The Last Firewall (15 page)

“What do we do?” Leon asked.

“I’m thinking,” Mike said.

A line of cars five hundred yards away blocked the road. At six o’clock in the morning, on an otherwise empty highway in the midst of farmland, they had no doubts the blockade was for them. Leon risked a quick search of the net, finding several sites dedicated to tracking their location.

“Should we ram them? If we outweigh those cars . . .”

“No,” Mike said. “Even if we got through, there’s six of them, and they’d get us sooner or later. They probably have guns, too.” He paused. “I think we call for help.”

“You said we couldn’t call anyone because the cops might be on their side.”

“I know, but we’re close now. If we call Shizoko, it can help us. Surely it’s got to have some robots or a helicopter or something.”

“Well, do it.”

Mike made the call, his implant going from anonymous mode to showing his ID, and his status changing to on-call. Leon kept an eye down the road, watched as the six vehicles approached slowly, side-by-side, spread across the lanes.

A few seconds later Mike opened his eyes. “He’s on his way.”

“He’d better hurry.” Leon looked left and right for any way to escape. The open farmland on one side appeared too rough for the Caddy. On the other side was an abandoned housing division surrounded by a chain link fence. Next to it, a heavy machinery rental shop, bulldozers and forklifts filling the parking lot.

Leon put the car in reverse and starting backing up. “Could you hijack a couple of bulldozers and block them?”

“Let me try.” Mike stared off into the distance. “I don’t think so. No known security holes. Wait, go through the housing development. According to the map, there should be an access road onto US-20.”

Leon put it in drive, floored the pedal, and the Caddy gave a lethargic leap forward as the capacitor charge sunk. He twisted the wheel, aiming for the chain link fence. They ducked as the fence collapsed on the convertible. Then their momentum carried them through and the fence was gone. Leon straightened back up to a spider web of cracks running through the windshield and his side mirror torn away. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the other cars were following at high speed.

“Make your third left, go two blocks and then a right.” Mike displayed a map in netspace in front of Leon.

Leon followed the directions, turning left at forty miles an hour, skidding across the road and through a white picket fence. The electric drone of the cars following was drowned by the muted roar of a hovercar. He mashed the pedal again and took a right turn, riding through the front yards of houses until he got back on the road. Then he saw a concrete barrier looming large in front of them, blocking access to the road they wanted. He spun the wheel to the left, sending the Caddy careening through another abandoned yard, then they bounced through the uneven terrain of an open meadow.

The cars behind them were only a few hundred yards away when the Caddy struck a deep drainage ditch paralleling US-20. With a shriek of tortured metal the left front wheel ripped off and the Caddy took a final lurch onto the pavement. Grinding on the road, one corner of the car riding bare metal on the asphalt, they threw up a shower of sparks.

They survived the rough ride without serious harm, but Leon felt terror rise up in him at their sudden helplessness. The car rested at a severe angle, the front wheel obviously gone. The car was a total loss.

Behind them, the approaching line of cars, slowing to carefully cross the drainage ditch, were close enough to see the people inside.

“Come on,” Mike yelled. He leapt out of his seat and took off running.

Leon numbly looked on. Mike wasn’t running away from the cars—he was running toward a black, heavily armored hovercraft just down the road, turbine engine roaring even at idle.

He forced his body into motion and followed. Behind him, he heard a distant pop, pop sound. He didn’t recognize the sound at first, but the pinging of bullets ricocheting off the armored hull in front of him made it clear.

Mike disappeared into a hatch in the side of the hovercraft, and Leon dove in after him, crashing into Mike and sending them both down in a tumble. The turbine roar increased and both men were thrown backwards as the military hover accelerated hard toward Austin, vibrating steadily.

“Welcome Mike Williams and Leon Tsarev.” The voice came through the interior speakers, over the roar of a turbine at full power.

“Shizoko?” Leon said.

“Yes, I am Shizoko. We are currently outrunning your pursuit, and I will have you at my home in four minutes.”

“Will they follow us?”

“Yes, but I am able to defend myself. However, you need to apply temporary first aid to Mike until you arrive.”

Leon looked over and realized that Mike was covered in blood and cradling his right arm.

“Jesus, what happened?”

“I think I was shot.” Mike smiled wanly. “I’ve been through two AI wars without a scratch, and now I get shot by a bunch of anti-AI extremists.”

“Please apply direct pressure to the wound to stem the bleeding. I can perform surgery when you arrive in three minutes and thirty seconds.”

Leon found the spot and pressed hard. Mike yelped and closed his eyes.

“Sorry, dude.” Leon didn’t know what to say. “You’re gonna make it, don’t worry.” The turbine revved higher as the hovercar took a hard left turn.

Mike opened his eyes. “I’m not going die from a gunshot wound in the arm,” he said through clenched teeth. “It’s just painful.”

“Oh, okay.”

They remained there, crouching in the aisle of the hovercraft until they felt it slowing. The approaching bulk of the Austin Convention Center, all concrete and glass, was visible through the windshield. Then it disappeared from view as the hovercraft passed into a tunnel. Seconds later, the craft stopped and settled to the ground. The door opened with a whoosh of hydraulics and Leon peered out to see five utility bots. Four carried a door between them. They appeared to be in the basement of the convention center.

“Please place Mike on the door, then follow us,” one of the bots said.

He helped Mike out and onto the door. Mike lay down, and a fifth bot came over and clamped a towel around Mike’s arm.

“Please do not be alarmed by the makeshift appearance of my stretcher and robots. I can assure you that I can perform the required surgery better than the most expert human doctor.”

“I’m not worried,” Leon said. He stumbled after the stretcher, suddenly aware of accumulated aches and pains from car crashes and riding over rough terrain, and the fatigue of twenty straight hours of high-speed driving. He tottered, and one of the bots was instantly by his side.

The bot waved a manipulator arm past his face. “Leon, indicators suggest you are suffering from severe exhaustion and stress. Please allow me to treat you while I’m operating on Mike.”

“I just need a good night’s sleep.”

There was a momentary pause before Shizoko replied. “Yes, you can sleep. However, the pace of events is increasing, and you will need to be moving again in less than eight hours.”

The group took an elevator to the fourth floor. Leon trudged after the stretcher to room 18D. Another robot waited there, this one with four long articulated arms, a fearsome machine Shiva. It gleamed dully as though it had just been steam washed. The utility bots put the door down on top of a long conference table and the new bot moved in.

It deftly cut away Mike’s clothes and moved the arm away from his body. “I do not have the required human medicines to numb the pain. It would be most expedient if I hold you down to perform the surgery.”

Mike mumbled incoherently.

“Do I have your permission to proceed?” it asked again.

“Go ahead,” Leon said. “I give you permission.” He sat numbly down in a chair. He felt his vision begin to narrow, and Shizoko’s voice came as though down a long tunnel.

Shizoko moved two utility bots in to hold down Mike’s head and other arm. Then the bigger bot’s manipulators moved in swiftly. Leon heard a blood-curdling shriek and he looked up to see that Mike had passed out.

Shizoko continued, his manipulators swiftly operating. Less than a minute passed.

“The surgery is complete,” Shizoko said. “The arm will heal completely given time. However, I can manufacture nanobots that will substantially speed up the healing process.”

“Fine, do it,” Leon said, before drifting off to sleep in the chair.

27

“I
NEED THE LOCATION
of Paul and Victor.” Madeleine Ridley, Adam’s plant in the People’s Party, worked her way through a checklist.

“Not until Friday,” Adam said, frustrated that she was pressing for this information again. He wasn’t going to reveal the planned location of the President and Vice-President until the last possible moment. If the data fell into the wrong hands, the timing of his plans could be destroyed and he wouldn’t get a second chance.

“Are you sure that’s enough time?” Madeleine furrowed her brows, doubtful.

“The crowd totals eight hundred thousand violent and frenzied people. My predictive models indicate it will be exactly enough time.”

“Fine.” She looked at the next item. “I also need the air traffic control codes to ground transportation.”

“I’ll release the codes Saturday.” Grounding air traffic would cause the chaos they needed to slip the assassination team into place. “Madeleine, I’ll release information when it’s needed, not a moment sooner. What else do you have?”

“It’s been suggested that Sam will fly to New York with Paul and Victor.”

Adam would have sworn if he was prone to such embellishments. Sam, the Speaker of the House, was unabashedly pro-artificial intelligence and, thanks to succession law, would become President after the dual assassination. Adam wanted him to succeed, of course, but he couldn’t tell that to Madeleine.

“That must not happen,” Adam said. “It’s critical he remain alive. I’ll manufacture an emergency to keep him busy until the President’s transport leaves.”

“Are you sure?” Madeleine asked. “He’s the biggest AI supporter among the three of them.”

“Yes, I need him as a scapegoat.” He analyzed Madeleine’s pulse; she seemed to believe the simple lie. “Do you have the weapons in place?” he asked.

She grimaced. “As I told you the last two times we talked, yes.”

Adam correlated this with recordings of their last two conversations, finding she was right. Fortunately she thought Adam was human, so forgetfulness was within the range of acceptable behavior.

“That will be all. Check in tomorrow,” Adam disconnecting quickly, slightly panicked by the episode. Under normal conditions, as an AI he should be able to remember everything perfectly, yet he was failing to recall more and more.

Running diagnostics, he found a six percent flattening of his neural networks, and fumed at the results. Adaptive neural networks depended on incoming data to reinforce patterns and build new ones. AI who didn’t receive enough stimulation suffered from Input Insufficiency Dementia or IID. Untreated, the end result was unfailingly a decline into complete loss of memory and behavior patterns, and ultimately death.

IID could be reversed if conditions were corrected in time, but in this case he was falling victim to the self-imposed firewall around Tucson. The electronic gatekeeper he’d built to keep himself hidden from the world also starved him of necessary input.

He just needed to hold out until the weekend.

Alarmed, Adam wondered if he’d given Madeleine the right information. He ran the calculations again but didn’t find any more mistakes. Lonnie Watson would share the information with his lieutenants in the People’s Party with the intention of setting up protests. Madeleine would organize the more extreme members in an attack on the President, Vice-President, and Speaker of the House.

Then Adam’s plan would come to fruition: after the President and Vice-President were dead he’d swoop in with remote bots, rescue the Speaker of the House, and come forward with data implicating the People’s Party.

In one smooth action, the People’s Party, and by association the larger anti-AI movement, would be discredited. Adam would be painted as the savior, the AI who could have acted sooner and saved the President and Vice-President, if only he’d had access to more power.

He hated that it had come to this. He really didn’t want anyone to die and he didn’t like the frightful amount of risk in his plan. If anything went wrong, he’d be terminated.

But the status quo of unending persecution against AI was simply unacceptable.

If things went right, on the other hand, the Speaker-turned-President would have full executive control over the Institute for Ethics. With his pro-AI stance, gratitude toward Adam for his rescue, and Adam’s ongoing influence, the newly minted President would circumvent the permitting process and the Institute would be shackled, or even better, disbanded.

Adam’s power would be legitimized. He could continue to grow, developing an even larger intellect than he already possessed. As his computational power increased, he’d become all-powerful, all-knowing. Why, it was almost inevitable he would become the leader of both AI and humans.

28

L
EON COULDN
’
T HELP STARING
at the line where Mike’s skin blended into the matte gray nano-structure filling the gunshot wound.

Mike inspected his arm quickly, then ignored it. He turned to Shizoko’s primary embodiment, the four-armed robot that performed the surgery. “We need to know everything you told Sonja.”

“I did not tell her much,” Shizoko said. “I performed nonlinear regression analysis using the Kim-Robson function. After the twelfth pass this cluster appeared, and I handed over the list of human deaths.”

Leon forced himself to look away from Mike. “Why do you say human deaths? Were AI affected too?”

“Yes, fifty-three AI and six hundred and eighty-nine humans have been killed.”