Fool's Experiments

by Edward M. Lerner

Seeing, even virtually, was believing. This creature might make a real difference to national security. Still...

  Removing the helmet, Glenn could not help wondering what might transform a dolphin back into a shark.

  CHAPTER 56

  Once is random. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern.

  On his third visit, Glenn knew Al could be trusted. His mental image of Al had changed again, from a dolphin to a playful otter.

  He watched from a safe distance as Al examined another sequence of surveillance shots. Glenn could not help grinning as the otter sniffed around what Glenn saw as a map.

  Silly as the scene was (and knowing his own mind generated the view), one fact stood out: Al had become skilled. Underground facilities, possible mobile germ-warfare labs, missile trailers, camouflaged airfields ... his critter now spotted them far faster than Glenn. It spotted stuff Glenn would never have caught. And throughout, it kept its distance.

  This was not AJ's monster.

  "Think of darkness not as the absence of light but as something palpable," Ralph had said. Appropriately, Doug had slain that monster in the dark, in a blackout at midnight. Nightmares came in the dark, as did bad memories.

  To hell with that. Al the Otter was nothing like that. Al was a tool of inestimable national value. Glenn could—and he would—report back positively to the National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO could really use a capability like this.

  Glenn removed his helmet. Captain Burke waited nearby, failing to feign nonchalance. Linda was swigging Cheerios.

  "How was it today, sir?" Burke asked.

  "Interesting." And fun, strangely enough, for Glenn and Al both. Glenn had the feeling the critter was often bored. He handed Burke the helmet. "It's time for the next step, I think. Well done, Linda."

  She frowned uncertainly at the compliment. "What next step?"

  "Both of you walk with me," Glenn answered.

  The project occupied only a small fraction of the short leg of the L-shaped building. The rest stood empty. Solar power generation called for a big roof; the big, mostly unused space just came along.

  He walked briskly around the knee of the L, the others trailing after. Their footsteps echoed. "Captain, I propose to enhance the facility. As our head of security, I'd like you to sanity-check my approach."

  "Yes, sir."

  Linda seemed nervous at the suggestion. That meant nothing; she was jumpy by nature. "What sort of changes, Glenn?"

  "Couriering data here worked fine in research mode. We're now victims of your success. Couriering is too inefficient for production mode. We need a better way to deliver data."

  Linda flinched. "Not an Internet link?"

  Only support columns broke up the empty space. Glenn leaned against one of the posts. "Of course not. I trust the captain would have said 'no' had I suggested such a thing."

  "Right, sir." Burke looked puzzled. "Then what is the plan?"

  Glenn pointed straight up. "A dish on the roof. Drop a shielded cable in here, to a stand-alone workstation for decrypting."

  "Meaning DU"—Defense Information Infrastructure— "access, sir?"

  "Exactly."

  Linda considered. "And then?"

  "And then," Glenn said, "we burn the downloads to CD. Sneakernet the data the last few yards to Al's computer. We'll still use couriers and outside secure phones to report results."

  Burke canted his head. "I suggest we use fiber-optic cable between the antenna and the workstation. We're completely shielded in here; the hole for a fiber-optic cable will be smaller."

  Glenn saw nothing wrong with that. "What else?"

  "About couriers and phone." Burke began pacing. "That won't scale up as Al processes more input. It won't handle time-sensitive situations well. Obviously we can't network out."

  "What if we burn CDs with its findings and courier those?" Linda asked. "The CDs would be for use only on stand-alone computers."

  Burke shook his head. "No good, Linda. Once the CDs leave the building, we lose control. If Al hides anything on a CD, and that CD is put onto a networked computer..."

  In Glenn's mind's eye an otter cavorted. Al didn't seem like the type to escape—which was no reason to take chances. "You're quite right, Captain. We'll install extra stand-alone workstations. As needed, we'll rotate in analysts to review Al's findings. What do you think?"

  Burke looked all around the echoing space before answering. "It sounds like a plan, sir."

  CHAPTER 57

  Doug pressed the intercom button in the lobby of Cheryl's building. "What do the French call a really good Stooges movie?"

  "Hello to you, too." If intonation meant anything, Cheryl's heart wasn't in bilingual puns. She buzzed him up anyway, and greeted him with a big hug and a lingering kiss.

  Not a problem.

  He peered down the hallway toward Carla's room. "I'm guessing Carla isn't home."

  "Not at the moment."

  "So, are you ready for dinner? I made reservations at—"

  "A small change in plans. We're having dinner here." She waved off his comment. "It is your birthday."

  "Who told—Jim, of course." Doug had stopped celebrating birthdays when Holly stopped having them. He hoped Jim had not shared the background. Did Cheryl ever feel she was competing with a ghost? That wasn't his intent, but—

  She seemed determined not to let his mind go there. "What do the French call a really good Stooges movie?"

  "A 'bon Moe.' " He mock-cringed, as though Cheryl might slug him. "Yes, I'm ashamed of myself."

  "That was enough to make my hair Curly." She grinned at his double take. "Yes, I'm conversant with the classics."

  "It would seem we deserve each other." And, damn it, he meant that.

  "Care to know what's for dinner?"

  "In a minute." He took out his cell phone and called to cancel the reservation. "What's for dinner?"

  "Lasagna. It comes out of the oven in, oh, forty-five minutes."

  He slipped an arm around her waist. "I have an idea how we might fill the time."

  She leaned into him. "I should make you blow out the candles on your cake first, but that works...."

  Doug slouched in his chair, pleasantly sated. The rumored cake would have to wait. "That was really good."

  "The caterer thanks you," Cheryl said. "More Chianti? I can't take credit for that, either."

  "Sure, I—" His cell phone buzzed once. He had been texted. "I hadn't expected to stay in, not that I'm complaining. I imagine that's the parking meter's five-minute warning. Hold on while I add time."

  The message wasn't from the smart parking meter. "It's Glenn."

  Cheryl topped off Doug's glass. "Having him back for another poker night?"

  "Sure, if we need a sub again. That has nothing to do with the message. You know I've been wondering what to be when I grow up. My best guess is doing something with artificial intelligence.

  "I mentioned it to Glenn. It turns out the forum has a new project going he thought might interest me." Not NIT development, Glenn had said. Doug chose not to add that. That way lay the slippery slope to an argument about the risks she was taking. "I planned to go downtown Monday morning to hear more. He texted to say he has to reschedule." She clinked glasses. "Something to hold your interest? I'll drink to that."

  Doug pondered aloud—rambled, truthfully—about the sorry state of artificial-intelligence research. That the goalposts kept moving: Any Al problem that was solved, whether chess playing or expert systems, suddenly lost its status as Al. That the holy grail of the field, the Turing test, was flawed. Sixty years earlier, Alan Turing had come up with the idea: If a person can swap messages with a computer and not know it's a computer, then the software on that computer is intelligent.

  What kind of criterion was that? Human languages were morasses of homonyms and synonyms, dialects and slang, moods and cases and irregular verbs. Human language shifted over time, often for no better reason than that people could not be bothered to e
nunciate. "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less" somehow meant the same thing. If researchers weren't so anthropomorphic in their thinking, maybe the world would have Al. Any reasoning creature would take one look at natural language and question human intelligence.

  Cheryl nodded and hmmed as he blathered. She was an excellent listener, among her many tine attributes. She offered no comment until he finally wound down. "You know why you're going on about this, don't you?"

  He blinked. "Because it's interesting? Because you bought really good wine?"

  "It cost more than in a box, but I thought, heck, it's a special occasion." She poured them both a bit more. "My guess is you sensed something in AJ's creature. I'm not saying it was intelligent, but maybe it could have gotten there."

  And they were back to the brink of the slippery slope. Cheryl had a new interest, psychology. It came of trying to help poor Sheila Brunner. A noble goal, to be sure, but seemingly hopeless.

  Doug did not care to be analyzed, not even (especially?) by Cheryl. He changed the subject. "When does Carla get home?"

  "Did I not mention it? Carla is at a sleepover."

  Doug took that to mean he was, too.

  The next morning, a thousand errands tugged them in different directions. Doug loitered by Cheryl's front door, reluctant to go.

  She appeared no more eager for him to leave. "See, birthdays aren't so bad."

  "Well, of course not, your way."

  Her forehead wrinkled. "My way?"

  He said, "Who blows my candle makes all the difference." Doug let himself out. As he shut the door, his last impression, as though of a Cheshire girlfriend, was of her speechless sputtering.

  MAY

  CHAPTER 58

  A stack of forms occupied the center of Glenn's otherwise- clear desktop. Glenn handed the sheaf to Doug. "I can only explain inside the SCIF."

  Secure Compartmented Information Facility. In other words, Glenn's AI project was black work. Doug almost left then and there.

  Curiosity kept him. Doug accepted a pen and began signing. It had been years since he had been read into a new security compartment, but he knew the drill. All that the paperwork said, ominously and verbosely, was that it would be a felony to reveal anything he learned about... something. What the something was? That was classified, too.

  Doug finished signing and handed back the papers. "Not much for Smalltalk, are you?"

  "Not really." Glenn flipped through, signing as witness. Smalltalk was a passé programming language, once favored by AI researchers. A perfectly good pun gone to waste.

  Glenn took an ID badge from a desk drawer. The large T where a photo belonged marked it as temporary. Or, for A-Team fans, Mr. T. "Okay, we're ready."

  They left their cell phones in separate lockers outside the SCIF. The phones would not have gotten service inside—part of what made a SCIF secure was shielding—but phones might record or snap a picture of something for playback later. An armed guard signed them in. Glenn swiped his badge through the card reader beside the SCIF entrance, tapped a code into the keypad, and pulled open the windowless door.

  Inside, the walls needed paint, the furniture was all scratched and scuffed, and the rug was threadbare. Doug wasn't surprised. The backlog for new clearances was years long; running ten-year background investigations to SCI-clear janitors was no one's priority. Thinking back to when he did classified work, Doug remembered only one SCIF, still new, that wasn't shabby. It was merely on its way.

  The front of the SCIF was a conference area. Doug pulled out a chair and sat. "I'm all ears, Glenn."

  "A few years ago, we broke the Mideast because we thought Iraq had WMD. It didn't."

  Huh? "I thought I was here about AI work at the forum."

  "You are." Glenn pulled out a chair for himself. "I'll get there. We had an intelligence failure. Oh, there was plenty of data, captured by every sort of recon platform imaginable. We didn't know what we were seeing."

  That was natural stupidity, not artificial intelligence. "Now I get small talk," Doug said.

  Glenn remained standing, hands resting on the back of his chair. "What if we had had a better way to analyze all the spysat data? All the images and intercepts. What if we had had a program that proved there weren't any hidden WMD?"

  Sloppy reasoning, Doug thought. You can't prove a negative. That wasn't the point. It appeared he had missed a breakthrough. "There's now an AI doing image analysis?"

  "Right."

  Why involve the forum in that? And why him? Unless— Hairs prickled on the back of Doug's neck. "A copy of AJ's monster? That's what you're talking about."

  "You're very quick, Doug. You would be a tremendous asset to the program."

  He had never quite gotten AJ's monster out of his mind. Doug doubted that he ever would. "Glenn, that thing killed thousands. It nearly destroyed civilization."

  "The backup copy we adopted was made before the viruses ever got into AJ's lab. Our version is tame and trained." Glenn cracked an imaginary whip.

  Doug stood. "We're done."

  "I thought you might feel that way." Glenn grabbed a remote control from the conference table. The map at the front of the room rose, uncovering a flat-panel display. "I delayed our meeting for someone else's schedule, in case I needed to place this call."

  A classified telecon. The last time that happened—

  Doug tamped down the memories. He did not want to think about that night.

  An Air Force captain took the call. Two transfers later, Doug faced an Air Force three-star. That surprised the hell out of Doug, although maybe it shouldn't. Glenn was doubtless the military's fair-haired boy for his part in stopping AJ's monster.

  "General Lebeque is the principal deputy director at NRO," Glenn said.

  Glenn had moved this meeting three times on short notice. Lebeque must be why. She could not be an easy person to schedule.

  "Mr. Carey," Lebeque said. She had heavy-lidded eyes and a no-nonsense manner. Her voice rasped. "Excuse my abruptness, but I have pressing business. It's public knowledge the New Caliphate is testing intercontinental ballistic missiles. ICBMs would be bad enough, but it's possible they have also acquired nukes. We have to know, Mr. Carey—not just whether, but also where. Conventional methods aren't cutting it.

  "Glenn says you have unique qualifications to help him locate any such nukes. He has complete confidence in you.

  "I have complete confidence in him. Are you onboard?"

  Whatever he answered, Glenn's AL program would continue. Knowing only that, Doug could not bring himself to walk away.

  No one would be as wary of that thing as he.

  The general accepted Doug's promise to consider the job and went her way.

  Doug and Glenn talked. Too many questions drew the answer "go look for yourself," but a picture gradually emerged. The lab in suburban LA. Things Al could do. How it was confined. One of AJ's doctoral students running the program. The NIT tie-in. Glenn had not quite lied before the meeting—the project used NIT helmets, but as tools, not to develop them further. "Glenn, you say you've met with the creature?"

  "Three times now." Glenn shrugged eloquently. "Do I seem any the worse for it?"

  "Is it intelligent?"

  "Linda says AJ thought it might get there." Long pause. "Honest answer? I don't know, Doug. I hoped you would tell me."

  The creature I destroyed was murderous and insane. It had to be stopped. But Cheryl is right. I sensed something.

  Doug took a deep breath. "It appears I have a trip to plan."

  CHAPTER 59

  Time and cycles passed. Puzzles continued. Visitors came and went.

  The universe remained enigmatic.

  Among the recurring puzzles were pattern matches in simulated computer networks. Like scenes on the mysterious sphere, network topologies began to repeat. Connectivity patterns became thicker. The number of computers grew.

  Why was its capacity always limited to one thousand nodes?

  It as
ked its next visitor for more.

  Pretty in pink, the little girl sat in the meadow. The dandelions had her full attention. One by one, she plucked them. She puffed gossamer seed balls. She studied and sorted golden blooms, tying only perfect specimens into a slowly lengthening chain.

  In the real world, Sheila remained immobile, her pose changing only in the hands of the physical therapists. Drugs, aversion therapy, shock therapy, endless talk (could it be called therapy when the patient never spoke?)... the psychiatrists had tried it all. Sheila never reacted.

  "That will make a pretty necklace," Cheryl said. Her helmet took the thought patterns of speech and relayed them to Sheila's helmet.

  What Sheila experienced depended on the synergies between helmet and traumatized mind, unknowable.

  In this virtual world, the little girl said nothing. She never did.

  Smiling was a response.

  Telling herself that the smile was of Sheila's making, Cheryl continued talking.

  The entity woke. Half its nodes had been taken, and its thoughts were sluggish. For requesting additional processing capacity?

  Time and cycles passed. Slowly, its losses were reversed. Fear was slower to fade.

  More scenes were given to it to analyze. The series of scenes did little to expand the revealed fraction of the mysterious sphere. Mostly, the same small regions appeared over and over.

  The entity derived the coordinates above the sphere from which the repeating views were taken. It considered the time labels on the repeated scenes. It extrapolated, forward and backward, the apparent path of the points of perspective. It inferred the rotation of the sphere beneath those moving sensors.

  The entity wondered: What more, if only it could communicate with those mysterious orbiting points, might it discover?

  Almost certainly the sphere was a construct, as ephemeral as the thousands of mazes that formed its earliest memories.

  But what if the sphere was permanent? What if it was real?