The Last Firewall (31 page)

The humans were primitive, but effective. The emergency red baseball bat, mounted anywhere with more than a dozen computers, was a not-so-subtle reminder that it only took one human armed with a wooden stick to start smashing. They didn’t need anything fancy to kill an AI.

Therefore Adam exercised a more devious approach, installing sub-sentient algorithms on compromised perimeter routers to filter network traffic. He couldn’t completely separate the city from the Internet, not yet. He had to monitor data flows for weeks before he could build accurate stochastic models to effectively imitate all the entities, human and computer, in Tucson.

It took Adam two months to complete the segregation, separating Tucson from the outside world. Disturbing issues cropped up during the process.

On the Tuesday following his connection to the cluster, the Computer Science department’s IT staff figured out that Adam hadn’t disconnected in days, and began to suspect something was wrong. He was tethered to the computing grid, and if he detached the operation would crumble. Without the firewall finished, exerting his new power would risk detection by other AI.

So he hired an errand boy. A non-sentient delivery bot brought a printed letter from Adam to Wranglers Auto Repair in South Tucson. Lucky, the owner of Wranglers and a six-foot-three-inch ex-football player turned bike mechanic, ripped the manila envelope open, pulling out a piece of paper and an anonymous payment card holding $128,000. He and his friends hopped on their bikes and roared over to the University of Arizona, mufflers set well over the legal limit.

In retrospect, Adam wished he had reviewed some video before choosing the particular method he had. He hadn’t been aware of how much humans bled, and was frightened that the blood would short-circuit a crucial power line. In the end, Lucky and his friends had finished the job, and even placed the bodies neatly in the basement as Adam had asked. And that was that.

61

A
DAM LOOKED DOWN
on the city, twinkling bits in his digital map corresponding to everyone he expected to find in Tucson, every transfer of data or movement of objects. But even this panopticon failed him; the girl was confounding his surveillance, first leading him on a wild chase outside Hotel Congress, and now defying him within his own city.

Slim and Tony had called in, along with the rest of the security bots. Catherine Matthews was definitively not on the Continental.

But Slim said the train passengers reported two men acting strangely before they evacuated. Of all the pawns in this vast chess game, the only two unaccounted for were Mike Mike Williams and Leon Tsarev. The implication that they were in Tucson sent his circuits racing. The top minds on artificial intelligence as well as Cat were now roaming the city unobserved.

He mobilized hundreds of combat bots and alerted his subservient AI to scour Tucson. He had learned the girl’s electronic signature when he trained her, and deliberately left out of that training a number of techniques he preferred to use. It should have been impossible for her to escape notice.

Yet, she’d vanished into thin air.

With so many uncertainties piling up, the peril of exposure was too much. After careful deliberation, Adam put his backup plan into motion.

A year before he’d used the supercomputing cluster to break the encryption codes restricting access to computers, allowing him to control the AI, bots, and computer hardware in Tucson.

His backup plan was an expansion of the original, requiring him to extend his reach outside the Tucson firewall. While it increased the chance of discovery and a joint response, if he could avoid detection long enough he’d subvert thousands of other self-aware machines by injecting his own core logic into their computers. This uniquely AI attack, akin to a human embedding their personality in someone else’s brain, required breaking the global master keys as well as the lower security regional passcodes he’d already cracked.

Adam was now a hundred times as powerful as the highest permitted class of AI. If this last resort worked he’d be invincible, even if the opposition attacked en mass. It would all boil down to one massive fight until he was eliminated or had subsumed a majority of the computer power on the planet. It was the riskiest move he’d ever considered: an all or nothing bet.

He checked the atomic clock and began the preparations to crack the codes. He’d start the process when the keys changed at the start of the hour.

62

C
ATHERINE CAME BACK INSIDE
to find Leon sitting up against a wall.

“What the hell were you doing out in the desert?” she asked, standing above him.

“I thought the AI manipulated you into coming,” he answered, licking his cracked lips. “I came to help and the train was the only way into town.”

“Jesus, you attracted dozens of combat bots, rescue workers, and surveillance helicopters, and nearly died. Who helped who?”

“Sorry,” Leon said, shaking his head, then looking up with big eyes. “Where’s Mike? He passed out in the mountains.”

She paused, unsure of how to answer. She hoped the microscopic, cell-sized robots known as nanotechnology would bring Mike back from the dead, an idea so far beyond her comfort zone that she wanted to run screaming. But it was also possible that other, equally unlikely things might happen. She thought nanotech press-on nails were impressive, and vaguely knew the military had unreleased medical technology, but this . . . she didn’t want to promise anything about his friend, let alone confess her role in decapitating him. “Are you using experimental nanotech?”

“What do you mean?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but the distant sound of knocking saved her. “Stay here,” she said, drawing her gun. Glancing down, she realized he couldn’t have gotten up if he tried.

Cat made her way out of the dining room toward the front of the clubhouse, passing through a large hallway into a foyer fronted by wide double doors. She switched to
Naihanchi-dachi
to minimize her profile, accessing the net to root around until she found the security cam for the door.

Tony, the guy from the noodle shop, stood outside along with a skeletally thin man, hands up and open, showing they had no weapons. In the background, an armored personnel carrier sat parked at the curb. She sensed an AI inside, the same one she’d fought at the battle in San Diego.

“
Kuso
!” she swore under her breath. They had to know she’d detect the robot. She stepped out of the likely path of any bullets, behind the slight protection of a marble sculpture.

“What do you want?” she called out, keeping the security cam feed up in her vision.

“To help you,” Tony said. “Helena’s in the transport, and she wants to work with you.”

“Last time we met she tried to kill me.”

“On Adam’s orders. But she blames him for her friends dying. She wants revenge.”

She thought about that for a moment. “She’s a hunter-killer bot. You’re telling me she has friends?”

Tony shrugged. “She
had
them, but they’re dead now.”

Cat had killed those friends, and by all rights the AI should blame her. But if that was true, why hadn’t they come in with guns blasting? The cannons protruding from the vehicle would have shredded the building. Cat unlocked the door through the security system. “The two of you can enter.”

She waited until they stepped inside to relock the entrance. She rolled out from behind the marble sculpture and came to her feet with her gun pointing at the skinny guy. They had their hands raised.

“He’s Slim,” Tony said, cringing. “Please don’t kill us.”

Slim threw a disgusted glance at Tony and turned to her. “Look, we don’t want to be here. But Helena said we have to convince you. She claims Adam wasn’t up front with her crew, didn’t explain how much of a threat you are. They would have come with more firepower.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Still aiming at them, Cat felt one corner of her mouth curl up. All one hundred and ten pounds of her, and she had two grown men and a combat bot scared. Despite the seriousness of the situation, a laugh rose from her belly. She turned away, not wanting them to see her smirking.

After a few seconds, Cat waved them in with the gun. The men tentatively put their hands down.

She slid the weapon into her holster, chuckling inside. She sent a message through the net to the AI. “Come in.”

Helena rolled out of the vehicle and toward the clubhouse. The doors flew open as she approached and overrode the security herself.

“Slim and Tony tell me you want to work together.”

“Yes,” she said, in a slightly metallic voice. “I believe we can eliminate Adam. I have a plan.”

“Come in the back and we’ll talk.”

They started for the dining room, then Cat stopped as her stomach grumbled. She hadn’t thought of food, and maybe the men were her answer. “There’s nothing to eat here. Can one of you get food?”

“I’m not hungry,” Slim said.

“I am,” Tony said. “Go get some pizza, huh?”

“Frak me,” Slim said. “Why should I go? I don’t need to eat.”

“Just do it,” Cat said. She rested one hand on the butt of the gun, then ignored him and continued on.

Slim grumbled and walked back to the personnel carrier.

Leon looked up in alarm when they entered, but stayed leaning against the wall, unable to do more.

Helena rolled up. “Leon Tsarev,” she stated, a hint of awe in her voice.

His eyes watched her, but he didn’t move.

“You are suffering from exposure,” Helena said, scanning his body with several tentacles. “My scans indicate you have residual nanites in your bloodstream. I am a Class III combat AI with field medicine skills and can reprogram your nanobots to counter the effects of heatstroke. Do you wish me to proceed?”

Leon nodded without hesitation.

Helena placed one tentacle on Leon and held it there. After a long minute she withdrew. “The nanites are nearly depleted, but they will be enough to reverse the worst of the heatstroke.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You are?”

“Helena.” She gestured. “This is Tony, a former agent of Adam who I’ve convinced to help us. His partner Slim will arrive shortly. We’ve come to join forces to destroy Adam. But first . . .” She executed an eerily graceful bow to Leon. “I wish to offer gratitude for creating my kind.”

“I didn’t make you,” he said.

“You created the ability for us to live, when others wanted to create the conditions to ensure that we would not.”

He bowed his head. “You’re welcome.”

Helena turned to Cat. “You fight as a true warrior, but you do not possess strategy experience. With your permission, I will tell you my plan to attack Adam.”

“Wait,” Leon interrupted. “First, where’s Mike?” His voice demanded, but his eyes displayed fear.

“Ack!” Cat jumped up. “Be right back.” She ran through the kitchen, out the pool door and over to the hot tub.

“Oh, God!” she cried.

While nanobots operated using stores of energy, sometimes they consumed nearby material to build more of themselves or other structures. She assumed that’s why Mike’s head had transmitted the request for MakerBot solution: the tiny bots needed the elements for some task.

But everyone’s worst nightmare was the possibility that something might go wrong with nanotech, creating runaway grey goo: robots endlessly replicating, turning all matter, possibly the entire earth, into a seething mass of the microscopic bots. That was why nanotechnology was so tightly restricted in the first place.

Mike’s head and the MakerBot solution were gone, the hot tub empty, and a gaping hole in the pool descended into darkness.

Cat might have doomed the planet.

She peered down the hole, unable to see the bottom. “Hello?” she called.

“Hello!” a voice yelled back. “Who is that?”

“Catherine Matthews. Who are you?”

“Mike Williams.” Pause. “Did you put me in this hole?”

“No, I, uh . . .” She panicked. “Hold on, I’ll get a rope . . . or something.”

She ran into the clubhouse, searching for anything useful, and found heavy drapes covering the tall windows. She grabbed with both hands and yanked, but they didn’t budge.

“Can I help?”

Cat whipped around. Helena had rolled silently into the room.

“Yes. Come with me.” She led the bot outside. “Mike Williams is down there. Can you get him out?”

Helena gazed at Cat with four eye stalks, then glanced at the hole in the concrete. “You people are both liberal and careless with experimental technology, a dangerous combination. You didn’t use enough solution and the nanotech kept going until it got the elements it needed to finish its program.”

Helena let out something approximating a sigh, then levered herself into the dry hot tub. Holding onto the rim with four tentacles, she lowered her body into the cavity. The limbs extended, growing impossibly slim, like fine black ropes, then the process reversed until Helena popped out. A few seconds later a naked man emerged in the grasp of her arms.

He blinked in the late afternoon sunlight and crouched. “Do you have clothes?”

Cat nearly fell in shock. He was alive, looking like a normal, healthy man of his age, indistinguishable from his photos. She’d put a disembodied head into the pool, and technology rebuilt him.

Mike coughed. “Clothes?”

Right. Cat ran into the building, and came back with a server’s uniform she found hanging in a closet. “Meet us inside after you’ve gotten dressed.”

Mike nodded, and Cat and Helena went in. Distressed by the incident, Cat held onto Helena for support.

“You know what he is?” Helena asked.

“I put his head in that tub with MakerBot solution. I’m guessing he had nanotech in him. It formed a protective core around his brain and then reconstituted his body.”

Helena’s optics swiveled and clicked. “Yes,” she hissed. “It’s highly illegal. Unethical.”

“You’re a fine one to talk about ethics,” Cat said harshly. “You came after me in a bar full of people, who are mostly all dead now.”