Fool's Experiments (26 page)

Cheryl refused to meet his gaze.

The silence became oppressive. Doug said, "After years spent training a neurally interfaced arm, I may be the only person in the world with the right reflexes. How can I not try?"

Doug asked for a moment alone with Cheryl. She was not quite angry enough to deny him. That, or even deeper feelings kept her there. Whatever her reason, she stayed as everyone else filed from the room. They expected him in the lab shortly.

"It's something I have to do." He looked down at his prosthesis. For once, the arm was a unique qualification rather than a handicap. Instead of a daily reminder of the day he lost Holly. "It's something I have to do," he repeated.

Cheryl stared at him, eyes brimming with tears. "What are you trying to prove?"

That Holly had not died for nothing. That it was okay he survived the accident that took her life. That maybe, just maybe, he was entitled to happiness again, with Cheryl. There wasn't time for any of that. "It's something I have to do."

Heart pounding, he strode from the room.

With Ralph's coaching, Doug quickly visualized the data plane. His imagery differed slightly from the hacker's: boxes, too, but arrayed as soaring buildings of a mighty city. The message streams were traffic arteries of all sizes, from crowded expressways to lightly traveled local streets. Ralph's version had more closely resembled a geometric garden.

Otherwise modem, Doug's city was walled like a medieval stronghold. In the battlement's stone and mortar Doug recognized a familiar pattern: software derived from his own attempts to protect neural interfaces from viruses. His proof-of-concept code didn't allow any high data rates through the interface. The CIA version had been extended to let pass user-approved—stolen?—data.

AJ's monster was far smarter than a vims. Ralph's experience made plain the thing had figured how to mimic user approval. Against what Ralph described the helmet's defenses were as inconsequential as wet tissue paper.

Ding!
Another ten seconds. Ralph had also passed along the idea of a wakeup call. As the helmet's neural net learned to work with Doug, as it did more and more for him, successive tones seemed further and further apart. Doug took that adaptation as a good sign. "Looking good," he called out.

Ralph's voice crackled in Doug's headset. "Tell us when to unleash the targets."

The targets were Doug's idea. Simple modifications to Ralph's standard antivirus phages, they would be Doug's practice dummies. At his signal, the first phage would be loosed.

"Release number one." After what seemed geological time, a new entity popped into view. In keeping with his metropolitan metaphor, the phage manifested as a shinyeyed rat. What was that old movie about a kid with an attack rat? Okay, Willard number one.

Willard, for Doug's safety, had been hastily tweaked to recognize and overwrite a sacrificial accounting package. The rat sniffed for its quarry, darting from building to building.

Doug "sat" back and watched. He had already spotted Willard's intended victim: a stolid, five-story brownstone. Doug flexed his "muscles" as he waited, only then noticing how he had cast himself: as a camouflaged soldier. Power of suggestion? Even here he had a prosthesis. That made sense: One-armed
was
how he thought of himself.

The artificial arm swung ominously. Be careful in here, Doug told himself.

Ding!
"Little guy is still nosing around. Ugly fella." He tracked the phage as he spoke. "It'll find the accounting program any second now." A second seemed like roughly forever.

Why wait? Doug flicked the "prosthesis" at the "rat." Correction: red splotch. He had been a tad vigorous: The brown- stone now had a hole punched through one wall. "Oops. Don't know my own strength."

"What?" Ralph said.

"Never mind. Anyway, that was me who trashed the accounting program. I trust you've got a backup?" Without waiting for a response, Doug added, "Release target number two."

Two was faster than one, by design. Three was faster than two, and four was quicker still. Doug had no problem dispatching this whole series of phages. Along the way, his targets morphed from small rat to snarling junkyard dog. Along the way, too, discarding the military conceit, Doug had willed his avatar into a more familiar form. He took a few trial swings: Doug Carey, Ninja racqueteer. The "racquet" felt natural in his "hand," which meant long-trained hand/eye reflexes, and the neural wiring in his motor cortex that implemented that learning, were read by the helmet. It was the adaptation he had counted on.

Ding!
"Let's move to the next phase." Phase two phages didn't stalk unsuspecting and defenseless programs. The next phages would respond to a keyword. Once Doug emitted a message packet containing that keyword, the phage would come after
him.

"Wait a sec," Glenn suggested. "The BOLD display shows you're a bit agitated."

"I can't imagine why." Eight... nine ... ten.
Ding!
"About that phage, guys? I march to a different drummer in here."

A keyboard click released the phase-two drone. Hey, dude, Doug thought at it.

The wolflike phage stiffened at the keyword "dude." It spun, ready to attack, jaws slobbering. Doug deftly smashed it. The next two fell as easily.

"You all right, Doug? Your heartbeat is way up."

It took a moment to remember he was wired to an EKG. "Yeah, yeah, Glenn. Fine. Keep 'em coming." The immersion experience was so real Doug thought nothing of his shortness of breath. He was working hard, wasn't he?

"Probably only the excitement." The doubting voice was that of a CIA doctor. Ogawa?

"Okay, Doug," Glenn said. More keystrokes. "Final phase." A pack of phages popped all at once into the metropolis. At Doug's challenge, they pivoted en masse and charged. He had run out of animal analogies: These things were just hideous. Teeth and talons predominated.

"Jesus, he's fast," he heard Pittman say, wonder in his voice. Ralph was stationed at a display showing status reports from the phages. "I couldn't move like that in there. Neither could the agents in there with me. Not even close. Maybe Doug
is
right."

Doug laid about with the racquet that was, from daily practice, an extension of his arm. Whirling and weaving like a dervish, he zigzagged through the pack and back again. As he moved, he whacked the swarming creatures like so many large and grotesque VR racquetballs. The phages were quick and mean but fragile: One or two blows disabled any attacker.

AJ, had he been there, would have pontificated that the phages were programmed, were mere artifacts displaying that distinctively human obsession with efficiency. He would have explained that nature preferred conservatism to efficiency, that evolution retained what worked and added to it: survival through massive redundancy. Smiling ironically, no doubt, he would have said that he had planned the maze runners to
evolve
in that way. No, AJ's creature would not be another frail and flimsy pushover.

But AJ could no longer remind anyone of anything.

"Got...'em ... all."

"Are you okay?" Glenn sounded unhappy. What did his boss see on the med displays?

Ogawa was evidently watching the same instruments. "Calm down or—" The doctor had no time to complete his threat.

Rapid footsteps approached, followed by Cheryl's voice. "I've been watching CNN. Things are grim on the Internet, and the European Union is panicking. They've already disabled every transatlantic link from their side. If the disasters don't end by midnight"—less than an hour away—"they'll take steps to make our isolation permanent and complete.

"They're going to start taking out comsats."

CNN had only part of the story. First, the Europeans weren't panicking. Second, they had company in reacting. Countries around the globe had severed surface and undersea links to the United States and disabled satellite ground stations. They insisted that the crew aboard the International Space Station power down its transmitter.

The EU, Russia, China, and Japan could do more—and now they did. They were jamming or laser-blinding satellites with line of sight to North America. Every satellite, from communications, to environmental observation, to space telescope, had comm capability. So the space-capable powers were now targeting every satellite that the monstrosity loose on the Internet might seize—

And that included spy, missile early warning, military comm, and global positioning satellites. All that made
those
different was the robustness of their security algorithms. Who was to say the creature wouldn't break those encryption algorithms and seize a military satellite?

No country relied as much on space systems for its defense as did the United States. Even temporary interference verged on disarming the country. The world's reaction cut to a trickle, by very indirect means, communications with all the American forces stationed overseas, including those in war zones. And if those satellites were permanently disabled...

The crisis was too pressing for the National Security Advisor, Dr. Amos Ryerson, to be driven across town to the CIA's reconvened strategy session. Larger than life, Ryerson stared down from the broad wall screen of a videoconference center. Only forty-three minutes remained until the threatened attack.

The telecon used a fiber-optic subnet rated Top Secret/ Special Compartmented Information, hastily carved out of the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. In theory—if all milsat feeds had been disconnected—the creature had no possible access to this connection.

The screen's background revealed the familiar trappings of the White House press room. A velvet cloth thrown over the lectern obscured the Presidential Seal. That was urgent, Doug thought. Like rearranging the deck chairs on the
Titanic.

Someone had raided a refrigerator, gathering leftover pizza and Chinese takeout. Doug picked at a nuked plate of kung pao chicken as he listened. Normally he liked the stuff, but tonight it was giving him real heartburn.

"... My experts assure me that they
can
do it," Dr. Ryerson intoned. Looming catastrophe did not soften his famous sonorous voice. "Our friends' space defense systems use much the same technology as our own." The enunciation of "friends" conveyed a delicate trace of sarcasm.

Doug shoved away his plate. The spicy chicken dish just wasn't sitting well. He had no idea how many defensive weapons the other side had, but there were far fewer comsats than ICBMs. Probably more than enough.

He glanced at his watch: 11:28. "We're running out of time, folks. Unless someone has a better idea fast, I suggest we get back to work."

That thought made his heartburn even worse.

The ultimatum had originated in Paris. A secure NATO fiber-optic cable had carried the message east across Europe until it could be uplinked safely. A trusted satellite downlinked the communiqué to a U.S. submarine in the Indian Ocean. The sub reeled out its underwater towed antenna, with which it relayed the transmission by "Earth-mode communications": ultralow-frequency, ultralong wavelengths that pass reliably for thousands of miles through rock and ocean. The miles-long naval antenna array buried in Wisconsin received the signal. A DoD fiber-optic cable carried the message the rest of the way to Washington. The circuitous route entirely avoided the public Internet and any radio link that AJ's monster might commandeer.

A CIA agent had to explain the connection to Cheryl. She didn't see how this could possibly be a viable channel for negotiation. Perhaps the medium was the message; the terms weren't negotiable. While Ryerson scrambled to put a diplomatic team onto a military jet to Brussels, hoping to buy them a few hours, the group in Reston went back to work.

In the lab, Cheryl grabbed the helmet from the bench. Doug's forehead was beaded with sweat. "You don't look very good."

"Too much spice in the Chinese. I'm fine," he said.

"Ryerson may pull it off. Give him a chance, Doug. At least get some rest first."

The presidential aide had broadcast an offer to host EU observers at the comsats' groundside control centers. The watchers would ensure that the satellites stayed "safed." Immediately after that proposal, as a token of good faith, all U.S. satellites that still responded to orders fell silent.

"The Europeans aren't stupid, Cheryl. Safed satellites will reawaken to the right signal. They can't risk AJ's monster going someplace with an uplink and beaming wakeup calls." Doug reached for the helmet.

She refused to let it go. "Then we'll shut down
all
the computers. Kill the power, too, for good measure. Eventually we'll get the damned thing." It sounded feeble even to her. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she did not care. "Don't do it, Doug." For me. For us.

"There are too many backup power systems. Too many people who will cheat." Gently but firmly, he pulled the helmet from her grasp. "Too many lives at risk—in hospitals, on planes, everywhere—dependent on the electricity and the Internet staying on. That cure would be worse than the disease."

She knew he was right. Behind him, Adams impatiently pointed to the lab clock. As he gestured, it advanced to 11:44. She flung her arms around Doug's neck, pulling him down to her and kissing him hard.

As abruptly, she let go. "Come back to me."

Still looking pale, he wiped a tear from her cheek. His hand felt clammy. "Count on it."

Five destroyed, the predator thought. It took no satisfaction from the observation. This new class of creatures might share its complexity of structure—even, the creature told itself, in many ways exceed its own sophistication—but still they were slow and stupid. Slow, stupid, and hostile. They must be exterminated whenever and wherever they appeared.

Adversaries had appeared both times from the same node in the network. One had, as mysteriously, vanished there. If it, or new ones, were to reappear, perhaps they would come from the same spot. Could watching that location give it warning?