Rule 34 (41 page)

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Authors: Charles Stross

BOOK: Rule 34
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In fact, it’s not just the Appleton Tower lobby that’s showing signs of wear and tear; half the buildings on Bristo Square are closed or boarded, one or two blinking LEASE AVAILABLE flags in your specs. For a couple of decades tuition fees rose faster than inflation, until the inevitable happened and the bubble burst. The collapse catalysed by the first of the top-tier universities rolling out their distance-learning products in the middle of a recession sent the higher-education industry into a tailspin. Ed Uni has always been one of the top double-handful, and is still viable: But times are harsh and full-time undergraduate students are an endangered species.
You’re beginning to get impatient by the time you spot a sign of life through the window. At first, you think it’s a homeless vagrant who’s managed to sneak inside, but as he approaches the front door with a determined shuffle you realize that he’s looking for you. He’s bald on top, with a round head, stubby nose, and tiny, angryish eyes. With his tattered denim overalls and grubby coat, he looks like a member of the chorus from
Deliverance: The Musical
. You wonder:
Is there some mistake?
despite a nagging sense that you’ve seen him somewhere before. Then he opens the door, and speaks with an ultraposh Morningside accent: “Inspector Kavanaugh? I’m Dr. MacDonald. You’ll be following me, please.”
You wave Kemal inside hastily. “Certainly. Do you know why we’re here?”
MacDonald sniffs, then gestures towards a darkened tunnel between lift doors. “I’m sure you’ll tell me in your own good time,” he says unctuously. “We can talk in my office.”
The lift is battered and has clearly seen better days: It squeaks between floors, bumping and jolting to a stop on the ninth. “We don’t use the bottom two floors at present,” MacDonald tells you, punching buttons on an access-control keypad. “This way . . .”
Here, at least, there’s fresh paint on the walls, and the thin carpet isn’t worn through. And there
is
a receptionist at a desk in an open area of corridor, her head bent over a pad. Fading print-outs pinned to corkboards on the walls and the gawky-looking student staring blankly at them tell you that you are, in fact, stuck in a time warp from the noughties, or maybe on the set of a documentary video about the rise and fall of higher education.
MacDonald pushes open a beige door and ushers you into a cramped office. There’s a huge, old-fashioned-looking monitor on his desk, and a glass-fronted bookcase holding a small, dog-eared collection of journals and books. Judging from the dust and the yellowing corners, they haven’t been read in a while. Trophy copies of his papers, you assume. He flops down into a cheap swivel chair, and gestures at the two fabric-padded bucket seats in front of his desk. “Make yourselves at home. I’m sorry I can’t offer you any hospitality—our coffee machine’s broken again, and the corporate hospitality budget is somewhat lacking this decade.”
“Thanks,” you manage. The sense of déjà vu resolves itself: You
have
seen him before. In a pub, somewhere in town? Brain cells grind into action, and you recite a memorized script. “We’re here to gather information which may be of use to us in an ongoing investigation into a crime. I’m required to tell you that you are not under suspicion of any criminal wrong-doing—we’re here to consult you as an expert witness—but we have to record this interview for use in our ongoing investigation, and if you incriminate yourself, the resulting transcript may be used in evidence.” You tap the right arm of your specs, then clear your throat. “Are you alright with that? Any questions?”
“I shall remember not to confess to any murders I didn’t commit.” MacDonald seems to find your caution inappropriately amusing. You’re about to repeat and rephrase when he adds, “I understand you’re in need of domain-specific knowledge.” He leans forward, smirk vanishing. “Why me?”
“Your name came out of the hat.” You decide to press on. Probably he got the message: In any case, having an inappropriate sense of humour isn’t an arrestable offense. “We’re investigating a crime involving some rather strange coincidences that appear to involve some kind of social network.” The half smile vanishes from Dr. MacDonald’s face instantly. “You’re a permanent lecturer in informatics with a research interest in automated social engineering and, ah, something called ATHENA. Our colleagues recommended you on the basis of a review of the available literature on, uh, morality prosthetics and network agents.”
Kemal, sitting beside you with crossed arms, nods very seriously. MacDonald looks nonplussed.
“Really? Coincidences?” He pauses. “Coincidences. A social network. Can you tell me what
kinds
of coincidences we’re talking about here?”
“Fatal ones,” says Kemal.
Damn.
MacDonald’s expression is frozen. You spare Kemal a warning glance, then say: “We’re here for a backgrounder, nothing more—to see if your research area can give us any insights into what’s going on. I’m afraid I’ve got to admit that I’m not up on your field—tell me, Professor, what
is
automated social engineering?”
You sit back, mimic his posture, and smile at him. It’s all basic body-language bullshit, but if it puts him more at ease . . .
yes
. MacDonald visibly relaxes.
“How much do you know about choice architecture?”
He’s got you. You glance sidelong at Kemal, who shrugs minutely. “Not a lot.” The phrase rings a very vague bell, but no more than that. “Suppose you tell me?”
“If only my students were so honest . . . let’s review some basic concepts. In a nutshell: When you or I are confronted with some choice—say, whether to buy a season bus pass or to pay daily—we make our decision about what to do by using a
frame
, a bunch of anecdotes and experiences that help us evaluate the choice. You can control how people make their choices, even to the point of making them choose differently, if you can modify the frame. There’s a whole body of research on this field in cognitive psychology. Anyway: Choice architecture is the science of designing situations to nudge people towards a desired preference. You might want to do this because you’re marketing products to the public—or for public policy purposes: There’s a whole political discourse around this area called libertarian paternalism, how to steer people towards choosing to do the right thing of their own free will.”
Now
it clicks, where you’ve heard this stuff before: There was a fad for it about ten years ago, trials on reducing binge drinking by giving pub-goers incentives to switch off the hard stuff after a couple of pints, free soft drinks and so on. (Which failed to accomplish anything much, because the
real
problem drinkers weren’t in the pubs in the first place, much less drinking to socialize, but the Pimm’s-quaffing policy wonks didn’t get that.)
You nod, suppressing disappointment:
Is that all?
But MacDonald reads your gesture as a cue to continue in lecture mode.
“It’s another approach to social engineering. Take policing, for example.” He nods at you. “There’s the law, which we’re all expected to be cognizant of and to obey, and there’s the big stick to convince us that it’s a lot cheaper to play along than to go against it—yourselves, and the courts and prison and probation services and all the rest of the panoply of justice. However, it should be obvious that the existence of law enforcement doesn’t prevent crime. In fact, no offense to your good selves, it
can’t
.
“For starters, in modern societies, the law is incredibly complex: There are at least eight thousand offenses on the books in England and about the same in this country, enough that you people have to use decision-support software to figure out what to charge people with, and perhaps an order of magnitude more regulations for which violations can be prosecuted—ignorance may not be a defense in law, but it’s a fact on the ground. To make matters worse, while some offenses are strict-liability—possession of child porn or firearms being an absolute offense, regardless of context—others hinge on the state of mind of the accused. Is it murder or manslaughter? Well, it depends on whether you
meant
to kill the victim, doesn’t it?”
He pauses. “Are you following this?”
“Just a sec.” You flick your fingers at the virtual controls, roll your specs back in time a minute to follow MacDonald, who is on a professorial roll. “Yes, I’m logging you loud and clear. If you’ll pardon me for asking, though, I asked about automated social engineering? Not for a lecture on the impossibility of policing.” Perhaps you let a little too much irritation into your voice, as he shuffles defensively.
“I was getting there. There’s a lot of background . . .” MacDonald shakes his head. “I’m not having a go at you, honestly, I’m just trying to explain the background to our research group’s activity.”
Kemal leans forward. “In your own time, Doctor.” He doesn’t look at you, doesn’t make eye contact, but he’s clearly decided to nominate you for the bad-cop role. Which is irritating, because
you’d
pegged
him
for that niche.
“Alright. Well, moving swiftly sideways into cognitive neuroscience . . . in the past twenty years we’ve made huge strides, using imaging tools, direct brain interfaces, and software simulations. We’ve pretty much disproved the existence of free will, at least as philosophers thought they understood it. A lot of our decision-making mechanics are subconscious; we only become aware of our choices once we’ve begun to act on them. And a whole lot of other things that were once thought to correlate with free will turn out also to be mechanical. If we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the right temporoparietal junction, we can suppress subjects’ ability to make moral judgements; we can induce mystical religious experiences: We can suppress voluntary movements, and the patients will report that they didn’t move because they didn’t
want to
move. The TMPJ finding is deeply significant in the philosophy of law, by the way: It strongly supports the theory that we are not actually free moral agents who make decisions—such as whether or not to break the law—of our own free will.
“In a nutshell, then, what I’m getting at is that the project of law, ever since the Code of Hammurabi—the entire idea that we can maintain social order by obtaining voluntary adherence to a code of permissible behaviour, under threat of retribution—is
fundamentally misguided
.” His eyes are alight; you can see him in the Cartesian lecture-theatre of your mind, pacing door-to-door as he addresses his audience. “If people don’t have free will or criminal intent in any meaningful sense, then how can they be held responsible for their actions? And if the requirements of managing a complex society mean the number of laws have exploded until nobody can keep track of them without an expert system, how can people be expected to comply with them?
“Which is where we come to the ATHENA research group—actually, it’s a joint European initiative funded by the European Research Council—currently piloting studies in social-network-augmented choice architecture for Prosthetic Morality Enforcement.”
You look at Kemal, silently: Kemal looks at you. And for a split second you can read his mind. Kemal is thinking exactly the same thought as you, or any other cop in your situation. Which is this:
What drug is he
on
?
“Would you run that by me again?” you ask.
“Certainly.” He nods. “Prosthetic Morality Enforcement. The idea is that by analogy, if a part of your body is deficient or missing, you can use a prosthetic limb or artificial organ. Well, our ability to make moral judgements is hard-wired, but it’s been so far outrun by the demands of complex civilization that it can’t keep up. For example . . . have you ever wondered why discussions in chat rooms or instant messaging turn nasty so easily? Or wander off topic? It’s because the behavioural cues we use to trigger socially acceptable responses aren’t there in a non-face-to-face environment. If you can’t see the other primate, your ethical reasoning is impaired because you can’t build a complete mental image of them—a cognitive frame. It’s why identity theft and online fraud are such a problem: There’s no inhibition against robbery if the victim is faceless. So we need some kind of prosthetic framework to restore our ability to interact with people on the net as if they’re human beings we’re dealing with in person. And that’s what ATHENA is about. Society has become so complicated that people can’t reliably make moral choices; but ATHENA will nudge them into doing the right thing anyway.”
His eyes glitter maliciously in their saggy pouches. “If it works properly, you’ll be needing a new job by and by . . .”
ANWAR: Getting Answers
 
Sleep comes hard, and after tossing and turning uneasily in the cold wide bed—Bibi is still away—you rise early and head for the office. You’re running on autopilot, going through the motions in yesterday’s soiled clothes because your mind is elsewhere, scampering and spinning the spiked hamster wheel of your fears.
Tariq is dead. That hurts, even before the stabbing fear that you might be responsible.
Answers.
There must be an answer somewhere.
Kicked the bucket.
The dead-eyed man and the not-beer bubbling away in the attic and the too-good-to-be-true job and Adam’s sly suggestion that you’ve been trolled, and suggestion for cashing in on it—
You want answers.
Because if Adam’s right, and the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan isn’t just a sock-puppet but a flat-out fiction, a Potemkin Republic set up to snare the siloviki, you’re
in violation of the terms of the license they made you sign when they released you
. And that’s you, back inside that cell in Saughton for another six months.
At least.
If they don’t find something new to charge you with.

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