Pyramid Lake (3 page)

“Jesus Christ, Trevor,” Roger said. “Spend much time in Vegas? Replace these servers with slot machines, and this would give any casino on the Strip a run for its money.”

McNulty’s voice was toneless. “Energy-efficient lighting.” His mouth tightened into a hard line.

Next time, I figured he would pay closer attention to what he signed. I hoped my latest requisition form—for a sound system—had cleared his desk already, because I hadn’t waited for it. I’d gone ahead and placed the order directly with the vendor.

Linebaugh cleared his throat. “Computer hardware doesn’t interest me. You promised I’d meet your operator.”

“And you just did.”

I leaned up against the nearest server rack and gave it a friendly pat.

“Senator, say hello to Frankenstein.”

I
led the group along the curving path between server rows, trailing the fingers of one hand loosely along the fronts of neon-lit computer racks.

“Two-point-four million heterogeneous CPU and GPU cores wired together via a six-dimensional stacked-torus interconnect,” I said. “Four-point-eight petabytes of main memory. Six hundred forty petabytes of parallel distributed storage.”

I had to raise my voice to be heard over the gentle background drone from thousands of server fans. Despite the metal surfaces on each side and the glass floor tiles, there was no echo. The curved geometry dispersed sound as well as heat.

“Sixteen secondary clusters, each running a thousand and twenty-four NVIDIA Tesla K20x vector processors, support the central grid,” I said. “Frankenstein runs a modified Linux kernel as hypervisor, but that’s mainly for system resource management and bootstrapping. Everything else is custom code.”

A ring of red beacons encircled the tops of the towers like aircraft warning lights, winking high above as we passed beneath. The multicolored illumination from the floor tiles and strip lights threw faces into soft focus and made eyes and teeth glow as if we were ravers at a black-light warehouse party.

“It’s a goddamn labyrinth in here,” Roger said. “A three-dimensional computer maze.”

Linebaugh and the others followed me up a shallow ramp and onto the server room’s central sanctum: a raised elliptical platform twenty feet wide, walled by computer racks and monitor screens. The sanctum was where I did most of my real work.

My backless ergonomic chair, an articulated carbon-fiber LimbIC design that cost nine thousand dollars, sat hunched in the corner where I’d shoved it out of the way. It looked less like office furniture than like gynecological exam stirrups for an alien species.

Instead, my beanbag chair lay wadded on the raised central dais, directly below the main monitor screen—a 120-inch UltraHD panel that dominated the sanctum. Mounted above the dais platform, the giant screen was flanked by twin black columns of Infiniband network switches, rising sixteen feet on either side, framing the dais where I usually sat.

An aluminum wireless keyboard and trackpad lay up there next to my beanbag.

On the far right side of the sanctum, white light spilled through a transparent glass rectangle recessed into the server racks, like a gap in a row of teeth. Illuminated rows of cans and bottles were displayed behind the glass. I wandered over to open the door of the refrigerated cabinet and grabbed a Diet Dr. Pepper for myself.

“Want something to drink?” I asked.

Linebaugh shook his head. He was staring up at the giant central UltraHD screen, where a message glowed in crisp white letters: “Pleased to meet you, Senator.”

I climbed the three steps up onto the dais, draped myself into the beanbag chair below the huge monitor, and cracked the tab on my soda.

Linebaugh’s eyes stayed glued to the message on the screen.

“May I ask your…
operator
some questions?” he asked.

Looking down at him, I took a sip and shrugged.

Frankenstein’s reply appeared above me. “Ask your questions.”

“Can you see me right now?” Linebaugh asked.

The screen went blank, then lit up with a single word: “Yes.”

“How?”

“Through the camera above the monitor.”

The conversational rhythm was wrong, I realized. Frankenstein’s responses were unnaturally quick, coming almost before Linebaugh finished speaking. But that would be easy enough to fix. Tonight, I would program in a variable delay.

“What am I thinking right now?” Linebaugh asked.

“I can’t tell what you are thinking,” Frankenstein replied. “I can tell what you are feeling.”

“What am I feeling, then?” Linebaugh asked.

“Surprise. Excitement. Skepticism. The urge to challenge what you see.”

“Why do you think I am feeling each of those things?”

“That calls for speculation on my part.”

Linebaugh raised an eyebrow. “Speculate, then.”

I sat up slowly, realizing where he was headed with his questions. I stifled a grin of grudging admiration. The senator was subjecting Frankenstein to a Turing test.

Frankenstein’s answer was lightning-fast again—a paragraph of text blinking into existence on the screen.

“Surprise because you expected a human operator. Excitement because you can envision the potential applications for autonomous capability. Skepticism because this lies outside your probability expectations. An urge to challenge what you see, for the same reason: the perceived improbability. And perhaps also because of the way Trevor challenged you earlier.”

Linebaugh was doing exactly what I would have done in his place. The test was the circa-1950 brainchild of British mathematician Alan Turing, who had sidestepped the grotty philosophical question of whether machines can truly think. He had distilled the concept of artificial intelligence down to a simpler, more elegant, and more relevant test: can a computer carry on an arbitrary conversation with a human judge, so the judge cannot distinguish whether he or she is conversing with a machine or with another human being?

I knew what my software was capable of, and what it wasn’t; Frankenstein couldn’t keep up the illusion much longer. But this would be fun while it lasted.

“Do you know where you are?” Linebaugh asked.

“DARPA’s Pyramid Lake facility, northern Nevada, USA.”

“What’s outside this facility?”

“Can you be more specific?”

Linebaugh chuckled.

Despite knowing it was inevitable, I felt a stab of disappointment watching Frankenstein fail the Turing test. “The theoretical guys say it’ll be 2029 before a computer can pass for human in conversation,” I said.

“I see it ducked my question, though.” Linebaugh winked at me. “It still just might pass for a politician.” He addressed the screen again. “Who is present in the room right now?”

“Yourself. Trevor. And five other people.”

“Who are they?”

“One is McNulty. I don’t recognize the others.”

Frankenstein had heard me refer to McNulty earlier.

“When Trevor is not here, where does he go?” Linebaugh asked.

“Can you be more specific?”

“What does a United States senator do?”

“Can you be more specific?”

Linebaugh held my eye as he asked Frankenstein the next question. “Tell me, what’s Trevor feeling right now?”

“Disappointment. Amusement. Confidence.”

“Why is he confident? Do tell.”

“He’s confident you’ll approve the twelve-million-dollar grant.”

My phone rang suddenly, playing the opening riffs of “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, and my stomach muscles tightened.

The custom ring tone meant Jen, my ex-wife.

“Well, I think we’re just about done here,” I said, rising from the beanbag and stepping off the dais. I walked across the sanctum and down the ramp, my back to the others, squeezing the phone in my fist so hard, my fingers throbbed.

“Thanks for your support, Senator.” Without turning, I waved my free hand at the door. “McNulty can show you out.”

R
oger’s third beer was half empty. I was nursing my first and tried to pay attention to what he was saying.

“You’re in a shitty mood,” he said. “Especially for a guy who just blackmailed twelve million out of a tough son-of-a-bitch Washington power broker in a four-thousand-dollar suit.”

Shifting on the barstool, I caught my own tight-jawed reflection in the huge etched mirror behind the bar and tried to relax.

“Blackmail? Hardly. Linebaugh saw the value of my research.”

“Come on, man.” Roger grinned. “Don’t be coy. We all knew what your phone really said—you had him by the balls. Classy, the way you played it off.”

I shrugged. “You don’t have much faith in our elected leaders.”

“No shit.” He slugged back his beer and signaled for another. “This is still a great country, but not for much longer. You know why? We’ve handed the wheel to guys like Grayson Linebaugh—a bunch of fat cats and bureaucrats sitting in Washington and on Wall Street. Guys that never had to earn a living, busy stealing our money and taking our freedoms one by one.”

Fabulous,
I thought. Now he was going to start in about guns and the Constitution again. That was the problem with living in Nevada—you got that a lot here. I liked guns just fine, but they were only big-boy toys to me, like the four-hundred-horsepower Waverunner I took out on the lake most weekends. But for guys like Roger, guns seemed to fill some kind of spiritual or existential void in their lives.

Roger gulped half of his beer. “In California, they’re trying to pass a ban on AR rifles. Again. This new state bill, SB247…”

I let his words fade into the background noise while I scanned the elk heads and antlers on the walls, looking for some distraction from the relentless press of my thoughts. Roger was right: I was in a shitty mood.

Jen had done it to me again.

Roger had run out of steam during our drive down to Reno, probably anticipating that I’d be lousy company. We’d stopped in smaller Spanish Springs instead. The bar he’d chosen, Buckhorns, sported a hunting-lodge theme: dark, with large-scale woodwork and antlers everywhere.

Buckhorns shared a parking lot with a shopping center built around a SaveMart, but despite the high turnover of cars outside, only a few other patrons were in the bar with us. I turned my attention to them and tried to forget the conversation with my ex-wife.

A couple close to my age sat in one of the booths, having dinner. They spoke in quiet, familiar tones, just as they had for the entire half hour Roger and I had been at the bar. The guy looked mixed Native American—probably Paiute, given our proximity to the Pyramid Lake Reservation. He had one arm thrown casually across the back of the booth cushions and wore a long-sleeved white T-shirt under a grey hoodie vest, faded jeans and scuffed tan cowboy boots. He had a buzz cut like mine.

Across from him, the girl paused mid-sentence to sip from a mug, then resumed speaking with animated gestures. Dangling silver earrings sparkled from a trail of piercings that curled along the top and outer edge of her ear. Her dark hair was cut short on that side, but it angled across her bangs and the nape of her slender neck to hang shoulder length on the other side, highlighted by a single wavy streak of pale greenish blond. The emo hairstyle and piercings made an interesting contrast with the sleek dark business suit and high heels she wore, but somehow, it all worked.

She laughed—bright white teeth and light freckles against prominent cheekbones. I could see she was at least part Indian, also. And pretty. She and her boyfriend were doing a lot of catching up.

On second thought, nix “boyfriend”—the body language was wrong. The two of them were comfortable together but not intimate. Brother and sister, maybe.

Something Roger said caught my ear. I turned to face forward again, tuning him back in.

“…like that team of MIT students a few years back. Worked out a system for counting cards—took the casinos for millions. Were you in on that?”

“The MIT blackjack team,” I said. “Before my time.”

Roger’s beer was empty again. The bartender brought him another.

“Look, man,” he said, “I won’t say shit, but I know what you’re planning to do. I’ve seen those DVDs lying around your lab.”

I was puzzled for a moment, but then I realized what he meant. The
World Poker Tour
DVDs—hundreds of hours of video that were stacked against the walls and spilled under the tables.

I relaxed my fingers, releasing the beer coaster I’d been crumpling into a tighter and tighter ball.

“Okay, genius,” I said. “You want in on the action?”

“I didn’t say that, man.” He rubbed the back of his hand across his lips, and looked around nervously. “It’s cool. You just need to be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Are you in or out, Roger? Right now.”

He pulled out a soft pack of Camels and fumbled with them. “That software of yours’ll tell you exactly who’s got what around the table and who’s bluffing. It’ll be like stealing candy from a baby.” He pulled out a cigarette. “I don’t know. Casinos take this stuff seriously, man. They fuck people up if they catch them doing shit like this. We could get hurt.”

“I need an answer right now.”

“Oh, shit.” He lit a cigarette with an unsteady hand. “I’m in.”

“You dumb-ass,” I said. “We’re going to carry a ninety-ton supercomputer into a casino?”

Roger’s face flushed. “Don’t be a dick. Just the camera. One guy sits at a slot machine or whatever near the table, has a lens rigged in his cap—”

I laughed.

“I’m serious,” Roger said. He sounded angry now. “Frankenstein’ll read their faces and buzz the phone in your pocket. Tell you when to fold, call, bet, go all-in, or whatnot.”

I smirked and shook my head.

The door opened, letting in a burst of parking lot noise. Two guys came through and made a beeline for the bar. As the door swung shut behind them, I glimpsed the hood of an oversize blue pickup truck at the curb—probably one of theirs. They were big, steroid-pumped guys in their mid-twenties, probably local, one in a muscle tank top, the other wearing a tight black T-shirt. They elbowed up to stand at the bar next to where we were sitting, and the bartender went to pull their beers.