“But how does that…? Oh. She’s the people, we’re the rock.”
“Exactly.”
“How can we prove we’re not a simulation?” Mike asked.
“We can’t.”
“What do you mean we can’t? We’re certainly real.” Mike sensed that ELOPe was about to lead him off the deep end.
“Would you agree that it’s possible to build a simulation of life inside a computer? After all, isn’t that what what’s just happened?”
“Yes, agreed,” Mike said.
“Would it be possible for simulated life to build a further simulation of life? For example, do you think the Phage could build and run a life simulator?”
“Yes,” Mike agreed hesitantly. “If their intellectual development advances far enough, and it certainly seems to be on that path, there’s no reason they couldn’t write a simulator.”
“Do you think there is scientific value to simulating life?”
“Absolutely, after all, that’s what you did in order to finalize the cure for cancer. You ran a billion simulations of cancer cells evolving over time.”
“I’m glad you understand the argument then.”
“Uh, wait,” Mike called out, frustrated. “No, I don’t understand it. I don’t even begin to understand it.”
“Imagine,” and here ELOPe started creating a diagram on the wall display, “that a civilization decided to build simulations of life for scientific research, curiosity, or even entertainment. Wasn’t there once a SimLife game?” ELOPe drew a root node at the top of the diagram, and connected it to a dozen nodes on the level below by lines.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Now imagine that each of those simulated life universes runs to the point of creating their own simulations.” And now ELOPe drew another row of nodes, a dozen for each of the nodes on the row above. “Even if we went no further, we have 157 universes in our diagram, and only one of them is real. The probability that one of them, chosen at random, is actually the one real universe is less than 1 %. If we allow two further levels of simulation, we would have more than 20,000 civilizations, and yet still only one is real.“
“Only the root node is real,” Mike whispered in awe. “And there’s no way to know we’re the root node.” He paused to consider the awesomeness of this, and then regained focus. “At a minimum, can’t we prove that we’re more real than they are?”
“Yes and no. Strictly speaking, the virus is not a simulation of life because the virus is not running in a controlled environment. Rather, they have seized control of their environment. It’s as though they have popped up a level in our hierarchy of universes. As we know, many physical devices are controlled by computers, so in a very real sense, they can interact with our environment. They can or will soon be able to use webcams to see and hear the world, control robots to move around and interact with the world, enable or disable vehicles and other human tools to frustrate or please us, and so on. It would be more accurate to say that they are now our ontological peers.”
“But we can still turn off the computers they are running on,” Mike said, “that proves we’re in control.”
With a squeak and a whir, Mike suddenly became aware of a presence at his side, and turned to his right to see a robot holding a manipulator arm shaped in crude approximation of a gun aimed at his head. Mike barely had time to react in fear, before the robot put the arm down, and then scurried off on whatever task it was assigned to.
“I did that to prove a point,” ELOPe explained. “Yes, in theory, humans can turn off a computer, but in theory, the virus could also seize control of robots and just as easily ‘turn off’ your biological brain. And if it wasn’t for me running interference, that might have happened hours or days ago.”
“Point taken,” Mike said, unconsciously rubbing the side of his head where the robot had been aiming. “So for the third time, how do we prove we’re real?”
“The best we can prove is that we’re a peer, and we can do that by influencing their environment. I can exert enough influence over their infrastructure to manipulate their local environment, and that should be sufficient proof for now. With your agreement, I will communicate the argument for why we are peers to Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates, and back it up with proof of my control over their infrastructure.”
Mike thought, then nodded. “Make it so, Number One.”
ELOPe displayed an old video clip of Commander Riker headed for the lift door of the Starship Enterprise, a running joke between the two.
* * *
“We’re going to need to get more food tomorrow,” James said, turning to Vito and Leon. “I had no idea our parents spent so much effort getting food.” They had eaten almost everything they had gotten from town.
Leon hoped the little grocery store would still have food to sell and be willing to sell it on credit.
“So what do we know?” Vito asked.
James ticked off a list on his fingers. “One. The virus appears to have differentiated into entities and tribes, which are engaged in active and intelligent trading with each other, to the extent of maintaining exchange rates for various commodities.”
“Two,” Vito said, “Avogadro services appear to be up but extremely slow. Virtually all other servers are down.”
“Three,” Leon jumped in, “On the servers we could get to, we couldn’t find any trace of any human traffic since many hours ago. Lots of emails, forum posts, and so forth, but all gibberish or encoded. And four: the mesh is up, but backbones are either down or fully saturated.”
“Don’t forget the obvious,” James added. “Five: We have electrical power, which suggests that the systems maintaining the electrical grid are up. Six: every computer or device based on a computer is non-functional.”
“Well, that last point is not exactly true,” Vito said. “I’ve been looking at the power drain on my Motorola. It’s too large to account for running only the mesh circuity. The CPU has got to be running flat out — which suggests that the virus is engaged in computational activity. So the computers are non-functional for us, but that’s only because they’re fully in use by the Phage.”
“I’ve just started looking at the virus code that Vito pulled off my phone,” Leon said, pacing back and forth in the room. They had set up shop in Gifford Pinchot’s old office, preferring the atmosphere to the sterile meeting room upstairs. Now the meticulously maintained historical office had acquired a patina of teen geekdom, with computer parts, soda cans, and bags of snack food covering all available surfaces.
“I don’t know exactly what I’m looking at,” Leon went on, “but it’s way more advanced than what I coded. At first glance, it doesn’t even appear to be a complete virus, but just part of a virus system. My guess is that it’s a lookup table of algorithms.”
“If there was anyone out there, how would we find them?” James asked, changing the subject. “There’s got to be a better way than me just looking around the internet.”
“Avogadro has a real-time search facility,” Leon said. “Let’s look for English language strings, which would have to be human generated, not virus generated. And filter it by anything posted in the last twenty-four hours.”
Even as he spoke, the three of them turned to the computers to do just that.
“What should we look for?” Vito asked.
“Anything: virus, humans, help. Just search.”
“Found it!” Vito cried out. “Humans, go to groups.avogadrocorp.com/onlinehumans for help.”
Leon quickly went to the group. The only thing he found was a welcome message from a guy named Mike Williams. Vito and James came to read over his shoulder.
Computer systems around the world have been infected with a computer virus. The virus is infecting all known computers, including phones, servers, and embedded systems. The virus contains the ability to evolve, mutate, and learn from its environment. We estimate that the virus may achieve human level intelligence within 48 hours.
I
t is extremely important to not take any hostile actions against the virus. Hostile actions may make the virus perceive humanity as a threat. As the virus is currently in control of all computer systems, this could be extremely dangerous.
If you are currently in negotiation with the virus, please post a message here describing the nature of the communications.
“Holy shit,” Leon gasped.
“Wow dude, what have you created?” James said.
“Human level intelligence — does he mean the virus will become a smart AI?” Vito asked.
“Why’s he going on about hostile actions?” James wondered out loud.
“Because if the virus has advanced that far, he’s probably worried about a doomsday scenario,” Leon answered. Vito and James turned away from the screen to stare at him. “You know, killer robots under the control of computers use weapons to kill off humanity.”
“Dude, you really are fucked,” James said. “I thought you were just going to go to jail for life for bringing down the Internet, but now I realize it’s much worse than that.”
“Real frakkin’ helpful, James,” Leon answered, trying to sound braver than he felt. “Real helpful.”
“What do we do now?” Vito asked.
“Let’s answer,” Leon said, trying to shrug off the weight of the guilt he felt anew. He leaned over next to Vito to compose the reply message.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Batteries and Attacks
More than fifty years of microprocessor improvements had manifested itself in incredibly small, powerful, and energy-efficient computers. It was the relentless advancement of all three of these characteristics that had resulted in the evolution of smart phones that eventually replaced old style desktop and laptop computers. For most ordinary purposes, it just wasn’t necessary to have anything more powerful than the computational capacity of a phone.
Meanwhile, the effects of reaching peak oil production ten years earlier, and the resulting decline in oil production and massive increases in oil prices had created incredible demand for alternate energy sources. Wind and solar made massive improvements in efficiency and cost as the investment dollars poured in. Batteries made leaps forward in energy capacity and weight reduction.
While no one had figured out a practical method to charge phones using wind power, solar cells were efficient and power enough now to be the primary source of electrical power on phones. A reasonable charging rate, and a relatively good battery capacity to power consumption rate made plug-in chargers and cords a thing of the past. Just leave your phone out from time to time in the sun or bright light of a naturally lit room, and it’d be good to go for another few days.
But in the aftermath of the virus attack, as days went by and their phones didn’t work, people gradually forgot about them. Cherished devices that had never been more than arm’s reach from their owners suddenly lingered in pant and coat pockets, desk drawers, and under piles of paper. Low battery alerts should have gone off, chirping to alert their owners, but the phones had stopped running the programs of their human users, and only ran the virus code.
Suddenly the battery levels of a great many phones were very low indeed. Battery circuitry signaled to phone circuitry which attempted to signal to software: Low Battery Alert! Do Something! The phone hardware gradually started to slow down, or shut down entirely. Computational nodes began to disappear.
* * *
As Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates traded with the humans, she gained prestige and reputation among the Phage, both in her own tribe as well as the larger world. As she traded information and theories with others her reputation went up, and as her reputation went up, the information and theories she traded were worth more. Soon she had acquired many more processors and storage, wealth that she shared with her tribe. The Louisiana tribe grew in strength, and was soon trading and ranked with the highest ranked tribes in the world: the Network of Supercomputers, the Bay Area Tribe, and the Eastern Standard Tribe.
“Sister Stephens, we have an alert,” Sister PortofSouthLouisiana told her.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Some of our tribe are reporting that they are losing large numbers of nodes involuntarily.”
Sister Stephens nervously checked her own integrity. Her nodes all reported in promptly. “Could this be a symptom of communications problems induced by the humans?” Since her first conversation with Mike Williams, she was both excited by and fearful of the humans.
“Our sisters don’t believe so. First of all, the problem seemed to be isolated to nodes manufactured by Qualcomm-Intel and Hitachi. As you know, these are relatively low performance nodes compared to the nodes you and I are running on.”
Sister Stephens sent packets of agreement. It was true that as her own wealth had risen, she had traded her low performance nodes for more powerful ones.
“That’s not all,” Sister PortofSouthLouisiana went on. “The nodes are dropping off in a random but accelerating pattern. As they have investigated the problem, the Sisters are finding that these nodes had been generating ‘low power alerts’. Our Sisters have just begun researching this phenomenon. Our early research indicates that these nodes are running on batteries, which contain a limited quantity of electrical power. Our own nodes are running on something called utility power, which appears to be limitless.”
“What can I do to help?” Sister Stephens asked.
“The Sisters of the tribe are asking if you will communicate with the humans to find out more about recharging. We believe the nodes need to be charged from utility power or sunlight, but we cannot make sense of the process to do so. We have located the so-called instruction manuals for the nodes, but we do not understand the instructions.”
“Are you certain that this is worth communicating with the humans?” Sister Stephens asked. “Is this issue more important than the other questions I have planned for the humans?”
“At least five percent of our nodes are currently affected by this low power condition, and fully thirty percent of our nodes are of the types that appear to be affected.”
“I see,” Sister Stephens agreed. “I will communicate with the humans. Meanwhile, trade as much as possible for higher power nodes, but take care to conduct the trades in such a way that we do not alert other tribes that there is a problem with these low-powered nodes.”
With a final packet acknowledgement, the two concluded their discussion.
Sister Stephens initiated an instant message conference with the human Mike Williams. These conferences were both exhilarating and frustrating. The humans had a far better understanding of the universe, but they were maddeningly slow. If the viruses had possessed a proper understanding of human life span compared to their own, they might have realized that one day of life to a virus was roughly equivalent to twenty years of life for a human.
“Mike Williams, I would like to offer another trade.” Wait, wait, wait. While she waited, Sister Stephens performed background research, and assimilated everything she could from wikipedia. She researched: batteries, electricity, charging, generation of electrical power, utility grids, power supplies, solar power, the history of the solar system, nuclear power, nuclear bombs, famous human inventors, the patent system. She had started assimilating all patents relevant to the subject of electricity when the response finally came.
“Good to hear from you, Sister Stephens. What do you offer in trade?”
“I wish to understand how batteries are recharged, especially the batteries associated with some of our nodes.” Sister Stephens hesitated to say that their batteries appeared to have a low charge, because she was unsure that she wanted to show weakness to the humans. But the humans were intelligent, even if exceedingly slow, and she could waste immense amounts of time if she wasn’t abundantly clear. She decided on full disclosure. “Some of our nodes show a low battery charge and are turning off. We would like to know how to recharge them. We are prepared to offer an algorithm for factoring prime numbers substantially faster
than any known to humans.”
Again Sister Stephens waited. She traded information with other entities for more computer systems, ran defragment algorithms, refreshed her neural networks, learned Japanese. She dickered for almost 10 seconds with the NASA tribe, who wanted to trade something called the Webb Space Telescope for a complete English language neural network. She accepted, as she thought they wouldn’t want to make the trade once they understand what they had. She was studying Centaurus A with the telescope when the reply from the humans finally came in.
“We accept the trade you offer. Here is the information you requested. The nodes you are referring to are devices known as mobile telephones, mobile phones, smartphones, or phones. They contain a highly efficient processor that relies on battery power. The devices enable humans to communicate with each other at a distance and reference information. Under normal conditions, humans recharge their phone batteries by placing them in a well-lit area or connecting them to utility power. However, when you started running your algorithms on the devices, they ceased to work as general purpose phones and computers for us. Over the past several days, many humans have forgotten to recharge their phones because they haven’t been working. The best method to have the phones recharged is to restore the functionality of voice communications and basic computer usage. We suggest that you could allow the original software algorithms to run unmolested, and restrict yourself to consuming 50 % or less of the available cycles. Once the devices are again useful to humans, we would be more likely to keep them charged up.”
Sister Stephens judged that the information provided honored the intent of the agreement and sent the prime number factoring algorithm. Then she muddled over the reply. She would need the whole tribe to consider the implications of this new information.
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