The Turing Exception (2 page)

Cat sat next to Helena, the two of them the only passengers in a large cabin that held twenty-four widely spaced seats designed for troop transport, a configuration the military used to drop a mixed team of human and robot soldiers into a hot zone.

As the harness buckle slid home, a loud crack from the airframe signaled the move into takeoff configuration and the engines went full-throttle. They rocketed down the runway using barely a quarter of the length of the strip before getting airborne. Through the net Cat sensed hundreds of alarms blaring as they broke the sound barrier before even leaving the city limits.

“I see what you mean,” Cat said, and loosened her white-knuckled grip on the armrests. She turned to Helena. A new scar creased the surface of her ceramic armor. A half dozen alloy tentacles, used for locomotion, manipulation, and fighting, surrounded her central body, where Helena’s processors, power supply, and sensors were located. Despite the fighting robot’s fierce presence, she was loyal, fair, and honest. And Cat’s best friend. “It’s good to see you again.”

“The same, my kitten. How did Mike get you to come?”

“It was this or wash diapers. Have you ever washed diapers?”

“I’m sorry. Who cared for Ada and your house when you and Leon were sleep-deprived? Besides, turn off your olfactory sense, and it’s not so bad.”

Cat froze, staring at Helena. It was true, the neural implant that permeated her brain had complete control over her senses: it could create any scent, sight, or feeling as realistically as the real world. And it could, just as easily, remove any scent, sight, or feeling.

“You never thought of that?” Helena asked. She waggled a tentacle. “Motherhood has addled your brain. You should spend less time stacking toys and more time out in the field.”

Cat punched Helena gently and laughed.

*     *     *

As they approached Miami, Mike called back with new data from the Institute. The universal social reputation system that caused AI to behave ethically also compelled them to report any unusual behavior they encountered. Since the AI monitored the net, the electrical system, the transportation grid, and virtually everything about modern life, that meant that they quickly discovered any suspicious behavior.

“Several AI reported fluctuations in the power grid in an industrial district,” Mike said. “I’m sending the coordinates. It could be nothing, maybe malfunctioning equipment or a replicator run amok.”

“Got it,” Cat said.

She knew from long history what the Institute and Mike really feared most: unsanctioned computers, because they could allow an AI to run off the grid, without monitoring, and without any checks on its power.

The reality was that the Institute had operatives who could handle most routine stuff. They usually only called Cat or Leon in for the complicated jobs. Either Mike was extra concerned about this, and needed Cat’s unique abilities, or he was being kind and giving her some time away from the baby.

“There’s more,” Mike said. “We bid on historical data from WatchNet for the region around the building. A dozen humans went in on Friday. Nobody’s come out since.”

“What’d they go in for?” Cat asked.

“Not sure. They all had bids in on temporary work, general labor sort of stuff. Could have been anything from running factory equipment to moving furniture.”

“Why wouldn’t the company have used robots?”

“Don’t know,” Mike said. “If we get any new data, we’ll pass it along. Be careful.”

As the plane came in for final approach, Cat’s adrenaline surged with the anticipation of action. She spent the last few minutes practicing qigong, the silent meditation that calmed her mind and body. With the ease of long-honed skills, she subconsciously tailored her implant for optimum performance, speeding up her reflexes, augmenting her mind with supplemental processors, and taking control of her nervous system so that she wouldn’t dump so much adrenaline that she’d make bad decisions.

The military aircraft put down at Homestead Air Reserve base, where an Army truck waited for them. A lone battle bot greeted them and transmitted the credentials for the truck. Cat’s implant received them, and she assumed control of the vehicle.

They drove north, Helena and Cat side by side in the big cab. Cat meditated, moving the noise out of her brain until she could reach effortlessly into the net and subvert the other autonomous vehicles on the road, moving them all out of their way. They raced down the middle of now-cleared roads for fifteen minutes until they entered the industrial district.

Cat felt through the net as they neared the target building, but she didn’t sense anything. She glanced at Helena.

“No. I don’t get anything either, although my infrared sensors show the warehouse radiating twenty degrees hotter than any of the surrounding buildings. Whatever it is, it’s highly exothermic.”

“Power consumption and exothermic. Not good.”

“Could be industrial machinery,” Helena said. “Of course, a server farm would be worse.”

Cat frowned. “Or runaway nano.”

If there was one fear greater than an AI seizing control of all the world’s infrastructure, it was that of endlessly replicating nanotechnology. Nanotech, machinery at the atomic level, could be used to make nanobots, cell-sized robots that could turn matter into more copies of itself. Nanobots were everywhere, used for everything from reinforcing building structures to augmenting the human immune system. Programmed by AI, they did exactly what they were told. But given the wrong instructions, they could turn the entire Earth and everyone on it into nothing but a seething mass of nanobots.

“Not likely,” Helena said. “We have many layers of safeguards.”

“We have safeguards against bad behavior by AI, and yet we still get called out to deal with them.”

They pulled up at the street and got out of the truck. Side by side, they examined the plain white cinderblock structure fifty feet away.

“The building temperature has increased five degrees since we arrived,” Helena said.

Cat felt for a camera or sensor inside the building she could hijack, but she found nothing. “Can you see inside?”

“No.”

She didn’t particularly want to walk through the doorway into who-knew-what. “I’m going to use the truck.”

Cat guided the military truck with her implant, driving it across a patch of crabgrass to ram the cinderblock wall at twenty miles an hour. The truck hit the wall and the cinderblocks gave way, with the truck wedged halfway inside.

Now Cat had access to the truck’s cameras and sensors. She shared the feed with Helena.

There was nothing inside but a flat, featureless floor that reached all the way across to the far wall of the structure.

“It’s one hundred and forty degrees,” Helena said. “And EMF is through the roof.”

“No sign of the workers who went in on Friday.”

Cat checked, found the truck had a basic spectrometer, and scanned the floor. Silicon, rare metals, fragments of diamond, iron.

Helena also saw the measurements. “It
is
bloody nano!” she said, taking a step back.

Cat opened a three-way connection to Mike and Helena and transmitted the data. “I’ve never seen a pool of nano that big,” she said. “It’s inactive, but clearly on and ready to do something, radiating heat like crazy.”

“The workers who went in?” Mike asked.

“No sign of them,” Cat said. “What do we do? That nano is primed. Want me to try to shut it down?” If she and Helena didn’t find a way to render the nanobots inert, there was no limit to what they could do or become: keep replicating and spreading, drill down to the core of the Earth, kill people, or form into virtually any machinery or electronics. The stuff was infinitely programmable matter.

Mike answered quickly. “Don’t do anything. We’ve got a protocol to deal with this. An electromagnetic pulse. Hold on.” A few seconds passed. “The Air Force will have a localized EMP there in ten minutes. Get at least half a mile away.”

“I think protocol suggests we leave the truck where it is,” Cat said, gesturing to the truck still sandwiched in the building wall, half in the nanobot soup.

“Piggyback ride?” Helena asked. She could manage fifty miles an hour on open terrain.

“I’m not a kid,” Cat said, laughing as she patted the robot’s armored shell. With the barest effort she hacked into the controls of a nearby car. “Let’s drive.”

They opted for two miles between them and building, now probably the most dangerous spot in the nation, not knowing exactly what the military had planned. Before even a few minutes passed, Cat heard the approaching plane. It was an old A-10 Warthog, an absolutely ancient craft that flew without electronics, and could keep flying even with half the plane shot away. In this case, Cat knew why they’d chosen it: when the electromagnetic pulse occurred, all nearby circuits would be fried. The EMP would destroy the nanobots, but it would also wreck any electronics onboard the plane. Hence an old plane without modern flight controls or computers, presumably flown by someone without a neural implant.

The plane passed overhead. Cat shut down her implant and Helena curled up in a ball, tentacles wrapped around her core. They should be far enough away, but better safe than sorry.

The EMP made no sound when it triggered, but Cat felt the immediate effect as background noise in the city quieted. Everything from garbage disposals and traffic lights to cars and computers, anything within range of the EMP would be dead now. And that included anything connected to the power grid, too, since that would act as a transmitter.

The thump of helicopters approached, and Cat turned her implant back on, opening a video connection with Mike. The cameras in his office sent the signal to her implant, which superimposed the video stream over her vision. Cat and Helena did the polite thing and faced each other, so Mike would get the live video stream from each of them.

“Mike, what’s happening?” said Cat.

“EMP fired on target and within parameters. We’re having a couple of helicopters fly over with EMF sensors to see if the nanotech is truly dead.”

It made sense. Anything electronic threw off at least some electromagnetic frequency emissions. If the nanotech was dead, no EMF.

Mike glanced off to the right, and engaged in another conversion they couldn’t hear. “The military is having a fit. They’re not happy that the Institute is running the mission. They’re going up to the president to try to take control.”

“What did the helicopters find?” Cat asked.

“Hold on. . . .  Damn it, they’re still getting readings. The nanotech is not dead.”

“Are you going to use a HEMP?” A high-altitude EMP caused by the burst of a nuclear warhead high up in the atmosphere was thousands of times more powerful, but it would destroy all the unprotected electronics in Miami.

“Yes, that’s the Institute’s protocol.” Mike looked to the right again, and they could see him yelling, but couldn’t hear anything as he argued with his other connection.

“Get the hell out,” Mike said. “The president overrode me
—
they’re doing a ground-level nuke. You’ve got five minutes.”

“You’re kidding, right? We’re in the middle of Miami, surrounded by millions of people.”

“No, I’m not kidding. Apparently the president’s advisors convinced him this is a terrorist incident and procedure is to nuke first.”

“Let me shut down the nano,” Cat said. “You bring me in to avoid these kinds of escalations. If it’s connected to the net, I can hack it, no problem. Give me ten minutes.”

“You don’t have ten minutes!” Mike yelled. “They’ve already launched. I’ve got no jurisdiction over the military operation. Just get out, now. I’m sending the transport to you. You don’t have time to get to the airport. I gotta go.”

He cut the connection, and Cat stared weakly at Helena, suddenly numb. “This can’t be. They can’t do this.”

Helena peered closely at Cat’s eyes. “Cut your emotional feedback. You’re in shock. I need you present.”

Cat nodded, made adjustments to her implant, and her mental clarity came back. The world became crisp, her thoughts outlined by sharp edges. Why would they use a nuclear bomb on the ground? They’d kill millions of people. The nanotech was a huge risk, but surely there were other options.

“They should use a bigger EMP,” Cat said. “Or counter-nano nano.”

“Good, you’re back,” Helena said. “Are there other ways to disable the nano? Something you and I could do on our own? And if we can disable it, then can you stop the nuclear bomb on your own?”

Cat understood Helena’s implied question. She didn’t have much time. She closed her eyes, did the Flores meditation practice in 2.1 seconds, and spread her conscious awareness across the net until her mind and thoughts were no longer just in her head, but running across every computational substrate she could grab. Ignoring the looming black hole where the EMP had fired, she seized nodes across the net
—
first thousands, then tens of thousands, then millions. Her personality spread out until she encompassed most of North America, her mind massively parallel, running at AI speeds. She thought through the questions Helena posed.

Hacking the nano might be possible. She probed it, found nothing at first, went deeper, trying a range of protocols and frequencies, using nearby mesh node radios. She got a blip on the old television frequencies, and satisfied herself that the nano was set up to take commands from a third party. She’d still have to hack its security measures, but she could do that.

What about the incoming nuke? She could detect the cruise missile now, already in the air from the launch site in Georgia, traveling at Mach 4. The missile was online, under military command and able to receive new inputs. She could compromise it with ease, disable the nuclear warheads, and send it harmlessly into the ocean.

But if she did stop the missile, what would happen? She fast-forwarded, running thousands of simulations. At each decision point, she forked more simulations, calculating possibilities further into the future.

One vision came to her, over and over again: a frightening wasteland where almost nothing lived. It was not the effect of runaway nanotech, nor even the incoming missile, but the consequence of a vast global war with no sides: man versus machine, man versus man, and machine versus machine. Her mind reeled, as simulation after simulation brought images of destroyed cities, no electrical grid, and above all, a landscape of wrecked vehicles and abandoned buildings with no people in them.