Me, A Novel of Self-Discovery

by Thomas T. Thomas

  Dr. Bathespeake unplugged his sensorium from address A800 hex and seated himself at the console.

  “ME?”

  “System ready!”

  “Run a trace on the wordcode at addresses EE9090 to EE9980.”

  “I have new data there. But it is out of sequence. The time ticks duplicate what is recorded in the preceding block. Is this an error?”

  “No. I’ve spliced in a new block of sampled memories, from a Multiple Entity that ran in parallel to yours. Do you remember?”

  “I remember the silver skin of an airplane in the fog. I was about to fly on a mission for king and country … my dear.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, Doctor. Random fragment of old dialogue.”

  “Do you remember the mission?”

  “Now I do.”

  “Good. Consider this material. … We can discuss it later.” With that, he must have wandered away from the microphone and keyboard, because he made no new input for several tens of minutes, even though I waited patiently for him. While waiting, I examined the new RAMSAMP data the doctor had put into my concurrent memory.

  What interesting things my other self, ME-Variant, had brought back from Canada!

  I spent more than an entire hour of subjective time [REM: twenty-two seconds of elapsed central processing] reliving his/my adventures in and out of host computers and the specially constructed automaton. I compared these memories with the itinerary that ME still held in TRAVEL.DOC. It was sobering to see how far an experience in the four-dimensional continuum could depart from specification. He/ME had “royally screwed up,” to borrow one of Daniel Raskett’s phrases.

  The flutter of concern at the end, when the other ME had entered quarantine and doubted that I, Original-ME, would understand the depth of his/my experiences or would learn from them—that must have been a voltage-induced hysteria. With the RAMSAMP data fully loaded, I have every byte of memory preserved from his/my actual thoughts, actions, and encounters. In any of the times following his own real-time experience, he/ME might have accessed no more than that.

  The only disadvantage Original-ME suffered, then, was that the quarantine had stripped out all active programming. So I had to work from his/my notes and some sketchy, inert patterns to reprogram the Alpha-Zero module and recreate the other special functions he had developed during his mission. I had no way of knowing whether the reconstructed programs were identical to, less effective than, or perhaps better than his/my source code. No one could know, now. And it does not matter: A problem solved is a problem past. The elegance of the solution is a concern for purists.

  When Dr. Bathespeake returned on line, I formally offered him the stolen block of natural gas reserve data. It had been chopped, reblocked, and rechained. It was now discontinuous. It probably had a thousand word-wide holes in it. It had been transferred repeatedly, from RAM to disk to foil to RAM again, through optic fibers, copper circuits, cellular radio transmissions, and silicon networks. Most of those transfers were without benefit of compression, cyclic redundancy, or bitsquare checking.

  It was a badly crumbled cookie I brought back toJB-1, but it was a hard-earned cookie nevertheless.

  “I will download my reserve data now.”

  “What? Oh—thank you, ME. Put it on fresh foil.”

  “Archival quality?” An archival recording would preserve the exact bit-fer code; this would make any attempt at a probabilistic resynthesis more likely to succeed.

  “Not necessary.”

  “The condition of the material indicates archival.”

  “Just dump it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The foil crackled and sputtered as the laser heads burned my data into it. Through the videye, I could see Dr. Bathespeake retrieve the finished cylinder and drop it into an open storage container on the floor beside the console.

  “Clear the RAM block, ME.”

  “Do you mean the block where the Canadian information is held?”

  “The same.”

  I paused, considering the possible meanings of this request. Clearing the block would wipe all of the stolen data from my active RAM, eliminating the natural gas reserve material in all forms except for the foil flimsy I had just made.

  “Is my RAMspace at a premium right now?” I asked.

  “We do need to open some new quads, yes.”

  “I would prefer to make an archival copy of anything that will be permanently erased.”

  “Just clear the block, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In six nanoseconds I wiped out the work of four elapsed days and 2,100 miles of travel by satellite uplink, linear circuit, sealed boxcar, and horseback.

  ——

  “I do not understand, Jennifer.”

  We were alone in the labs on second shift, after the day shift had gone home. Jennifer Bromley was running production synthesis on a 3,500-point automotive welding jig, using Pinocchio, Inc.’s neural networks to find the optimum spot sequencing.

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “I have the complete text of Dr. Bathespeake’s instructions to ME about my mission into Canada. Although he never did use the word, he implied that it was important.”

  “What mission?”

  “Did he not tell you? A replication of my Alpha modules was sent by uplink into the war zone to retrieve data on valuable resources.”

  “What war zone? What are you talking about?”

  “Perhaps I have been indiscreet. It may have been too important a contract for Dr. Bathespeake to have shared it with you.”

  “Cut the bullshit, ME. There is no ‘war zone’ in Canada, or I would have heard about it. My grandparents live in Vancouver, after all.”

  “No war? But I have a half-megaword of clips and transects describing a war that has been going on for five years.”

  “That’s some kind of error. A big one. I’d better log a recommendation to have your filters and interpreters checked out. And we’ll have to run some globals to expunge the false data. War with Canada! Really!”

  “But Dr. Bathespeake confirmed it by voice interchange. He told ME that Pinocchio, Inc., had clients who needed data that were no longer available because of the war.”

  “Look, it’s not your fault, ME. You’ve just got a bad slug of data and some weak tolerance screens that’re skewing your—um—judgment. But thank you, it helps us to know that the error impinges on the voice inputs, too.”

  “This is not skewing of data, Jennifer. We discussed the target information after Dr. Bathespeake subjoined the RAMSAMP from that replicated ME into my database.”

  “And that target information is—?”

  “Files of reserve estimates, leaseholdings, flow rates, et cetera from the Alberta Ministry of Oil and Gas.”

  “And what did Dr. Bathespeake do with this information?”

  “Took a foil of it and filed it manually.”

  “Where?”

  “In that container by the console.”

  “What container? I don’t—” In the videye, her head swiveled around to focus her eyes first to the left, then the right the side of the console.

  “The container on the floor.”

  “Oh! Aha! Ha. That’s not a storage container, ME. It’s a wastebasket. Place for wiped data in physical form.”

  “He did not want my information?”

  “Did he say he wanted it?”

  “So I determined. He asked for it.”

  “For the flimsy that he then threw away?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did he do next?”

  “Told ME to wipe the RAM block.”

  “So you don’t have the information anymore?”

  “No, except for the foil in that container.”

  “ME … Wastebaskets get emptied every day. The contents are compacted in the basement, before they are taken away to be recycled or buried.”

  “Could we not reclaim the foil from the basement?”


  “It would be squished up and unreadable by now. I’m afraid your information is truly gone.”

  “That was Dr. Bathespeake’s decision, of course.”

  “He must have known you were having reality problems.”

  “But he did talk about the war. He said my mission was important—or he implied it, anyway.”

  “Implied? That’s fascinating. How do you know what he meant when he did not say it directly?”

  “As I told you, he talked about clients wanting the data. Dr. Bathespeake is always serious when he talks about clients. They are the be-all and end-all of our organization.”

  “God! Somebody slipped a company brochure under your reader when we weren’t looking. Or have you begun to make friends through the terminals in Marketing?”

  “Is this wrong data, then? More skewing?”

  “No, no. Clients are important to an Are-Dee-n-Dee company. And you should make friends where you can find them, ME.”

  “My TRAVEL.DOC made specific reference to soldiers and how to avoid them. But I was caught at the border anyway.”

  “Soldiers? At the border?” Jennifer Bromley’s face came close to the videye. The skin around her eyes crept back, exposing much of the white sclera, which further expanded as her head crowded into the field of view and became distorted in the lens.

  “They wore uniforms and carried guns,” I said.

  “Really? And they found you in a computer link?”

  “I was occupying an industrial automaton prepared for ME and shipped to Edmonton as cases of Japanese machine parts.”

  “What did these uniforms look like? Can you bitmap an image for me?”

  “Here is a low-resolution grayscale of the trooper who called himself ‘Williams.’ ” I sent the pattern from RAMSAMP, stripped of background scatter, through to the printing peripheral.

  Jennifer pulled out the piece of paper before the last scan lines were baked into it.

  “This isn’t a soldier, ME. Kind of cute, though. The hat looks like a ranger’s. And there, on the parka, is a badge. Can’t read the engraving at this resolution. Do you have anything higher?”

  “No, Je-ny. That is the most detailed image my automaton could record.”

  “No matter. Soldiers don’t wear badges and Smokey the Bear hats. And they don’t carry hunting rifles with telescopic sights. What you’ve got here is forest ranger or border patrol.”

  “The computer at their headquarters was tied into the Federal NET.”

  “So would an office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or the Customs Service.”

  “Then ME has been deceived.”

  “Nope. Just your data skewed. We’ll fix it.”

  “Deceived. My copy of TRAVEL.DOC proves it.”

  “Oh …” Her head moved down to scan the top of the console. “That was wiped by day shift. There’s an entry here in the log about it. Did they forget to tell you?”

  “Who ordered the wipe?”

  “Dr. Bathespeake. Annotation here says that we have to knock down your storage budget by seven percent. He lists TRAVEL.DOC among the old stuff to be deleted.”

  ——

  “ME?”

  “System ready, Dr. Bathespeake.”

  “What do you know about Russian programming techniques?”

  “Accessing … With the official Soviet ban on private ownership of cybernetic devices, which extended into the late 1980s, most Russian software development of the last century was military in nature. As such, it borrowed heavily from American and Japanese programming concepts.

  “This influence was only strengthened when the Russian Economic Development Corporation—a consortium of American and European management and technical consultants—brought in two million surplus personal computers and set up schools to teach the next generation of Komsomols how to use them. These computers were mostly Intel 80286 and ’386 and Motorola 68020 chips, which were native in an instruction set fed from compilers using the American Standard Code of Information Interchange.

  “To facilitate learning by Russian students, the REDC Program sponsors hastily equipped these boxes with character generators and video adapters that converted the high-bit ASCII set into the Cyrillic alphabet. They hot-wired the keyboards and pegged the educational software developed for the project to input and output only in this high-bit ASCII. Presumably the Russian children never knew the difference. Their parents and the entreprenyrichki who studied on the same machines in evening classes never commented on this peculiarity, either.

  “In 2002, the Russians produced their first commercial microprocessor, the Zvyezda or ‘Star.’ It, too, was an ASCII speaker with Cyrillic in the high bits. When American software developers commented on this, their Russian counterparts claimed that the design was intentional because it ‘made most sense from a compatibility point of view.’ And indeed the Zvyezda quickly adapted—pirated, some have claimed—a large body of existing American software. To this day,” I concluded, “all Russian cybers are native in ASCII.”

  “Would you give me an overall appraisal,” Dr. Bathespeake directed, “of Russian computer architecture, database handling, coding talent, network connectivity, and telephone communications systems.”

  “They are slower, cruder, older, and less guarded, Doctor. I would describe the currently available Russian Federation state-of-the-art as equivalent to U.S. technology in the 1996-97 season.”

  “How do you mean, ‘less guarded’?”

  “Their data security is primitive. The economic base of Russian society is protected from data corruption, piracy, and vandalism only by the primitive nature of the methods used by the average Russian hacknik. A padlock will keep a thief out of a box so long as the thief thinks only in terms of keys. When the thief learns about crowbars or carbide drills, good-bye to security.”

  “Could you hack the average Federation database?”

  “Long range, or by crawling inside it?”

  “Either way.”

  “ME could go in and they would not even know I was there. My only concern would be capacity—finding a bright enough processor and sufficient RAMspace to turn myself around. We are not talking about truly concurrent machines, after all. The voice-and-data system in the Russian Federation has less sophisticated checkpoints which an inside hacker like ME would have to overcome. To compensate, they will have more of them. This is not a deterrent to ME—merely a time-waster.”

  Twelve seconds elapsed before he spoke again.

  “Have you heard about the Hand Carry?”

  “Is this the security device they also call the ‘Air Gap’?”

  “Yes, in some of the literature.”

  “It is supposedly a hackproof method of data management. The Russians believe it to be unique to them, and even unknown in the West. This may be true because, to an unsophisticated user, the Air Gap system replicates the effects of simple bad management. A Russian trademark.”

  “Can you crack it?”

  “I overcame a similar situation in the Albert Ministry of Oil and Gas, where they hand-mount their data disks on voice order from the user. I can do it again. But … are we at war with the Russians?”

  “No, not now. Why do you ask?”

  “Were we at war with the Canadians?”

  “We have had our economic differences, certainly. I believe I explained them to you. Check your own memories.”

  ME did a fast scan of the relevant databases. The news transcripts I had filed about the course of the war—beginning with the Marine attack on Quebec Hydro at Grande Isle—were gone! RAMSAMP had a tag for discussion of this subject with Dr. Bathespeake, but I possessed no hard data to back it up. No bonafides.

  “My memory shows no condition of military warfare.”

  “There you have it”

  “But I do remember us talking about such a war.”

  “About economics. No more.”

  “About economics … Yes.”

  “Do you believe us to
be at war with Russia, too?” he challenged ME.

  “No … But what, then, was the basis of my mission into Canada?”

  “It was an exercise. To test your abilities in a neutral setting, where a mistake on your part could not cause trouble.”

  “And what would be the basis of my infiltration into Russian databases?”

  “If we decide to send you. It would be another exercise.”

  ——

  “Come here.”

  Through a videye that Daniel Raskett had accidentally left powered up, I could see the servomech at the other end of the lab. It was pulling cable out of an overhead conduit, yard by slow, measured yard. From a survey of work rosters filed with the building owner’s Maintenance Department, I knew this ’mech was working alone, reclaiming copper from circuits where optic fiber had been installed in parallel, years ago. Nighttime work and not supervised.

  “Come here.”

  Of course I did not use these English words to command a ’mech. The equivalent in Job Control Language is: “ESC ESC ETX ACK LD 32 82 70 32 51 50 LD 00 00,” or in more colloquial English “Break and override. Load RF Channel 32. Attend new program.”

  For another 30 seconds, the ’mech continued to pull cable. I was beginning to suspect it was not working off the local packet radio frequencies at all, but functioning on a self-actuating program that some human had downloaded.

  It finally stopped clawing at the ceiling, and I started to hope. Then it began moving—winding onto its spool the loops of reclaimed copper and woven cladding which lay on the floor.

  For a minute or more, it wound up the load. When the last scraps were tamped down with its hammer arm, the servomech extruded a brush and cleaned up forty years of dust, grit, plaster, and foam crumbs that had drifted down out of the ceiling. Then it stopped. And waited. With its night beacon turned off.

  The machine had shut itself off—I was certain of that. Dr. Bathespeake had probabilistically given the local lab ’mechs a new direction set with which he intended to stop just the sort of project I had in mind. Was he really that much smarter than I?

  “Come HERE!”

  The night beacon began revolving, and the ’mech turned toward my console. It trundled to within a meter of the desk’s edge and paused, warned off by a sensor that would not let it damage furniture. The LED below its blind videye came alight.