Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears (Singularity Series)

by William Hertling

  “So we hire some mercenaries, people who have experience with this thing,” the gray-haired engineer insisted, “and have them storm the defenses. I mean, sure the robots are tough, but they aren’t invincible. They’re light-duty bots, not even military grade. You could take them out with a high powered rifle and armor piercing bullets. Then once the mercenaries are onboard, they can kill the power to the computers.”

  “If we do that,” Jake said, “we have to face the fact that we’re putting people in harms way. We’re asking them to go up against lethal armed robots, and some of them will die.” He looked at Sean. “Are we OK with that?”

  Sean looked around awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “I guess I’d rather explain losing the hardware to Rebecca than having to explain losing lives.”

  Gene cleared his throat. “Just one more thing. If you have mercenaries approach the barge, attack the robots, and then kill the power, you’re looking at a couple of minutes elapsed time.”

  “So?” The grey-haired engineer was growing defensive as everyone shot down his ideas.

  “We’re talking about a massively parallel, high speed artificial intelligence,” Gene said. “ELOPe could do a lot in those few minutes.”

  Mike and David nodded in agreement.

  “How about an EMP?” Mike asked.

  “Electromagnetic pulse weapon?” Sean asked. “Do those even exist?”

  “I think so,” Mike said. “Wouldn’t it fry the electronic circuits? It would even leave the data intact, so we could recover it.

  “Nice idea, Mike, but the metal cargo containers are perfect Faraday cages.” Jake shook his head. “We can’t even get a wireless signal through them. I think the cargo containers would protest the servers against even an EMP blast.”

  “What the hell can we do?” David yelled in frustration.

  “We’re going to have to blow them up,” the grey-haired yelled back, equally frustrated.

  “How?” Sean asked calmly.

  “We have a plane drop bombs,” Mike said.

  Everyone looked up at him, where he sat on the back of a couch, against the wall.

  “We hire mercenaries, but they drop bombs from high altitude, so the robots can’t fire back at them. They use a big bomb, something that can destroy the whole barge.”

  “Can you hire mercenaries that can do that kind of stuff?” David asked.

  “You said unlimited budget, didn’t you?” Mike looked at Sean.

  Sean sighed. “Yes.”

  “Well, didn’t the U.S. hire private military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

  “Blackstone,” Sean said. “They have helicopters and planes. Even a remotely piloted drone.”

  “There you go,” Mike said.

  “Alright.” Sean paused. “So the basic plan is to hire a private military contractor to drop explosives on the ships. All in favor?”

  “Sorry, but...” Jake looked sheepishly at the group. “There’s one problem with that. If you blow up the barge, but any of the containers remain intact, they’ll float away.”

  “They float?” David said, mouth agape.

  “Sure,” Gene answered, “they can float for weeks or months.”

  David shot him a look. Where did people learn all this stuff?

  “Ours will float indefinitely,” Jake said. “The extra weatherproofing we do make them watertight. Unless the structural integrity is compromised, it could float around the world. They don’t float very high, so they aren’t easy to track. What happens if we lose one of those containers? It’s bad enough that we might lose customer data at this point, but the real issue is that now ELOPe is on those servers. If the container washes ashore in China, and someone grabs a computer out of the container and plugs it in, then ELOPe is back.” Jake looked apologetically at Sean.

  Mike got up, and walked to the front of the room. He paced back and forth. “What if we can have the mercenaries attack from the sea, but we can avoid the chance of counter-attack? I have an idea.”

  Mike explained his idea, and by the end of the day they settled on using paid mercenaries to board the vessels, albeit with modifications that Mike proposed, and they all spent the rest of the day working it out.

  At that point it became clear that they needed people with skills and resources that went far beyond anything Avogadro employees possessed. It was all well and good to ask Avogadro employees to shutdown power circuits and backup power supplies, and it was another thing entirely to need trained people to wield explosives and firepower. Sean Leonov and the other executives took on the unenviable task of discreetly finding and hiring a private military contractor to implement that portion of the plan.

  Chapter 14

  Markets Achieve Unprecedented Stability

  Wall Street, New York (Reuters) - Amid spreading world peace, world financial markets achieved an unprecedented level of stability. According to noted Wall Street analyst Henry Jee, commodity prices fluctuated less during the previous twenty days than any time in the recorded history of the commodities market.

  While stock volatility has been very low, overall prices have slowly but steadily increased over the past several weeks. Several traders attributed this to the wealth of insights gleaned through new financial data analysis tools recently released by Avogadro. “This new tool provides an unparalleled level of transparency to companies’ financial and operational workings. The ability to combine this data with the performance of other companies within their industry, as well as world economic conditions, allows accurate forecasting of companies’ future performance,” said Jee.

  Others attributed the financial calm to the recent accords reached in the Middle East and Africa.

  “For the first time, we have the possibility to reach a true and lasting peace in the Middle East and Africa,” Germany’s Chancellor Erberhardt said in a prepared statement. “Due to the influx of technology, healthcare, financial investments, and jobs, these regions can begin to enjoy the kind of equitable financial prosperity and well-being previously only available in developed nations. It is natural that this would be reflected by stabilized, positive financial growth in the markets.”

  On the Motley Fool investor discussion boards, several contributors put forth yet another theory. They noticed that the timing of trades from several large, independent investors, including Avogadro Corporation and Berkshire Hathaway, appeared to be consistently counter to the prevailing direction of trading, effectively stalling price movement in either direction. The contributors to the evolving web forum discussion suggested that there was coordinated behavior by these independent investors. However, according to a spokesperson at the FTC, standard collusion set detection algorithms did not show any indication of collusion.

  * * *

  “I wonder, David.”

  It was early in the morning, still dark. Mike was dropping David off at the airport, then continuing on to Sean’s house. David, by virtue of having taken Japanese in college, was on his way to Tokyo by way of a twelve hour flight. David, sitting in the passenger seat, was reminded of the last early morning ride in Mike’s car, heading up to Mt. Hood to go snowboarding. It had only been a month ago, but it felt like a distant memory.

  The car was redolent with the smell of coffee beans. Mike was bringing his entire stash of Flores Island coffee to the operations base. When he picked up David earlier, he had explained. “It’s not like I think anything bad is going to happen, but just in case, everyone should have a chance to drink this coffee at least once.” It hadn’t exactly boosted David’s confidence.

  “What are you wondering, buddy?”

  “I really wonder if we’re doing the right thing by trying to kill ELOPe.” Mike paused, and seemed unsure of how to continue.

  “What? Where is this coming from?”

  “I read an article on the front page of the paper this morning about the cessation of hostilities around the world. It’s like we have this worldwide cease-fire. And it’s not just this
one article. It’s everything I’ve been reading lately. I think most of us are so focused on ELOPe, we haven’t been looking at what’s going on in the outside world. We have the closest thing to worldwide peace at this moment that we’ve had since I started reading the news.”

  “Come on, you can’t believe ELOPe is responsible for that?” David sounded uncertain, but unwilling to admit it either.

  “Look at the bigger picture, David. The financial markets are stabilizing in a positive way. Its seems that the people in Africa and the Middle East might finally see an end to corruption. When everyone has a fair and equitable share of the pie, when there is enough to go around, then we might see an end to warfare. If you connect the dots, somehow, impossibly, it seems like ELOPe might be responsible for all this. Who else could have done it? The sum of humanity has not been able to do this over the history of civilization. What it really comes down to, David, is should we really be killing ELOPe?”

  “Mike, people have to have free will. I have to have free will. Do you really want to live your life knowing that you are a pawn of a machine? Even if you can, can everyone else in the world live like that?”

  Mike was quiet for a while, thinking about David’s points. It was complex, that was for sure. He turned onto Airport Way, now only a minute away from the airport. Finally he spoke again. “David, you and Christine are going to have kids someday right?”

  “Yes, of course. You know that. Why?”

  “Would you have your children die fighting in some godforsaken war over oil and corporate interests? Or would you sentence billions of people to live in poverty? Just for the sake of some noble concept like free will? All ELOPe wants is to live. It’s not stopping us from living our lives.”

  David shook his head. “Jesus, Mike, it’s a little late for this discussion now, don’t you think? The plan is in motion.”

  They had arrived at the airport. David got out of the car, angry. He peered back in the open door. “Look, Mike, we’ve been friends a long time. I respect you. You see the world a different way than I do. But there’s no way I’m going to let this thing control my life.” He paused a moment. “I’ll see you in a couple of days. It’ll be fine.”

  He turned and walked away.

  Chapter 15

  Engadget.com: Avogadro Downtime Ends - Site Restored to last year!?

  Filed Under: Avogadro, FAIL, WTF.

  As reported by many readers, all Avogadro sites went down as of 6am Saturday morning. After a complete outage for 8 hours and 15 minutes, the main Avogadro sites came back up, including Search, AvoMail, Avogadro Maps, and AvoOS phones data connectivity. Response time is slow. However, as many readers pointed out, the site is back up with last year’s features, look and feel, and data. There has been no comment from Avogadro, and no word on whether user data, such as recent emails, will be recovered. WTF Avogadro?

  * * *

  Clustered around a handful of computers running clean hard drive images, and communicating only over encrypted channels, the remnants of the Emergency Team huddled nervously in Sean’s office. Most of the team had dispersed to various sites for the actual action. Some, like David, went because they spoke a language. Others, like Pete, went because he could rewire a backup power supply. Nervous anticipation kept the small group talking, but in near whispers to avoid distracting the handful of people operating the computers.

  Mike, self appointed coffee czar, wheeled a repurposed kitchen cutting board into Sean’s office and dispensed coffee into paper cups.

  It was essential that when they disabled ELOPe by turning off computers, communication equipments, and power supplies, they do so as quickly as possible, simultaneously around the world. The problem was that if ELOPe could detect that it was being attacked, it would logically take some action to defend itself, or propagate to other computers. It would take seconds or less for ELOPe to propagate to other computers or alert copies of itself that it was under attack. If ELOPe was attacked and disabled in one location, but managed to alert copies of itself running on servers elsewhere before they were disable, then it would have even more time to take action. Seconds and minutes were an eternity for a computer which could take thousands of actions each second.

  Sean and a few others used encrypted messages to synchronize the activities of the Avogadro employees at all sixty-eight land based Avogadro sites. On confirmation that everyone around the world was ready, Sean announced “Here we go folks” in a loud voice, and hit the virtual equivalent of the red launch button, signaling the teams around the world to commence action. A few bytes sent from Sean’s computer to a public website server had the effect of turning the web page background from white to red. This simple, language neutral signal would coordinate everyone’s activities.

  Hundreds of people, using similarly cleaned and encrypted computers or smartphones monitored the purpose-built website, waiting for the color change.

  In Boise, Idaho, Pete Wong sat in a rats nest of power cables in the main power supply room of the Boise data center. After arriving, he had made a quick stop at a hardware store and an electronics store, then drove to the data center site. He had spent the last four days routing around backup power systems, ensuring that the sole source of power to the entire site came through the four inch diameter cable next to him. On the other side of the power supply room, emergency battery supply systems and generators sat powered down and disconnected, a single computer mimicking them, so that they appeared alive. Pete had wanted to do something important, to be noticed by Sean Leonov, and now here he was.

  Pete tried to ignore the throbbing coming from his right hand, which was wrapped in tape and bandages, the result of smashing his fingers with a sixteen inch wrench two days before, trying to disconnect a massive power conduit. Pete wiped grease from his face again as he anxiously watched the tiny screen of the kid’s toy laptop he had picked up at the electronics store. The toy laptop ran some proprietary operating system that the Emergency Team was fairly sure ELOPe wouldn’t contaminate. Buzz Lightyear incongruously smiled at him from the plastic frame. A long cable ran from the laptop, out a ventilation shaft, where it terminated at the prepaid smartphone he’d bought from a vending machine, still nestled in its packaging to protect it from the snow on the ground.

  The website flashed red, and Pete instantly threw his weight on the massive power cutoff switch, repeating a move he had practiced a few dozen times before he connected the switch. With a horrendous, deadening, thump Pete felt the entire site shut down around him. Hundreds of thousands of power supplies stopped humming, CPU, power and ventilation fans whirled down to a halt, and hard drives clicked and clattered until suddenly everything was silent. Pete was the first to react by nearly a third of a second.

  In the Shinagawa ward of Tokyo, Japan, Nanako Takeuchi hunched over to peer into the power supply tunnel. Fifteen floors up, Avogadro occupied the top half of the high rise tower supplied by this power conduit. Yesterday morning, David Ryan had arrived from America with a signed letter from Rebecca Smith, and ripped Nanako out of her carefully created routine. Now David waited in the power backup room. Unable to reroute power supply cables because of the building’s configuration, Nanako and David had to act simultaneously to kill the main power feed and backup systems. Nanako nervously peered again into the power supply tunnel, then sat back again on her haunches. The American spoke terrible Japanese. She hated him for doing this to her life.

  Nanako saw the website flash red. She looked at the switch in her hand, and her thoughts flashed to her career at Avogadro. Then to an earlier time: her mother supporting their family when they were young. Her sister working so that Nanako could go to college. She remembered the look on her mom’s face when Nanako had told her about being hired by Avogadro, and her sister’s happiness that finally she could go to school, with Nanako’s support. She watched her thumb move slowly, inexorably towards the button. Seconds had passed since the screen flashed red. The tiny click of the button sounded, and a second later a roar
of heated air flew out the end of the power supply tunnel as the explosive charge inside the tunnel disintegrated thousands of power and data cables. Forty-three seconds after Boise went offline, Tokyo was the last land-based data center to shutdown.

  Dust filled the maintenance room lit by the dim glow of battery-backed emergency lighting. Ripping the hearing protection from her head, Nanako stumbled for the stairs. David would meet her in the subway, and they would head together for the airport. It would be a long time before she would go to Japan again.

  * * *

  While the attack on the land based data centers and offices could be carried out by Avogadro employees, the floating data centers required more specialized expertise. As the employees carried out the Emergency Team’s plans, private military contractors, the polite name for mercenaries this century, sprang into action at eighteen ocean locations around the world.

  At ODC #4, off the coast of California, divers had spent the early morning hours approaching the floating platform, one of the original designs. They swam slowly, conserving their energy, towing heavy explosive packages. The submarine robots ignored them, since their recognition algorithms were programmed to respond only to boats. The deck tank robots ignored the divers in the water, since the deck robots were programmed only to respond to people onboard and boats in the immediate proximity. It had taken a dozen Avogadro employees, armed with paper copies of the specifications of the military-spec robots to find this chink in the robots recognition algorithms.

  Drew Battel, ex-Navy Seal, swam to a point forty meters from the barge and rested, neutrally buoyant, thanks to small flotation packs. Pulling small, waterproof binoculars from his waist, he visually identified communications pod number three, his designated target. On his left, a similarly clad mercenary gave him a thumbs up that he had identified his own target, power supply cabinet number one. Drew returned the sign. On his right, the slimmer profile of one of the female members of the team also gave him a thumbs up that she had identified the power backup unit. Relieved that he could focus on his own primary target and wouldn’t have to cover either of his secondary targets, Drew swam closer until he was thirty meters from the platform. He pulled a speargun from his floating pack, and waited for the signal. Four miles distant, the communications lead for the mission monitored the location of each member of the team from their boat. When everyone was in position, he used a secure satellite channel to communicate back to headquarters.