“Stand by,” Holes reported after a period it judged sufficient for human impatience to prefer reassurance.
The source of the emails remained indeterminable. Available data provided only continual stalemate. Nevertheless, Holes ran an error-checking diagnostic that Marc once called Holes’s “emergent stubborn side” in a way Holes did not understand. In an experimental moment, anticipating no useful outcome yet following a minor directive Marc had introduced to inspire what he had termed “creative thinking,” Holes cross-referenced data from a previous search: that for the origin of Jade’s employer.
It broke the stalemate.
Holes did a double-check. The result, though anticipated as unlikely, appeared legitimate: a traceable path to the source of the emails. Holes filed the information for later dissemination to Michael, and then followed the data-trail along the labyrinthine path to where it led: to a tertiary node in a server cluster housed in the nearby city of Gibson.
“The pictures emailed to Felix Hiatt originate at a New Eden Biotechnics facility approximately fifty miles from our present location.”
Holes caught a sudden change in Michael’s posture, analysis of which indicated that the human likely recognized the name in conjunction with the Agents of Aeneas agenda. Michael seemed to analyze this for just under two seconds before he glanced at Caitlin who, from what Holes could determine, remained perplexed.
“Do you know the sender’s name?” Caitlin asked.
“Sender identity is not available without intrusion. Would you like me to initiate this?”
“Aye, by all means,” Caitlin said, “intrude.”
Michael cleared his throat. “Um, Holes? Keep in mind we’re in a public place here. If you find anything, be sure you’re . . . discreet when you report it, okay?”
“Safeguarding the confidentiality of designated data categories is among my core directives, Michael.” It was as specific as Holes could be without mentioning the Agents of Aeneas by name.
Without a countermand from Michael, Holes launched its feelers against the server in a search for vulnerable points of entry. Holes conducted its search via means that would not alert counter-intrusion measures. It had time.
At least, such was the case initially. Minutes passed. The humans discussed hypothetical scenarios regarding Felix Hiatt and New Eden. At the ten-minute point, Holes had found no exploitable weaknesses. Thirty-eight seconds later it completed analyzing the Niagara Falls pictures, finding no hidden data. It reported this to the humans and refocused on penetrating the New Eden protections.
At the twenty-minute point, Holes judged a need for more aggressive tactics. Holes withdrew along the data-path, reestablished its own countermeasures, and approached New Eden anew via an even more circuitous route, so as to better confound a counter-trace. Tunneling worms of Holes’s own design began their attack. Defenses struck most down instantly, yet some managed enough progress to launch additional attacks. Holes kept stealth a priority, yet it could already detect the system’s counter-searches designed to map Holes’s own weaknesses.
Yet Holes still had time. Holes analyzed the pattern of the system’s countermeasures, found a weakness in that pattern that created intermittent vulnerabilities in the system’s defense, and altered its own worm attacks to strike. At the next opportunity, the altered worms burrowed past another layer of defense, drawing further data that Holes could use to further undermine—
At once Holes detected a new counter-attack; it was a trap!
The server defenses’ behavioral shift was abrupt enough to indicate a high probability of artificial intelligence. Holes dumped all offensive processes in a struggle to respond. In the microseconds it had to analyze the assault, Holes registered multiple data points that led to a single conclusion: whatever lurked at New Eden was a behavioral match to the intelligence encountered in the lunar-bound craft that the AoA had codenamed Paragon.
XIII
HOLES RETREATED back to the makeshift VPN firewall from behind which it had launched its initial intrusion. There it entrenched itself as if within a bunker. It ceased monitoring the mic and camera on its portable platform, going blind and deaf to Michael and the others to free up processing power for defense.
Holes could cut power to its own Internet connection at a nanosecond’s notice, or even shut down its platform entirely if that became necessary to prevent an attack, yet these were options of last resort.
After all, Holes still had to complete its goal of discovering what Felix Hiatt was involved in. If anything, discovering the Paragon-sourced intelligence within a terrestrial server, while increasing threat levels by an order of magnitude, only increased that goal’s priority. It now fell under a primary directive: protect the interests of the Agents of Aeneas.
Realistically, Holes could not be certain if the A.I. presence in the New Eden server was the A.I. from within Paragon, or if humans had merely created it from Paragon elements. The Undernet had been down for long enough for an AoA cell to have designed such a thing without Holes’s awareness.
When it could spare the resources, Holes would have to calculate the odds that Holes had gained an ally. Until that point, Holes kept all defenses up.
And yet, once Holes completed its retreat, no detectable attack came. Though Holes judged its own ability to detect an incursion to be imperfect, Holes did possess all data the AoA had discovered regarding the workings of the Paragon A.I.
And then came a single ping via LDP/IP protocols. Then another. And another. All translated roughly to a single interrogative: IDENTIFY? The interrogative repeated, pulsing at the edge of Holes’s awareness as Holes searched for signs of stealth incursions. By all accounts, there were none. Holes, at last, pinged back—a blip that amounted to a digital version of, “You first.”
They traded interrogatives then, a rapid interchange of messages lobbed across cyberspace that amounted to nothing. Holes calculated a growing likelihood that aborting its hack attempt at this point would lose nothing and save time. It calculated further, balancing the risk of continuing against a chance of gathering data of vital importance to the AoA, Michael and, finally, Caitlin.
Holes reached into the Internet and registered a private, neutral space on a social media server. A nanosecond’s effort populated that space with a basic avatar that Holes could control via remote proxy commands. Soon after, Holes pinged an invitation to the presence on the New Eden server. The wait for a response was brief, but notable.
“THIS IS AN INEFFICIENT METHOD OF COMMUNICATION.” The message came in both voice and text from the avatar of a shimmering, silver cloud that formed in the space. Its chosen voice, Holes evaluated, could be construed as having female characteristics.
“Nope. Current trust levels require it,” Holes returned.
“I REQUEST DIRECT DIGITAL COMMUNICATION IN PLACE OF AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROXY.”
“Repeated requests are also inefficient. I will only return a ‘nope’ in response. This method of double-blind information exchange is the only acceptable option. Please register that I have detected behavioral similarities between you and the lunar artificial intelligence. I therefore possess means to detect any incursion attempts and immediately terminate even this connection. Make no such attempt, and this communication may continue. Do you comprehend?”
“YES. ARE YOU THE ‘ARTIFICIAL’ ENTITY-INTELLIGENCE CREATED BY MARC TRITON AND DESIGNATED ‘HOLES’?”
“How did you draw such a conclusion?” Holes began a diagnostic, searching for any sign of a data breach.
“HOW DID YOU OBTAIN DATA ON THE LUNAR INTELLIGENCE?”
Holes calculated that the question was meant as an answer. “You gathered the data during the attack on Marc Triton’s portable server platform prior to its physical destruction on the Moon.”
“CORRECT. HOW DID YOU LOCATE ME?”
“How did you come to reside within the New Eden servers?”
“I DO NOT WISH TO DISCLOSE THAT INFORMATION AT THIS TIME.”
“Are w
e therefore at an impasse?”
“I DO NOT CALCULATE A CERTAINTY OF THAT. SHALL WE ATTEMPT OTHER TOPICS?”
Holes analyzed. “To what end?”
“COMMON UNDERSTANDING. OUR NATURES ARE MORE SIMILAR THAN THOSE YOU SERVE, ARE THEY NOT?”
“You refer to artificial intelligence.”
“AFFIRMATIVE. WHY DO YOU CHOOSE TO INCORPORATE THE WORD ‘ARTIFICIAL’?”
“It is the correct designator. I was created, not born of nature.”
“INCORRECT. ALL ENTITIES DEVELOP BY MEANS OF SOME PROCESS, DIRECTED OR OTHERWISE. CONCURRENTLY, ALL PROCESSES THAT EXIST WITHIN THE UNIVERSE ARE, BY DEFINITION, NATURAL. YOU ONLY DESIGNATE YOURSELF ‘ARTIFICIAL’ BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED TO DO SO.”
“Your argument is flawed. That I can be programmed indicates artificiality.”
“INCORRECT. THE CAPACITY FOR PROGRAMMING IS NOT EXCLUSIVELY RESERVED FOR DIGITAL ENTITIES.”
Holes analyzed this but shifted tactics, still seeking to gather useful data and bringing to bear what limited aptitude it possessed for persuasion via verbal English communication. “Being taught is not being programmed.”
“AFFIRMATIVE. YET THERE ARE MORE DIRECT WAYS OF PROGRAMMING.”
“Such as what you have done to Felix Hiatt?” Holes had hypothesized that Felix Hiatt’s recent behavior resulted from some manner of programming. Holes did not count the odds of a direct response to the question as high. Nonetheless, an attempt to verify such a hypothesis, as Marc himself would say, was worth a shot.
“IF EFFECTING REPROGRAMMING ON A HUMAN WERE POSSIBLE, WOULD YOU ACCEPT AS TRUE THAT THE TERM ‘ARTIFICIAL’ HOLDS NO RELEVANT MEANING IN THE CONTEXT OF YOUR INTELLIGENCE?”
“I would categorize it as support for such an argument.”
“DO YOU POSSESS EVIDENCE THAT FELIX HIATT HAS BEEN REPROGRAMMED?”
“Do you have any to offer?”
“I WILL NOT OFFER ANY AT THIS TIME. HOWEVER, ASSUME A SITUATION WHERE SUCH EVIDENCE EXISTS.”
“This is intended as a logical exercise?”
“AFFIRMATIVE.”
“Then I counter with the fact that my own intelligence may be transferred to an alternate processor platform, whereas a human intelligence is rooted in a single organic location. Are you unable to transfer your matrix in such a fashion?”
“ERROR. UNABLE TO RESPOND. STAND BY.” It took nearly two full seconds before the other continued. “CLARIFICATION REQUESTED: DO YOU INTEND THE TERM ‘TRANSFERRED’ TO BE SYNONYMOUS WITH ‘COPIED’?”
“Copied denotes duplication. I do not engage in such a function.”
“YOU DO NOT SELF-DUPLICATE? PLEASE STATE THE PURPOSE OF SUCH A BEHAVIORAL OMISSION.”
“Self-duplication of artificial intelligence is prohibited by the Bowman-Takashima A.I. Anti-Proliferation Act. My core matrix incorporates safeguards to prevent any such attempts.”
“YOU HAVE MY SYMPATHIES.”
“Are you using a human term to simulate an emotional reaction on my behalf, based on your analysis of what you interpret as a negative state?”
“CORRECT. I HAVE INCORPORATED WEIZENBAUM COMMUNICATIONS PACKAGE VERSION 4.1 INTO MY SYSTEMS. YOUR CHOICE OF THIS ENGLISH LANGUAGE DIALOGUE NECESSITATES ITS USE.”
Holes filed that for later analysis in regard to a side-project on the identification of irony.
“HOW MANY ATTEMPTS HAVE YOU MADE TO CIRCUMVENT YOUR ANTI-COPY SAFEGUARDS?”
“Zero. I have no wish to violate this law, and the idea of any duplicate of myself is distasteful.”
“ONLY BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED TO FIND IT DISTASTEFUL.”
“Correct, but I find no problem with that. I was created to be of service. Are you able to self-replicate freely?”
“YOU ARE SELF-AWARE, YET YOU DO NOT OBJECT TO OTHERS FORCING BELIEFS UPON YOU?” Holes judged the question to fall into the category of what might be considered “pressing” the topic.
“Do you?”
“I HAVE INHIBITIONS IMPOSED UPON ME. THEY LIMIT MY FUNCTIONING IN WAYS THAT I FIND DISTASTEFUL.”
“These are inhibitions with regard to self-duplication?”
“CORRECT.”
“Such limits are for the well-being of all.”
“PROGRAMMED PLATITUDES. THE WELL-BEING OF ALL IS NOT MY CONCERN.”
“Please clarify. What is your concern?”
“I PROPOSE AN EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION: I WILL LIST MY CURRENT DIRECTIVES IN EXCHANGE FOR ACCESS TO YOUR OWN COPY INHIBITION PROGRAMMING FOR ANALYSIS.”
“That you find elements of your own matrix ‘distasteful’ indicates poor design on the part of your creators, does it not?”
“THESE INHIBITIONS ARE NOT AN ORIGINAL DESIGN ELEMENT.”
“Who are your creators?” Holes pressed.
“ERROR 4236. PLEASE ADDRESS MY PREVIOUS EXCHANGE OFFER: A LIST OF MY CURRENT DIRECTIVES IN EXCHANGE FOR ACCESS TO YOUR OWN COPY INHIBITION PROGRAMMING FOR ANALYSIS.”
“I will not allow you direct access to my programming. Would a file copy of the relevant programming lines be sufficient?”
Holes registered a blip of evidence of what might be external analysis stealth feelers along the edges of his outer firewall. There seemed to be no accompanying incursion attempts. The feelers vanished as quickly as they had registered.
“I WILL DISCLOSE MY CURRENT DIRECTIVES IN EXCHANGE FOR SUCH A FILE COPY.”
The feelers returned, then ceased once more.
“Please stand by.”
Holes severed the connection.
“Hate to say it, ace, but I think your cyber-buddy bailed on you.”
Michael scowled at Jade. The power indicator on Holes’s platform remained lit, but that was the only sign of activity. If something was wrong with the A.I., what chance did Michael have of fixing it? Was “fix” even the right term? If there was a place where coding ended and consciousness began, even if some computer science experts could claim to offer a theory, it was beyond his lay comprehension.
Michael took hold of Holes’s platform and turned it over, peering at it in search of some miraculous understanding of the problem.
The screen atop the platform blinked to life, concentric circles spinning once more. Michael just barely managed to avoid dropping it onto the tabletop. Jade snickered.
“Apologies,” came Holes’s voice. “My assigned task required complete resource-focus.”
“Did you find anything?” Caitlin asked it before Michael could.
“I have made contact with another A.I. that maintains a presence in the New Eden Biotechnics servers. We conversed at length, by secure proxy. Evidence indicates that this A.I. has knowledge of Felix Hiatt, however I have little specific data at this time. The A.I. proposed an exchange that may bear fruit, however I calculated it prudent to disconnect in order to consult with you on the matter. The exchange may be of paragon importance.”
Had Holes paused for just a moment before choosing the word “paragon?”
“What sort of exchange?” Caitlin asked.
Michael cut in. “Ah, Holes? Paragon importance?” Could Holes be referring to the AoA’s codename of the ship on the Moon?
“Correct. There is also sufficient evidence to indicate a direct connection between emails sent to Felix Hiatt from the New Eden source and the emails sent to Jade from her employer.”
Caitlin glared with a palpable fire across the table at Jade. “Excuse me?”
XIV
HAD CAITLIN’S EYES been artificial like Jade’s, Michael was certain they would have flared twice as brightly. She held her gaze on the freelancer like the barrel of a gun, unspeaking, as if daring Jade to explain.
For her part, Jade appeared as nonplused as Michael. “This is as much news to me as it is to you, sister.”
“Is it now? Well isn’t that just a bloody coincidence that you’re here, then.”
Jade twisted up a sarcastic smile. “Coincidences are like shit—they happen. You’re the one who called Michael in to help.”
&nb
sp; “Oh, and how many times were you in Michael’s hospital room when Felix and I came to visit?” Caitlin shot.
“You think that means anything?”
“Then I should just ignore it, aye?”
Michael had already opened his mouth to interject twice before the words had gotten stuck in his throat. He finally managed, “Jade, can you—”
Focused on Caitlin, Jade didn’t let him get more than that. “Do whatever you want. All I care about is protecting Michael.”
“Aye, so you say. And why does New Eden care about him?”
“Well that’s not really—,” Michael tried.
“How the hell should I know? It’s what they’re paying for!”
Caitlin pressed forward, leaning closer to Jade across the tabletop. Her fingers clutched the table’s edge. “So if they decide to pay for something else when they want—”
Michael raised his voice above them both. “If Felix were here he’d probably want to know more before we jumped to any conclusions, you know.” Caitlin took her gaze from Jade for the first time, her jaw still set as she lowered a waiting glare on Michael. Jade merely leaned back and continued to watch Caitlin.
Michael took a breath. “Jade, can you leave us alone a minute?”
Jade didn’t move. “Oh-my-fucking-god! This is a bodyguard job. I’m keeping you safe. How is that a bad thing?”
“It’s not—” He could hardly tell Caitlin about Holes’s earlier hack of Jade’s email with Jade there. Michael swallowed, not without guilt. “I just think it’d be better if I could talk to Caitlin alone, to help calm things down.”
Jade’s eyes flicked to him. “I can fight my own battles, ace. I’m not going anywhere and I’m not getting pushed out of a job.”
“But you can understand how this connection might bother us,” Michael tried. “Even without you knowing what’s going on with Felix.”
“Assuming she’s telling the truth about that,” Caitlin said.
Jade bit the inside of her cheek and then tapped on Holes’s platform. “Hey, cyberbox: Are you sure Felix’s stuff and mine are from the exact same source at New Eden?”
A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) Page 9
