by Nick Thacker
“Yeah, why?”
“We’re out in the open. If anyone wants to get off a good shot —“
“Yeah, I got it. Sure, pick it up a bit. Where are we heading, anyway?”
“That way.” Ravi pointed to another slight rise to the east, this one topped with a few trees and large boulders. “Just over that hill is Umutsuz, but we can camp up on top of it if we need to. Good vantage point and a few places to duck out of the way.”
It was a good plan, Myers had to agree. Good enough, anyway.
“Hey, listen,” Myers said. “I meant to ask you earlier. Who are you? Why are you out here?”
“I told you. I’m like you. A Relic.”
“A Relic? There’s that word again. What does it mean?”
Ravi looked back over his shoulder at Myers. “What do you think it means? We’re Relics, man. Cast out of society. Done. No longer needed.”
“But I’m the President of the United State —“
“You’re not. Not anymore,” Ravi answered. “No longer needed, like I said. And for what it’s worth, there is no United States of America.”
“There’s not?” Myers moved a rock out of his path with his bare toe, only now wondering where his shoes were.
“No. After the System went online, there was a massive overhaul in management of resources, across the board. Computing took a turn, and humans were pretty much left behind.”
The explanation rang a bell, but Myers wasn’t sure — or couldn’t remember — exactly what Ravi was talking about, so he let him keep talking.
“There was a brief period of chaos, while we tried to regain control, but after about six months it was evident that we were better off with something else running the show. After a while we just stopped fighting it.”
“Something?”
“Yeah, the System, like I said. You really don’t remember any of this?” Ravi asked. “Man, it was all right at the beginning of your first term.”
Myers shook his head.
“EHM came in and revamped the computer information systems used by the Federal government for administrative and organizational planning — real basic stuff, like email, calendar, planners, you know. The stuff your secretary probably used every time you had a meeting.”
“My Chief of Staff.”
“Right. Whatever. EHM — your old company — was contracted to streamline the systems you guys all used, across the board. I guess the old software was getting antiquated, out of date. They came in and installed new stuff, using a self-replicating piece of software that could automatically download and install itself on any computer sharing a network connection. The idea was that it would help keep costs low, since you only had to get it working on a single machine in any particular office or department, then connect the others into it and it would do its thing.”
“You’re kidding me.” Myers knew enough about computers — or, at least, he used to — to know how stupid that sounded.
“Well, that’s what your precious company told the media, or was allowed to tell the media. It was ‘supposed’ to just be a simple package — an installable — and it was only ‘supposed’ to hit the computers in one centralized IP band.”
“Let me guess,” Myers said. “It was ‘supposed’ to only do these things, but it did a little more?”
“Correct,” Ravi said. “EHM quickly found themselves chasing a virus in their own software. A little bug that just wouldn’t be squashed. The system migrated faster than it was originally designed to, and it started jumping to computers that were completely removed and isolated from the network. Through emails, websites, you know the drill.”
“So it was a virus? Why didn’t we just make everyone install virus protection software, or clean their computers?”
Ravi laughed. “We thought about it. Or you guys did, or whatever. Yeah, we covered that. ‘It’s a virus,’ they said, ‘so let’s kill the virus.’ But the problem was that the program was designed to protect itself against ignorant computer users who don’t know the first thing about anything other than sending an email and playing solitaire — the types of people that can generally be found working in government offices.”
Myers smirked. He did remember that much.
“So what happened was that the program was trying to protect the computer users who would typically use the ‘burn it all’ method of using antivirus software, to protect itself from being deleted along with the critical information and files on the person’s machine. It would create a backup drive with ‘mission critical files’ it found on the infected computer and upload them to a cloud storage device. When the antivirus software ran on the machine, the program simply waited it out, then downloaded and installed itself again, either from the cloud backup or from another connected machine.”
“You’re saying the program just did these things? Either it was designed that way, or it had a mind of its own.”
“Neither.” Ravi shook his head. “EHM was highly regarded for their program due to its simplicity, ease of use, and one-hundred-percent file protection guarantee, but they were most proud of one little feature the program boasted: the ability to learn.”
“To learn?”
“Yeah, simple stuff. It had a very robust spam-protection applet, and some nifty calendar scheduling tools that would learn your preferences. But it could then extrapolate those preferences to either anticipate what you were going to do, or it would use those ‘preference maps’ in other areas. If you typically scheduled meetings on Mondays, and kept Fridays open, then your mom emailed you asking to grab lunch, it would draft a pre-written response telling her that Friday was your most free day.”
“Wait a minute. This thing wrote emails on your behalf?”
“Yes and no. At first it was a basic library of pre-written messages, culled and cultivated from years of messages. But it was very clear that the program’s interpretation of EMH’s vision was to learn from new messages it came across, incorporate those into its database, then use that to determine a profile for the computer’s main user. It was supposed to be helpful — and it was — but it took it too far.”
“I’ll say. What happened? Did EHM figure it out?”
“No, it was a small group of computer nerds, worried about artificial intelligences and computer viruses and stuff. Mostly a group of really smart nutcases and conspiracy theorists, but pretty soon their voice got a lot louder. They figured out what was going on, and tried to stop it. The program was already too ubiquitous to be removed completely, but at the very least the government and any other organizations using it tried to set up separate, isolated networks that weren’t on the same server grid.
“The anti-AI group identified a few key flags that this program waved, breadcrumbs showing them which computers were infected. They used the identifiers to submit to the government a list of targets that were likely compromised, but by then the program had also identified those same flags.”
“And learned how to suppress them?”
“No, not exactly. Instead, the program created the same code snippets on uninfected machines. It found terminals that hadn’t been compromised, installed the code, then left it alone. The government-funded group that hired EHM realized after a little bit that the identifiers didn’t always point to a machine that had been compromised. They were concerned about resource waste, so they called the removal project a failure and moved on to other ideas.”
Myers shook his head. “Sounds like typical Congressional committees.”
“It does, except it wasn’t Congress. It was chaired by Joseph Eben, and most of the people calling the shots with him were from all over the public sector.”
“Joseph Eben — the technology coordinator?”
“One and the same. Yeah, you hired him, if I remember correctly.”
“I did. Good guy, too. How’s he doing?”
Ravi stopped and looked around. “Better than we are, I presume.”
Myers smiled. “You seem to know a lot about EHM
and this little virus — I thought you were just a petty thief.”
“Well, I was. At least after it all started going downhill. But before that, before the System, I was a hacker. I did some contract work for EHM and a bunch of other high-paying private-sector companies. Computers were my thing, man.”
“But when the program failed, and the System no longer needed you…”
“Yep. Exactly. Cast out, like you. But it wasn’t a failure, like I said earlier. We stopped fighting it because it was actually helping us to ‘iron out the discrepancies’ in what was previously poor administrative practices. The program was eventually successful, but it led to side effects.”
“Like what?”
“Like a perfectly balanced economy, for one. Wall Street had no clue what to do for about three weeks. Then there was the Peace Campaign, which led to a worldwide treaty, ceasefire, and —“
“A worldwide treaty?” Myers was skeptical.
“You were the leading signatory, old man,” Ravi said. “And yes, it was worldwide. But by then no one was convinced anymore that it was you behind it all. We’d all seen enough to know there was something bigger going on. People were losing their jobs, but then they’d find a better one; one that fit them better — much better. I’m a perfect example of that. Before college, I was on track to be a basketball coach. Never really enjoyed the school thing, and even though I loved messing around with computers, I didn’t want to be an IT guy or anything.”
Myers couldn’t help looking the kid up and down. He must have been no taller than 5’9”.
“Yeah, exactly,” Ravi said. “Would have been a huge mistake if I followed through with the basketball dream. Anyway, my acceptance to my school of choice for basketball somehow changed to a rejection, and I reapplied nine times to seven different schools. Eventually I gave up, took an internship at a computer consulting firm, and excelled.”
“But now you’re here,” Myers said. “With me. Doesn’t sound like a ‘success’ in my mind.”
“Maybe not for us, but the world at large, absolutely. War torn regions that had been fighting for hundreds of years suddenly found one side with a massive amount of armaments and supplies, and they obliterated the competition. It took awhile, but we realized that whatever the “System” was implementing was working. And we were all better off for it.”
“But, the people who died —“
“…All picked the wrong side,” Ravi said. “Trust me, there was a lot of debate over the philosophical implications of a one-sided ‘supreme judge for all humanity, just as there has always been.’” He turned to look at Myers. “I was in high school when it all started. You had just won your presidency, and you were all about progress in artificial intelligence applications.”
“But I don’t even remember any of that,” Myers said.
“I know. They scraped you. Took it all away. You’ve only been out here for three days, right?”
Myers nodded.
“But you can’t remember anything from the past fifteen years.”
Again, Myers nodded.
“So your entire campaign, your two terms as President, all of it is gone, man.” Ravi turned away and continued walking.
“But why get rid of me? Why cast me out, leave me for dead?”
“Because it doesn’t need you anymore. You’re irrelevant now.”
Myers considered this for a moment. It actually made sense. “I’m a leader. I was a public face for leadership, and the ‘System’ you’re talking about decided I was no longer necessary for a functional, self-sufficient society.”
Ravi clapped his hands together. “Now you’re starting to see it, old man. But it’s not just that you weren’t necessary. It’s that you — me, all of us — were considered threats to the System’s rule. It wasn’t that it didn’t need you, it’s that it didn’t trust you. We’re wildcards.”
Myers nodded along as he followed Ravi over the broken, cracked dirt.
“How can a computer not trust someone? The rules of AI prevent any semblance of sentient thought — that’s why they call it artificial intelligence.”
Ravi grinned. “So you haven’t forgotten everything, I guess. But don’t forget that the ‘rules’ of AI were established for us — the creators — not the programs and applications themselves. They just do what they’re told. They’re programmed to, and they can’t do anything besides what they’re programmed to do. And if they’re told to build a system that identifies anomalous activities, iron out deficiencies, and project the human race to new heights at whatever cost, trust all of a sudden becomes one of many variables that system is measuring.”
Myers took it in, not speaking. He thought about it all — the ‘System,’ the AI that was now growing inside computers around the globe, the intelligence that had developed because of it.
“Myers, listen — can I call you Myers? The System can’t directly kill people, at least not yet. Part of its parameters are to ‘increase efficiency’ of its creators, the human race, and it has so far taken that to mean the overall survival of the human race as well. It hasn’t directly harmed a human, but that’s changing, Myers. It’s probably changing fast. If we make it through the next few days, that’s going to be our biggest challenge.”
“What, exactly?” Myers asked.
“Our challenge is going to be to try and understand a system that’s likely more intelligent than us, that was created by us to protect us, yet determine how it’s going to reconcile the fact that this planet only has room for one of us.”
Myers was about to ask another question when he heard Ravi shout from out in front of him.
“Run!”
MYERS
MYERS HEARD THE VOICE, KNEW it came from Ravi, but was focused on the other sound he heard.
A low, rumbling sound from behind them. He turned to look.
A dark black shape floated toward them, hugging the horizon as it descended down over the outer edges of Istanbul. It was moving — fast — and Myers was quickly feeling another wave of panic set in.
“Let’s go, old man. They’re here!”
“Who — who’s here?” he shouted back.
Ravi didn’t answer. Instead, Myers followed him toward the hill. What the plan was at this point, Myers had no idea. They had no weapons, no way to outrun the thing — whatever it was — and nowhere to hide.
Myers made it to the hill just as the floating machine came up behind them. Myers tried climbing up, but the hill was much steeper, and much less forgiving, than it had appeared from farther away. He called out to Ravi, already halfway up the hill and nearing the top. The giant thing floated smoothly over his head, aiming for Ravi. He struggled faster up the hill, but it grew steeper the higher he climbed and he quickly found himself able to only crawl on his hands and knees.
“Ravi — hey, give me a —“
A deep, clanging rattle intercepted Myers’ call for help, and he saw something small come out of the machine hovering in front of and above him, flying straight for Ravi.
They’re shooting at him.
He tried to shout a warning, but it was too late.
The device — Myers wasn’t sure what to call it — flew through the air and landed on Ravi’s back, immediately knocking him to the dirt on the side of the hill. The mechanical object opened and eight long, spindly arms sprouted from somewhere in the center of the mechanical object and grabbed around Ravi’s torso. Ravi let out a quick yelp, but one of the arms forced Ravi’s head down and into the dirt.
As Ravi struggled with the robotic creature that had incapacitated him, Myers worked his way farther up the hill, watching. The robot was black, but polished to a sparkling sheen. Myers didn’t know how to describe its movements, however. It seemed less robotic than it did biological. It stretched and grew on its extendable legs, counteracting Ravi’s struggling with precise, calculated movements. Every motion was smooth, as if it really was alive and interacting with its prey.
“What the —“ Myers
was helpless as Ravi was overwhelmed.
He couldn’t help but wonder at the little object, even as Ravi fought against it. He watched Ravi try to spin on his side, to crush the little beast or at least throw it off, but the spidery machine simply pressed two of its legs out and pushed back against the ground. Ravi moved about an inch before the creature’s strength overwhelmed his own. He stopped, defeated. The spider-robot once again pushed his head down and into the dirt, then brought its two back legs up into the air.
It’s preparing to strike, Myers realized. The two back legs, he now realized, were the only legs on the creature that sported deadly-looking spikes at their tips. These spikes were raised up and were looking straight down at the backs of Ravi’s kneecaps. If it hits him there… Myers didn’t want to finish the terrifying thought.
He struggled to get up to the kid’s position near the top of the hill, but couldn’t finish the rest of the steep climb. He reached up for one more handhold on a protruding rock, and —
A large boot smashed his hand down into the dirt. He screamed in agony as the boot twisted, digging his hand deeper into the ground.
“I’d suggest you move a little less, Asher.”
Who are these people? They already know my name?
Myers lifted his head up to see the man who was crushing his hand. The beast was easily over seven feet tall, completely bald, and smiling.
“You realize how much Current you’re posting at? How much you’re going to bring in?”
Myers stared up at him.
“Seriously, you’ve got no idea.” The man lifted his foot and kicked Myers in the side. “Hey, Grouse, check it out. Both marks, right here in one place.”
Myers swiveled around to see who Grouse might be. He saw a shorter man, also bald, with tattoos covering every square inch of his face. Lines, shapes, and a random assortment of symbols, the guy looked to have more ink than skin.
“I got it, Birdman. Get him in here, and clean him up. Take your time with him, too. I’ll log him in and we’ll just run the Board a little longer with him.” Grouse turned to yell into the open door of the floating machine. “Yuri, Wong, keep an eye out for Unders, and make sure the kid doesn’t make a run for it.”
