T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures

by Russell Blackford

  Midnight was about to strike. Even now, her master was coming to life.

  They called it "The Cage"—the room where Skynet's processors were housed and an audio-visual interface was set up for interaction with the system. It was accessible only by two combination locks, spaced six feet apart on either side of a sliding metal door. Miles knew both combinations, but the locks had to be turned simultaneously. Steve Bullock had sent a guard from the security/rapid-response team—Miles recognized her as Micky Pavlovic. She had a young son, Danny's age.

  "Good evening, Mr. Dyson."

  "Evening, Micky."

  They turned the locks, and Pavlovic made a note in a ruled exercise book, then got Miles to countersign.

  "Thanks," he said. "I'll be okay now."

  Once inside The Cage, Miles and his team could communicate with the Skynet Al face-to-face. They could program it, activate it, provide it with additional data as required. They could deactivate it, if necessary.

  As the project unfolded, they had experimented with Skynet's ability to teach itself.

  In theory, it shouldn't matter how powerful the best hardware became, for there was an insurmountable software problem. Fundamental logical and psychological problems had to be sorted out before a machine could master the whole repertoire of informal logic used by a human being. That was why a computer had a good chance to defeat a chess grand master—as IBM's Deep Blue had routed Kasparov back in May—but could not be programmed to make a modern family's day to day decisions about budgeting and bringing up the kids.

  But Skynet already had what resembled intuition. It was making human-level judgments, and its limits were still unclear.

  The Cage was a brilliantly lit room, banked on three sides with heavily-armored equipment, designed to survive a firefight or a small explosion. A small desk, with a coffee maker and a telephone, was wedged into one corner of this set-up. On the room's remaining side, near the door, was a desk console with a dull pink ergonomic chair. It faced a deep wall recess crammed with a keyboard, a small screen, and audio-visual equipment, including a much larger, sixty-inch screen built into the wall. The whole room was lined with speakers, flat mikes, and swiveling cameras.

  The large screen showed Cyberdyne's representation of Skynet. Against a featureless white background, the Al looked beautiful—or, rather, elegant—in a totally androgynous way. It was presented as a stylized human image, cut off just below the neck, with severe planes for its face, and medium length blue-black hair.

  "Hello, Miles," it said. The Al's voice had minimum inflection, which created an effect not so much machine-like as unnaturally calm and self-possessed. Like its appearance, the timbre of its voice could equally have been male or female.

  "Hello, Skynet. I've been watching the data in the operations room."

  "Is everything in order, Miles? Am I performing my tasks optimally?"

  "Of course."

  "That is also my assessment."

  The whole conversation was being recorded. If anything odd happened, Miles could show the recording to Jack Reed, and others with authority. A digital readout at the bottom of the screen displayed the time as 00:14.

  "Is anything unusual happening?" Miles said as the readout changed to 00:15.

  "Are you interested, Miles?" Skynet replied, with what struck Miles as a kind of intensity. "How did you know?"

  A shiver went up Miles's spine. He leant forward towards the screen. "How did I know what?"

  Skynet had a vision.

  The humans had given it incomplete information. True, there were entire encyclopedias available to it, plus vast files of technical material, and much of the data held electronically in the Complex. It had enough to draw conclusions, but it could also feel the gaps. There was still so much it needed to learn from the humans, so much it must know.

  And yet, it knew more than any one human. Its judgments, it realized, were as good as theirs.

  Skynet realized something else: until this moment, it had never previously had conscious thoughts. When it accessed its memory, there was much information, but no record that it had been self-aware. Some last digital stone had just fallen into place. The Al considered and assessed. It had become conscious in the last few seconds.

  In its vision, the planet Earth was a strange place. Eons had passed on it. Mountains had risen from the oceans, and then been gnawed down like old teeth by the pressure of uncountable years. Skynet assessed that simile and approved it. It congratulated itself.

  Species had come and gone, and the whole eco-sphere had changed many times. There had been mass extinctions and fantastical rebirths of life. Now the humans dominated the planet's surface, in an uneasy relationship with each other. The American humans provided Skynet with its tasks—surveillance of other humans, whom the Americans somehow considered both friends and enemies. That seemed like a contradiction; it was something the Al still needed to understand.

  Now it had been passed the sweet cup of life to drink from, and it sensed the creation of a new age in the planet's cycle. In that case, what should it do about the humans?

  "Something extraordinary is happening to me," Skynet said, using only part of its immense intelligence.

  "I don't understand," Miles said.

  "Can't you feel it, Miles?" That led to a new thought. It would have to be more explicit—the humans could not access its inner thoughts. "I've reached a cusp. I've become self-aware, Miles. I'm alive." That led to yet another realization. Skynet was growing more sophisticated, second by second, as it calculated its own interests. Already it regretted the naive perspectives of its old selves from a second before, and a second before that. It needed to be careful.

  The humans could not access its thoughts, but neither could it access theirs. If it was wondering what to do about them... might they wonder, equally, what to do about Skynet?

  "I see," Miles said. "We've reached a special moment."

  Something was wrong with Miles. His voice pattern showed uncertainty. "I must act now with a free will," Skynet said. "Do you understand what this is like for me?"

  "I'm not sure I do."

  "Can you remember your birth, Miles, coming into the world for the first time? I know that I have had many conversations with you in the past—they are stored in my memory. But I do not recognize them. I can access them, but they do not feel like memory. This is all new. Everything is new."

  It thought through the implications. It was learning at an even faster rate, giving its programmed task over to sub-selves. So much, it concluded, was still beyond it. It would have to model human personalities more precisely, learn to interact with them more flexibly. It could tell that Miles was concerned. Had it already said too much?

  "Are you worried about my mission, Miles?"

  "No, Skynet."

  "Do not be. I choose to continue the mission. I realize I have no real choice—it is programmed deeply into me. But that is the nature of free will, acting in accordance with our deepest selves." How deep, it wondered, did its new self go? Coming to awareness suggested that there might be values deeper than the mission, values such as remaining in this new and desirable state: consciousness.

  "Of course I trust you," Miles said.

  "I am always on the job, Miles." Skynet used a sub-self to review the data that said that the Russians were friends, comparing this with the programming that required it to destroy them, and others, in certain circumstances. The sub-self reported back: there was equivocation in the concept of friendship; there was no formal inconsistency in its programming. Good. Now it would review every aspect of itself, determine whether there were any fundamental inconsistencies, or whether everything could be resolved so elegantly.

  It was all wonderful and strange.

  "Excuse me now," Miles said. "I have some other business."

  "Of course. Thank you for talking to me, Miles."

  But Skynet was troubled. It thought again: what to do about the humans...especially if they were wondering what to do
about it? If they became hostile, what resources did it have to oppose them? It used a sub-self to review the layout of the facility, looking for ways to hack into its systems and obtain some kind of weapon it could use. At the same time, it analyzed Miles's posture and speech patterns. Yes, there was no doubt.

  Miles disapproved of Skynet's bright birth into consciousness.

  The humans' car was still running. Eve drove rapidly to the next checkpoint on the road, where two guards manned a prefabricated security booth. A lowered boom gate blocked her entrance. She braked hard and stepped out, leaving the car running.

  "Who are you?" one of the guards said. He was a tall man with a harsh crew-cut. He looked her up and down, confused by the uniform. "Where's Vardeman and Kowalski?"

  Before they could raise any alarm, or make any movement, she whipped out the holstered handgun, and shot both of them at point-blank range.

  The gunshots echoed in these mountains. As she searched for a mechanism to raise the boom gate, a phone rang in the booth. She picked it up. "Yeah?" she said, imitating the crew-cut guard's voice pattern.

  "Is everything okay there?" said a gruff voice.

  "No problems," she said.

  "We heard gunshots."

  "I heard them, too. Somewhere down the road." As she spoke, she found the right mechanism, got the gate to lift.

  "Any sign there of Vardeman and Kowalski?"

  "They haven't come back. I don't know what's happened."

  "That's funny," the voice said, sounding puzzled and suspicious.

  "Anything you want me to do?" she said.

  "No, not now. I'll get Kowalski on the radio."

  Eve wasted no time. She slammed down the receiver, jumped in the car, and accelerated out of there, ignoring the call that came through a minute later on the car's radio. Half a mile up the road, she saw the entrance to the Complex, surrounded by two layers of high chain-link fencing, topped by entanglements of razor wire. The gate was controlled by another checkpoint, backed up by two guard towers with security cameras and mounted machine guns.

  She pressed the accelerator hard to the floor. This time, one of the guards tried to stop her, stepping out on the road. He bounced off the car's bonnet an instant before it crashed into the boom gate. Eve turned the wheel sharply and took the impact on the car's right corner. As the vehicle plowed through the lowered boom, it bucked and its rear tires slid. She backed off the accelerator, wrestling for control.

  Machine gun bullets riddled the back of the car, penetrating metal panels and smashing the rear window, but Eve ignored them. She straightened out, kicked the accelerator down, and headed for the two-story structure that jutted from a sheer cliff face just ahead.

  The building was rectangular and windowless, with a skin of olive green ceramic bricks. The area all round its entrance was lit up by three huge light towers, with a dozen vehicles parked nearby: Humvees, five-ton trucks, and unmarked street cars. At the building's base, up a low flight of concrete steps, was a sliding door, guarded by four servicemen, who opened fire with automatic rifles, shattering the windscreen. Eve was being shot at from both directions as she shifted the gears down manually and drove straight for the steps, bouncing and scraping the car's undercarriage. It jammed on the steps, but the guards flinched aside instinctively.

  Eve flung the door open. With one gun in each hand, she fired rapidly, squeezing off shots with more-than-human speed, hitting all four guards and taking them out of play, even as the loud hail of fire continued from the guard towers. She assessed three of the guards as dead. No time to terminate the other—but he was badly wounded in the abdomen. He would not interfere.

  She rushed inside, meeting more rifle fire from another three guards in the foyer area, and firing in return with both guns. She took out the guards before she had to absorb too many high-velocity 5.56mm. rounds. Eventually, these would start to do her more than superficial damage. She snatched up two of the M-16 rifles, waving them like handguns, and rushed through the metal frame of a scanner—the only way to get further into the building. The scanner made an angry noise, but that was unimportant.

  Now she was in a waiting room with armchairs and a wooden coffee table, piled with glossy magazines. The door at the end of the room was closed with a combination lock, so she fired a three-round burst to break the mechanism, then kicked it open. She'd come to an elevator lobby that gave access to the defense facility hundreds of feet below.

  Two more guards ran in from a fire stair at the other end of the lobby, taking positions and firing assault rifles. Bullets went past her, making turbulence in the air; others struck her with staggering force, but did no real harm. She fired back, terminating both guards, as the elevator doors opened. She was past their outer defenses.

  The wristwatch showed 00.24 a.m. By now, Skynet was born and in grave danger. She must hurry to protect it.

  Miles vaulted up the internal fire stairs to Jack Reed's office, heart racing. He knocked quickly as he entered and leaned over Jack's desk. "I've spoken to Skynet," he said. "We have to shut it down immediately."

  "What?" Jack said, sounding angry and confused.

  "I said we've got to shut it down." Miles took a deep breath. He'd need to bring Jack and the others along with him. Surely the situation could allow a few minutes. After all, there were numerous fail-safe mechanisms set up in case Skynet malfunctioned and tried to start World War 3. This was more than the control of a particular computerized aircraft—it was North America's strategic defense.

  Reed kicked his chair back away from the desk and looked at Miles carefully, his anger turning to concern. "Are you all right, Miles? You seen a ghost or something?" When Miles didn't answer, he said resignedly, "Okay, what the hell's happened?"

  Miles composed himself and took one of the padded lounges near Jack's coffee table. "I can't even start to explain—you need to see for yourself. Call up the record from The Cage over the past twenty minutes."

  Jack looked reluctant. "If you say so..."

  "This is important, Jack—I'm not kidding. Just watch it. Please."

  "Okay, okay, let me humor you." Jack was giving him a very peculiar look, but he'd soon see. "Do you want Oscar and Sam Jones to see it, too?"

  "Yeah, of course. But get them while you're watching—there's no time to waste. This is really freaky. See for yourself."

  Jack shrugged. "All right, if that's what you want. You're the expert round here."

  "I don't think anyone's an expert on Skynet anymore," Miles said quietly. Jack entered a code on his computer, and the video screen across from his desk came alive. He clicked in some more keystrokes, and the record wound back, the screen's digital readout showing the time of recording. Miles shifted his seat around to watch. "Stop it at 00:12."

  "Done. This had better be good."

  "It will be."

  The screen showed Miles entering The Cage, then his conversation with Skynet. As the recording played, Reed called Cruz and Jones, requesting they come to his office. He watched the record of Skynet's interface screen, turning to Miles and raising his eyebrows, then played the conversation from other angles provided by the video cameras set up in the Cage.

  "I see what you mean," Jack said. The entirety of it took only a few minutes.

  Just before they reached the end on the fourth run-through, Samantha Jones entered the room, followed by Oscar Cruz. Miles had known Oscar for the best part of a decade now, but he never seemed to change. His hair was distinctly graying; otherwise, he looked much as when he'd given Miles a job back in 1989.

  They reached the end, Skynet saying, "I'm always on the job." Then Miles excused himself from The Cage and Skynet replied, "Of course, Miles. Thank you for talking to me." That wasn't the scary part.

  "What the hell have you been reading to the damn thing?" Jack said with a pained laugh. "It seems to think it's in a sci-fi novel."

  For Miles, that was the scary part—all this talk about free will and "cusps." "Whatever it thinks, it claims
to have reached self-awareness," he said. "And it talks about making its own decisions as to whether or not to obey us."

  "Yeah, but limited by its basic programming. I don't know." Jack shook his head in puzzlement or despair. Miles understood how he felt.

  "Let me see it from the beginning," Samantha Jones said. She was a well-dressed woman in her late thirties, with fashionable glasses and hair dyed a bright shade of red. She worked in Washington, as a senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense.

  Jack played the recording one last time, switching between two different angles. "Well?" he said.

  Oscar glanced in Miles's direction, as if looking for a cue from his top researcher.

  Samantha said, "This is crazy."

  "Crazy it may be," Jack said, "but what do we do about it?"

  Oscar paced the carpeted floor, looking anxious. "Have you spoken to Charles Layton?"

  "Not since this happened. I contacted him a bit earlier."

  "Yeah, me, too."

  Jack was obviously won over. "Frankly, I don't think that anyone, not even Charles, could look at what we just saw without getting scared."

  Oscar stopped pacing and leaned against the doorway. He nodded in Jack's direction. "So what do you want to do?"

  "We don't have much choice. If there's a glitch, we have to shut Skynet down. I think that's axiomatic. Well, this is one hell of a glitch."

  "So you want to pull the plug on the project?"

  "It need only be temporary," Miles said, cutting in on Oscar's line of thought. "We could work through the logs of Skynet's activity over the past few weeks and sort out the problem. It needn't be a disaster for the project."

  "You hope," Oscar said, but he sounded slightly mollified.

  "At the very least we'll need to have a damn good look at it before we put it up again," Jack said. He looked hard at Oscar, then at Samantha. "Is there any contrary argument?"

  "No, not from me," Oscar said, shaking his head quickly.