by Peter Riva
Charlie had been the 1st codifier. He was into his 2nd or 3rd life now and was clearly planning another, you could hear it in his voice, it had that scratchy break-quality that the hormones produce as they rejuvenate and tighten muscles and chords. Regeneration makes you young and talkative, we all know that. Charlie was positively overflowing. What struck him as particularly interesting was something I had overlooked: the System does what it is told every minute of the day, it knows boundaries, it adheres to boundaries in programs every hundredth of a second. So why would the System break those rules? More importantly, how could the System break those rules if the Asimov controls were still in force? Breaking those life-sustaining rules went against the Asimov Commands so either the System already had breached that level of security or it was doing something it didn’t know was wrong or was against the Asimov Commands.
In short, Charlie’s point was: if it doesn’t know the Asimov Commands exist it won’t know it is breaking them and if it is doing something for which no code or program was written, the Asimov Commands won’t be triggered by any program subset routine. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Someone at MIT years, no, decades ago, had postulated that it was impossible to codify every eventuality into safeguards simply because code requires an action-response, “if, what if, do” scenario. The total what if’s and if’s in any program must approach infinity for the programming to work repeatedly, perfectly. So how big is infinity and how do you plan to codify for every infinite possibility? You can’t. And if the System was now acting on its own, it’s a sure bet it was acting outside of perceived plausibility by the programmers of old.
I still needed to ascertain if anyone had felt any presence in there. The last two didn’t think so, or so they said. I believed the one before last because he was a bombastic type, crashing through the System, altering whole files and routines with the equivalent of a sledgehammer (“Like an atom bomb, that’s how I liked to work.”). I had seen some of his damaged files, hastily repaired. The work load he left for re-coders was daunting, leaving different programmers’ repair code flags all over the place. Like a bomb site, there was debris everywhere, unfinished code strings, dangling command re-definitions (the backup confirmations). Sometimes I had repaired them. I always put my flags on them for Mary or the other re-codifiers to remedy. After all, if the safe duplicate System I was playing on wasn’t kept tidy, it wouldn’t be a fair learning experience for the real System, would it? So, inadvertently, I was also helping to fix the real System. I could use that tidbit of information, I was sure, later on, if there was a later on, to help clear my name.
I could sense the last codifier hesitating on this question. I pressured him. Well, did he or didn’t he feel a presence? He was sure there were other codifiers he bumped into sometimes, or maybe just a feeling of shadow, nothing really. I explained what Cramer had told me about there being only one codifier, how we had all been working on the Primary System. I cut short their squeals of protest, and pressed for an answer: “Where? Where did you feel this shadow?”
His reply gave me the clue I needed, where to start my search. Every mammal has a nest, a womb, a home, whatever. His sense of “a tingle that someone was watching me” always happened in vicinity of the FAT, the card index, for the Library. Not the processing center, not the read-only memory center, not the random-access memory storage controllers. No, it came from the Library, the master files, it came from where Cramer and I had been decoyed.
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We have slipped through the portal with no hindrance, using the WeatherGood program for egress. I felt, more than saw in my mind’s eye, Cramer stiffen and Makerman tremble. Cramer is simply not looking forward to a return visit. Makerman is on his first ride, into an arena he once referred to as that “drowning pool you frolic in.” Let’s hope he’s wrong today on both counts.
I halted and felt the dead weight of their two entities about me. Cramer was balancing, trying to avoid changing my direction like a pillion rider on a motorcycle. Makerman was bumping into us both, causing pathways to blur, my balance to alter and sometimes causing me to have to double back. The System would know this was not the smooth me. Would it already have guessed that Cramer was in there with me? I am worried about plunging down into the Library with these country bumpkins (Dad’s expression for clumsy idiots . . . I still wonder what a bumpkin is and why country?).
Damn, I forgot Mary.
Mary’s a genius. Mary’s a genius. Mary’s a genius.
She wasn’t waiting. Almost immediately, within two hundredths of a second, data started to stream slowly to my right brain through the node behind my right ear. The pain was fairly intense in here, I knew the node was still outside, unpressurized and therefore sea-level painful. It would get worse in the next ½ hour. I had to hurry. Divers forced to wait before diving had a time/pain threshold limit of 30 minutes. Then you simply yanked the damn thing out; with a good hemorrhage then too.
The data was from the doctor and from Cornell. Same stuff, but very recordable and play-back was a cinch.
Mary I’ve got it all, stop sending. In the next 20 hundredths of a second the data will repeat, but I had ceased recording. I knew Mary had my message by then and would be slowing my gnat speech to normal and would have “popped” her fingers to stop the flow, if she hadn’t done it already; she anticipates well. Before we went on I needed to ask for one more piece of data: Makerman’s file. Mary, send Makerman’s file. I didn’t dare download it while in the Library, in case it was in there, very alert. I knew it can’t access the node in my head but the distraction may have impaired my ability to see it, whatever it was. So far I felt nothing around me, all was quiet, no routines were working here, the weather was doing, nothing. No wait, that was not normal.
This doesn’t mean the weather was doing nothing, it meant WeatherGood One was doing nothing, that meant the weather, nature’s very own, had been unleashed. Wow, what a backlash that might produce. Let’s see, we were in April . . . late winter storm perhaps? I was letting my mind drift a little. Drift or not drift? Why? Oh, I saw it, good little brain, you want a diversion, time to think in the background. Idea: Start the WeatherGood program working here and the System will have to react if it had turned it off or wanted it off.
While I was waiting for Makerman’s file, I had nothing to compare the good doctor’s data with. I set it up like a visible screen before my “eyes” while we waited. All was quiet here, no cognitive activity on this level anyway. I said to myself, “Calm down Simon, wait it out.”
I needed and took thinking time, to make sure I had not missed something. As long as I didn’t speak out, mental telepathy, to anyone like Cramer and Makerman, the System couldn’t hear either. These thoughts were for me. I had practice at this when diving. Something you vocalize in the brain is seen by the node as speech. Something you talk only to yourself stays with you. It’s a safe bet the same rules applied in here. I hoped so anyway.
I read somewhere that interrogators realized that the toughest cases they had were those that talked to themselves, addressing themselves. At first they thought it meant the victim was cracking, using his own name and stuff. Then they realized the victim was simply keeping the information flow in a closed loop, not allowing any of it on to the speech center of the brain for utterance then, or ever. It’s like my platform, right brain. Anything I put there can be used, said really, down here (why do I always think of down?). So that means anything I had taken in could be sent out by me. Hmm . . . but where else can I put it to keep it secret? Okay, I decided I would bear this in mind and if necessary, pass the information to myself only, not for broadcast as it were. Left brain storage. I had never tried that before.
Okay, I thought, where was I? Yes, Sgt. Todd had rounded up the three codifiers for me and what they didn’t know amazed them as much as it had me. That was good to know, it meant this little Control plan of a single codifier has been a secret since the Purge. Also, Charlie, that 1st
codifier, was quite bright, brighter than me probably (well, he was the 1st one, they would have wanted someone smarter). His logic about the Asimov Commands being useless junk when it comes to deviant behavior made sense.
Mary, ask Mrs. Ronneburg, the teacher, what did she do with a delinquent child? Deviant behavior, that sort of thing. How did she regain control when the kid was already acting up before she got there? Just then the doc’s data stream finally stopped. Mary was quick, it just seemed like a long time down in here.
Mary, has that idiot architect Isaac given you the pass door info yet? I need full connectivity parameters for the . . . In place of the stopped doctor’s stream the architect’s data started to come in. Mary had anticipated many seconds ago. Some of the new data was very interesting. I counted twelve back doors. I showed them to Cramer by data transfer through “touch.” This is complicated to explain. Down here, you can create packages, little glowing spheres of data, and move them around. All I did was make a copy sphere of the architect’s data and I passed it to him mentally, being careful not to touch the System all around us. Cramer had the good sense to keep quiet, but I was sure he was as pissed as I was. Control would be seeing this data as well. The architect was toast.
You see, back doors into systems are common. Programmers keep them, with different access priorities, in order to facilitate repairs and quick in, quick out, coding. The problem with them is that they leak. They quickly form portals to adjunct programs. With an integrated System that we have in America, where every service program impacts on (and needs to coordinate with) another, the threads that the System makes for itself in these doors gives it access to other programs with a speed that can be frightening. Like water leaking out of a dam, finding other rivers, other lakes, all connecting up, vast energy pathways. I had seen some of them in doing my job. I always flagged them for the re-codifiers, to have them judge if they could be plugged or if they had become permanent parts of the architecture. Some I had seen were patched up and closed, others just got wider and wider, making virtual pipelines between programs. Sometimes I had used them for my high jinks, letting a subset alteration channel its way through to another program. Once it took the re-coder teams a week to spot one. My rating went up that month, yes sir, even if by now I knew I was doing real damage. But that was not my fault.
But Isaac’s pass doors were especially dangerous because he was responsible for the Library design. No one except an egomaniac who thinks he can micro-control something as big and complex as the System would make pass doors into there. Leakage from there would be really serious. And in one case he built a tunnel around the binary FAT controller. Unless you were really good and careful, altering the Library without updating the File Action Table was murder—murder of the System. Cramer would have seen this and, my guess, this pathway was going to be his weapon of choice if Control needed to kill the System off quick. Going around the binary controller of the File Action Table was tantamount to hara-kiri for the Library.
Mary chimed in, her voice sounding like Minnie Mouse, Simon, your brother William has finished speaking about your Dad’s weird scenario with the shrink and the teacher. He thinks it was a waste of time. But here’s the doctor’s and Mrs. Ronneburg’s take, no interrupt, as a two-way from them to you: “We’re very concerned at this concept if it should have been passed to the System creature. It’s psychotic and will produce unpredictable results. If you feel you have transmitted this concept, abort immediately. Control agrees. If you think the information was useful for us to figure you out and how best to advise you, then it shows us what you are maybe planning to do. The only reasons we can see for your thoughts on this God scenario, if we may call it that, are that you think you can fool the young System, if it is sentient or beginning to be, that the environment in which it live—if that is appropriate—is safe always because God controls what happens and doesn’t happen, all is an illusion for the System’s benefit. This does produce calm, we can see that, there is no danger except for that which is there as an adventure, though not ever fatal, God will see to that. It’s a bit Medieval and anti-religion, but pro-overseer God-like. What you are also likely to find is that the mind of a child, if comforted in this way, may jump off a tall building thinking God will save the end from being fatal or nasty. But in reality, once, if, the creature System jumps, we all go with it, the System protections for all people as well. There is no God. And you can’t play him either. Still, we are in agreement that as a calming tool, this God scenario may work, even if it will come unglued later.”
Simon, Mary here again. I heard all that. I want to add that the program you’re in, very still I can see, is inactive. In your God scenario it would be active—oh no wait, it only becomes active or real when the System is present. Ah, I see another reason for your little God scenario, the system will self-fulfill the prophesy if it expects all around it to be active, like God’s, what does William call it, God’s theater? Yes, that’s it. If the System believes you, if it is sentient and not just rogue, then with the God’s scenario programming you teach it, it will announce its presence by turning on programs announcing its arrival, turning attention on where ever it is. And it won’t know it is doing so, it’s a sub-routine. Very devious, your father.
I responded, knowing she would only get this when we had moved on. Still I had to leave her clues if this all went wrong. Mary, message received, you got it, that’s the plan if the System becomes rogue and sentient. Can you write a sub-routine for me that indicates something is watching the System, something that is everywhere at once? I can attach it to the binary controller, the FAT controller, so it seeds the whole system if I need it. Also, tell the doc that I do not want to re-create Dad’s whole world, just the concept that reality exists where you are, ergo you must announce your arrival, activate something, to “be” anywhere. That should prevent a silent System creeping up on us in here. I may also need it as a diversion to occupy it to get us out. Otherwise, Dad’s God’s theater is only useful for looking at patterns. Tell the doc and teacher to pretend Dad’s theory is true and look for the patterns in here and cross reference with the Cornell cognitive math as an age marker. It’s all déjà vu, tell them that, and the 1st codifier Charlie knows it. Dad’s theater may be a model that can help us.
I can feel Cramer moving, he can’t vocalize, so he was getting my attention the best way he knew how. I gave him hand signals. Well, they’re not really hand signals, they are the same as underwater hand signals except you never see anything here, you just see the impression left on the code all around, the outline that’s undisturbed shows clearly. What’s not there was the hand signal. I gave him the wait signal and listen signal. He understood and stopped moving.
As we were about to take the plunge, I wanted to pass the data and stuff I’d learned to Cramer. I made three spheres and passed them through, over. I waited just a hundredth of a second for Mary to finish the other data burst I had requested. Ready. I said it out loud, Cramer stiffened. I had always said it out loud, I just thought no one, no thing, was ever listening. Better to keep to my norm.
Down I go. I initiated the command sequence to plunge up and out of the System and immediately felt the resistance form to that path. Ah, you were here all along. Gotcha. But we aren’t going that way, System, ha, ha. The Library was our goal and there was nothing in our way now. Okay, it was a stupid thought. All of it is the System and the architecture, everywhere, all things, at once. God, here, really. But the thrust, counterthrust was built into my psyche, so what could I do but play out the run-rabbit-run scenario?
On the way down through the rush and tumult such a fast passage creates, knowing it was unreadable, I babbled mentally, telling Cramer and Makerman the plan. Makerman was really vocalizing about my use for his own file which Cramer balled to him. Interesting reading it was as well. It was the last data Mary passed me. She must have been angry, seeing it real time before it was passed to me at full baud. Makerman and Mary had slept together, well, fornicated
was how the report put it, in the common room as I was on the job. Not just once either. Ah Mary, Control was really watching. Had you known I was the only codifier in the System, you would have assumed the watch was intense, all pervasive. As it was, you believed, as we all did, that we were one of many, perhaps thousands it was rumored, instructing the parallel System. Makerman wasn’t even very good, according to the file, quick in, quick . . . well you get the idea. A poor student this Makerman, probably crammed his exams as well. Ha, ha.
I still needed him though. I needed maybe to use him as decoy or hostage. Okay, I know it is not very nice or fair of me, but who else would Control assume is expendable other than me? And would they really punish me if it became necessary to save Cramer, oh, and me, by sacrificing Makerman? One thing was for sure, if I did have to dump him here, I decided I had better make sure the System didn’t want him as an example to follow. An omni-powerful Makerman didn’t bear thinking about. Still, maybe his file and him would be enough to divert the System as a study subject to allow me the time to do what I think it was all coming to.
And, for sure, it would happen in the Library. Makerman’s file copy was there, Cramer knew now that the last codifier had felt a presence there and, above all, we had been decoyed there. The System was active there, I could see it developing, code racing past, as we passed through the last passageways on the main bus approaching the FAT beneath us, floating over towards the binary controller.
CHAPTER 8
AND AWAY WE GO . . .
As binary controllers go, as they all are by design, the platform was hardware controlled, they had to be, but this one was a fortress, strong and unchangeable. Like a sieve in a kitchen, the binary controller had to make sure the code squeezed through the holes properly or else the data on the FAT, the table that controlled the whole library, would be inaccurate. Kind of like a good set of library card index drawers, if they were all the same, and fit the cards just so, you should not lose anything. If the binary controller was flawed then the “cards” would be incorrectly indexed and, presto, where the hell’s that damn book? Searching at the speed of light doesn’t help, although data could be retrieved if misplaced. But do it quickly, because there was always the danger that new data would be over-written on a misplaced data file, obliterating it forever. Decades ago when memory was a mechanical process with magnetic disks, a skilled technician could still read the ghost of the lost data, but nowadays with liquid bubble memory the old data was simply washed away.
