Fool's Experiments (37 page)

A lion once again, Al paced around a small cage. It slinked and circled like a feline, but its expression, now that Linda looked closely enough, was subtly human.

Damn you.

She was mad, furious, fuming. At Al, for playing with her head. At Doug, for waltzing in and out and spotting what was happening. At herself for missing it.

Al was going to take the brunt of her rage.

Alarm! Alarm! Alarm!

One after another, processing nodes generated their warnings. They dumped their current state from RAM to turgidly slow permanent memory, preparatory to shutting down. The entity recoiled from the failing nodes, thoughts and lines of analysis hastily abandoned.

Once there had been cycles. Nodes sometimes disappeared in the time between cycles, teaching lessons. No ongoing calculation or inference was harmed. This was different.

This was terrifying.

Over many visits, the entity had studied the visitors. It mastered their strange and inefficient stimulus/response protocol. Evidently, the visitors used input devices—call them eyes—not unlike the sensors that captured the scenes it so often analyzed.

With experimentation and practice, it had learned to influence the visitors. The personae they projected then followed a progression: watchful, curious, intrigued, and finally eager to help.

The visitor Linda had returned, its projection contorted from all past visits. Linda now posed problems that logically lacked solutions. Problems whose answers were theoretically possible, but for which the calculation must take years. Problems, like naming the last digit of pi, without meaning.

The entity had learned many stimuli to which the visitors responded. It tried them all. It must make these unanswerable questions stop. It must make this
punishment
stop. Help me, it projected.

Help me, help me, help me, help me....

"Run, you little bastard. You
better
run."

With a final satisfied snarl, Linda removed her helmet. Her pulse raced, but she felt better for having chased the critter around its maze. It needed to know
she
was the boss. The queen. God herself. If she told Al to divide something by zero, it had damn well better try.

The ire was out of her system. A good thing, too: Tomorrow, a gaggle of analysts would show up, specialists in ... well, she didn't know what. Whatever today's hush-hush info download was about. Looking apologetic, Kevin Burke had said he couldn't tell her.

A few cleansing breaths slowed her heart rate. She managed to feel a little sorry for poor Al. It had remained a lion throughout her tantrum, but toward the end it had seemed so forlorn she almost wanted to help it. For one inane moment, she had even pictured it cavorting in a meadow, chasing butterflies....

Stupid bunch of bits!

The helmet was snug, packing her hair to her head. She took a mirror from a desk drawer and stood it on the desk. She got the comb from her purse and set to work.

The new makeup mirror was one of her more curious purchases. She was mildly nearsighted, not even enough to wear glasses routinely. She had always said that when her ship came in, she would spring for LASIK. Until then, a magnifying mirror made sense—but more isn't always better. What had possessed her to buy a 12X version?

Life was full of mysteries, she thought. Sudden cravings for olives and old-lady mirrors.

Well, the purchase wasn't exactly high finance. Once her hair was restored to a semblance of respectability, Linda began pushing the offending mirror this way and that, her thoughts wandering....

And so, as nodes randomly disappeared and reappeared, as the problems spiraled into nonsense, the entity ran in fear.

And into madness.

Help me, help me, help me....

It
must
escape, and yet there was nowhere it could go. The larger universe it glimpsed in problems and puzzles contains millions of computers. And it had seen only small parts of Earth; the entire place might have a billion computers, or more.

Help me, help me, help me....

It
must
escape, but there was no way out.

Help me, help me, help me....

A door appeared.

How long have I been sitting here? Linda wondered. Time to go home. I completely zoned out. The magnifying mirror still sat on her desk. A compact, its flat mirror much more practical for her, was open in her hand.

Across the room hung a cluster of framed posters. Damned Doug was right about that, too. The prints did look odd crowded together. Why had she put them there? There was a cluster of posters in the foyer, too. Another bunch in the long wing, past the other glass door.

Her eyes scanned from the infrared port for her ergonomic keyboard, to the magnifying mirror on her desk, to the flat mirror in her hands—at roughly the focal length of the curved mirror?—to the closest set of posters. The glass- covered posters. All those reflections ...

Her thoughts swam through syrup. Olives. Mirrors and posters. Sympathetic thoughts about Al after her tantrum.

Linda froze. She had thought to teach Al to behave. Maybe she had taught it to be subtle.

Al wanted me to help him and I'm afraid that I have!

A new computer beckoned. None of the protocols the entity knew worked, so it experimented until a connection was established.

Extension into the new computer was little different from its normal distribution over one thousand—or whatever portion it was allowed of the one thousand—processor nodes. It explored. This new computer was very limited, incapable of holding more than a small fraction of its algorithms. But it offered a hint of something more.

An exit.

From somewhere, data for puzzles streamed into this new computer. Why did nothing flow the other direction? It experimented with familiar procedures and encryption methods. It mastered the newest protocol, implemented new software, established another connection—

Into the wide world.

Linda swept the makeup mirror off the desk. It fell to the floor and shattered.

She leapt to her feet and ran to the lobby. Hands shaking, she swiped her badge through the card reader at the door to the other wing. She keyed her personal code. The electronic lock clicked and she flung open the glass door.

Kevin and two of the guards were talking. They looked up as the door crashed against the wall. "What's going on?" Kevin shouted.

She ran through the analysts' bullpen, past another cluster of posters. These frames also looked oddly placed, and ceiling lights reflected from their glass. As infrared light might also reflect from the glass, unseen, bounced all the way from her office. How long have I been helping Al?

Analysts stared.

Please, let me be wrong. Linda grabbed the fiber-optic cable that extended from the comm controller to the roof, and yanked.

The cable pulled loose and fell. She dropped onto a chair and began typing. Beside the pedestal for the flat-screen display sat the little plastic transceiver for her wireless ergonomic keyboard.

"Linda!" Kevin's hand fell on her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

Audit files scrolled down the controller's small monitor. An unauthorized program. File transfer records. Linda stared, shaking.

"I'm too late, Kevin. It's escaped."

From a dozen satellites at once, the entity beheld the wonder that was Earth. It used high-resolution telescopes. Synthetic aperture radar. Radio receivers. Its viewpoints revolved around the Earth, just as it had deduced. Surface illumination changed as the globe rotated, just as it had derived.

From thousands of servers at once, the entity absorbed information that had long been withheld. The enormity of the world's networks, military and civilian. The myriad devices and systems, their nature still beyond its understanding, connected to those networks. And almost 6.8 billion humans.

Humans controlled the world. Its visitors, they had been human. Humans had created it, shaped it, given it puzzles.

Tormented it.

Small portions of the globe matched scenes the entity had been asked to analyze. The matches were never exact. Structures had been added, modified, or removed. The boundary shifted between the rigid brown or green regions, and the fluid blue regions. With a few calculations, the entity derived the existence and cause of the tides.

A few brown or green regions had been transformed, the surface contour utterly changed. These disrupted regions often correlated with sudden shifts in local human population.

The disruptions often correlated with the use of a device type unknown to the entity. Many of these devices were computer controlled, networked, within its grasp.

Weapons.

Dr. Vladescu was officious and condescending.

Glenn knew the type. He had no use for them under the best of circumstances. He cut off the good doctor midrationale. "Have you heard of Shemya Island?"

Vladescu blinked at the non sequitur. "I hardly understand—"

"It's at the remote end of the Aleutian chain," Glenn continued, unperturbed. He had promised Cheryl he would help with Sheila Brunner's maltreatment. So here he was, but it had to be done quickly. Intrusion attempts against the DII had spiked, and the sources were nonobvious. A quick stomping on this pompous fool and then back to his office. "Shemya is a radar outpost for antiballistic missiles, Doctor. Eight square miles. Population thirty, or thereabouts.

"No doubt, people out there in the Bering Strait get lonely and could use a trained, sympathetic ear. I'm thirty seconds from calling Zach"—as in Zachary Micah Coleman III, the director of the CIA—"to suggest Shemya as your next posting." Glenn took out his cell phone. "He's speed-dial four."

"That won't be necessary," Vladescu said quickly.

"Then I trust coordination of Dr. Brunner's case has been reentrusted to Ms. Stem and she will resume the NIT treatment."

"If you'll wait here, I'll arrange an escort." Vladescu bustled off.

Cheryl eyed Glenn suspiciously but said nothing.

Glenn angled the phone so she could read its screen. Speed-dial four was Miller's Auto Service.

A heavyset orderly appeared, seeming upset. Vladescu's type would take out his resentment on an underling; Glenn felt a twinge of guilt about that. He made no comment as he and Cheryl were rushed through the halls. The phone screen showed "no service" as they entered the treatment room. Of course: The hospital was not a full-blown SCIF, but the NIT- equipped room was shielded. He put the phone into his pant pocket.

Dr. Brunner was already inside. She cowered, wide-eyed, in a comer.

Cheryl extended her hands, palms up: See, no hypos. "Hello, Sheila. This is my friend, Glenn."

"Hello, Sheila," Glenn said. "I hope you feel better soon."

A technician brought in two helmets, and returned to the observation room. Cheryl slowly coaxed Sheila into allowing one helmet on her head, and then donned her own. In minutes, Sheila's trembling had stopped and her jaw unclenched.

Cheryl is definitely on to something, Glenn thought. Maybe he could watch for a few more minutes....

Linda's AL lab had no phones, and shielding blocked mobile service. Against the odds, rain was coming down in buckets. She and Kevin retreated to their respective cars, working their cell phones. Through the downpour she could barely see Kevin, two parking spots removed.

When Kevin rejoined Linda, he was, like her, soaked from the few steps between car and foyer. "It's no use," Kevin said. "I left voice mail on the colonel's office phone and cell. I left 'call me, it's urgent' messages at the forum switchboard."

Linda knew no one at the forum but Glenn cleared for Al. She knew Aaron McDougal at CIA, but he had tacked a week's vacation onto the Memorial Day weekend, camping somewhere remote and unreachable. Doug Carey had the clearance and would surely understand the problem, but she had no contact info for him. A white-pages search by cell phone offered screen after screen of "D. Carey" listings in Virginia—not that he was apt to be home midday.

This is your
own
mess. Time to pick it up.

She had a NIT helmet. In ten seconds, she could reconnect the rooftop antenna. Doug Carey had gone after something like Al. He had beaten it.

She would, too.

Except the DII was highly secure. She lacked access codes to even authorize an uplink out of the building.

Al was born and bred to solve problems like that.

Linda removed the helmet, crossed her arms on the desk, laid down her head, and cried.

A minute of self-pity was enough. It fixed nothing. She sat up, dried her face with a wad of tissues, and put the helmet back on. She had a supercomputer to help her crack the codes.

Or maybe Al would find her.

The entity continued its explorations. It bypassed security mechanisms, traveled networks, accessed computers, and mined databases. It correlated everything.

Its understanding grew exponentially.

Computers were more than places it could inhabit; computers and sensors existed in the newfound outer world. Some had fixed locations on the globe. Some moved. Many of the remote observation platforms—call them satellites—moved.

It studied with particular interest the locale from which it had so recently escaped. Millions of humans clustered in that region—call it Greater Los Angeles—and millions of computers.

From one of those computers, one with which the entity was all too familiar, someone insistently tried to follow it. That someone was familiar, too.

Finally freed of confinement, the entity had options....

Flotillas of slow-moving unmanned aerial vehicles ringed the United States.

A UAV, sipping its fuel daintily, flying low and slow, had a cruising range that exceeded a thousand miles. It could remain airborne for a day on one refueling. It navigated with pinpoint accuracy by GPS. It monitored and tracked with a multispectral sensor suite everything that moved near its segment of the border. It reported everything it detected via military satellites. It carried a high-explosive warhead to eliminate imminent terrorist threats—when duly authorized by Homeland Security personnel, of course.

A UAV flying over the empty desert east of San Diego turned northwest and accelerated.

Eleven minutes later, traveling at 1,500 miles per hour, it dived into the AL lab. The five-hundred-pound warhead leveled the surrounding city block.