Artifact (22 page)

And the list went on.

“Lancelot Kattar,” I said.

Lancelot Bryan Kattar, EE# 128221, Principal of Research and Development
.

222 Calliope Street, New Mexico, 87081

DOH 6/8/2032

Date of Hire was June eighth, 2032.

The truth was that I didn’t know what year it was. Nobody that I encountered in this place seemed to know either. But if I had to guess, I would have put the date somewhere in the ballpark of 2015.

2032 seemed too far removed. Too distant of a place to see clearly. I filed that for later, promising myself that I would devote serious attention to figuring out where, and especially when I was…

“Mars dot Phobos, dot Deimos.” I said quietly.

“What is
fa
,” Sarah asked. “
Foh bose
?”

“Phobos and Deimos are the two moons of Mars.”

ARCHIVES, PERSONNEL, PROJECTS

“What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know.” I said, “I suppose I’m trying to falsify a thought that I’ve been having.”

“You told the other guy that you think we’re inside of a dream?”

“Yes. I guess what I’m really looking for is a way out.”

“What about my dad?”

I looked at her. I watched hope relentlessly gather in her eyes. It wouldn’t stop. I suspected it wouldn’t stop until the moment before she took her last breath. I didn’t know what to say. My thoughts suddenly circled back to Sid’s outburst earlier, and how crushed Sarah seemed.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “For everything.”

Everything I could have said, every term of phrase, every sentiment, every single combination of apologies that I could have possibly given, all I could say was, I’m sorry
.

The gravity of her pain was too much. I couldn’t think through it.

What I offered wasn’t enough. It would never be enough to make things right. Nothing I could do or say would bring her father back, and I went as far to imply that he never even existed.

She shook her head and looked at the ground. “I hope this is a dream…”

She wiped her eyes.

We thought about separate things for some time. I eventually had to pull myself back into focus, away from that deadly, defeated place.

“Patrick implied that there was a way out of here,” I said finally. “We’re going to find it. Then we’re going to make our way back to the Clean Room and open that artifact.”

“What about those things?”

“Well,” I thought. “Maybe there’s a way out of that too.”

I turned back to the wall–screen, leaving Sarah the privacy of her thoughts, which were probably circling the shades of her father, no less the shadows in her dreams. Although I had given up – although I let this place pour into me until I burst – Sarah wasn’t done yet. If there was any way for me to pay her back, I was going to find it.

“Projects,” I said, coming back to focus.

The vault’s time–lock – which had become a symbol of security and safety since Patrick’s death – suddenly popped open. Sarah and I both looked toward the sound.

The eight time–sensitive locks finally reached their window. If there was anything on the other side that had the combination to open the vault door, this was the time to do it.

The thudding finally stopped altogether, and then the combination dial slowly, almost imperceptibly started turning.

5.

[SITE.const], [excavation.] [LAUNCH], [Neurl.limbic.archi], [MICROelectromech.systems], [HIL.lex], [Onsite.artifact]

Right after the time–lock snapped open, both of the combination dials started turning slowly in opposite directions. My first guess was that the thing on the other side was spinning the dials, but at second glance it appeared that they were moving in a more mechanical fashion, rather than being manipulated by something with a specific goal in mind.

“It can’t get in here,” Sarah asked quietly. “Can it?”

It must have been some probability function, which decreased the likelihood that someone, or something, could stumble upon an already impossibly diverse combination, by spinning the dials and making them more random. It really depended on how many digits the combination was. I figured that a twenty nine digit combination lock had a one in twenty seven thousand chance of someone randomly finding the right combination. This vault’s combination, however, looked like it could have been a one hundred digit lock, or even a thousand digits. The odds of randomly opening it were ten to the n
th
removed decimal of likelihood. I assumed that the numbers being in constant motion just decreased the odds even further.

“I don’t think so.” I said finally.

“That man said it was going to eat your brain…?”

“Patrick? Yeah, he did.”

“So that it could know what you know?”

“Yes…”

“Well,” she said. “What about him? Did the monster learn what he knew after it ate him? What if he knew how to get in here?”

That was an interesting thought. I watched the locks for a moment until I was confident that the spinning was some sort of automatic process. “Keep watching it, will you?”

She nodded.

I turned back to the wall–screen. What was going on? I could guess that the Research Center had various projects that they were working on, many of which probably involved various government contracts they would have wanted to keep under wraps – that’s reasonable. But it seemed that the CEM was bankrolling some serious stuff. I studied the file names. Onsite artifact…

That’s what I was looking for. “Onsite artifact.”

WEEKLY ACTIVITY REPORTS

“Here we go,” I said. “Weekly activity reports.”

The screen zoomed out as thousands of entries filled the wall, floor to ceiling. The first entry was dated May 15
th
, 2034. I walked to the right, scanning the various dates until I found the last report at the very bottom of the wall, which was written on August 19
th
, 2042. There were thousands of reports. Way too many for me to try sifting through each one, so I decided to start with the first entry and work my way randomly through the list, until I finally reached the last.

Week Ending 5/15/34

Classified Restricted Ivory Tower Redshift

Lancelot Kattar, Center for Energetic Materials

This first week wasn’t without hiccups. The accommodations were perfect, no less, but aside from braving the crowds of homeless, we had a brief but unsettling correspondence with a research group from CERN, who cautioned that they suddenly found evidence that implicated what screwing up would mean at this point – if we are even one logic gate off, we would most certainly short circuit and ruin the electromagnetic field of our wafer, which would ultimately set us back to square one – at this point, after so many man–hours, I can’t really imagine what such a failure would feel like. They’re right after all, but Jesus, I don’t think they realize how important everybody’s mindset is at this point. If we started focusing on what failing would mean, it could prove to be such a distraction that we’ll bring about the very failure that we’re worried about. I understand that we were basically told that the powers that be have amassed near unlimited resources for this endeavor, but I can’t just shut off an upbringing of despising wastefulness and praising frugality. If only the rest of the world knew. If only they could rally behind our cause and bolster our confidence so that we could do this right the first time. I would hate to waste another score trillion dollars in an equally risky project.

Another complaint I have is the complete lack of developmental perimeters. The project managers come to me and ask me to set aside what technological hurdles we face from now until then, and tell me to simply focus on the end result. What do I want to happen when this is all done? My answer is always the same – if I knew what sort of budget I had to work with, what sort of equipment we had, what sort of equipment we could get our hands on, then I could plot out a definite plan of attack. I could know exactly what the end result was going to look like, if I knew what tools I had to get me there. They say the same thing, that money isn’t an issue, which sounds accommodating but is actually quite stifling – if budget isn’t an issue, what would I conceivably need to get the job done? If we could conceivably get our hands on any available resource or equipment that I need, what then? If the technology doesn’t exist yet, what materials would I need to make it? I find that I’m suddenly paralyzed by the enormity of choosing from an unlimited list of possibilities. Screwing around in campus labs was almost easier, because I knew what my limitations were – I knew what things I had to work with, and what things I didn’t. Suddenly they tell me that I have the entire universe at my fingertips, and that all I need to do is ask for it. Having unlimited options happens to be very intimidating.

Week Ending 10/23/34

Classified Restricted Ivory Tower Redshift

Lancelot Kattar, Center for Energetic Materials

During the initial geometric etching, we were able to program a set of algorithms onto the first sheet of rudimentary microprocessors with a subtractive method, similar to how sculptors shave sections out of a block of marble to create a shape, rather than constructing shapes by building an object from the bottom up, with smaller components. In other words, we started with a large block of something, and carved away the unnecessary parts. It’s a process of construction by destruction. What has been happening is that the molecules of transistors started passing messages back and forth via electromagnetic fields, and selectively attached to each other to form an even powerful processor. The atoms not necessary to build the connection simply fell away. After those atoms were discarded, they were free to participate in the formation of a new connection. A lot of us here are very excited – we can’t even begin to speculate what it’s creating – this microchip is essentially creating itself atom-by- atom, molecule-b- molecule. We won’t really know what it intends to do for another few weeks. Algorithmically, the main challenge so far has been how individual atoms wouldn’t have many computational resources, but we expected this. The main question at this point is how we create economical algorithms that won’t waste information at such low levels of communication and at such low levels of storage.

The answer lies, as often is the case, in nature. You asked me what the ultimate goal was, so here it is: you want a neural and limbic learning machine that can sense its environment, is self–aware, and can plan for the future by formulating strategies. That’s it. What better hope for the future of our species than that? I’m talking about a self–replicating, self–guided, self–repairable, essentially indestructible learning machine with modular, unlimited information storage and processing capabilities, with a hardwired instinct to adapt to ever changing environments.

You may be thinking that this sounds awfully familiar, and it is. But the truth is that we can’t simply design this thing from the top down. It’s too costly. Too much processing power is needed, too much heat would be generated, and too much cooling would need to be done, on top of the thing most likely ending up bulky and, for lack of a better word, dumb. Sure, we would have the fastest processing machine ever created, which could store obscene amounts of information. But it would just be a big, dumb, directionless machine incapable of understanding what it’s doing. We already have supercomputers like that – it’s nothing new. We don’t want another dumb machine that would simply carry out commands like some sort of complex Rube Goldberg device. Save those supercomputers for atom smashing. Again, we think that the answer can be found in nature. We think that this thing has to learn about its surroundings by trial and error, like an organism. One of the ideas floating around here lately is that we need to design this thing to be organic in nature, but mechanical in purpose – in short, we think it needs to evolve before it can one day be able to think like we do. The power to store and process information is rather meaningless, if whatever is doing the storing and processing doesn’t have a specific goal in mind. Mind, after all, is the fundamental issue. I’ll keep you posted on things as they develop.

Week Ending 3/28/35

Classified Restricted Ivory Tower Redshift

Lancelot Kattar, Center for Energetic Materials

Something truly amazing happened this week. We came into the labs on Monday morning to find that, over the course of the three-day weekend, the synthetic polymers threose and anhydrohexitol completely transcribed entire strands of XNA sequences. Without any outside introduction of existing DNA polymerases, our simple approach has proven effective, as our atomic transistors continue to evolve like their naturally occurring counterparts, DNA and RNA. This is amazing for two reasons: one, we programmed the initial algorithm to find and create the most optimal and efficient intermediary for trial–and–error, if–then clauses – this means that, without any influence on our part, our microprocessors automatically started creating a synthetic replica of the very building blocks for life! It’s as if our little microprocessor is creating its own probability clause, and coming to the same conclusion that nature did some three hundred million years ago. This is truly an amazing observation. The second reason is that this is absolute, irrefutable proof that you don’t have to adhere with the ribose or deoxyribose blueprints of RNA and DNA in order to have heritable, transferable information that evolves. It’s very strange – we don’t know where it’s getting its information. How this was supposed to work is that the polymerases synthetic XNA would get synthesized through rounds of DNA to XNA transcription, and vice versa – creating polymerases that can replicate XNA directly from XNA. But this new synthetic genetic sequence has done so on its own, despite both XNA strands being foreign to the polymerase – no DNA was ever introduced for this thing to model itself after. We have to look into it a bit more, but Alice and I are convinced – the only possibility is if some of our own DNA somehow contaminated the process without us knowing it. I mean, we thought it was really just going to create some sort of processor – some logic machine based on whatever interpretation it had for adaptation. We never expected this kind of evolution. It’s clear now that it wants to replicate life – after we programed that first microchip with the simple instruction to build itself so that it could be the most optimal adaptation machine, it immediately started to resemble life, just like how single cells act in nature. It’s amazing. Truly amazing. It’s building some new form of life that’s based on completely synthetic genetic polymers. We’re mere months away from witnessing the birth of a completely novel life form, that would have created itself out of the simple premise: adapt or die.