Overclocked (10 page)

Carl sighed and dropped his hand. He walked back over to the chain of large screens pinned against one wall.

“We’re both agreed that the Rhine-Temple needs to be taken down, right?”

Tania thought over each word in his state­ment, look­ing for a loop­hole. When she couldn’t find one, she nod­ded. “A bot­net is bad enough,” she said, “but one that has already de­veloped a de­gree of sen­tience doesn’t bear think­ing about.”

Be­com­ing more an­im­ated, Carl star­ted pa­cing in front of the boards.

“I’ve done a bit of dig­ging on the his­tory of the Rhine-Temple. Back when it first star­ted out, it was just a reg­u­lar bot­net, op­er­at­ing out of an ex­ploited server in the Middle East. In­struc­tions from its cre­at­ors were trans­mit­ted via an In­ter­net Re­lay Chat chan­nel.” He shrugged. “The usual. How­ever, when the cre­at­ors set the bot­net to in­filt­rate a Rus­sian spy server, things star­ted get­ting out of hand.

“What the cre­at­ors didn’t real­ise was that the Rus­sian server was ac­tu­ally be­ing run by ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.”

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence har­nessed by a gov­ern­ment’s in­form­a­tion and se­cur­ity ser­vices? Tania thought of the im­plic­a­tions and mouthed a si­lent “wow”. “So the data min­ing op­er­a­tions that the Rus­sian server was en­ga­ging in…”

“…were be­ing handled by one or more ar­ti­fi­cial per­sons.” Carl nod­ded. “This goes bey­ond what most, maybe all, other se­cur­ity ser­vices have. The Rus­si­ans de­veloped a soph­ist­ic­ated set of self-tun­ing pro­grams, each with a small de­gree of sen­tience. By work­ing to­gether, the pro­grams were able to make de­cisions based on the data avail­able, their pre­vi­ous ex­per­i­ences and their own soph­ist­ic­ated al­gorithms. By run­ning con­cur­rently, they were able to mimic reas­on­ing that ap­prox­im­ated a hu­man’s.”

The story Carl was weav­ing was fas­cin­at­ing. Without lift­ing her gaze from his, Tania searched blindly for a chair, sink­ing into it heav­ily when she found one. Un­for­tu­nately, she thought she knew ex­actly where this story was lead­ing.

“The Rhine-Temple bot­net suc­cess­fully com­prom­ised that Rus­sian server, didn’t it?” she asked.

He made a click­ing sound with his tongue.

“Give the lady a prize,” he said, a smile break­ing across his face. “When the Rhine-Temple in­filt­rated the server,
some­thing
happened. The most prob­able ex­plan­a­tion is that the Rus­sian soft­ware tried to as­sim­il­ate the en­tire bot­net but couldn’t. In­stead, the
bot­net
conquered the
soft­ware
, one ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence at a time, in­cor­por­at­ing the data-min­ing heur­ist­ics into its own pro­gram­ming.”

“Be­com­ing the only semi-sen­tient piece of viral soft­ware in the world.” Tania's voice was hushed.

“And it’s been on a global kick for dom­in­ance ever since.”

Tania didn’t want to ask, but she could now fully un­der­stand the reas­on­ing be­hind Carl’s drive to de­feat the Rhine-Temple.

“How do you in­tend to stop it?” she asked.

“Al­most one of the first things the Rhine-Temple did when it joined with the Rus­sian AIs,” he said, sidestep­ping the ques­tion, “was to sever its con­nec­tion to its op­er­at­ors via the con­trolling IRC chan­nel. Once that happened, it be­came an autonom­ous agent. It’s been grow­ing and for­ti­fy­ing its de­fences ever since, but I don’t think it’s looked at that un­used IRC chan­nel since it was cut.”

“You want to in­filt­rate the bot­net through that chan­nel.” It was a state­ment, not a ques­tion.

He nod­ded.

Tania slipped lower into the chair, think­ing furi­ously.

“You dug up a lot of data on the Rhine-Temple,” she said, “but I don’t know how you did it. Secrets like the spy AI pro­gram suite you just de­scribed are held tighter than a fish’s arse­hole, if you’ll for­give the French. For starters, how do you know that that the bot­net in­filt­rated a
Rus­sian
in­tel­li­gence server?”

A voice be­hind her spoke up. “He knows it be­cause I told him.”

Tania was out of her chair in an in­stant and spin­ning around. Her heart thud­ded loudly in her chest. “And who the hell are you?” she asked, her eyes nar­row­ing.

But she already knew who it was. The height, the ro­tund white­ness, the two long floppy ears, were a dead giveaway. It was the white rab­bit, but it stood in­side Carl’s apart­ment, barely two metres away from her. Someone had man­aged to breach Carl’s se­cur­ity.

Tania glanced down at a nearby desk and saw the weapon she and Carl had used to des­troy the Rhine-Temple spider bots dur­ing their re­cent in­va­sion. She was about to make a grab for it when she felt a hand cap­ture her wrist, then Carl let go and brushed past her, clap­ping the rab­bit on the shoulder with ob­vi­ous pleas­ure.

“It’s been a while,” Carl said. Tania heard the loneli­ness in his voice and wanted to close her eyes at the sound of his un­der­ly­ing pain. She wondered if the rab­bit heard it too.

“For you per­haps,” the rab­bit replied, un­per­turbed.

Be­fore her eyes, the rab­bit began to morph. It shrank, its ears dis­ap­pear­ing into a smal­ler, more com­pact skull. The large white furry belly dis­ap­peared be­neath a navy blue t-shirt and the chubby legs were sub­sumed be­neath a pair of cas­ual tan trousers and sneak­ers. Tania looked back up to the rab­bit’s face again and saw an un­pre­pos­sess­ing young man with brown hair, fair skin and hazel eyes.

“Tania,” Carl said, turn­ing to make the ob­vi­ous in­tro­duc­tions, “this is Tomek Miller, also known by his avatar name of ‘Kru­lik’. Tom, this is—”

The rab­bit-that-was-now-a-man held up a hand. “No, don’t tell me,” he said, in slightly ac­cen­ted Eng­lish. “This is Doc­tor Tania Flowers, second cy­ber­naut of Base­ment Five.

“Al­though born in Lon­don, her par­ents moved to Cali­for­nia when she was a teen­ager. She com­pleted her un­der­gradu­ate work at Stan­ford and was awar­ded her doc­tor­ate by MIT. Her ma­jor area of in­terest is heur­istic com­put­ing with a minor in com­pu­ta­tion as it relates to or­ganic sys­tems’ bio­logy. She was offered vari­ous luc­rat­ive posts but turned them all down to take up a po­s­i­tion as lead­ing re­searcher for Speed­fish, a small but highly in­flu­en­tial think-tank that’s fully fun­ded by Rim­shot In­dus­tries.”

“How do you know all this?” Tania askedt, the hands at her sides slowly form­ing fists.

“We make it a point to keep up-to-date with our peers in other coun­tries.”

“‘We’?”

“Tania, this isn’t what it ap­pears,” Carl said, mak­ing a pla­cat­ory ges­ture with his open hand.

“It
ap­pears
that you’ve been trad­ing in­form­a­tion with someone from an­other gov­ern­ment,” she said bluntly. “Or am I wrong?”

“I’m from one of the friend­lier gov­ern­ments,” Miller said with a smile. “A gov­ern­ment that also has its fin­gers in some Rus­sian pies, if you take my mean­ing.”

Tania backed away, try­ing to edge closer to the desk where the ray weapon lay. “Don warned me about this.”

Carl moved away from Miller, tak­ing a step to­wards her. “Warned you about what?”

She dar­ted a quick glance at him be­fore set­tling back on the for­eigner. “Warned me about hos­tile gov­ern­ments com­pet­ing against us in cy­ber­space ex­plor­a­tion.”

“There are more of us than you think, Dr. Flowers,” Miller told her in a steady voice. “But we’re not all your en­emies.”

“I couldn’t have pieced everything to­gether without Tomek’s help,” Carl in­sisted, phys­ic­ally pla­cing him­self between Miller and her. Tania had no choice, she had to look at him.

“I un­der­stand Don’s con­cerns Tania, I really do, but they’re not war­ran­ted un­der these cir­cum­stances. Tomek has helped me with data and strategies. I wouldn’t be as far along in my re­search without him.”

She shif­ted her gaze bey­ond Carl’s shoulder, till they met can­did tawny eyes. “Do you live in cy­ber­space too? Like Carl’s done for the past…,” the word “fif­teen” choked in her throat, “…few years?”

Miller shook his head. “No. I'm usu­ally in the real world.” He jerked his chin up. “I have a team be­hind me. Every time I leave cy­ber­space, we swap in­form­a­tion. What I've found, what they've found. Tac­tics. Pro­gress re­ports. When I re-enter cy­ber­space, it takes me a few mo­ments to clock up. Of course, the pro­gress re­ports are usu­ally out of date by then, but the rest of the in­form­a­tion I’ve been shar­ing with Carl is, as he keeps telling me at least, solid gold.”

It soun­ded to Tania that he was try­ing to ex­plain him­self as much as an­swer the ques­tion.

“And have you heard Carl’s plan for des­troy­ing the Rhine-Temple?” she asked. Her eyes nar­rowed. “Do you agree with him?”

“In fact,” Miller said, cock­ing his head to one side, “I helped him to come up with it. So yes, I sup­pose you could say I agree fully with his plan.”

He flashed her an im­pudent grin and Tania sud­denly felt like a long-suf­fer­ing mother of two mis­chiev­ous brats.

“What are you do­ing here, Tom?” Carl asked, at the same time as Tania’s, “How did you get in?”

Miller looked from one to the other, then de­cided that he’d bet­ter an­swer Tania's ques­tion first. He was ob­vi­ously smart enough to know who he had to get on side.

“I have stand­ing per­mis­sion to enter Carl’s labor­at­ory,” he said. “Prob­ably be­cause, un­til now, there hasn’t been much of…in­terest go­ing on here.”

There had never been an­other mo­ment when Tania was so happy she didn’t sport a fair com­plex­ion. Des­pite this, her cheeks felt as if two spears of hot metal had been pressed against them. There must have been a dull flush evid­ent un­der her brown skin, how­ever, be­cause both men sud­denly grinned at her.

Maybe not­ing that her em­bar­rass­ment might quickly turn to ir­rit­a­tion, Miller quickly con­tin­ued. “And I’m afraid time’s run­ning out, Carl. Soon, the Rhine-Temple will be too big and dis­persed for us to des­troy com­pletely. We must start the job now. That’s why I’m here. To help.”

Carl’s lips tightened. “How much time do we have?”

“My team and I think we have no more than two cy­ber-days.”

“And you brought it?”

Miller pulled some­thing from his back pocket and held it up. It looked like a thick rect­an­gu­lar en­clos­ure of some sort, per­fectly sleek with roun­ded corners. Tania tried fo­cus­ing more clearly on it but the ob­ject de­fied such ex­am­in­a­tion, pulsing brightly through a gamut of col­ours. It was im­pen­et­rable but beau­ti­ful. It looked like Miller was hold­ing a carved shard of star­light in his palm.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice hushed.

“This is the soft­ware we hope will des­troy the Rhine-Temple,” Miller said. “But there are two prob­lems with it. Due to time con­straints, this is the one and only ori­ginal. I can get a backup sent down the line but that would take too much time. And,” he ad­ded, walk­ing past the other two to put the gleam­ing block on the desk, “this comes without a hand­shake shell.”

Carl scratched his neck, an un­con­scious move­ment that Tania had no­ticed months be­fore, from the time they first met. He al­ways made that ges­ture while deep in thought.

“Okay,” he said, “here’s what we do. Tom, make two cop­ies of that soft­ware here. I know it’ll take hours, but it’ll still be much quicker than wait­ing for a backup real-time. Tania and I will craft a shell for it. Once we’ve tested it, we’ll cover your soft­ware with our shell then…we go. And Tom,” he angled a look at his friend and Tania caught the soft­ness in his gaze, “thanks for com­ing. I ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

That soft­ness hadn’t been there three “real-time” days ago. Tania bit her lip. She thought about how much had changed. How much
could
change, if only they sur­vived this.

“Right.” Miller slapped his hands to­gether and the sound re­ver­ber­ated through Carl’s work­room like a gun­shot. “Let’s get to work.”

The next “day” passed in a haze of work, ar­gu­ment and counter-ar­gu­ment. Tania found she’d lost the urge to sleep, nap­ping only for an oc­ca­sional thirty minutes now and then. She com­men­ted on it to Carl and they agreed that her power naps were more a psy­cho­lo­gical ef­fect of the Blue rather than a phys­ical im­per­at­ive, much like his age­ing.

She snatched glances at her ex-rival while they worked and could have sworn he was look­ing younger than he did when she first saw him. Maybe it was the fact that her pres­ence con­firmed that only dozens of hours had passed in the real world, not the fif­teen years he thought he’d lived through. She wondered whether
she
, re­gard­less of ap­pear­ance, had also played a factor in his re­verse-age­ing.

At one point, he caught her watch­ing him.

“What is it?”

She glanced over at where Tomek Miller was work­ing. Tom was bent over a far table, cre­at­ing cop­ies of his dazzling code cap­sule. If he wanted to, he could hear their con­ver­sa­tion but seemed too in­tent on his own task. She knew that level of fo­cus well.

“It’s just…” She shrugged but con­tin­ued watch­ing Carl closely. “You’ve really changed, you know that?”

An edge of his mouth lif­ted up in a jagged smile. “Yeah, well, I don’t re­com­mend the cure for every­body. Fif­teen years of al­most sol­it­ary con­fine­ment in a uni­verse of data is a slightly ex­treme route to take.”