“This had better be worth it, Mike,” said Victoria Ryan while sitting in a rocking chair breast-feeding Little Michael, as they called their infant boy, who made ten months yesterday.
Ryan sat in a love seat next to his wife, who was dressed in a pair of blue jeans, penny loafers, and a starched white shirt, which she had buttoned down halfway to expose her right breast and placed a hand towel beneath it. She cradled the baby, who was sucking with obvious vigor, making slurping noises while holding the sides of her breast with both hands. Victoria’s once-long hair was now cropped above the shoulders in a European style she had seen in some fashion magazine, stylish yet practical, since she no longer could afford the time to care for it as much as she did before. And also in classic European style, she had dyed it deep auburn, which went well with her light-olive complexion.
“I think he likes boobs,” Ryan said. “Just like his dad.”
“Nice try, Mike,” she said. “But our son’s apparent affinity for breasts—a trait he certainly inherited from his dad—is not the subject of this little chat. We’re talking about you jacking in. You promised me you wouldn’t do it again.”
Ryan leaned back, regarding Little Michael, who continued to refuse the bottle, crying for hours on end until he got the breast—the reason why Victoria was still breast-feeding so far into his first year.
Ryan vaguely inspected the large living room of their year-old house on the shores of Lake Travis, thirty minutes west of Austin. It was a Mediterranean-style place, with high ceilings, lots of stucco, marble floors, pastel colors, high-tech equipment, and plants. Ryan had designed the computer system that essentially controlled every aspect of the residence, from the lights, gas furnace, the environmental control system, and the security system—which included a dozen high-resolution video and audio cameras inside and around the residence—to the toaster and the cappuccino maker. The entire system was interfaced to an AI similar to MPS-Ali, tasked with watching over his family while he was away from home. And just in case, Ryan had the system connected to the Internet through a sophisticated firewall so he could also keep an eye on his family and home from anywhere in the world.
The rear of his property, a manicured backyard, sloped down to the water, where they kept a modest boathouse with a speedboat and a personal water craft. They had bought the place for cash using the money he had gotten during his last such special government project, when he’d assisted Tom Grant and Karen Frost in their quest to capture the cyberterrorist Ares Kulzak.
Ryan sighed, remembering the awesome deal he had gotten for this property, formerly a government safe house confiscated by the IRS from a corrupt corporation years before. The place had burned to the ground during his last stint with the government, which had not only given Ryan the opportunity to snag the place for a fraction of its going value but also provided him and Victoria with a clean slate to build the house of their dreams.
“We certainly don’t need the money or the aggravation,” she continued. “Why would you do it again? At least last time that terrorist, Kulzak, was spreading havoc across America. What have these guys done that merits your risking turning into a vegetable?” The last time Ryan had messed around with hostile AIs on the Internet he had been nearly lobotomized when the AI had fried the Helmet-Mounted Display of his virtual-reality interface in retaliation for Ryan’s cyber-snooping.
“It’s not what they have done, Vic, though they are responsible for the attack at USN last week, killing many people. The real threat lies in the large-scale disaster that they can trigger if they get their hands on the mobile assembler and unlock its secrets.”
Little Michael slowly released the nipple, and she rested him over her right shoulder to burp him. He let go a loud one and smiled before fading into deep sleep.
“MPS, dim lights,” said Victoria, and the lights in the living room slowly dimmed. The AI was programmed to obey only Ryan’s and Victoria’s voice patterns, and do so only after hearing the key activation acronym, MPS, which stood for Multi-Protocol System, the technical term for the multiple software routines making up the core of the AI program governing his house’s systems.
“Life should be that simple,” he commented, standing and getting the baby from Victoria, who wiped her breast and buttoned her shirt.
They went upstairs and laid him down in his crib, then continued down the hallway to the master bedroom, which had a balcony with a million-dollar view of the lake and surrounding tree-dotted hills.
“So, Mike,” Victoria said, stepping out into the warm evening. Lake Travis extended beyond their property. Lights from The Oasis, a restaurant sporting a dozen decks built down the side of a steep hill, twinkled a mile away. “Tell me why you are doing this? The last two times that you agreed to help Uncle Sam on these clandestine projects turned our lives into shit. Why should this go-around be any different?”
Crossing his arms while sitting against the wrought-iron railing, Ryan remembered the two instances Victoria was referring to. The first when he had first moved to Austin to work for a high-tech firm that turned out to be in a scheme to launder money for organized crime. Victoria was even kidnapped during that wild ride, and only by the Grace of God was she not killed. The second time was right here, on this piece of land on the shores of Lake Travis, where another house stood, the safe house that the government had used to keep Ryan and Victoria out of harm’s way while Ryan helped Tom Grant and Karen Frost catch Ares Kulzak. The elusive terrorist had managed to slip past the Secret Service detail guarding Ryan and Victoria, seven months pregnant at the time, and detonate a bomb inside the mansion. Once again, only by the Grace of God had they escaped with their lives. Ryan wondered if Divine intervention would spare them again if this new mission headed south.
“There are no guarantees, Vic,” he finally began, “except that if I don’t help them, we soon may be facing a force far more devastating than anything we have seen before.”
“How so?”
“The military version of the mobile assembler lacks the need for USN’s digital enzyme. It can survive without it. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“How . . . how did that happen?” she asked, leaning forward while placing her hands on the railing, her hair swirling in the lake breeze. She understood what that meant. A bachelor’s in computer science followed by a master’s in finance gave her the broad technical foundation to follow his explanation.
At Ryan’s silence she added, “You mean the Orb doesn’t need the enzyme to survive?”
“It gets worse,” he continued. “In addition to being able to assemble just about anything with atomic precision, it also has the ability for limited replication, meaning it can create subordinates, Orbs with lesser capabilities but just as deadly. The military version of our assembler also has a high-alert military mode that will realize it has been stolen and will react accordingly, probably blasting its way out of captivity before creating this small army while it waits for its creator to return and bring it back to USN. But its creator isn’t coming. Dr. Giles was one of the casualties of the attack last week. And to top it all off, the brass also removed the Turing inhibitor from the AI. Given the large capacity of its nanotronic memory, my bet is that the mobile system will get quite smart in very little time.”
“So, if it indeed escaped and it has replicated, what could happen next?”
“No one knows for sure. It could try to connect with other smart systems on the Internet, perhaps form alliances.”
“Machines performing pacts? Are you sure that it is possible?”
“The technology exists, honey. The Turing Society just doesn’t let it happen. It’s against our rules. But this machine was given the . . . call it the gift of not being burdened by the multiple levels of virtual shackles we impose on the civilian version of the Orbs.”
“This is serious.”
“I’m telling you.”
“But, Mike, darling, I thought you said it was impossible to release an AI without an inhibitor. I thought that the Turing Society had permission from the White House and Congress to shut any such system down instantly, without any notice to the violators.”
“That’s right, but this one escaped such scrutiny under the pretext of being a military research and development project. According to General Granite, the assembler was just an experiment conducted by the brass to determine just how smart a machine could really get without the inhibitor. They were planning to lobotomize it after gathering their data. But the system was stolen the other day when USN was hit, and Granite fears that given the combination of unprecedented smarts plus a very handy weapons system, the mobile assembler might have escaped its captors and is now on the loose.”
“So no Turing inhibitor and no digital enzymes,” she said, more to herself than to Ryan.
“Plus don’t forget that the civilian version also can’t access the Internet on its own, but the missing military Orb can and most likely will if it wants to. It’s been allowed to become smart enough to do that and much more.”
“So, darling,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder, her fingers squeezing softly. “What are you expected to do?”
Ryan closed his eyes and rolled his neck around while saying, “I have to find it, or at least narrow down its possible location from anywhere on the planet to maybe a few hundred square miles so they can then increase the intensity of their satellite search.”
“How are you going to achieve that?”
“By jacking in and doing something that defies logic.”
“That defies logic?”
“Right. I have to do something this smart Orb is not expecting me to do. That’s the only way I’m going to trick it into telling me where it is—that’s assuming it has managed to escape. If it didn’t and was dismantled for its intellectual property, for its secrets, then there’s very little I can do—though that’s probably the better scenario.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m saying we’re better off if the cyberterrorists managed to dismantle the unit and figure out its secrets than having it roaming loose on its own getting smarter and finding ways to hook up and corrupt large networks. Imagine for a moment if this Orb manages to hook up with communications satellites, or with military networks, many of them already under the control of artificial intelligence systems that can’t get smarter because of the Turing inhibitors. The uninhibited Orb could find a way to bypass our protection systems and do it so that we would never know it, until it was too late.”
“Mike, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m just calling it as I see it, Vic, which is why I must assist the Pentagon on this one.”
“So,” she said, “assuming that it has escaped, could you elaborate on this defy logic trick of yours to find its general location?”
“Sure. By reversing Turing.”
She dropped her fine brows at him. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you remember the Turing test?”
She nodded. “Alan Turing, a British scientist, some time back stated that a computer could be called intelligent if it could fool a human being into believing that it was human. Ever since then, this simple test, called the Turing test, has become the basis for deciding whether or not a computer system is exhibiting intelligence.”
Ryan nodded. “A textbook explanation. Now reverse it.”
Looking into the distance, she said, “The reverse of the Turing test would be to fool a computer into making it believe that a human was another computer.”
He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “That’s why I love you. There’s a brain behind that cute little face—and that awesome ass.”
“Hey!” she said. “Watch it, mister.”
“So, that’s the plan. Assuming that the military Orb is on the loose, it will likely try to contact the AIs of other networks, and when it does I will be there posing as one of those AIs.”
“But,” she said, confused, “there’s tens of thousands of artificial intelligence engines around the world these days. How are you planning to monitor all of them?”
“Simple,” he said. “What’s the one thing that all AIs in existence today have in common?”
“The Turing inhibitor?” she said hesitantly.
He gave her another kiss. “You really know how to get a guy in the mood.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Keep dreaming, pal.”
“And,” he added, “the Turing Society already monitors them on a regular basis, and since I’m a senior member of the society, all I have to do is tap into the network, get their IP addresses, and release copies of my intelligent probes. Then I just sit back and wait for one of them to report an anomalous contact.”
“An anomalous contact? You lost me there.”
“That’s a contact that deviates from the usual traffic flowing through the networks controlled by the respective AIs. And once I receive this signal, bingo, I will know the IP address of the contact’s origin, which will most likely narrow down its physical location to a few hundred square miles on the outside.”
“Sounds pretty low-risk.”
He nodded. “That’s because it is.”
They stood in silence, side by side, staring at the starry night.
“So, Boss,” he said, tentatively. “Do I have the green light to go forward with this?”
Instead of answering, Victoria said, “You never did tell me who the primary suspect was behind the theft at USN.”
Ryan remembered what Granite had told him. Looking into his wife’s eyes, he replied, “CyberWerke.”