Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears (12 page)

Mike had meant the question as a joke to himself, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized just how out of touch he was. He palmed his phone, which still had no signal, desperately wanting to log into Avogadro’s network so he could verify the log files, and lacking that, to talk to David to find out in detail just what he had done.

He looked up to see his parents staring at him, his mother with a little frown for him taking out his phone at the table. He apologized, and asked to borrow his parent’s house phone just to find that indeed, the lines were out. That meant no internet service, either. And there was no mobile phone signal.

Pacing back and forth in the privacy of the kitchen, Mike thought about the design of ELOPe. The intended real-world use of ELOPe would be to offer language optimization suggestions to the Avogadro’s AvoMail customers. But in fact, the suggestions could be automated — there was code in there to do just that. In fact, they had used the automated suggestions during their human factors testing to automatically modify preexisting emails. Not only had the human factors testing shown that the recipients preferred the emails modified by ELOPe substantially, they also had not been able to tell the difference between a genuine human generated email and an ELOPe modified email, even when they knew one had been modified by a computer.

In fact, it was after that experiment that one of the guys on the team had given ELOPe the ability to generate emails without any human based text. It was just for the development team to have fun with, and so it could only be triggered from a hidden module. You could put any goal into the module parameters and it would generate emails. It was surprisingly good and around April Fools Day there had been no end of practical jokes among the team.

Stranded now in a snowstorm in the middle of Wisconsin with no connection to the outside world, Mike found himself wondering if ELOPe had just social engineered him into this situation. If so, to what end?

Chapter 7

“
Mike, I hope your dad is OK. Christine and I have been thinking about you guys, and our prayers are with you and your family. I was hoping to hear back from you by now, but we’ve seen the weather report, and know that phone and power lines are out across half of Wisconsin. That’s one hell of a storm. I think you know that Christine and I are going to visit her parents in New Mexico for the holiday. I’ll keep my phone with me. Please give me a call when you get this message. I’ve got something important to discuss with you. I’m worried about ELOPe. I’m going to be somewhat incommunicado while we’re at Christine’s parents’ place, but keep trying me.”

David hung up, and looked over to where his wife waited with their suitcases. In truth, he normally loved going to the ranch Christine grew up on in New Mexico for the holidays. He had grown up as a city boy, but found deep pleasure in the outdoors. Going to their ranch was one of the highlights of his year. Especially in the middle of the rainy Portland winter.

Unfortunately, he was far from joy at the moment. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that ELOPe was somehow originating emails on its own. He still hoped that he and Mike could take care of it without telling anyone else. He was becoming more afraid for his career by the minute. If he did anything that materially affected the Avogadro Mail service on top of the deceptions he’d already done, he’d never work there or at any of the other big Internet companies again. It was no wonder his throat felt tight, and his stomach a boiling pit of despair.

He hadn’t been able to remove the code changes without Mike’s help. And now, to top it off, David was headed out of town. He couldn’t cancel his trip with Christine on an unconfirmed fear, nor did he really want her to know how worried he was.

The only consolation, and it was a small one, was the holiday break. Most people at Avogadro would be out of the office. With a little luck, there wouldn’t be that much that ELOPe could do with so little email moving around. But he still hoped that it was just his own worries running away with themselves.

Christine was gesturing at him from the terminal gate, and he could see people boarding the plane. Reluctantly, he got up and went over to her, managing a weak smile. He gripped his luggage tightly and followed Christine toward the plane.

He tried to tell himself that when they got back from New Mexico, everything would be fine, just perfectly normal. He’d be able to laugh at everything that he was so worried about now. Meanwhile, a stiff drink, or better yet, two stiff drinks, would be really nice.

* * *

Bill Larry flew out by helicopter to visit ODC #4 again. Since his last visit, the standard “data center in a box” cargo containers had been replaced with specially hardened units, and iRobot had delivered their automated defenses.

On this visit, for the first time, in order to land on the floating helicopter pad, Bill had to authorize their visit via the iRobot services administrator before the helicopter took off. It unnerved Bill to step onto the deck of the ODC knowing that robots with lethal force were onboard the vessel. He realized that part of his unease came from the lack of positive feedback. Unlike with a person, there was no obvious way to know that the robots were in stand-down mode. They just stood there like any other piece of machinery.

He inspected one of the deck robots, more than a little terrified that it would suddenly lurch into motion and kill him. The robot looked like a miniature tank. It was about four feet long, three feet wide, and three feet tall. It had treads like a tank on either side of a small lower chassis that contained the motors and power supply. A rectangular box on a hinged and rotating scissor arm extended up another three feet. The rectangular box look incongruously like a box of roses he had once bought for his ex-wife.

He ran his fingers over the glass panes that he knew covered the optical and infrared sensors. Small metal covers would presumably retract to expose the armament. Peering around it, he looked for the directional acoustic sensors that must be there, somewhere. He knew infrared lighting and cameras, as well as sonar, allowed the robot to see in 3D even when normal visibility was obscured. Speakers allowed the robot to instruct would-be attackers to back off. If they failed to obey, the robot had several non-lethal deterrents. It could emit pepper spray in a 60 degree arc and it could fire taser-like electrical shocks directly in front of it. The same speakers that would tell attackers to back off could deliver a 18.9Hz acoustic blast that would vibrate the eyeballs of anyone within thirty feet. It was supposed to be incredible painful and disorienting. Should the non-lethal defenses fail to be sufficient deterrent, as a last resort, the robot was armed with two hundred 10mm, body-armor piercing rounds that were more compact than traditional rifle rounds, yet powerful enough to stop anyone they hit.

In theory, all of this would be under the control of a trained iRobot handler. The handlers had a central location from which they monitored defensive robots around the world for a variety of civilian customers. Bill had seen videos, and it was not dissimilar to what contracted security companies did for old fashioned corporate security, except that the handlers were mostly pimple-faced kids who looked like they spent most of their time playing video games.

When the robots sounded the alarm, the handlers could take immediate action from their remote location to deter the pirates. That was the normal course of action, and it didn’t scare Bill too badly. Knowing that there was a human being on the other end of the camera, well that wasn’t too bad, even if they were teenage video gamers.

Bill took his hand away from the metal casing of the bot and stepped back. If an iRobot handler didn’t take control of the robot — if their signal were actively jammed, if increment weather interfered with that signal, or if the handlers were swamped with too many simultaneous intrusions, well, in that case, the robots could act on their own.

Bill remembered the protocol. If the robots detected an intrusion, and the handlers didn’t take control, and the robots hadn’t been put in stand-by mode, and any would-be attackers didn’t back down, then the robots operated in autonomous mode. They’d broadcast a verbal alarm, escalation to non-lethal measures, and if all else failed, start shooting. The robots would coordinate together to cover all aspects of the deck and back each other up. Thinking through all of that, Bill was practically freaking out now that he was standing next to one of them. He backed further away, and carefully avoided the business end of the robot’s armament.

With one eye on them the entire time, Bill hastily finished his inspection of ODC #4. He boarded the helicopter, running the last few steps, and signaled for the pilot to take off. Only once they were in the air did he relax just a bit.

As the pilot circled back toward land, Bill watched the sea for some evidence of the underwater robots, but he couldn’t spot anything under the chop. The underwater robots used sonar to detect boats approaching the offshore data center. They would broadcast across all radio spectrums to warn the boats off. They would share intelligence data with the on deck robots. They too had weapons. Each had two torpedos that could sink a boat, and as a last resort, the submersible robots themselves could attach to the hull of a boat, either to track the boat or blow it up.

If the deck robots were unnerving, well, at least they could be seen. The thought of the hidden underwater robots brought back terrifying childhood memories of seeing the movie Jaws. The photos he’d seen of them, with side-mounted torpedos and maneuvering fins, only strengthened the fear. Bill made a mental point to ensure he would never take a boat to visit the ODCs.

At least the offshore data center deployments were back on track. The team had agreed that with the new hardened units and robotics defenses in place, further pirate attacks were unlikely to be successful. Bill had six teams working overtime through the Christmas holiday to deploy additional ODCs that were waiting in storage, pending a resolution to the piracy issues. Getting those ODCs deployed would put the master rollout plan back on track.

* * *

Off the coast of India

Prateet said a silent prayer before he boarded the data center. His company was under contract to Avogadro to service this floating data center, one of the four original prototypes. He always found it unnerving to visit the unmanned high tech island. Although he wasn’t an excessively superstitious man, he always thought the computers here were lonely. To make a bad situation worse, just prior to this trip Avogadro notified him that the floating data center would now have armed robots defending it.

They provided fifty pages of documentation regarding the robots, noting that Prateet would not need to service the robots himself, as that would be done by the robotics subcontractor. Prateet had been most thorough and exacting when he followed the protocol to disable the robots before he boarded. He preferred it when his only concern had been that the computers seemed lonely.

A tropical depression offshore caused some communication delays between the robot administrators and the robots, until they finally pronounced it safe for him to board the vessel. The seas were already quite rough, but his company had been given a substantial bonus to install the additional satellite communication system on board the boat. He was unsure why they wanted the additional system. The vessel was, as he knew from having serviced it before, already connected directly to the mainland through two fiber optic cables, and there was already a backup satellite communication system. This would give a third independent system. Well, if now they wanted two satellite communication systems, he would not second-guess rich American companies who were willing to pay him double the normal rate.

He completed his work as quickly as he could safely finish, given the high seas and unsettling stares of the robots at his back. When he boarded the boat that would take him back to Chennai, he said a few more prayers to Vishnu in thanks that he was finished and on his way home to his family.

Unknown to Prateet, other subcontractors were performing similar work on the newly deployed ODCs off the coasts of Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands.

* * *