Emergence (Fox Meridian Book 5) (17 page)

‘How bright is it?’ Fox asked, her voice flat.

‘That’s a tough one. It’s operating at about the level of a six-year-old, but it’s pretty variable. It’s amazing at logic problems. Feed one in, there’s a flurry of activity, and then the answer comes back. It doesn’t seem so good at math, but… I think it doesn’t like doing math problems.’

‘It doesn’t
like
doing them?’

‘Yeah. It’s been getting a bit slower at logic and I think all the number sequences right at the start of the language-learning sequence got it bored with numbers. It keeps blipping out requests that seem to suggest it wants to know about us. I’ve got it learning some protocols that should let us share images and sound with the promise that it’ll make learning easier.’

‘A six-year-old is learning networking protocols?’ Jarvis asked.

‘Network protocols are just sets of logical rules and it’s good with logic. We aren’t worrying over cryptography, though I figure it could probably handle it. It’s a bit trial and error, but it’s getting close to being able to handle audiovisual feeds.’

Fox’s expression had turned
very
serious and when she spoke, her voice was quiet and disquieted. ‘What does FEI mean, Terri?’

‘Fractal Emergent Intelligence.’

‘It’s fascinating,’ Kit said.

‘It’s got the potential for being the most dangerous piece of technology ever developed,’ Fox said. ‘If the media hears about this in an uncontrolled manner…’

‘And that’s why we’re here, right?’ Jarvis said. ‘I’d have thought some memetics people would be a good idea, but you want us to consider the potential problems.’

‘Actually,’ Terri said, ‘I’m sort of hoping you can put a cap on the list. I’ve been thinking about it for over a month and I’ve got a
really
long list of things that could go horribly wrong.’

‘I’m not going to be that much help then,’ Fox said. ‘Emergent intelligences scare the crap out of me, and that’s the ones that
don’t
have the capacity for near-infinite expansion of what’s emerged.’

~~~

‘You’re talking about a potential singularity situation?’ Jarvis asked.

They had retired to a meeting room, with coffee. The coffee was making Fox feel better, but there was still an undercurrent of worry that refused to stop swirling around in the pit of her stomach. ‘I’m talking about a potential paradigm shift in human society with the possibility of the species becoming obsolete. So… yeah.’

‘It won’t be quick,’ Terri said. ‘I mean… At the moment, it really doesn’t know much. It could take years to educate it enough that it’s up to the kind of problems that could really change things, but it’s possible. We could double the number of processors in there and it seems like it’ll operate just as well. I can’t even contemplate what kind of mind it’ll have at that point.’

‘That’s kind of the point of the singularity concept, but I’d just like to take a moment here to say that I’m not really worried about FEI.’

‘You’re not?’

‘No, because it’s here, under your supervision. You’ve seen what can happen when an ordinary AI without the usual controls is set free and I’ve seen how you reacted to the person who let it out. I assume that FEI is isolated?’

‘Totally. Well, we talk through a dedicated terminal. There are no network connections to the rest of the station, the room’s in a Faraday cage, and the station network is isolated anyway. Even if it got access to the local net, that’s as far as it goes. And the system is unique. There’s nothing like this hardware anywhere else. The only way FEI is getting out of here is if we decide to transport the tank to a new location.’

‘It certainly sounds secure,’ Jarvis said. ‘What about Yliaster? Could FEI run in one of those tanks?’

Terri shook her head. ‘Fundamentally different nanomachines. Anyway, there’s the problem of transferring the “program” into another tank. Program is the wrong word because we
think
FEI is more like a database shared over the whole cluster. FEI is a gestalt. All the individual processors combine their efforts to make the program work. Trying to move that to another set of processors… I have no idea how to do it.’

‘I bet you FEI could work it out if there was another tank to migrate to. I’m going to say “infect.” I think it’s probably a bit like Kit’s synchronisation trick. Add more processors and the program spreads itself out into the new space, but if there’s a lot of processors available, they could divide, like a cell. A new copy is spawned.’

‘Like a virus,’ Jarvis said. ‘I’m starting to see why you’re worried.’

‘And that is one of my nightmare scenarios,’ Terri admitted. ‘But you said you weren’t worried about FEI, Fox, so you’re worried about someone else getting their hands on this, right?’

‘Oh yes.’ Fox was cradling her coffee mug to stop herself fidgeting. ‘Lots of people are likely to be less scrupulous about using something like this than you, Terri. Can you imagine what our friends at the National Intelligence Executive would do with something this powerful?’

‘No… Actually, I tried and my mind decided it would rather think about more or less anything else instead. If Poppa’s right about the existence of this Overwatch project and you hooked something like FEI up to it… You’d have something growing rapidly in knowledge with no real way of controlling
what
it learned and very little idea of the kind of conclusions it might reach.’

‘And you already built the Terminators so we’re all set for the robot apocalypse.’

‘You were supposed to
stop
me thinking about the oncoming cybernetic war!’

Fox shrugged. ‘Let me work on that. I’ll get back to you.’

~~~

‘Do you think this… entity is a candidate for a class five AI?’ Kit asked.

Fox and Terri were eating in Terri’s quarters; Jarvis had decided to take the opportunity for an informal chat with his people on the station, which was a rare thing given the isolated nature of the Jenner facility. The food was somewhat improved there since Yliaster had become a mature technology, even if the recipes were a little basic. Kit was, of course, hanging with her owner and her creator, and seemed fascinated by FEI.

‘Too early to tell,’ Terri replied, ‘but I think so.’

‘I thought there were only four types,’ Fox said.

‘There are four classes in current use. Class five is more of an idea. I wouldn’t even call it a theoretical class since no one has figured out a proper definition for them. They get called True AIs, or Transcendent AIs, so TAIs. Basically, anything with a complexity beyond human levels could be a class five.’

‘I’d say you’ve built one then.’

‘Like I said, too soon to tell. Maybe all we’ve done is build a really good pattern-recognition engine. That could be useful, sure, but it’s not going to change the world.’

‘We
must
try to communicate with it,’ Kit said. ‘I mean, on a less technical level. If you are correct about its boredom with mathematics, surely that suggests some level of emotional engagement.’

‘
If
I’m right.’ Terri gave a little grimace. ‘You’re right, we need to talk to it. Maybe it’s just not great with manipulating numbers. It’s recognised the pattern in the sequences and worked out what they mean. It’s grasped numbers, but it’s developed a relatively poor toolkit for actually manipulating numeric values. That’s the thing with FEI. We don’t really know how the system works; we just know it does.’

‘It’s an emergent system,’ Fox said. ‘You’ve built something out of very simple components which interact to produce something enormously more complex. At the very least, Terri, you’ve created a new form of life.’

‘Just call me Frankenstein. So long as I don’t end up–’

Kit frowned and broke in urgently. ‘Fox, there is an active security alert.’

‘Any details?’ Fox asked.

‘Communications with Luna City are currently down.’

‘All of them?’ Terri asked. ‘We’ve got two channels. Surface relay and satellite. They shouldn’t
both
be down.’

‘I am connected to the secure network. External communications and most of the work being done to correct the problem are on the… less secure, secure network.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Control room?’

Terri nodded. ‘Control room.’

~~~

Jarvis was already there and gathering what he could on the situation. ‘The satellites are still there and functional,’ he said. ‘We’ve got contact with Far Side Station, but Malapert isn’t responding and we’ve got no comms to Earth or L-one.’

‘And the relay system?’ Terri asked.

‘Is up, but not behaving properly.’ Jarvis glanced at Fox. ‘As I understand it, it connects straight into the network at Luna City. That’s the MarTech network there, not the general system.’

‘That’s right,’ Terri agreed. ‘Even if there’s a problem at Luna or Malapert, we should have connectivity with the Luna City facilities.’

‘Well, we do, but it’s like they’ve decided not to talk to–’

‘We’re getting activity,’ one of the technicians manning various consoles around the room said. Somehow, his tone suggested that that was not a good thing. Alert indicators began to flash up on various screens. ‘Heavy activity. Denial of service, possible worm infiltration.’

‘No way…’ Fox said, frowning.

‘Minotaur?’ Jarvis asked. ‘You can’t think– He’s on the run. How can he be attacking here?
Why
would he attack here?’

‘I’d imagine he has a second facility set up somewhere. I’d imagine he doesn’t like MarTech very much. Me in particular. If he could grab the environmental control systems here, he could kill me, us, and maybe even have it put down as an accident. Plus, top-secret facility on the Moon. That’s like hacker bait.’

‘Environmental control is all handled on the secure network,’ Terri said. ‘He doesn’t have a hope.’ She was scanning over the displays. ‘Actually, he’s not getting anywhere at all penetrating the outer network. Even our insecure network is military grade.’

Fox nodded. ‘Can we get a shuttle prepped? I want to go back to Luna City and check on things there. I have a feeling MarTech might get some business hardening the networks.’

‘I’ll come–’ Jarvis began.

‘No, you stay here. And check a load of weapons out for your security team. It’s just possible this isn’t Minotaur and someone’s launched some sort of attack on lunar facilities. Far Side is pure science and not likely to be high on the list, but this place… Get ready to repel boarders.’

Luna City.

Fox was met at the airlock by Lenora Pierce from the Luna City Emergency Response Unit, who was armed and in combat gear. That was not exactly a good sign, but then again, Fox had had to walk from the shuttle to an airlock in the landing bay because the spaceport systems were playing up, which was not a good sign either.

‘Pierce,’ Fox said as she lifted her helmet off, ‘long time, no see. How are things with ERU?’

‘Right now?’ Pierce asked. ‘Total fucking chaos just like the rest of the place. Flight control are handling incoming ships with portable radios, in case you hadn’t noticed. We’ve been mobilised in case this is a preliminary for some sort of assault and I got sent down here because you said you might have some idea of what’s going on.’ Pierce was just above regulation height for Luna City Security Services, a cute, button-nosed, blue-eyed blonde who, last Fox had heard anyway, was ERU’s technician.

‘I might. I need to get to my people here and see if we can confirm it.’

‘Then I’m with you.’ Pierce turned, heading for the elevators at the back of the concourse. ‘You getting any of this out at Jenner?’

‘We were hit with a DoS and several attempts at viral injection. It was totally failing to penetrate anything and the main network over there isn’t even connected to the outside world.’

Stepping into an elevator car, Pierce thumbed a button and they were moving. ‘You take security pretty seriously out there.’

‘We take security to paranoid levels. Occasionally I think we’re not being paranoid enough, but I probably have a jaundiced view of things.’

Pierce shrugged. ‘Looks like we could do with a
lot
more paranoia around here.’

~~~

The first thing Fox and Pierce heard as they walked into the network control room at the MarTech facility was, ‘Got you, you sneaky, malicious prick!’

‘That sounded promising,’ Pierce said.

‘Unless he’s playing video games,’ Fox replied. They rounded a corner between some racks of equipment to find a tall, thin man with a very pale complexion sitting at a fairly complex console system. ‘Mister Donovan,’ Fox said, ‘I’m hoping that means you’ve got something interesting to tell me.’

‘That depends on your definition of interesting, Miss Meridian,’ Donovan replied. ‘I’ve isolated the machine on our network that they managed to get into. Secondary routing node I’ve been
trying
to get a replacement for for six months. That should stop the forward attacks and get us connectivity with Jenner back.’ His fingers flicked over virtual keyboards Fox could not see and one of the real displays hanging over his desk lit up to show the Jenner control room.

Jarvis appeared in frame almost immediately. ‘Donovan? What the Hell’s been– Fox, you made it.’

‘Just in time to see the amazing Green Machine crack the problem.’

‘It was not easy,’ Donovan said. ‘Whoever did this, they’re very good. I’ve been kind of busy, but from what I gather, half the city is going down or suffering intermittent faults.’

‘That’s an underestimate,’ Pierce supplied.

‘Environment?’ Fox asked.

‘A lot of the primary utility systems are on an entirely separate network,’ Donovan said. ‘Limited connectivity and they should have locked down at the first sign of trouble.’

‘They did,’ Pierce said. ‘Air, water, and power are good, but communications is basically down all across the city. We’ve got doors that won’t open in various places. Fox can attest to the crappy state of the spaceport. The Malapert comms hub is, well, just offline.’

‘Now that I’ve isolated our problem,’ Donovan said, ‘I think I can help with the rest of the network. He’s attacked a bunch of out-of-date router systems left over from the early days of the network. They used to be mandated as standard for everyone connecting to the city network. I relegated ours to backup, so have quite a few commercial groups in the city, but there are plenty still in use, even as primary routers.’