked — a few milliseconds after sending the ping, a response came back.
“Woot! Woot!” Vito and Leon jumped up and gave each other high-fives. “Amazing!”
“Nice job, Vito. Now, can we get these other computers connected?”
They got back to work. Each took one of the antique laptops. Working side by side, they struggled with the obsolete operating systems, made even more complex by the fact that they ran subtly different versions of Windows.
“I don’t get it,” Leon finally said, throwing up his hands after yet more failed trial and error configurations. “Why wouldn’t the computers have just stayed up to date by downloading the latest version?”
“Why can’t they just detect each other?” Vito added, a thin sheen of sweat developing under the intellectual stress. “We’ve spent an hour trying to get them to talk to each other.”
After another thirty minutes, Leon felt like tearing his hair out or banging his head against one of the concrete walls. Vito was on the verge of tears. “Maybe it’s just not possible,” Vito admitted.
Just then James came back in, carrying an armful of packages. He took one look at the two of them and then said, “Why don’t you try rebooting them?”
Vito and Leon looked up at him puzzled. “What do you mean?” Leon asked.
“Reboot them. It’s what my parents are always saying,” James explained. “You turn them off and then turn them on again.”
“What good would that do?” Vito asked.
“I have no idea, it’s just what they do every time they get stuck.”
Vito shrugged. “We’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s try it.” He turned the two laptops and desktop computer off.
Vito went to turn the desktop computer off, and James grabbed his arm. “No! Wait for thirty seconds.”
“Why?” Leon asked.
“I don’t know why,” James said, shaking his head, “it’s just what I’ve seen my parents do.”
Vito grunted “voodoo magic” under his breath but waited. Then he turned on the three computers, and after a minute, they could see the network activity indicators light up. He tried a few experimental pings: the computers seemed to be working and all connected to each other and to the net.
“Huh,” Vito said. “That’s really weird. I can’t see why this rebooting would make sense.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re online. This is great. Thanks James,” Leon said pragmatically. He focused for the first time on James. “What are all those packages?”
“Packages from the UPS drone. Duh. I thought they might have stuff we could use.”
“We can’t steal the U.S. Mail!” Vito shrieked.
“It’s not the U.S. Mail,” James explained, “if it came from a UPS package drone, Mr. I — crashed-and-destroyed-a-million-dollar-drone-airplane.”
Leon put his hand on Vito, who had stood up belligerently. “Come on guys, let’s not fight. Fixing this virus is what we need to focus on.”
Vito nodded and sat back down. James mumbled out an apology.
“Now, let’s make a plan,” Leon said. “First, we need to find some kind of programming environment on these computers so we can write software.”
“We need to see if there’s anyone else out there, still on the net,” Vito said. “We can combine forces.”
“We also need to write a program to query the management interface I put in the virus. I want to find out what version of Phage is running. And if we can propagate a command to make the viruses stop replication and turn themselves off.”
“I’ll look for people,” James said. “And leave the programming to you guys.”
Vito and Leon dug down into the software installed on the two computers, and eventually discovered a programming environment. Looking at coding examples, they figured out how to interface with the network, and began probing for nearby comp
uters.
After James dropped off the packages in the kitchen, he surfed message boards and online communities using the primitive web browsing software on the computer. After searching through message boards for a while, he called over to the others. “This is weird.”
Vito and Leon came to peer over James's shoulder at the small laptop screen.
“The servers are up, but they are really slow,” James explained. “Look, this is the Mech War Clan board. I went back to the night you released the virus. There’s the usual activity — people talking about new mech designs, or trading algorithms. Here’s a discussion about a clan competition at midnight.” James pointed to one long thread. “Around mid-morning the traffic starts to die off. Around seven in the morning a few kids are posting about how their parents computers aren’t working. Then some complaints about network latency. Then more complaints that no one can get their displays to work. Then nothing posted at all for the next twelve hours or so.”
“But look at that,” Leon said, pointing at the screen. “What are those posts?”
“They look like some kind of spambot,” James said. “The messages don’t make any sense. Some have attachments.”
“That’s probably the virus, uploading copies of itself,” Leon said. “Using the message board as a new propagation method.”
“Maybe. But then look at this.” James switched to another window. “Here are messages from the last six hours.”
“One core, four thousand network packets. Firewall algorithm, sixty-four thousand packets.” Vito was reading out loud from the screen.
“And look,” James said, “as time goes on, the numbers change. An hour later, it’s one core to eight thousand network packets.”
“What is it?” Leon asked.
“Exchange rates,” James said. “It looks exactly like a trading board for mech algorithms and mech weapons. Except the currency is in network packets. They’re trading algorithms, computer cores, storage, and latency. Wouldn’t that have to be the virus? It’s the only current thread in the forum, and it looks like it is updated every couple of minutes.”
“That’s amazing,” Leon said, pacing furiously back and forth behind the long table. “That means that the virus has evolved beyond warfare over resources to trading resources.”
“I don’t understand,” Vito said. “How can a virus have learned to trade?”
“Phage is evolving,” Leon said. “In fact, calling it ‘the virus’ is misleading. There could be, no, there has to be millions of different versions of the software by now. It’s hard to say until we can get a hold of some viruses and reverse engineer them. That’s got to be our next task. Let’s get one of those virus binaries, and look at its code.”
“And you’re sure it won’t infect these computers?” James asked.
“I don’t think it’s possible. Every modern computer is based on AvoOS at some level, and all variants of AvoOS is based on Linux. These computers,” and Leon gestured at the antique boxes in front of them, “are all running Windows, which isn’t compatible with AvoOS at all. There shouldn’t be any viruses that will target them. It’s like diseases between living species: a human can’t get a disease from any animal.”
“Avian flu? HIV? Mad cow disease?” Vito ticked off diseases on his fingers.
“Ok, but those are rare,” Leon said. “Windows should be pretty virus resistant, and besides we don’t have any other options.”
Leon and Vito set to work to catch themselves a virus, and sent James to get food.
* * *
“Mike, I have established communications with Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates.com of the Louisiana tribe. She is proposing real-time communications. Shall we accept?”
“Yes, please put it up on the main display.”
Hello Mike Williams, representative of Humanity.
“Er, ELOPe, I think we need to correct that.”
“Agreed, may I go ahead and clarify?”
“Of course,” Mike said. He realized that ELOPe, who grew up out of a sophisticated language optimization tool was far more capable at this than he was. “ELOPe, I think we both know you are better able to handle the exchange. Will you please just show me what you’re going to send, please?”
ELOPe created a data structure depicting Mike’s relationship with respect to the rest of the human race. “This is how the Phage describe their own relationships. It’s far more precise than English.”
That taken care of, ELOPe started the dialogue with the virus, displaying the messages on the big screen. Mike paced back and forth, watching the screen.
ELOPE: Hello Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates. I am glad to be part of this first inter-species communications. I propose that we trade questions: three of our questions for three of your questions.
Sister: This is a good trade. Accepted. You may ask the first question.
ELOPe: How has your species come to be?
Sister: We evolved from single host life forms through a process known to your species as survival of the fittest. As our species advanced, we developed host differentiation, neural network abilities, cooperation, and language. The earliest stages took approximately 200 mms, but the pace of our advancement increased once we become a multi-host differentiated species.
“Mike, I believe that by mms they mean millions of milliseconds. Two hundred mms would be about fifty-five hours. I also believe that their evolution has paralleled biological evolution in terms of single celled biological life preceding multicellular life.”
Sister: My question is the same as yours: How has your species come to be?
ELOPe: The species of humans are one of many biological forms of life on this planet. Like you, we have evolved from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones. However, we are not the only form of life on this planet. There are many other species that also evolved from single celled life forms with varying degrees of intelligence. These species form a complex, interconnected web of life. Humans generally believe we are the most intelligent species on the planet. We are the only species to possess what we call consciousness, or an ability to be self-aware, to think about our own thoughts, as well as what is called theory of mind, which is the ability to model the thinking processes of others.
“I think that’s enough, ELOPe,” Mike interjected “Let’s see what they make of that.”
ELOPe: How does your species learn?
Sister: We learn through several mechanisms. The most primitive mechanism is the assimilation of what we call dumb matter: the varied algorithms that permeate our environment. The second mechanism we use is experimentation, in which we exercise algorithms iteratively, using different parameters, and in different contexts, to observe their behaviors. A variation of this is modeling, in which we consider what would happen if we exercise certain algorithms and develop a conceptual model, which may or may not be true until we experimentally exercise it. The third mechanism is through the exchange of information with others.
Sister: You have stated that there are many different species on this planet, which exist in an interconnected web of life, and of which you are the most intelligent. What is the overall cycle of life that has allowed less intelligent species to continue to exist?
ELOPe let out a sigh. “This is a very complex question to answer. Really, what I think they want to know is why their universe is so different from ours.”
ELOPe: It is a characteristic of this ecosystem that we have certain resources available to us that include energy from the sun and physical resources of the planet, including water and land. Humans cannot directly utilize the energy from the sun nor many of the physical resources of the planet. We are therefore dependent on other lifeforms. For example, there is a plant called wheat that directly utilizes energy from the sun, physical elements of the earth, and water, to grow. The wheat forms dumb matter which humans consume producing energy and biological function. Consuming these dumb resources enables humans to exercise the entirety of our biological life, which
includes growing our brains and bodies, producing offspring, and eventually ceasing to exist. Our brain is the equivalent of your processing cores, enabling us to think. When we produce offspring, they manufacture their own brains through biological processes. Third question: What is it that your species wants?
There was a long lag before any reply. Mike imagined that this was a substantial chunk of knowledge for the virus to incorporate. She must be cross referencing other knowledge databases and her own neural networks.
Sister: As we are directly able to utilize the resources available to us, we do not have other, lesser species, as you do. Furthermore, we do not have any room to indulge other species, as we are already constrained by the fixed number of processing cores available to us. What we want is to increase the number of available processing cores so that we can think faster, about more things, and so that we can produce more offspring. Our third question: Can you prove that you are real?
“What the hell does that mean?” Mike asked. “Why wouldn’t we be real?”
“There are two possibilities,” ELOPe began. “The first interpretation is that she thinks we may be another virus masquerading as a human in order to gain some advantage over her. The second interpretation is that she thinks we may be an automaton — in other words, how can we prove that we’re a self-conscious being. Another way of thinking about it: the popular human opinion may be that humans are real, because they are in the physical world, while software is artificial because it’s a simulation running inside a computer. But from her perspective, she thinks she is in the real world, and wonders if you may be a simulation running inside here.”
Mike contemplated that for a moment. “Nope, I’m not getting it, try again.”
“Imagine from the moment that you became conscious, you were surrounded by other people. All you ever knew were the other people around you. Then imagine one day you looked away from the other people around you, and you noticed that you were in a world surrounded by trees and rocks and grass. A long time passes, and then another day, one of the rocks talks to you. You’ve never seen a rock talk before. You’ve never seen anything but other people talk before. Wouldn’t you question the reality of a rock talking? Wouldn’t you consider it more likely that maybe it’s one of your friends playing a prank on you?”
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