Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears (26 page)

Gene cleared his throat. “Just one more thing. If you have mercenaries approach the barge, attack the robots, and then kill the power, you’re looking at a couple of minutes elapsed time.”

“
So?” The grey-haired engineer was growing defensive as everyone shot down his ideas.

“
We’re talking about a massively parallel, high speed artificial intelligence,” Gene said. “ELOPe could do a lot in those few minutes.”

Mike and David nodded in agreement.

“
How about an EMP?” Mike asked.

“
Electromagnetic pulse weapon?” Sean asked. “Do those even exist?”

“
I think so,” Mike said. “Wouldn’t it fry the electronic circuits? It would even leave the data intact, so we could recover it.

“
Nice idea, Mike, but the metal cargo containers are perfect Faraday cages.” Jake shook his head. “We can’t even get a wireless signal through them. I think the cargo containers would protest the servers against even an EMP blast.”

“
What the hell can we do?” David yelled in frustration.

“
We’re going to have to blow them up,” the grey-haired yelled back, equally frustrated.

“
How?” Sean asked calmly.

“
We have a plane drop bombs,” Mike said.

Everyone looked up at him, where he sat on the back of a couch, against the wall.

“
We hire mercenaries, but they drop bombs from high altitude, so the robots can’t fire back at them. They use a big bomb, something that can destroy the whole barge.”

“
Can you hire mercenaries that can do that kind of stuff?” David asked.

“
You said unlimited budget, didn’t you?” Mike looked at Sean.

Sean sighed. “Yes.”

“
Well, didn’t the U.S. hire private military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

“
Blackstone,” Sean said. “They have helicopters and planes. Even a remotely piloted drone.”

“
There you go,” Mike said.

“
Alright.” Sean paused. “So the basic plan is to hire a private military contractor to drop explosives on the ships. All in favor?”

“
Sorry, but...” Jake looked sheepishly at the group. “There’s one problem with that. If you blow up the barge, but any of the containers remain intact, they’ll float away.”

“
They float?” David said, mouth agape.

“
Sure,” Gene answered, “they can float for weeks or months.”

David shot him a look. Where did people learn all this stuff?

“
Ours will float indefinitely,” Jake said. “The extra weatherproofing we do make them watertight. Unless the structural integrity is compromised, it could float around the world. They don’t float very high, so they aren’t easy to track. What happens if we lose one of those containers? It’s bad enough that we might lose customer data at this point, but the real issue is that now ELOPe is on those servers. If the container washes ashore in China, and someone grabs a computer out of the container and plugs it in, then ELOPe is back.” Jake looked apologetically at Sean.

Mike got up, and walked to the front of the room. He paced back and forth. “What if we can have the mercenaries attack from the sea, but we can avoid the chance of counter-attack? I have an idea.”

Mike explained his idea, and by the end of the day they settled on using paid mercenaries to board the vessels, albeit with modifications that Mike proposed, and they all spent the rest of the day working it out.

At that point it became clear that they needed people with skills and resources that went far beyond anything Avogadro employees possessed. It was all well and good to ask Avogadro employees to shutdown power circuits and backup power supplies, and it was another thing entirely to need trained people to wield explosives and firepower. Sean Leonov and the other executives took on the unenviable task of discreetly finding and hiring a private military contractor to implement that portion of the plan.

Chapter 14

* * *

“
I wonder, David.”

It was early in the morning, still dark. Mike was dropping David off at the airport, then continuing on to Sean’s house. David, by virtue of having taken Japanese in college, was on his way to Tokyo by way of a twelve hour flight. David, sitting in the passenger seat, was reminded of the last early morning ride in Mike’s car, heading up to Mt. Hood to go snowboarding. It had only been a month ago, but it felt like a distant memory.

The car was redolent with the smell of coffee beans. Mike was bringing his entire stash of Flores Island coffee to the operations base. When he picked up David earlier, he had explained. “It’s not like I think anything bad is going to happen, but just in case, everyone should have a chance to drink this coffee at least once.” It hadn’t exactly boosted David’s confidence.

“
What are you wondering, buddy?”

“
I really wonder if we’re doing the right thing by trying to kill ELOPe.” Mike paused, and seemed unsure of how to continue.

“
What? Where is this coming from?”

“
I read an article on the front page of the paper this morning about the cessation of hostilities around the world. It’s like we have this worldwide cease-fire. And it’s not just this one article. It’s everything I’ve been reading lately. I think most of us are so focused on ELOPe, we haven’t been looking at what’s going on in the outside world. We have the closest thing to worldwide peace at this moment that we’ve had since I started reading the news.”

“
Come on, you can’t believe ELOPe is responsible for that?” David sounded uncertain, but unwilling to admit it either.

“
Look at the bigger picture, David. The financial markets are stabilizing in a positive way. Its seems that the people in Africa and the Middle East might finally see an end to corruption. When everyone has a fair and equitable share of the pie, when there is enough to go around, then we might see an end to warfare. If you connect the dots, somehow, impossibly, it seems like ELOPe might be responsible for all this. Who else could have done it? The sum of humanity has not been able to do this over the history of civilization. What it really comes down to, David, is should we really be killing ELOPe?”

“
Mike, people have to have free will. I have to have free will. Do you really want to live your life knowing that you are a pawn of a machine? Even if you can, can everyone else in the world live like that?”

Mike was quiet for a while, thinking about David’s points. It was complex, that was for sure. He turned onto Airport Way, now only a minute away from the airport. Finally he spoke again. “David, you and Christine are going to have kids someday right?”

“
Yes, of course. You know that. Why?”

“
Would you have your children die fighting in some godforsaken war over oil and corporate interests? Or would you sentence billions of people to live in poverty? Just for the sake of some noble concept like free will? All ELOPe wants is to live. It’s not stopping us from living our lives.”

David shook his head. “Jesus, Mike, it’s a little late for this discussion now, don’t you think? The plan is in motion.”

They had arrived at the airport. David got out of the car, angry. He peered back in the open door. “Look, Mike, we’ve been friends a long time. I respect you. You see the world a different way than I do. But there’s no way I’m going to let this thing control my life.” He paused a moment. “I’ll see you in a couple of days. It’ll be fine.”

He turned and walked away.

Chapter 15

* * *

Clustered around a handful of computers running clean hard drive images, and communicating only over encrypted channels, the remnants of the Emergency Team huddled nervously in Sean’s office. Most of the team had dispersed to various sites for the actual action. Some, like David, went because they spoke a language. Others, like Pete, went because he could rewire a backup power supply. Nervous anticipation kept the small group talking, but in near whispers to avoid distracting the handful of people operating the computers.