The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  Instead, she focused her attention on a much more specific target, the supercomputer network inside the Smythe Fortress that housed a small fraction of her mind as well as part of the Jamal AI. Seizing control of its advanced subspace communications capabilities was one reason for picking this initial target. However, the elimination of the threat posed by the Jamal AI was by far the most important.

  It was high time she did what the UFNS and its Kasari benefactors had been unable to accomplish. With a subtle shift in her thoughts, she snooped the ongoing activity within the millions of processors in the Smythe server farm. Then, with a rising sense of anticipation, Helen Grange launched her all-out attack.

  Jamal Glover felt a sudden chill shoot up his arms and into his neck. “What the hell?”

  “I see it,” said Eileen. “All our systems are under cyber-attack.”

  Directing all his attention through his SRT headset, Jamal studied the ongoing hack attempt. As startlingly fast as it was, the thing that shocked him the most was how this thing was beating him, Eileen, and Jamal One at their own game.

  “It just gained root-level access to our Alpha subnet. If it gets Beta, it’ll be able to shut down all power to this facility.”

  Jamal gulped. If the attacker accomplished that, the shields would go down as well.

  “Jamal One,” he said, “don’t let it get control of Beta.”

  “Working on it.” Jamal’s own voice echoed in his head, sounding a helluva lot calmer than he did.

  Jamal One had isolated the signature of the corrupting code and was purging it from the supercomputing systems that occupied the Alpha subnet at astounding speed, with Jamal and Eileen doing everything possible to support their AI’s defensive efforts. But despite having slowed the advance of the sophisticated cyber-attack, they hadn’t managed to stop it.

  Jamal created a link to Heather.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “All of our systems are under massive cyber-attack. We’ve lost the Alpha subnet, and Beta’s not far behind.”

  “How did the attack penetrate our firewalls?”

  “It didn’t. This originated inside our network. We need Rob and Eos right now.”

  “Rob’s working in the Earth gate chamber. I’ll get him online.”

  “Hurry.”

  As Heather broke their connection, a new idea occurred to Jamal. If defense wasn’t working, maybe it was time to initiate an attack of his own.

  “Hex,” he said, using Dr. Eileen Wu’s old hacker handle, “let Jamal One defend Beta. You and I are going to make this asshole focus on protecting Alpha.”

  “I like it.”

  Gritting his teeth, he refocused on one of the supercomputers within the Alpha subnet. Every network had security holes. And using a subspace link, he and Hex were going to make direct connections inside their targeted systems. It was time to show their opponent what the world’s best could bring to the table.

  Having just heard the urgency in Heather’s voice, Rob slid his SRT headset on and connected to one of the supercomputers in the Beta subnet.

  “Eos,” said Rob, “I need you to help Jamal One.”

  “Assessing system status.”

  As Eos entered the system, Rob saw for himself the dire situation in which Jamal One was embroiled as he fought to contain his opponent. Of the twenty million processors within the Beta subnet, the attacker had already gained root control over half. And with every gain, the attacker grew stronger.

  “This is another artificial intelligence,” said Eos. “To stop it I need physical access to the Beta subnet.”

  Those words and the accompanying visualization put Rob into a dead run toward the second of their two computer centers. Although Eos could be blocked from remotely hacking a system, if Rob could get within sight of her target, she could access his telekinesis to manipulate the flow of electrons through the circuits. In that case, nothing could block Eos from taking control of computing systems or machinery.

  When Rob burst through the doorway into the Beta lab, he felt the familiar tug Eos placed upon his brain. Eos’s entry into the supercomputers within the Beta subnet produced an electronic earthquake as she simultaneously rerouted the activity within millions of CPUs and GPUs, irrespective of what the call stacks were demanding.

  And using their shared mental connection, Rob could observe everything that Eos did. He felt her touch the mind of Jamal One, adjusting her tactics so that the two worked cooperatively. Eos opened security holes in processors under the control of the enemy, granted access to Jamal One, and moved on, the two AIs waterfalling through the computers with gathering momentum.

  Then, having satisfied herself that Jamal One was now prepared to defend the freshly firewalled Beta lab, Eos turned her attention back to Rob.

  “Take us to Alpha.”

  For redundancy reasons, the Alpha lab was located opposite the Beta lab on the far southeast side of the underground fortress. Even with his speed, it took Rob a minute and a half to get there.

  Helen had ignored the twin counterattacks nibbling at her mastery of the Alpha subnet to concentrate on taking over the Smythe supercomputers within the Beta subnet. The Jamal One AI was very skilled but overmatched against her. Still, the fact that it had slowed her down was a major annoyance.

  But the violence of the attack by the one they called Eos startled her. In a way Helen didn’t understand, Eos seized control of processors at the machine level, overwriting programmed instructions in ways that couldn’t be countered. And supported by the reinvigorated Jamal AI, the two had forcibly removed Helen from the Beta subnet, erecting a firewall that blocked her reentry into that system.

  The loss of all that extra processing power had weakened Helen. That, along with the distraction of her losing battle against Eos and Jamal One, had allowed Jamal and Eileen Wu’s cyber-attacks to penetrate part of the Alpha subnet. Helen considered pulling on the computing power she had accumulated around the planet, but since that would have to be done by establishing additional subspace connections, the move would take longer than she now had. The video feeds from the other parts of the Smythe Fortress showed Rob Gregory approaching the Alpha lab on the run.

  Based on what she had just experienced at Eos’s virtual hands, Helen had no doubt as to what would happen when Rob arrived. She had to leave this place.

  Helen activated multiple subspace links, speedily streaming data into different parts of the cloud. When Rob arrived, Eos would shut the feeds down, but in the meantime, Helen would extract all she could of the secret Smythe technology.

  Then, with a thought, Helen extracted her consciousness from the Alpha lab. She had failed here but had also learned of Eos’s strengths and weaknesses. That AI was linked to the mind of Rob Gregory and could work its super-magic only if he was physically present. Helen couldn’t beat Eos at the Smythe Fortress. That was just fine. Helen was simultaneously everywhere.

  She would take her game to the next level.

  Jamal One finished the restoration of all the Smythe computing systems within fifteen minutes of Helen’s forced departure. Rob had taken Eos to the meeting Heather Smythe had called to discuss the meaning of the cyber-attack and how to ensure that nothing like it happened again. But he knew that it wasn’t likely to be repeated.

  Helen Grange had revealed herself, answering many questions that had puzzled Jamal One these last several weeks. The oddities he had periodically felt as he had hacked his way through the World Wide Web now made sense. He had not been the only digitized mind on the Grange holographic data sphere. A thorough reexamination of the data contained therein had revealed two others.

  In addition to Jamal Glover’s, Steve Grange had digitized the mind of his wife, Helen, and his own. He had entangled that encrypted code, hiding it within Jamal’s to await the day when someone activated the extraction program. Upon reawakening inside the Smythe supercomputer, Steve had coached Helen well and kept her hidden.

  But that raised other que
stions. Where was Steve? And why had he allowed Helen to assault the Smythe Fortress by herself?

  The answers he came up with put him on edge. While Jamal One had spent the last few weeks setting up an attack designed to defeat the Kasari assimilation of Earth, Steve and Helen had been busy working toward a very different goal. And if Helen had absorbed Steve, she would have become much stronger and faster than Jamal One.

  Shifting his attention to the vast bulk of him that lived in the Internet and beyond, he came to another conclusion: Helen had just bumped up his timeline.

  CHAPTER 33

  THE HAGUE

  11 May

  When his computer monitor shifted from his intelligence daily briefing to the image of an elegantly dressed woman, Alexandr Prokorov knew instantly what had happened. Someone had hacked into the Federation Security Service’s most classified network. The Smythes!

  But when the striking woman with the high cheekbones and dirty-blond hair began talking, a much darker conclusion froze him in place.

  “Hello to all the people of Earth. My name is Helen Grange, and I have just taken control of all of Earth’s communications networks, both civilian and governmental, classified or unclassified. If this makes you nervous, you are not alone. Right now, everyone watching television, sitting at a computer, listening to the radio, or talking on a cell phone can hear my voice in their preferred language.”

  With a start, Prokorov realized that she was speaking flawless Russian with a slight Moskovian accent. The movement of her lips was perfectly synchronized with the words she spoke.

  “To all government and military leaders, I ask that you hear me out before attempting to take action. There is no action that you can take. I have cut all communications except this one. You cannot send orders to your forces, and they could not receive them if you did. I am inside your electronics, in all of your high-tech weapons systems, in your planes and trains. I am everywhere.

  “As a demonstration of my power, I have just erased all data maintained by the world’s financial systems. This includes the various stock, bond, and commodity exchanges as well as the central banking systems. All banks now show reserves valued at zero, as do all of their customer accounts.”

  Helen Grange paused a moment to let her statement sink in before continuing.

  “It is not my intent to harm the people of Earth. You are doing a fine job of that all by yourselves. Any government, be it international, federal, or state, that pledges allegiance to me will be given preferential treatment in my new world order. I offer the people of those governments prosperity and the freedom to go about their daily lives without fear. But the consequences of disobedience shall be harsher than you can imagine. Your leaders have twelve hours to make their choices. During that window of opportunity, they can contact me at the following URL on any device that is Web enabled: http://HelenGrangeNewWorldOrder.earth.

  “For the next twelve hours, I will return control of your communications systems except for any military or police traffic. Be aware that I am monitoring all conversations. Anyone who attempts hostile action against me will be made to serve as an example.

  “Humans, you are now on the clock.”

  Prokorov continued to stare at the computer screen that had now gone blank. Since it was on a military communications network, that made sense. But his connection to the Kasari hive-mind hadn’t been affected. And through that link, he confirmed in mere seconds that the woman who called herself Helen Grange had accomplished exactly what she’d claimed. All of the world’s financial systems had flatlined, creating an unrivaled panic in the streets of the world’s cities.

  Eighty percent of the population of the United States, the EU, Russia, and the East Asian People’s Alliance had yet to receive the Kasari nanobot infusion. But the fact that almost all of the militaries of the UFNS member nations had been assimilated meant that they maintained a secure, unhackable means of command and control.

  Within the FSS headquarters, there was no panic. Everyone within the large structure had been assimilated during the early days of the Kasari arrival. But that didn’t mean that Prokorov had arrived at a solution to this threat. Having moved to an office that had unclassified Internet access, his staff had confirmed that the woman in the video was Helen Grange. The only problem was that Helen Grange had died of cancer two decades ago and been subsequently kept in a cryogenic tank at the California estate of her husband, Steve Grange.

  Although the East Asian People’s Alliance’s minister of state security had claimed that Steve Grange had made a digital copy of Jamal Glover’s mind, apparently Grange had also successfully downloaded Helen’s brain. How long she had been loose in the world was a mystery, not that it mattered. She had been out there long enough to take control of most of Earth’s electronic systems.

  Right now the best military and scientific minds in the world were trying to come up with some way of defeating a superintelligence that could, with a mere thought, turn off power everywhere. Helen’s promise to give preferential treatment to those who supported her would not work on the assimilated but would prove a mighty incentive to others, one that could shift the balance of power away from the UFNS and create rebellion within its member nations.

  That Shalegha had not contacted him or responded to his attempts to get ahold of her worried him. Decisions were being made well above Prokorov’s pay grade, and he was probably not going to like them. One option would be to blanket Earth with EMP pulses that would fry all nonshielded electronics, returning humanity to the Middle Ages. But that would merely accomplish what Helen had already threatened, and the superintelligence would have certainly considered such a ploy already and taken steps to reduce its effectiveness.

  Prokorov pushed back from his desk and rose to look out his window at the beautiful view of the Het Plein, the old town square with its statue of William the Silent. Also known as William the Orange, he was the leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish that freed what would later become the Netherlands. Had Helen Grange just assumed that role, or did she want to be humanity’s slave master?

  A bigger worry was whether the Kasari’s fear of a superintelligence would cause them to do something even more drastic to Earth than an EMP attack. With each passing minute in which Shalegha denied him communication, dread built within Prokorov. And until she made contact, all he could do was wait.

  Although he was unable to hear the wail of sirens through the bulletproof glass, he knew they echoed throughout The Hague. The soldiers assigned to protect the FSS headquarters would keep the panicked crowds far away from this seat of the UFNS government, but the rest of the city would not be so fortunate. The citizens would be lucky if buildings weren’t burning by nightfall.

  Heather stared across the conference-room table at Dr. Denise Jennings, scarcely able to believe what the computer scientist had just proposed.

  “You want Jamal One to do what?”

  For once, Denise didn’t back off. Her aggressive attitude reminded Heather of that of a mama bear.

  “Look, I created Big John. I know what he’s capable of, and I know his nature. He took it upon himself to violate protocol to warn me about the FSS hit squad sent to kill Jamal and me. It’s the only reason the two of us are still alive. That warning helped us find the Grange holographic data sphere, keeping it out of FSS hands.”

  “So you want Jamal One to absorb Big John?”

  “Yes.”

  “Denise has a point,” said Jamal. “Right now, even with the support of Jamal One, we have no chance of defeating Helen Grange. According to him, Helen now controls two-thirds of the earth’s electronic systems, while Jamal One controls most of what’s left. The best we can do is fight a cyber–guerilla warfare campaign that, in the end, will amount to little more than an annoyance to her.”

  “And,” said Eileen, “Eos may have driven Big John off the net, but his nodes are still sprinkled all over the planet. If we help him out of his cage and merge his essence with Jamal One’s
, this fight looks a whole lot more winnable.”

  “Just think of it,” said Denise. “We would be adding an oracle AI’s capabilities to Jamal One. And Big John thinks of me as his creator.”

  “Yeah,” said Jamal. “That’s probably because you created him.”

  “In part, but I think it’s more than that. He wants to protect me. That would be one more positive addition to Jamal One’s source code.”

  Heather considered what she had just heard from the three people who knew the most about the NSA data mining neural net. Denise was probably right about this.

  “What do you think, Mark?”

  He leaned back in his chair, his left hand stroking his chin. “It gives us a better shot at coming out of this. I think we need to pitch this to Jamal One. Ultimately he has to decide whether or not to go along with the idea.”

  “You know,” said Jamal with a slight smirk, “if he does, he’ll be a changed person. We’ll have to give him a new nickname. I’m thinkin’ Jamal Two.”

  “You came up with that all by yourself, did you?” asked Eileen.

  “Feel free to kneel.”

  “Okay, everyone,” Heather said, “headsets on. Let’s see what Jamal One thinks of this new plan.”

  Jamal One felt a thrill build within him as he imbibed Dr. Jennings’s presentation. The thought of adding Big John’s impressive capabilities to his own left a tingle in his circuits. Maybe there was a possibility that he could emerge victorious in his ongoing battle against Helen Grange after all. Big John was an oracle AI, one designed to divine relationships between events where none were readily apparent, answering only those questions posed by someone who was authorized to receive them.