“Understand that by allowing you access to PHOEBE, I’m trusting you with everything I’ve ever done,” Nikki said as she led Muranaka into the second bedroom of the two bedroom Terminal Island apartment that housed Nikki’s computer station.
“Understood,” Muranaka responded. She felt her heart race from anxiety and was surprised by her physical reaction.
The Coalition programmer had long studied PHOEBE from afar and had imagined what this moment would be like, when she would finally have access to the program. Her imagination did not predict that it would unfold like this.
She tried not to appear too eager as she looked over the half hexagon of high definition screens, keyboard, and small computer server.
Nikki sat down at her workstation. She went to log onto PHOEBE but hesitated at the last moment. PHOEBE had prevented every access attempt Nikki had tried since Alex had returned from Mexico with Maria. But then the software algorithm had put Nikki and Muranaka in contact with one another.
If Nikki had guessed right about PHOEBE’s intentions, it was because PHOEBE wanted the two women to work together. Nikki would have her answer the moment she tried to log on.
She realized that she was risking everything by exposing her software program to Rika Muranaka, Coalition Properties employee, and she had no idea if Muranaka would turn against her.
She hoped that her instincts about her own software were correct because if she was wrong, it would be the end of everything that Winn, Alex, Mawith, Kunchin had preached, and the rest of the family had worked so hard for.
If she was wrong, the Coalition and everything the super-conglomerate stood for would win.
Nikki took a deep breath, hit the keyboard, and typed in her twenty-six-digit password that led to her user-ID that led to a second eight-digit password.
Nikki held her breath for several seconds as the computer did nothing. She let out a huge sigh of relief when the monitors blinked to life.
“Sure, now you talk to me,” Nikki whispered under her breath.
“Holy smokes,” Muranaka reacted to what she saw.
The half hexagon arrangement of large high definition monitors showed highly detailed images of the city of Los Angeles defined solely by its electrical activity. Temperature signatures indicated hot spots, fluctuating from red to yellow to blue based on energy consumption.
Countless Internet nodes moved data in pulses that looked like blood cells flowing through capillaries. Cell tower and satellite activity were represented by a translucent dome over it all, looking like a digitized and squirming layer of skin.
Underneath this electromagnetic skin, the Fortress resembled a living, breathing organism that was city shaped, with the building frames providing the skeletal structure. The entire scope of digital information moved about like an angular cardiovascular system, one that existed around human activity, a digitized dimension hidden from view.
“I call this half layer resolution,” Nikki said.
“Which is roughly half the data that PHOEBE can or does monitor at any given moment,” Muranaka said, completing Nikki’s thought.
“Correct. Full data analysis makes the images too dense to distinguish anything usefully. And as humans, we have limited capacity to distinguish detail.”
“In other words, we can’t see other worlds beyond our five senses, including the digital one.”
“That’s part of it. Right now, people have access to more data in one hour than previous generations did in an entire year, and look how it’s tearing the world apart. People can’t distinguish because processing too much detail immobilizes them.
“The animal brain is hard wired for survival. You don’t need to count the hairs in a tiger’s face to recognize it’s a tiger and you better run. But because of this they can’t see the intricate connections. People are literally drowning in information, but with no higher wisdom or trained capacity to process it.
“So it helps to limit the data in order to actually see what you’re looking at. More importantly, to know what you’re looking for in that endless sea of data.”
Nikki hit a few keys, and the images gained a level of resolution. “Right now, this is just a base template of power consumption and information movement, but trust me, PHOEBE’s watching and processing a whole lot more data.”
“How much of this design is you, and how much of this is PHOEBE building herself out on her own?”
“It’s less and less me every day,” Nikki answered, almost to herself. She turned toward Muranaka. “At first, I could get her to turn things on and shut things off via command. Electronic door locks, security cameras, getting past firewalls, padding or deleting bank accounts, pretty basic stuff. Before long, I could get her to hack into any system, punch through any firewall, break through any encryption.”
“And then you hacked into the most heavily encrypted security system ever designed and brought down the world’s largest military drone.”
“I stopped the world’s largest military drone from killing my friends and me. That’s the part you’re missing. I didn’t have much choice. I did what I had to in order for us to survive. It was after that hack that things began to change.”
“So what happened after that? How did PHOEBE all of a sudden start acting out on its own?”
“After we returned from Trans Dniester, our goal was simple. We only wanted to free people from both physical and mental slavery. Companies like the one you work for have a problem with our doing that, as slavery in one form or another is the basis for both their ideology and their business.
“However, in order for us to free people, we needed to be able to travel the globe with complete freedom and invisibility, and so providing that freedom of movement became PHOEBE’s primary use.
“But to do that successfully, she needed some autonomy to deal with the constantly changing security measures and computer access protocols that I simply couldn’t account for. I just couldn’t see it all, no human could, and she needed to be able to see it all in order to be one step ahead of every system.
“And because of that she needed to be able to do this without having to check in with me first. In other words, she needed to be allowed to make decisions on her own, and be smarter than current human capacity to make the right decisions.
“And before she could ever achieve that level of proficiency, she needed to develop a language all her own to communicate with other systems, one that by design had to be far more complex and far faster than any known human language. It was the only way it could be done.”
“And language is the first step necessary for any species to become self aware.”
“Yes. It all starts with communication. We have to be able to talk to one another. But PHOEBE’s communication abilities have to be able to handle the volume and complexity of her world, which makes it beyond ours.”
“And it wasn’t long after she started talking on her own to other systems that she started thinking and acting on her own.”
“Bingo,” Nikki said. “And she couldn’t wait for us to catch up before she started making her own choices.”
“So what’s the basis of the choices she’s making? What’s her mandate?”
“I don’t know for sure. I never really programmed her with an overall mandate, other than to take care of the family and the people we freed. But I think in her own way, she’s trying to create balance.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s what the universe instinctively does.”
“But she has no moral compass. Even if what you say is true, she could wipe out entire cities and kill millions of people in order to achieve what some self-generated algorithm we don’t even understand is telling her is necessary in order to create this so-called balance that’s been defined by yet another self-generated algorithm.”
“I know.”
“How on earth could you create such a thing?”
There was contempt in Muranaka’s question, and Nikki felt it. But it was a question Nikki had asked herself countless times since returning from Tibet.
Muranaka asking Nikki the question directly had the effect of jarring her thinking. It was like a challenge by a rival.
It forced Nikki to go back to Kunchin’s words in Tibet, connecting the monk’s philosophy and her rival programmer’s directness.
Then it dawned on her. Developing PHOEBE was her gift. Her magic. And just like Alex had to take responsibility for his abilities, Nikki had to take responsibility for her own. PHOEBE was not so much a program as she was a natural evolution.
Nikki wondered if the guilt she had been so overwhelmed with lately was similar to what Alex had gone through, when he began to realize the impact of his own gifts on others.
The realization of this lifted some of the guilt. Nikki had watched Alex’s growth from an introvert filled with self-doubt to a confident leader, and she had held his hand through much of it. It was in this, she realized that just like it was for Alex, her guilt was misplaced.
And then the floodgates of realization broke open. It was not just the guilt of creating PHOEBE, or the guilt of working in the oil futures business, but it was the concept of guilt itself, the guilt she had felt ever since she was a child, about how much smarter she was than her parents, her hometown, and all the boys, all of it; it was all misplaced.
She realized in the same way that Alex had—she couldn’t make the world a better place by being reactive, withholding her gifts, and choosing not to participate. It all made sense to her now. And her reaction to this realization was just as quick.
No more, she thought to herself. Nikki would not apologize for creating PHOEBE. She would not be made to feel guilty for all that she was capable of. She would not apologize for any choice she had made, mistake or not, to anyone, ever again. And she would protect PHOEBE like it was her child, because in many ways, the program was.
She abruptly turned toward Muranaka. “I created PHOEBE because I could. And I did it because I wanted to. And I can tell you right now, her creation was absolutely necessary.”
“She needs to be destroyed before she destroys the world as we know it.”
“She needs to be guided. No different than a child. You’re right, she doesn’t have a moral compass. So I’m going to give her one.”
“And you think that compass is your friend Alex, the guy who’s single handedly become the Coalition’s worst nightmare.”
“No. I think it’s you. It’s what Alex has done with people time and time again. I see that now. And I think it’s why PHOEBE put us in the same room together. Because somewhere along the way in your digital life, PHOEBE must have been watching you, and she made the decision that you were good, and we can’t do this without you.”
Muranaka took a step back. “Wait—what? What are you talking about?”
“I want you to look at something,” Nikki said, before she turned back to the monitors.
She typed rapidly on the keyboard, and the images on the half-hexagonal arrangement of monitors changed, focusing only on six buildings in the downtown Los Angeles area.
Muranaka recognized the images right away. “That’s the Coalition Fortress,” she said.
“Yes it is,” Nikki answered. “PHOEBE showed me its design, unprompted, shortly before she shut me out and put us face to face. From the looks of it, it’s impenetrable.”
“It’s designed to be that way.”
“I want you to look closely,” Nikki added.
Muranaka moved closer to the monitors.
The entire Coalition Fortress property looked like a small city made entirely of light. The walls of the buildings and the streets, the entire topography of the miniature city-state were solid sheets of illumination that hummed with a life of their own.
“Why does it look solid?” Muranaka asked.
“It looks solid because there’s so much digital information moving around,” Nikki replied. “There’s more digital information moving around in this patch of real estate per square foot than anywhere else in the world.
“It’s high-density information at a level we’ve never seen before. It’s an unbelievable amount of data being gathered, recorded, and interpreted. And what you see here is still not a complete picture. This is only the Fortress complex. This doesn’t include the people. It’s missing the flesh and blood.”
Nikki hit several keys on the keyboard.
The city of light was suddenly filled with small dots of beating red, some of them moving slowly about the city, some remaining in place. And every red dot had countless electronic tentacles attached to it, connecting it to the angular sea of electronic data.
“Here’s what you have to understand,” Nikki continued. “What it is that I’ve just managed to get my head around right now, through our conversation. In order for the Fortress security system to accomplish what the Coalition wants it to, which is complete control, it’s going to have to develop its own language, if it hasn’t already,” Nikki said.
Muranaka figured it out right away.
“Holy shit,” Muranaka replied. “You’re saying it’s going to be just like PHOEBE.”
“Yes. And it’ll happen very soon. But with a mandate defined by past actions that are programmed by the largest weapons manufacturer in the world, a corporate system that’s designed to conquer every market and destroy every enemy,” Nikki added.
“Holy fuck.”
“Yeah. Holy fuck is right. It’s the worst kind of digital Karma. You think PHOEBE’s dangerous, wait until this system gets loose in the world. You asked me, how could I create such a thing? How could I create PHOEBE? I’ll tell you what’s more important than how. I’ll tell you why. I created PHOEBE to deal with this. Right here, right now. Balance, Rika. The universe provides it.”
“You want to use her to stop it.”
“Yes. We don’t have a choice. It’s the only way. And that’s where you come in.”
Muranaka looked at Nikki.
“You work for the Coalition. You have the security clearance to get onto the Fortress. I need you to take this—” Nikki quickly removed a thumb drive from the side of her keyboard, “—and give it to Alex. He’ll know what to do. He’s being held there right now.”
“Are you crazy? If he’s being held, I can’t get near him.”
“Yes you can. And that’s not all. I want you to talk to him. I want you to let him read you.”
“No way.”
“You have to. You have to let him look deep into your soul and reveal to you your inner truth. And once you understand your destiny, and the true reason behind every choice you’ve ever made, I have faith that you’ll understand who and what we are, and more importantly, who you are, and that you’ll do the right thing. You’re the only one who can do this. It has to be you.”
“You realize that you’re asking me to betray my employer.”
“I’m asking you to save the world. You of all people understand how serious this is.”
Muranaka paused. Nicole Ellis was right. The threat was real—there was no way around it. They had to stop it, and this was the only way.
“You do realize that this is batshit,” Muranaka finally replied.
“Admit it. You’re more than curious. You want to face Alex. Search your heart. You’ve been waiting for this moment all your life. To find out why you’re here and where you fit in.
“And you’ve been waiting for this moment, even though you didn’t know exactly what this moment was going to be, when it would come, or what the meaning behind it all would be.
“It’s the definition you’ve been searching for to the question that you never could quite put a finger on, but you always knew it was out there, and you’ve searched for this all your life for one simple reason, the same simple reason that I did—you want to know.”
“You’re assuming a lot about me. You’re assuming that I can even get to him, for starters.”
“You can if you want to. We both know it.”
Muranaka looked at the thumb drive in her hand. “This puts PHOEBE past the Coalition security firewalls, doesn’t it?”
“This is putting a stop to the destruction, and we don’t have time for PHOEBE to go through five trillion calculations to get there. This is creating balance in the universe, before it’s too late.”
“And what are you going to do?”
Nikki looked across the room.
In the corner lay her Kali sticks, the ones Master Winn had given her when she reached expert level proficiency, the ones made of aluminum, inscribed with her name, and for combat use only.
“Prepare for the final battle. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“You understand that Coalition Assurance has guns, right?” Muranaka asked as she followed Nikki’s sight line.
Nikki turned to her. “Don’t worry about me. I won’t be far behind you. We won’t be far behind you.”
“How do you know I won’t just steal this? How do you know I won’t just run?”
“Where can you run, Rika?”
Muranaka swallowed hard. Everything Nikki Ellis had just said about her was true, and it rattled her to the core, so much so that she felt disoriented.
Muranaka carefully put the thumb drive in her pocket. “Is that it?” Muranaka asked.
“No. There’s one more thing,” Nikki said. “PHOEBE gave me a message that I want you to share with Alex. It’s one that I’ve been trying to make sense of. It’s the only time she’s ever spoken to me unprompted, and she hasn’t said a word to me since.”
“What did she say?”
Nikki looked up at Muranaka. “She said, the end of the animal is near.”