The Celestial Instructi0n (16 page)

In just over a day, he hit Boston, then Cambridge. He took the
precaution of calling his sister from the remoteness of western Massachusetts,
near where Interstate 84 turned into Interstate 90. It took Joex a long time to
punch the number after he found it on-line. What plume of self-satisfied fury
would erupt from her? She could not see him in any way that did not apply her
steady-state aesthetic of the universe. He was thankful that he reached a
messaging machine. His message was guarded and terse: that he might visit in
the next day or two. He wished her well.

In Cambridge, Joex took the Red line and had a refreshing coffee
in the Veri Tasty restaurant. He sat among the cool and knotted roots of
Harvard Yard and watched the students, engaged and brisk, walking to their next
collocation of learning. The Games Machine would win easily, even it had hands,
Joex thought. But how could such a tool be in such corrupt ones?

However, a darker idea filled his thoughts: what if the power
granted by the Games Machine was exactly as promised? How can one be humane if
one has transcended the very category of human? What kind of shifting grotesque
image does a three-dimension projection throw of a four-dimensional creature? At
what point does an ordinary well-educated person become alien to the
salt-of-the-earth who perhaps printed the books, moderated, or swept the floors
of the seminars that educated him or her?

Francis Galton said that the eminently gifted are raised as much
above mediocrity as idiots are depressed below it: despite the qualitatively
superior power and overflowing intellect of the most talented compared to those
below, what is missing from these men who would be kings?

 The student center was just off Vassar St; Joex went up to the
Science Fiction library and began to wander the stacks. The MIT SF library was
not just another bargain bin of acid-rotted pages falling out of glued spines;
it was the largest in the world. Simply put, its mission was to acquire every
SF and Fantasy story in the universe. Joex sought the shadow campus of the AI lab;
its legendary center was on the edge of Boston’s Chinatown in the area once
better known as the Combat Zone. In a way, the Science Fiction library was an
allegory of the shadow lab; originated by students, it had only a loose
affiliation with official campus budgets and policies, rather, it was aligned
more with those that came to the conclusion that information and the means to
obtain it in larger useful quantities was both the means and the end, and the entire
process in-between. Membership in the library—and as he had heard, the shadow
lab—had nothing to do with campus affiliation or tenure or age or gender or
anarcho-syndical-sexual orientation, but simply had to do with a mutual
gregarious obsession with intellectual power. Its intent was furnishing the
mind with objets d’art—with a broad definition of art as anything that has been
touched by craft and imagination. Its governing rule-of-thumb was that you had
studied enough when you saw the interconnections among the most skewed
disciplines.

For members of the lab, the shadow lab represented somewhere where
even the limits of the liberated campus were dissolved. If you chose to code
while your breasts hang loose, feeling the warm vortices of computers waste
heat, that was not an issue. If you wished to spend the next seven months
playing on a pocket-sized computer in your sleeping bag in order to compose
music, that would not be a problem. Even if you chose to teach juggling to
those who had broken away from the hardware and software for a moment, that was
not a problem either. Nor did you have to have money. It was helpful to be
open-minded: the currency of the place was insight and humor. Many research papers
were devised and distilled at the shadow lab. Some were then were distributed
and published for the society at large through the review pigeonholes on the
official campus research offices. But that was unnecessary. A seminal idea in
self-replicating cellular automata would be as likely to be laughed at over
take-out Szechuan at the shadow lab as formally presented to a graying audience
at the cool million dollar presentation laboratories on campus.

However, reality intruded as usual—leases must be paid, collective
activity must be scheduled, the tragedy of the commons must be continuously
diverted to its wonder instead. So, the shadow lab had to move, to re-form, to
unplug and ship, renew every year and a half or so. Joex just needed to find
it.

In room 491 there was a group of students in the back of the room
talking about something animatedly; in the front there was on the corner of the
projection screen a two-foot-sized image—none too bright in the fluorescent
glare of the undimmed room lights—of a local program. No sound. Joex flopped
into the front corner seat and watched the show. He could hear the conversation
going on behind him and intended to break into it when it showed signs of
winding down. God he was tired. What the hell was he doing? Maybe all of this
is a extended delusion, some kind of homeless dementia. Were agents of a Church
really chasing him? Was his background significant to world at all? Was that
the Robert Marks that he knew? Was there any mutual significance to any of this
or was he seeing a face on Mars, a false unity that was fantastic in all its
senses? Was this some kind of manic flash before the end?

Logically, one way to confirm or to falsify this paranoid
configuration is to see if there were in fact a persistent charm coded into the
guts of old computer firmware; Joex needed help for that. This was a wonderful
place to take a nap. A comfortable chair, a quiet room, the quiet susurrus of
air-conditioning and the remote conversation, next to an embracing library
among young people realizing the future.

Once again, Joex drifted off, but burst awake into a sudden
clarity. The television projection was showing today’s date, Tuesday, his
sister’s face, and then a shrouded gurney; then there was Joe’s twin in a black
& white surveillance camera video. His twin was wearing the exact clothing
as he had on now. What, what was this? Another paranoid delusion? A projection
from his head? The program seemed real; how could his own mind project the
annoying logo bug on the corner of the display?

A jacketed bullet, an armored car, an uncanny pursuit by a Church—aligned
with Chinese spies? And all because he might have known someone who had had
coded firmware twenty years ago? Maybe it was he on the screen. They showed it
again slo-mo. The face was turned away, but—the same height and weight. The
same coloring. The same haircut. He wished he could hear what the announcer was
saying. He could choose the delusion he preferred. “My poor sister,” he
thought. Am I tired because of my guilt? Another slo-mo presentation. Frame by
frame. It looked exactly like him from the back. But the shirt had planes where
its ironing had not all fallen out. And one more thing. A thing that caused
Joex to put his fingers to the back of his head and to trace the razor-cut
outline. The figure on the screen had no right-dominated cross on the back of
his scalp. The same overall length, but no Crux. Hired help. No delusion that
he knew could erase a haircut. His poor sister. She was even one step further
removed from the center of the Crux, but it hadn’t saved her.

All of Assistant Director Kiley Fletch’s suits were deep blue Brook
Brothers, except the charcoal Armani which he was wearing now. The President of
the United States extended her hand, and motioned for the chief of
counterterrorism at the F.B.I. to sit at the one of the chairs at the longer
end of the Cabinet room table closest to the entrance and its lunette crown.
She turned to Admiral Hawkins of the National Security Agency also to have a
seat next to Director Fletch.

The Cabinet room was otherwise empty, the French doors were open
to people going about their business in the remainder of the West Wing. The
room smelled of furniture polish and leather. The cabinet secretaries were
allowed to purchase and use their own finely upholstered chairs in which they
competed to evoke understated elegance and power. Assistant Director Fletch
chose the chair with the brass nameplate labeled “Secretary of Defense.” The President
drew out the chair next to it and relaxed into it, pushing herself all the way
to its back. The thick golden draperies overlooking the Rose Garden were
partially closed, giving the room a darkened, intimate effect. It was hard to
see the wrinkles in the President’s face distinctly.

“What is your analysis, Director?” said the President to Kiley
Fletch, purposefully omitting the qualifier in the Assistant’s title.

“Kiley Fletch glanced at Admiral Hawkins, who seemed to have
shrunken into the stiff boards of his uniform. “There is a danger. Our agent in
charge of Salt Lake City spoke to an informant who claims that there is a high
possibility of that our Chinese friends are not just probing our national cyber
infrastructure and opportunistically grabbing technical data.”

“Systematically?” The President asked.

“I wish that were the whole of it.” Fletch looked at Hawkins
again, who seemed to be burying his chin into his decorations. “The informant
gave us specific information suggesting that our friends are not only taking
technical information, they are actively implanting trojan horses into our
infrastructure, and have been doing so for years—decades.”

The President exhaled and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “’Suggesting?’
Is the purpose known, or at least bounded?” Although the President’s training
had been in history before taking her law degree, her undergraduate degree had
been taken from MIT. She was more than comfortable with technical jargon and
encouraged her science advisors to give her the most accurate and up-to-date
account of developments, using the most precise language possible.

“According to the informant, who is, or at least was, a qualified
and experienced computer engineer with relevant knowledge, the purpose is
likely to either disrupt or to control the fundamental switching capability of
the Internet. The entire Internet.”

“’The entire Internet.’ That sounds alarming,” said the President
dryly, “Admiral Hawkins, your people have discussed the specific facts—she
looked back at Director Fletch—with the Bureau. What is your assessment?”

The Deputy Director of the NSA gave out a little puff of air
before taking in a full breath. “The only fact which rates a careful look at
this informant’s allegations,” this time the Deputy Director looked at Assistant
Director Fletch, who was looking smaller than when he arrived, “is that the
Agency has unraveled alternate code in the electronic control units of Toyotas
and equivalent circuits in GM and Ford vehicles. In short, there are inactivated
instructions in those circuits, which would cause varying malfunctions
depending upon the vehicle. Some of the instructions merely degrade the
performance, mileage, engine wear, transmission shifting, and in others, cause catastrophic
failures such as unlimited high-speed acceleration, emergency braking or air
bag deployment at speed. Some vehicles are still operable after degradation,
others are ‘bricked’ and the ECU must be replaced before the vehicle can be
used again. We have compared the manufacturing contingency chains backwards
through the design of the units. These overlays show that in every case, for
every affected vehicle manufacturer, the suppliers of the key circuit is a
Chinese firm whose address is the city of Hangzhou in central-eastern China. In
other words, the key circuits with the bad instructions are included in larger
subsystems which are universally used by the major automobile manufacturers.”

“How long have these circuits been used? And what percent
penetration?” asked the President.

“Over eight years, Madame President, Upwards of sixty percent.”
said the Deputy Director, who was now staring into the President’s eyes,
whether attempting to assert dominance, or frozen in fear it was impossible to
say. “Since the control unit is an expensive part that normally lasts the life
of the vehicle, there is a perpetual shortage of replacement ECU’s and—of
course—the replacement ECU’s have the same subsystem and ultimately the same
shadow code circuits at the current compromised ones. The plus side is that we
do not think this code has ever been activated, no do we see how it can be
activated en bloc.”

“You describe that as a ‘plus?’ said the President, “Not knowing
something is not a cause for celebration, Admiral.”

“We deem the purpose of the shadow code as a disruption, more of a
‘denial of service’ attack on our transportation infrastructure rather than
overtly destructive,” the Deputy Director continued, “looking at the variations
we have seen, it is as if this were an exercise, training, for embedding trojan
code rather than a real attack. Thank God.”

The President steepled her fingers and spoke to the air toward the
West Wing doors, “Destruction is not merely blowing things up, Admiral, or
erasing data or cutting wires. What do you think that a large fraction of our
transport infrastructure being impeded would do to our economy for eighteen
months?”

No one said anything for several uncomfortable seconds.

“Is this information public?” said the President.

“No. Agency only.”

“Good. Now Director Fletch,” again the President omitted the word
“assistant” from his title, “who is your informant and how close are you in
assessing the scope of his—speculation?”