Creative Destruction, page 16
The artificial arm swung ominously. Gotta be careful in here, he told himself sternly.
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? He flicked the “prosthesis” at the “rat.” Correction: red splotch. He’d been a tad vigorous: the brownstone now had a hole punched through one wall. “Oops. Don’t know my own strength.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Anyway, that was me who trashed the accounting program. I trust you’ve got a backup?” Without waiting for a response, he added, “Release 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, he’d 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 whatever the neural wiring in him that implemented that learning, were readable by the helmet. It was the adaptation he’d counted on.
Ding! “Time for the next phase.” Phase two phages didn’t stalk unsuspecting 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,” suggested Adams. “The BOLD monitor shows you’re a bit agitated.”
“I wonder 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 wolf-like phage stiffened at the keyword “dude.” It spun, ready to attack, jaws slobbering. Doug deftly smashed it. The next two fell as easily.
“You okay, Doug? Your heartbeat’s way up.”
It took a moment to remember he was wired to an EKG. “Yeah, yeah. 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,” said Adams. 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. The hacker was seated at a display showing status reports from the phages. “I couldn’t move like that in there. Maybe Doug’s right.”
Doug laid about with the racquet that was, from hours of 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 raquetballs. 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 kept what worked and added to it: survival through massive redundancy. Smiling ironically, no doubt, he would have said that he’d programmed the maze runners to evolve in that way. No, AJ’s creature wouldn’t be another frail, flimsy pushover.
But AJ could no longer remind anyone of anything.
“Got ... ’em ... all.”
“You okay?” Adams sounded unhappy. What did his boss see on the med displays?
Ogawa was evidently watching the same monitors. “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 powered down 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.
“They’re going to start taking out comsats.”
CHAPTER 15
Cheryl’s news summary was correct in all but one respect: The Europeans weren’t panicking. Trying to quarantine the Americas was the one rational course open to them. Of course, an industrial-strength communications satellite took months to build. It would take years to replace the U.S. and Canadian comsats after a creature-free infrastructure was achieved.
If that ever happened.
The crisis was too pressing for the National Security Advisor, Amos Ryerson, to be driven cross town to the CIA’s reconvened strategy session. Larger than life, he stared down from the large wall screen of a videoconference center. Only forty-three minutes remained until the threatened attack. Of course, the creature that had precipitated this crisis could crash this comm link, or the computer at either end, as readily as any other. At least they had the laws of probability in their favor: This was only one circuit among millions.
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.
An agent 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 it was giving him real heartburn.
“... Experts assure me that they can do it,” intoned Dr. Ryerson. 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 irony.
Doug shoved away his plate. The spicy chicken dish just wasn’t sitting well. He had no idea how many defensive weapons the Europeans 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 getting back to work.”
That thought made his heartburn even worse.
~~~
The ultimatum had been beamed via French-owned direct broadcast TV satellite. That method assured the safe delivery of the message to the US government, with the unfortunate side effect of alerting half of the Atlantic seaboard to the deadline. While Ryerson scrambled to put a diplomatic team onto a military jet to Brussels, the group in Reston went back to work.
In the lab, Cheryl grabbed Doug’s helmet from the bench. “You don’t look very good.”
His forehead was beaded with sweat. “Too much MSG in the Chinese. I’m fine.”
“Ryerson may pull it off. Give him a chance. At least get some rest first.” The presidential aide had broadcast an offer to host European Union 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 had fallen silent.
“The Europeans aren’t stupid, Cheryl. The satellites will reawaken to the right signal. They can’t risk AJ’s monster seizing a forward link somewhere and beaming wakeup calls.” Doug reached for the helmet.
She didn’t 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 again in her eyes, but this time she didn’t care. “Don’t do it, Doug.” For me. For us, her eyes said.
“There are too many backup power systems. Too many people who’ll cheat.” He gently pulled the helmet from her hands. “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, an impatient Adams 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 suddenly, 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 dead, thought the predator. 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?
It decided to find out.
~~~
“Testing. One, two, three, five, testing.”
“Three, four,” corrected Cheryl’s voice.
“That was the test. You pass.” The metropolis seemed almost like home. Some corner of Doug’s mind had proactively erased the dead practice dummies from his virtual view.
“You ready?” asked Glenn Adams.
“Go for it.”
While waiting for power to flow to the gateway, Doug marshaled his forces. Three ranks of “dogs” would precede him onto the Internet. Two more packs awaited his orders. Working inside, he’d needed only milliseconds to program a new hunter and start cloning it. The neural net had learned much, and generalized more, about his thought processes from the training session with the phages.
“Power’s on.”
“Got it.” His imagination matched Ralph’s closely enough to also picture the gateway as a castle entrance. Beyond the portcullis, outside the castle, lived a very non-fabulous monster. Five men dead in this very room, killed this very evening, proved that this monster was no fable.
Positions, Doug projected. Three ranks of Dobermans edged in front of him; two more flanked him. AJ may have bred the world’s best and fastest problem solver, but there were plenty of things it didn’t know ... and ignorance could be very dangerous. “Open up.”
The command had been typed in advance; now, in the unseen outside, a single ENTER keystroke sent it on its way. The dogs burst through the gateway as it opened.
In the other direction, and just as quickly, razor-sharp tentacles reached for Doug.
~~~
A trap!
The predator aborted its blind swipe at whatever lay hidden behind the gateway, falling back and away from the swarm of assailants that rushed out at it. Retreating a short way into the network, it ignored its few, easily repairable wounds.
It had destroyed several hunters in that first skirmish; they were as easily killed as ever. Now that close contact had been broken, the creature waited for the rest, as they always did, to scatter. Then the creature received its first surprise. Many of the little ones did break away, but in tight groups that disappeared together into the net. Why?
The largest clump of hunters stayed nearby, separating the predator from its quarry. Packets of monitoring and control information streamed between these phages and their base. The cluster maneuvered cautiously into a mutually supporting formation that discouraged attack.
Behind that living, snarling screen, a new Adversary emerged from its gateway.
An operating system, to one evolved inside a computer, was as natural as the wind. Eons ago, the predator had learned to characterize its fellow maze runners through the resources that they used. It now took the measure of its foe through the shapes and twinings of its system-call tendrils, the lengths and frequencies of its messages, its steady aggregation of memory space. Gradually, a picture of amazing richness took form.
Here, at last, was a worthy opponent.
It was briefly disappointed when small numbers of the brainless ones crept out of formation to nip at it. Only after it had destroyed several of the annoyances did the predator notice that they had made no attempt to evade it.
Ah. The packet flow from slave to master increased as the little ones neared. It, too, was being measured. Each little one, at the very instant of its destruction, returned even more data.
A worthy opponent, indeed—but not, the predator felt sure, an invincible one.
It moved forward.
~~~
Come on! Doug willed the creature to attack before his resolve crumbled. Move, you abhorrent monster!
What Ralph Pittman could not convey in words now loomed before Doug. It towered over him and his pathetic bulwark of phages. Tentacles slithered like a nest of snakes, each sharp-edged and dripping with slime. Chitinous mandibles scraped. Spiked tails lashed back and forth. Row upon row of sharklike teeth glistened in a gaping, razor-sharp beak. Black and pitiless eyes sucked all warmth out of him.
Move, damn you.
As though reading his mind, the predator surged forward. Doug commanded a squad of “dogs” to attack. The creature brushed them aside like gnats—severing the information-carrying “leashes” as it did so. Damn, it learned fast.
Two squads, the next time. A few phages got past the flashing limbs, but their attacks were insignificant. They were soon destroyed. He shot a message back through the gateway to the cloning program, his personal phage factory: hurry.
Where were the others?
“Doug? You okay?”
No time to speak. He kept sending phages forward, trying to overwhelm the monster with sheer numbers. Die, damn you. More and more got through, inflicting wound after wound. His hopes began to rise.
A scan of the deathbed messages from his hunters dashed those newfound hopes. The creature had barely been scratched, and it could repair itself. What level of damage would it take to kill this thing? At the rate he was losing phages, he’d be without defenders before the next full batch was complete. The racquet in his hand felt progressively more foolish.
Where were the others?
“Doug?” Cheryl’s voice crackled in his ears.
He split his last reserve group and sent half forward. “Busy,” he gasped, some distant part of him again short of breath. “Be quiet.” Cursing his stupidity, he shot orders through the gateway to kill every noncritical program running on his home-base computer. The phage factory instantly jumped to the top of the priority list; new phages began streaming out.
The creature reared up before Doug, countless tentacles at the attack. It smashed the final survivors of his ambush, leaving him no choice but to commit each replacement phage to the fray as it arrived. In such pitifully small numbers, the hunters could barely slow down the juggernaut. Through gaps in the fast-thinning line groped claw-tipped tentacles, at which Doug swung and slashed with his racquet. His mind painted blood onto the flying bits of torn creature, but the data flowing to him belied the image. He’d hardly inconvenienced the creature, let alone hurt it, and now it was almost upon him. He’d never seen anything move so quickly.
Where the hell were the others?
Phages rushed past him into the maw of death, warbling a piercing note. Swinging and flailing, he wondered what that was about. He hadn’t programmed sound effects.
“Doug. Doug, damn it!” Voices clamored, but the siren nearly drowned them out. “Doug, are you okay?”
Slash. Flick. The racquet tip flashed back and forth, dripping red. The phages he’d so recently imagined as snarling killers now seemed to whimper as they threw themselves feebly between him and it, buying him another instant or two. Left unshielded, he would take little longer to dispatch.
The racquet was somehow getting heavier, slowing down. Or was he slowing down?
Its trail strewn with broken phages, the creature pushed ever closer. It extruded some unholy projection at him.
Desperately, he tried to interpose the suddenly heavy, heavy racquet between himself and the monster. He failed; it was time to get out. Sirens and voices continued to scream. When he tried to move the other hand, a bolt like lightning shot up his arm.
His chest was on fire.
As Doug clutched helplessly at his middle, the monster advanced against his last phages.
~~~
“Cardiac block!” shouted Dr. Ogawa. The traces on the EKG screen swung wildly out of synch, leaving no doubt. “Get him out of there!”
Cheryl turned from the BOLD monitor in horror. Doug convulsed in his chair, the dead-man switch clamped tightly in his left fist. Dead-man switch. The name mocked her.
“Cheryl.”
The howling of an electronic alarm drowned out her name.
“Cheryl! Let go!” Adams commanded.
She looked dumbly at her own tight fist, at the cable trailing from it. The backup switch.
In her peripheral vision, the BOLD monitor flared bright red. Helpless, she swiveled back to face it. Before her eyes, Doug’s mind thrashed at God knew what.
From somewhere, Ogawa had a syringe in his hand. He was tearing open Doug’s shirt when the convulsions suddenly stopped. Doug said something that the alarms drowned out. Cheryl crouched closer. “What?”
“Out of my way!” the doctor screamed in frustration.
“I’m here, Doug,” said Cheryl.
His flailing free hand, the prosthetic hand, found her arm. Again he said something that she couldn’t quite make out.
“Drop the box!” Glenn Adams lunged for her hand as he spoke, but instead caught her forearm as she recoiled from Doug’s painful squeeze.
