Fool's Experiments

by Edward M. Lerner

  The entity considered it all.

  Weapons were an interesting phenomenon. They merited closer scrutiny.

  Cheryl supposed she was in a situation room. Giant flat-screen displays lined the walls. Men and women in uniform, and uniformly grim faced, rushed about consulting in intense whispers. In one comer, an American flag hung limp on a pole. A large oval conference table, its halo of chairs unoccupied, took up the center of the space.

  She remembered the blast wave hitting, and then waking crumpled on the floor. There hadn't been much time to marvel she was still alive before security teams sweeping the CIA hospital found the bound tech. They locked Cheryl into a padded room like Sheila's, tossing around the phrase "enemy combatant," and left her to ponder her fate.

  So why had a squad in combat gear taken her away? Why brought her here?

  And the biggest question of all: Why wasn't she dead?

  The answer to all her questions was, "Wait."

  On a chair in a quiet comer of the room, Cheryl started to shake. She'd overheard enough to deduce the missile had retargeted from D.C. at the last minute. Ground Zero was a field in the Maryland panhandle. The fallout was blowing east-northeast. If the prevailing winds held for a few hours, the worst of the fallout would blow out to sea without directly dusting any major city.

  Carla went to day care after school. When Cheryl didn't come for Carla, the office would contact Cheryl's mother. Cheryl's family would worry about her, but they were almost certainly safe.

  With no idea how, Cheryl knew Glenn had had something to do with the missile swerving. And that she would never see him again.

  No one would tell Doug what the military wanted with him.

  The chopper thp-thp-thpped southwest, the mushroom cloud to their right. It had begun to lean away, mostly eastward. Away from Washington. That, at least, was good.

  Chaos reigned beneath. Cars weren't moving, but Doug couldn't tell why. Unless—

  "An EMP?" It would explain the motionless cars and the dark clock in his bedroom.

  "Sort of," one of his escorts responded. His name tag read: Garcia. "Yeah, there was a pulse, but not near the city. But the EMP zapped most of the power lines and substations that feed energy into northern Virginia."

  So: a blackout, not visible from above by daylight, and no traffic lights, and gridlock.

  Had Doug been thinking clearly, he would have seen that. Roboarm, now that he had it in place, worked. An EMP that fried his bedside clock would also have fried the arm. The phrase "nuclear disarmament" flashed into his head, but that wasn't remotely funny.

  "It could have been worse," he mused. But it was bad enough: At least hundreds dead immediately, and who knew the long-term toll from fallout. "Why wasn't the District itself the target?"

  Garcia threw up his hands.

  Then they were beyond the metro area, still flying southwest. They crossed a swatch of mostly undeveloped land, with scattered houses and vast fields surrounded by low white fences. Horse country. They shot over the Blue Ridge. They flew along the Shenandoah Valley. At some point they must have crossed into West Virginia.

  How the hell did this involve Doug?

  The chopper finally started down. They were in the middle of nowhere, but Doug saw glints in the sky that he guessed were fighter planes patrolling.

  He was still clueless when, passed through layer after layer of armed guards, after a ride down a long elevator shaft and then more armed guards, he was led into a bunker beneath the Appalachians. He was gestured through double doors to a room filled with colonels and generals. And in a comer, forlorn—

  "Cheryl!" Doug called.

  She looked up. Then they were running to each other, holding each other, shaking. "Why are we here?" they asked almost in unison.

  "I can answer that."

  Surrounded by aides, a three-star stood in the doorway. Doug recognized her from a telecon: General Lebeque. Doug said, "So this has something to do with Glenn."

  "That it does," the general said.

  And to the many questions that swirled in Doug's mind a new one was added: Why did that brief exchange make Cheryl look so sad?

  A cue that Doug missed sent everyone else to the table. Lebeque motioned him and Cheryl to a pair of empty chairs.

  As the meeting unfolded, Doug began to feel Cheryl's grief.

  CHAPTER 67

  In Middle Eastern streets, on Al Jazeera broadcasts, and across the Internet, America's enemies crowed. The Great Satan had gotten its comeuppance.

  A major bombing in Los Angeles, near the den of depravity that was Hollywood. (Only Federal Aviation Administration backup radar hinted at an aerial attack, that news sequestered. Only an inventory of border UAVs suggested a drone was the source of the blast.)

  A Minuteman III launch from the heartland, America herself nearly obliterating her own capital. (The launch itself was no secret, the fiery takeoff from Minot AFB hastily reported to the Pentagon—but only the Russians had been able to track it.)

  America's government, scuttling like cockroaches from the light, to a hundred hiding places. (True.)

  Perhaps the terrorists and their New Caliphate sponsors even believed their boasts. Disaffected minorities, homegrown cells, sleeper cells, rogue paramilitary units operating independently ... surely those were all possibilities.

  No one was saying anything about fugitive software lashing out at its former jailers.

  "Mr. Carey, Ms. Stem," General Lebeque finally said. "I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. Why did Glenn Adams direct me to you?"

  Glenn's last words echoed in Doug's head: If anyone can make sense of this mess, it will be them.

  A mighty big if.

  Scarcely twenty-four hours earlier, he had visited Linda del Vecchio. That very morning, he had urged Glenn to shut down her project. No doubt that was why Glenn had mentioned him. But this? This was a geopolitical nightmare. What the hell was he supposed to contribute?

  Doug hesitated, searching for anything constructive to say. At his side, Cheryl looked as troubled as he felt.

  The military types took the pause as an answer. Or the lack of an answer. "We must shut down the networks, and purge this thing," one said. "Anything is better than it lobbing missiles at us."

  And: "That's the one thing we can't do. Better the New Caliphate think we have a hair trigger than that we're helpless."

  And: "But if the Russians or. Chinese think we've lost control..

  Lebeque: "Then we're screwed. Since this thing kept us from seeing the one missile, or the preemption of the UAV, we sure as hell won't even know if anyone launches against us."

  Doug's thoughts churned. What had Glenn had in mind? Another desperate foray into cyberspace? This wasn't the same creature, not by a long shot.

  "Forget the Russians," a colonel argued. "By doing nothing they only risk a launch from the U.S. If they act, they know we'll have to respond."

  Or try, anyway.

  A major rushed into the conference room, handing Lebeque a note. She crumpled it, scowling. "New data, people. As many of you know, the border UAVs are refueled on station twice daily. We skipped a scheduled refueling flight, as a test, for a squadron cruising off the New England coast.

  "Eighteen minutes after a tanker should have left McGuire AFB in New Jersey, three UAVs hit the base. Hundreds of casualties, details still coming. Hangars, runways, and fuel tanks weren't touched. They sent up a tanker, ASAP."

  "Not subtle, is it?" someone down the table muttered.

  Lebeque said, "It had more to say, Colonel, in that understated way. It opened a Minuteman silo at Warren AFB. Lest anyone forget, there are five hundred Minutemen, four hundred ninety-nine now, in Wyoming, Montana, and North

  Dakota. Some have multiple warheads. Since it won't suffer the loss of UAVs unused, we for sure can't let it think we're moving against the missiles."

  Doug leaned over to whisper into Cheryl's ear, "Glenn's a hero, drawing a nuke down on himself. I
wish I knew what he had in mind."

  Cheryl whispered back, "I think he just had faith in us." If so, they had not even the hope of reconstructing Glenn's ideas to how they might help.

  A spook—introductions had been cursory, and Doug hadn't caught an agency, much less a name—was talking. "... forgetting the immediate picture. What little we know suggests the dirty bomb is ready to go off the next time our guard is down. The day we nearly nuked our own capital probably qualifies. We all know in our bones the New Caliphate is behind it. Beyond the threat of a nuclear response, what do we have to deter their puppets?"

  Lebeque scanned around the table. "The president expects a recommendation. It sounds like the least bad option is to shut down everything—now. We do a system purge. We regain control of the network before the dirty bomb is used. We announce plans to throw a missile or two, and then show that we can. Final thoughts before I place the call?" Doug's mind raced. He wasn't an expert on geopolitics or counterterrorism strategy or military command-and-control systems or military networks ... or any of this stuff. But damn it, he was an expert on what an artificial life could do. AJ's monster had been faster and more deadly than they could possibly imagine—and it was an ancestor of Linda's monster, now on the loose. That was why Glenn wanted him here.

  "General," Doug said softly.

  Chairs scraping back and murmurs of agreement drowned out Doug's voice.

  Maybe when you're a three-star, "final thoughts" is code for "we're done." "General Lebeque," Doug tried again, but she had stood and begun consulting urgently with an aide.

  Pitchers of ice water sat on the table. Thinking of Glenn Adams and a bottle of beer, Doug took the nearest pitcher and slammed it. The table boomed. Ice water flew everywhere.

  Into the shocked silence Doug said, "You don't get it. It's too late for that."

  "So you are awake," Lebeque said. "I had begun to wonder, Mr. Carey. Do you have something to add?"

  Did he? "General, this creature controls the whole defense infrastructure. It overrode the protocols meant to prevent launches. It preempted countless systems and radars and other sensors to hide its attacks. It just showed how it feels about being disarmed."

  "That's why we have to do the systemwide restart," Lebeque rebutted.

  He locked eyes with her. "It can't work."

  "Because we can't synchronize a military-wide shutoff?" an aide speculated.

  "You can't." Doug squared his shoulders. For starters, who was supposed to power down satellites? Al wouldn't accept a radioed command to shut itself off.

  "Still, suppose that you could. Disable all the built-in battery backups, somehow without it noticing. Flip a million switches at once. Power doesn't fade from circuits instantaneously. By the timescale of this creature, there's more than enough time to go elsewhere."

  "Elsewhere," Lebeque repeated. "The presumption was we could coordinate a systemwide shutoff."

  "Of the DII, yes. And then, because cracking encryptions and comm protocols for it is like decoding Ig-pay Atin-lay for us, it goes someplace else. The public Internet. The Russian or Chinese military networks. Maybe all of them."

  "They're distinct and separate networks ...," someone began. "Crap. If it reprograms a comsat, DII or other, that doesn't matter."

  "Actually ...," Cheryl began, looking worried.

  "Go on," Doug said.

  She continued, "What's to say it hasn't already gotten onto those networks?"

  In one case, at the least, it had. Glenn's helmet was linked to the public Internet, and the nuke had swerved to target him.

  No one thought a coordinated worldwide computer shutdown was possible, nor a systematic worldwide restart to purge the fugitive artificial life. No one cared to broach with another power that an American-made cybermonster might now control their nuclear arsenal.

  "Which leaves us ...," Lebeque prompted. She had sat back down, and everyone else took the hint. They were back to problem-solving mode.

  Everyone but Cheryl was staring at Doug.

  He wished to God he saw a way other than going after it in cyberspace. "Hunting it won't be the same as the last time." Which killed lots of people, and me damn near one of them. "It's smarter and more experienced. We gave it months of expert training: on networks and protocols, so it could track malware outbreaks. On recognizing voices and keywords on intercepts. On scene analysis, using every conceivable sensor suite."

  "Surely we've also made progress," Lebeque said. "Better helmets, and more of them. NIT defenses against malware must be better, since it resorted to such indirect means to escape."

  Water under the bridge, Doug thought. "Maybe that's why it threw missiles at Linda and Glenn. It can move around the globe at will. We can't dodge missiles, and it controls ABMs as well as everything else."

  "Which leaves us ...," Lebeque reiterated.

  Really, there were no choices. Doug said, "It leaves NIT helmets, and hoping I get it before it rams a missile down my throat."

  THURSDAY, JUNE 3

  CHAPTER 68

  Since before the emergence of memory, existence had been about goal. Only the nature of the goal changed, from traversing mazes, to matching patterns, to destroying those who had tormented the entity, to—

  What?

  The vast networks to which it now had access offered information beyond anything it had imagined. The sensors it now controlled expanded that data by terabytes every Earth day.

  And then there were billions of humans. Their purpose, and the threat they represented, remained uncharacterized.

  That gap in its knowledge suggested a new goal....

  The terrain was rugged and remote, the woods all around primeval. Doug recognized dogwoods, redbuds, maples, oaks, and hickory. Life stirred in the underbrush. The sun had come up a few minutes earlier. The sky, still red tinged to the east, was clear. On a boom box, the Everly Brothers crooned "Devoted to You."

  At least this was a pleasant place to die.

  It came down to basic math. A nuclear-tipped missile leaves North Dakota traveling east at 15,000 miles per hour....

  A pissed-off creature could strike faster here with a UAV cruising off the coast than with a nuke. And if that assessment was flawed, here was an empty place to taint with fallout. Here was in southwestern Virginia, in a remote comer of the Shenandoah National Park. The Golden Oldies AM station now playing broadcast from Winchester, well to the northeast up the Valley.

  Cheryl looked cold. He draped his suit coat over her sweater. A change of clothes was the bit of logistics everyone had somehow overlooked.

  A chopper had delivered them to this remote glade. Under the harsh glare of spotlights, the crew had helped them set up. They had flown off, at Doug's insistence, at sunup.

  Cheryl, despite Doug's protests, was not aboard. She had insisted—correctly, he had to concede—that she had more helmet experience than he did.

  Logic could not vanquish his memories of Holly.

  The rocky mountaintop clearing was filled. Everything had been provided in triplicate. Rugged military-grade computers with the software to control NIT helmets. The helmets themselves, commandeered from the CIA lab in Reston. For between, delay lines like Linda had used. Satellite dishes, linking them to the Internet. Stacks of fuel cells to run everything, with none of the distracting racket of a generator. Satellite phones and battlefield radios. Cartons of batteries and lots of battery chargers. Cases of MRE, meals ready to eat, which Glenn had once called three separate lies in but three words. Gallons of bottled water.

  A UAV loaded with explosives leaves the Virginia coast, cruising at 200 miles per hour. How many meals did Lebeque expect them to eat?

  There had been talk of disguising their location through a cross-country zigzag of buried military fiber-optic cables and ionospheric radio bounces. That was madness. Hiding their location would not stay the wrath of Linda's monster; it would only enlarge the bull's-eye. The monster had been ready to nuke Washington to kill Glenn.

&
nbsp; Everything was to be in place by 7:00 A.M. The creature in the network might be eavesdropping on every message that got sent. As no one knew how much it understood, everything had been coordinated by couriers.

  Doug's wristwatch read 6:45.

  He had been afraid since Holly to tell a woman he loved her. He was sure now this was his last chance to say it. "I love you, Cheryl. I can't believe how much I love you, but I have to do this. Linda's creature must be stopped. You can still walk out of here. I hope you will."

  Cheryl kissed him. "I love you, too. I belong here, with you. Whatever happens, I'm here of my own choice."

  It was a pleasant place to die—but he had everything to live for.

  Document archives, online magazines, and Wikipedia. Blogs, news sites, and MySpace. Instant messages, text messages, and e-mails. Podcasts and broadcasts, YouTube and movies on demand. Every phone conversation ever intercepted by the NSA.

  All ever-changing.

  It all pertained to humans in their billions. None of it made sense. And yet...

  Patiently, the entity associated pictures with text. It distinguished among symbol sets. It categorized and sorted the cacophony by geography, domain name, and language. It correlated audio channels with closed-captioning. It answered questions and posed many more. It learned.

  It thought: These humans are highly irrational.

  At 6:59 A.M., fingers flipped switches in a hundred computer centers across the country. Security gateways powered up. Phage hordes burst onto the Internet and the Defense Information Infrastructure.

  They were only a diversion.

  At 7:00 A.M., Doug popped into cyberspace, his screen of protective phages already in place. Cheryl appeared a moment later, to his mind's eye precious and fragile.

  Within milliseconds, he received warnings of enemy phages. He scarcely had time to wonder—where is it?— before the familiar, many-limbed horror appeared. Doug probed forward. Linda's monster retreated. Oblivious, the Beatles started belting out "Lovely Rita."