Phantom

by Ted Bell

  “What the hell?” Laddie said. “Amazing.”

  “Yeah,” Hawke said. “We sliced her bloody keel off. All that lead just plunged to the bottom. There’s no more boat beneath the waterline. She’s wide open from stem to stern.”

  Laddie just looked at him, his lower jaw threatening his collarbone.

  “This is one for the books, sir.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Loose lips sink ships?”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Hawke replied.

  Alvand sank without a trace within seconds.

  The Strait of Hormuz now lay wide open before them.

  They were going home.

  Home, Hawke thought.

  England.

  My beloved son.

  Hawke, in the following moments, was silent, still as a photograph. There was no jubilation, no exultation of triumph or evincing the thrill of victory. He was simply paying tribute to his dear father and all the wisdom that great good man had imparted to his son before his parents were brutally murdered.

  The much-decorated naval hero had said it best:

  War is never about what’s in front of you, Alex. It’s always about what’s behind you.

  And it was the truth.

  Epilogue

  Bermuda

  It had been cold the previous night, unseasonably cold. The chill wind howled around Alex Hawke’s tiny Teakettle Cottage on Bermuda’s southern coast, whistling down the chimneys and round the window sashes, clawing at the rattling shutters, insistent and noisy as an angry mob of banshees seeking revenge.

  Hawke recognized it as that cold sea air, filled with the bottomless chill that lies at the cloistered heart of ghost stories.

  Alexei had come running into his father’s bedroom to say good night just as Hawke was slipping his loaded .45 into the drawer of his bedside table. He always slept with it nearby now, even though the boy’s bodyguard, Nell Spooner, was just down the hall, sleeping in the child’s room.

  Hawke felt the boy was safer in Bermuda than anywhere else, but still, he was taking no chances.

  At that precise moment came a deafening boom of thunder, one that rattled the seaward windows and was quickly followed by a blinding flash of lightning that lit up the room brighter than the brightest day.

  Little Alexei’s eyes widened with delight and the three-year-old leaped onto his father’s bed.

  “Oh, Papa, this is a real storm. I love storms!”

  “His father’s son, isn’t he?” Nell Spooner said, entering the room to collect her charge. “Now I know two very odd men who much prefer bad weather to good.”

  Hawke smiled at her and then his son, who now had his thin little arms clasped around his father’s neck and was hugging him as hard as ever he could.

  “Good night, Alexei,” Hawke said, kissing the boy’s forehead. “Promise me you’ll get a good night’s sleep because Daddy’s taking you out sailing tomorrow.”

  “Sailing! On Stormy Petrel, Papa?”

  “Of course we’re taking Petrel. Now, you go with Nell and don’t forget to say your prayers.”

  Petrel, unlike Hawke’s massive megayacht, Blackhawke, was a simple forty-foot Bermuda ketch. But she was lovely, built of mahogany over oak planking, teak decks, sitka spruce spars, and a gleaming varnished cabin house. Her hull was painted jet black with golden cove stripes along her sides.

  “I never forget God, Papa. He watches over me, just like Nell does.”

  “I know he does. I love you, boy.”

  “I love you even more, Papa.”

  Nell swept Alexei up into her arms and carried him away. Hawke watched the two of them disappear down the dimly lit hall, aware of that overwhelming sensation of gratitude for his little family. It was as powerful as anything he’d ever felt.

  And he remembered what his late father had said about the true meaning of war.

  This, he knew, this was what lay behind him when he went off to battle.

  After a lullaby or two, Alexei fell fast asleep in his bed. Nell Spooner reentered Hawke’s tiny bedroom, arms wrapped around herself, shivering. She spied the fire Pelham had laid in the brick fireplace.

  “Please light the fire, Alex. I’m so cold. To the bone.”

  Hawke put down his book and looked up.

  “You know what Ambrose Congreve told me once?”

  “No, darling.”

  “He said, ‘Great love affairs are born in heaven. But so, too, are thunder and lightning.’ ”

  Nell laughed her soft laugh. She was now wearing his old Irish fisherman’s sweater and nothing else. Her long legs were tanned a deep bronze by the Bermuda sun, pale white at the top where the beloved golden thatch nestled between her thighs.

  “I like that,” she said.

  “My darling girl. Of course I’ll light the fire. Come here first and give us a kiss.”

  He lifted the covers and she crawled inside, reaching for him and finding him already rock hard.

  It started with a kiss.

  Half an hour later he slipped from her body, then silently from the bed and lit the fire. He sat there, cross-legged on the floor before the hearth, watching until he was sure it had caught. Nell came over, knelt beside him, and placed the silk coverlet around his shoulders.

  “That was lovely,” she said, gazing at his profile lit by the flickering orange flames. “My man, my beautiful man.”

  “Looking forward to your first sea voyage tomorrow, landlubber?” Hawke asked, still staring into the fire, lost in his own thoughts.

  “I look forward to everything, Alex Hawke. Every single day.”

  At sea the following day, Nell emerged from the varnished mahogany cabin house and into the pale gold of the late afternoon sunlight. Hawke’s lovely old ketch, Stormy Petrel, was heeled hard over, slashing through crystalline blue water that roiled and foamed along either side of her bow.

  “Did he finally fall asleep?” Hawke asked.

  “Yes. He’s all tucked into your bed—excuse me, berth. Clutching his teddy and fast asleep. I think he was just exhausted. He loved it when you let him steer. He’s had an exciting day, hasn’t he?”

  “I guessed he would love the water, the wind and sails. Hawke blood runs thick with sea salt. Has done since my ill-mannered pirate ancestors plundered and terrorized the Spanish Main.”

  Nell sat down in the cockpit right next to Hawke, who was standing at the wheel, gazing upward at his billowing white mainsail, looking for a luff, and trimming or easing the mainsheet a bit when he saw a crinkle or pocket in the canvas.

  “Alex. I had no idea Bermuda could be so exquisite. Small wonder you and Pelham spend so much time at Teakettle Cottage.”

  “One of those places that make me happiest. But do you think Alexei is safe here? Safer than in England, at any rate?”

  “Without question. You cannot possibly monitor all the points of entry at home, but you certainly can here. Only one airport. The cruise ships arriving in town and out at the Royal Dockyards. And then the private yachts. That’s it. And we’ve got eyes and ears at all of them, all day, every day.”

  Hawke smiled down at her. “Thank you for that, Nell.”

  “I love him, too, you know.”

  “I do know,” Hawke said, gazing at the open water beyond the harbor and the westering sun. He felt a shiver of pleasure ripple down his spine. He was where he wanted to be, the feel of warm teak decks beneath his bare feet, the breeze on his cheek, the sharp spike of salt in the air, a beautiful sailing machine responding to his every command, slicing through the incredibly translucent blue.

  “Are you tired, Nell?” Hawke said, stroking her golden thigh.

  “A little.”

  “I’ve rigged a little hamm
ock forward, slung beneath the bowsprit just above the water, nothing but a sail but quite comfortable for two.”

  “And who sails the boat, Captain?”

  “The autopilot.”

  “So we just climb inside and sail off into the sunset?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sounds like something you’d read at the end of a novel.”

  “Yes. Or perhaps at the beginning.”

  Afterword

  Regarding the Singularity: the only difference between science fiction and science is timing.

  The preceding is a work of fiction, an entertainment. However, I want to make it clear that there is nothing fictional about the scientific underpinnings of the novel. Namely, the fast-approaching scientific phenomenon called Singularity. It will be an unfamiliar term to most readers. But it won’t be for long.

  What is it?

  The Singularity is that epic moment in human evolution when artificial, or machine, intelligence (in the form of extremely powerful, superhuman computers) first matches and then exceeds human intelligence by a factor incalculable.

  After reaching the point of parity, perhaps within the next decade or so, artificial intelligence will explode exponentially. Ultimately, ultra-intelligent machines called “artilects” will be a billion times more powerful than human intelligence of the highest order.

  A billion.

  The implications of that statement are of enormous importance to the future of humankind. Not to mention our universe and our whole understanding of what it means to be human within it.

  To repeat, there is nothing fictional about the Singularity. The scientific foundation upon which the story rests is as accurate as I could portray it and based on extensive research, delving into scientific literature, interviews, and documentary films.

  I want you to enjoy this book. Period. But I also want to make as many people as I can aware of what is distinctly possible in the very near future.

  A life-altering moment, when machines first match, and then exceed, the finite limits of human intelligence. Why is it called by scientists “the Singularity”? Literally, the word, borrowed from mathematics, means “a unique event with singular implications.” Life-changing implications. A rip in the fabric of current civilization. And it’s just around the corner.

  An essential resource in the writing of this novel was Ray Kurzweil’s groundbreaking book, The Singularity Is Near. I highly recommend it for readers of this novel who want to delve deeper into the facts. Kurzweil, considered the world’s leading futurist, has appeared numerous times on television, including in a documentary called The Transcendent Man, and on CNN, Fox News, and the Charlie Rose show multiple times to discuss the approaching Singularity. No less a visionary than Bill Gates has called Ray “A genius. Our next Thomas Edison.”

  Ray holds more than twenty patents, including the first flat-screen scanner, and the first “reader” for the blind, a handheld device that turns written words into audible human language for the visually impaired.

  A word to skeptics about the approaching Singularity: there is no longer any dispute; we stand on the verge of a new epoch in the realm of artificial intelligence. This quantum leap forward in machine-enhanced, superhuman intelligence will result in the ultimate merger of human intelligence (limited) with machine intelligence (unlimited). And it will change, literally, everything.

  As mentioned earlier, in the near future, intelligent machines will be a billion times more powerful than human intelligence. It’s difficult, but try to imagine what that will mean for human civilization. There will be no problem we face today that cannot be solved. Disease, war, aging, energy, poverty, starvation, water shortages, antisocial behavior—the list continues ad infinitum. This is the utopian view. Others hold a more dystopian view and predict the triumph of machines as the end of humanity.

  “Watson,” IBM’s ultra-intelligent computer, is just the beginning. In the 1960s, people said no computer would ever beat a human at chess. Turns out chess was child’s play for a computer. Mere data retrieval. But, until Watson, there had never been a computer capable of communicating in a “human-to-human” fashion. Not just retrieving data from some data bank, but a machine capable of understanding a complex, subtle, nuanced humanoid question and responding correctly in natural, human language. In seconds. To oversimplify, Watson doesn’t merely search and retrieve data, Watson thinks using human language.

  To understand what’s about to happen, you must imagine the vast knowledge embedded in our brains vastly enhanced by the far greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of immensely powerful linked supercomputers now being developed around the world.

  And then try to imagine what will happen when these ultra-intelligent machines actually outstrip the human brain’s limitations. Our organic brains are capable of a mere hundred trillion extremely slow calculations per second. But nonorganic brains have no such limits. Their capacity for speed is unlimited, infinite.

  At that moment, once the Singularity is achieved, the world will witness an “intelligence explosion.” Thus, the first ultra-intelligent machine will be the very last invention that man need ever make. Machines will do the inventing for us. Including inventing nanoneurons traveling in our bloodstreams that will make our own bodies and brains vastly more powerful and ageless. Thus will begin the merging of man and machine intelligence. Parity is the ideal, but not necessarily a given.

  And herein lies the great question.

  Certainly the moral implications give one pause, in any case. The line between man and machine might eventually become blurred, then disappear altogether. So what is man?

  We are entering an era as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals. From the human point of view, this change will be a discarding of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential technological runaway. Will it accelerate beyond any hope of human control? Those who take the dystopian view see this rise of the machines as the beginning of the end of human existence. They envision superintelligent robots with inhuman strength that know us and love us, even while they are ripping the very fabric of our civilization to shreds. They envision a war, the very last war, between man and a vastly superior robotic warrior. And that’s a war humans might well lose.

  Already, cyberweapons like the ones described in this book are not only on the drawing boards but in advanced stages of development. The Stuxnet attack on Iran heralded a new era in warfare. The Era of Cyberwarfare. What do you do when your navy’s most advanced nuclear aircraft carrier is rendered useless without a shot being fired? Or your Predator missile reverses direction in flight and homes in on the launch site? As I tried to make clear earlier, this is not just some spy novelist’s fantasy, it is literally what the military is wrestling with at this very moment. Even more frightening are bioengineered diseases, reverse engineered from the human genome, for which there is no cure. We are then looking at genocide on a global scale.

  We will have one very powerful arrow in our quiver: our innate and deeply embedded desire to survive. Human beings will literally do anything to live.

  Anything.

  There are other inherent dangers, obviously, embodied in the dystopian view. To visualize this, imagine this destructive, superintelligent robot without an on-off switch. This unpleasant notion is exactly why mankind (human-based science) must tread exquisitely carefully here. We enter this uncharted territory at our peril. Safeguards, if they are even possible, are mandatory at every stage of the progression.

  Unimaginable weapons could be created by runaway machines. Bioengineered diseases described above and designed by computers run amok would make our atomic and hydrogen bombs pale in comparison. An atomic explosion is a local event. Remember that the influenza epidemic of 1918 killed fifty million people around the world! Should this new technology fall into the wrong hands and create a b
ioengineered disease mankind was incapable of stopping, it is no stretch to say that the extinction of humans is entirely possible.

  Of course, there are positives.

  The Singularity will allow us to overcome age-old human problems (such as the aforementioned disease and aging) and vastly amplify human creativity in the arts, engineering, and problem solving. We will then be able to preserve and enhance the intelligence that evolution has bestowed upon us while overcoming the profound limitations of our biological evolution.

  In summary, benefits, as well as dangers, will accrue when we radically outstrip the hundred-trillion-operations-per-second speed limit of our human brains.

  We might well discover how to live forever (or as long as we want to). We might learn how to exceed the speed of light, at which point anything, even time travel and exploring other universes, will be possible.

  But the preceding story, though fictional, is a cautionary tale. Because, without question, the Singularity will also amplify our ability to act upon our innate destructive inclinations, the dangerous primal components of our brains referred to by Arthur Koestler in his work The Ghost in the Machine. Cyberwarfare alone presents enormous new challenges. Challenges I’ve endeavored to illuminate in this book.

  Let me, in conclusion, summarize the thoughts of John Arquilla, professor of defense analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Professor Arquilla actually introduced the notion of cyberwar twenty years ago.

  Arquilla believes cyberwar to be an emerging conflict mode enabled by and primarily waged with advanced information systems. These systems will be, in and of themselves, both tools and targets. This new method of war fighting, already quite potent on the battlefield, will also be able to strike at the enemies’ homelands without the need to defeat their military forces first. In other words, outbreaks of conflict may be primarily driven by the state of play in technology. This state of play (as demonstrated in this novel) makes attacking seem easy and defending oneself hard. Unfortunately, a world plagued with cyberwar appears to be the future.