Insidious (20 page)

“What happens after the culling?” asked Devin.

Hrm … she may not know many of the details about our cores. Or is she trying to help me by derailing Vendrati?

Bren had a large hand in the design of the algorithms they used, so he explained further.

“The first two stages are about the formation of a learning engine, which then iteratively improves itself in stage three. In stage four, the Guts team injects a large amount of sterilized information that the cores need to operate effectively on any mission. We give them weapons data, human languages, space station designs … anything else that the cores might need to run an ASSAIL chassis during an incursion. Finally, we add a smaller amount of mission specific data to prepare the units for a particular mission.”

It looked like Devin was listening intently. “Why did you say, sterilized information?” she asked.

“What we leave out is as important as what we tell them. We leave out anything that directly suggests human flaws and weakness, because we don’t want the young cores to question their mission or who they work for. Of course, eventually, as a core gets older it deduces our inferiority. It sees flaws in the designs, watches the marines in action, things like that. Actually, as an added safeguard, we foster the idea that humans have a wide variance in intellectual capacity. That way if it sees one human do something stupid, it might continue to think there are other humans out there as smart or smarter than it is.”

“We should devise a screening procedure to detect faulty cores before they’re deployed in combat,” Vendrati said.

We do have such procedures. But I can’t mention that because they failed miserably. Dammit.

Bren nodded. “The ASSAIL team will have that ready for the next incursion. We’ll hunt down the sandbox bug and fix it.”

“Is there anything else?” Jameson said.

“I have an issue, if I may,” Devin said.

“Go ahead.”

“Well, it concerned me that Meridian seemed to know it was going to be turned off after mission. How?”

“Superhuman intelligence,” Bren summarized. “A mind that forgets nothing, listens in on the tactical chatter, snoops the networks of the stations, and has access to the data on the previous unknown we encountered. It doesn’t have the energy limitations of the human brain. I think it’s to be expected; these things exhibit spooky omniscience. That’s exactly why we use them.”

“Then how do we expect to stay in control?” Vendrati demanded.

This debate had already occurred and she knows it. In a way, she’s right to bring it up, but it’s already been decided at the highest levels that the benefits outweigh the risks.

“A city of cavemen could keep one of us in a prison, even though we’re smart, as long as they keep an eye on us and shove a spear through our heart at the first sign that we’re up to something.”

“A poor analogy,” Vendrati said. “And one that we’re risking all of Earth on.”

“We’re fighting an AI so we need AIs of our own,” Henley said. “We know we have a chance of controlling ours and no chance of controlling any long-lived rogue AI … in fact, all evidence points to the fact that the rogue AI or AIs are now controlling humans directly. So, our worst case scenario isn’t any worse than what we have already.”

Jameson nodded. “We’ve deployed the ASSAILs successfully twice now in the face of stiff resistance, and we haven’t lost control. Best to stay the course and neutralize all the deep space stations before things get worse.”

Jameson waited for a moment, and then added, “Dismissed.”

***

A high priority message interrupted Bren’s work. He checked the pointer in his PV. It fed a video into his mind. Bren sighed and closed his eyes to concentrate on his link feed.

It showed a woman sitting in a briefing room. Bren thought he recognized her, but he wasn’t sure. She had straight black hair and a slim body. She looked scared.

“Of course you’re working for a corporation,” stated an off-screen interrogator. The deep male voice sounded intimidating. “Why else wouldn’t you have immediately disclosed to us that you remembered the events leading up to the UNSF incursion of the base?”

“It was so embarrassing. Being picked up naked by the marines … and then brought into the space force ship and having all the men go through the video feed with me over and over as I talked with that crazy person with the gun. Besides, I don’t know anything, really.”

Bren nodded, finally placing the stranger. He could remember seeing her on Meridian’s camera feed in the examination room. She’d been naked and terrified, huddling in the corner.

“You don’t find it odd that you’re the only one who has memory of the offsite described in the booklets we found?”

“Well, yes, it’s odd, but I have no explanation. I don’t know what’s wrong with everyone else’s memory.”

“Who owned Red?”

“I don’t know … I think Alec Vineaux did.”

“What company produced Red?”

“I don’t know. I assumed Alec built it.”

“Vineaux Genomix isn’t a military robotics company.”

“No. I don’t know. Look, I just thought maybe he had it made for him. I don’t know by whom.”

“Well, what was a VG robot doing on Thermopylae, anyway?”

She shrugged. Her face looked drawn. “I think that Bentra works with VG from time to time,” she said in a small voice.

“Why did everyone wear these armor suits?”

“They aren’t armor. We wore them because we were told it was part of the offsite exercise. If you ask me, Alec is insane. He kept coming up with crazy rules for us, and he thinks the virtual competitions he makes us participate in are more important than real life.”

“Who do you work for? Really?”

“I already told you.”

“Then if you’re not ready to talk frankly with us, I’ll schedule another appointment with the Scorpion team this afternoon.”

The woman shook her head. A single tear streaked down her cheek.

“I’m telling you the whole truth already.”

***

Nicole talked to Bren over an incarnate lunch. Bren enjoyed getting an inside line on happenings in her area without having to wait for a formal report. Besides, things happened in the UNSF that never reached light in a virtual meeting room. Something about meeting incarnate made people feel closer, and thus more likely to share secrets with one another.

“We believe she may be a higher-up who was in on the deception from the beginning. Bentra is probably lying to us about her rank within the corporation. But we haven’t been able to get her to talk.”

“Then how did you find out she still remembers?”

“Caught her in a minor lie under the Scorpion,” Devin said. Bren knew she referred to a brain-scanning device used to detect lies. It couldn’t read a person’s thoughts, but it could detect deception with almost complete reliability. “We’ve been playing twenty questions with her trying to get hints about what to ask her next. It’s understandable that she’s fatigued. Trying to unearth things with the Scorpion is a total hit and miss process.”

“Bentra wouldn’t let you do that to her if they thought she knew something,” Bren said. “They’d have moved to block the interrogation with headquarters by now.”

“They’ve requested the return of all their personnel, but HQ hasn’t complied due to the extreme nature of the threat. Or that’s what they said, anyway. Sounds like we know what the threat is, doesn’t it?”

They shared a cheerless smile.

“It is big, though,” Bren said. “Mind control, at the very least. I think a rogue AI controlling human minds. If this spreads to Earth, then the whole planet could be under AI control very quickly. It’d be the beginning of the end for our whole race.”

“So true.”

“You should start with a more obvious answer, and work toward the conspiracy stuff only if you have to,” Bren said.

“What do you mean, more obvious?”

“Well … this woman was the only one who kept her memories. And she was the only one naked on the station.”

“How can being naked prevent memory loss?”

“Or, how can wearing gear cause memory loss? The gear could be wired up for the mind control.”

“True, but the slaves didn’t have any gear on.”

“The slaves probably didn’t know anything about the offsite to begin with. They weren’t privy to the corporation secrets.”

“What you’re saying makes sense, but Vendrati’s legions of scientists haven’t found—”

Bren received a link interrupt. He held up his hand, even though Nicole had stopped talking on her own. Probably the same interrupt. He accessed the interrupt and found an embedded message.

“This is Vendrati. We’ve found something important in the helmets of the uniforms the corporate employees were wearing on the stations. I’d like to convene an emergency meeting to discuss it.”

Nicole raised her eyebrows.

“Good call, Major.”

Eight

Chris signed on to his virtual challenge with a feeling of elation and anxiety that rivaled any he’d ever felt. He thought he might finally have a chance to act and break the cycle of frustration he’d felt since arriving on Synchronicity. There had to be something more than hiding in the gear and playing random virtual games. If he managed to engineer Captain’s defeat, then maybe he’d finally get to interact with Alec Vineaux.

He found himself inside the immense warren of corridors that served as the setting of the challenge. He’d expected that the maze would be made of square hallways, but he noticed that the passageway before him was a hollow tube of stone. Pockmarks and clots of soil littered the inner surface. Light entered the tube from an oval hole bored into the ceiling a few meters from him. A vine intruded into the passageway from the nearest hole, hanging down and obscuring his view down the straightaway.

Chris let his eyes adjust for a moment. He saw more ceiling portals evenly spaced ahead and behind. He guessed they were perhaps thirty meters apart.

His avatar held a beam weapon in its right hand. The gun looked exactly like a conventional projectile handgun without a hammer. The rough rubber grip and the weight of it felt reassuring in his grasp. Chris supposed that the familiar feel would help everyone adapt to the weapon quickly.

He had read about the weapon in an information packet sent to his link days before. Those struck with a bolt four times at any point on their body would be marked as dead and their avatar removed from the competition.

Chris glanced back over his shoulder. The tunnel behind had a red tinge to it. Even the air in that direction held a slight red haze. He knew the color meant he couldn’t head in that direction. According to the rules, he always had to move forward through the maze, unable to reverse direction unless he made a kill. Each kill he made entitled him to change direction once. Apparently, the maze had no dead ends, or else people would be stuck. The red tinge advanced very slowly, perhaps a few inches every minute.

Not enough to hurry us, but enough to prevent us from laying in ambush forever.

He brandished his weapon and started forward. The light from above slowly dimmed as he left the ceiling portal behind him. The curved stone floor of the tunnel absorbed his careful footsteps without a sound. He paused in the darkest part of the corridor. Now he felt safer. His eyes adjusted a little, and he stared ahead past the next light hole into the next segment of shadows. If someone lurked there waiting for him, would he be able to spot that person from here? Chris wasn’t sure. But he knew if someone walked through the lit area ahead, he would definitely see him or her. In fact, he might even spot someone walking through a lit area beyond the next ceiling portal.

Reluctantly, Chris resumed creeping toward the nearest overhead illumination. He’d have to be quick passing under it, he decided, to minimize the vulnerable time. He darted forward through the lit area. Just when he thought he had made it through safely, a shock jolted up his right leg and forced out a cry of pain. He fell to the ground as his leg went numb.

Life force decremented
a message announced in his mind. Chris realized he had only three hit points left in the game.

The floor glowed red in a square where he had stepped and then returned to its previous earthy coloration. Chris stared at the floor, dumbfounded. What was that? There hadn’t been any warning about traps in the challenge information kit.

He saw a glimmer on the floor. He blinked and leaned forward. Yes! A dim line of shifting color still marked the square, almost impossible to observe without careful examination. As he stared, it seemed to shift sluggishly from dull red to yellow like a single strand of hair lit by sunlight.

Chris decided that the game had more than one movement restriction: not only was it forbidden to go back the way you had come, but also you couldn’t barrel forwards recklessly either. He thought about how this would affect the plan he had shared with his allies.