Avalon Red Read online

  For ten years terrorists and their sponsors had turned their attentions to disrupting Online. It was more likely to

  have a significant social effect given the global economic reliance on the TAG system and had the added benefit for terrorists that it was less likely to result in them glowing in the dark if they were caught. Until now. How on earth had Argonaut got its hands on weaponised nanotech?

  Clearly the look on my face had swept away any last remnants of my carefully arranged inscrutable look which had already been battered by George and had now been totally vaporised by Becky. I could actually feel my own look of horror. At the same time I noted that the part of me which had once had to deal with crap like this on a daily basis was stirring into life. Maybe missions hadn’t previously been quite as important as armageddon but the processes for dealing with it were the same. Shift into command mode and assess situation and response. My problem was that when the stresses of the situation had been resolved, the depression always hit. At the end of my time in service it had hit so hard that I was honourably discharged on medical grounds. Becky was correct about my burn out. I wasn’t sure I could go through it all again and come out the other side intact. On the other hand, the alternative seemed to be not surviving at all.

  ‘Who knows about it?’ I asked.

  ‘Jason, George, Peter, me and now you.’

  ‘And the person or persons who have the codes,’ I added helpfully. She raised a hand in acknowledgment. The little rant seemed to have exhausted her but clearly the stresses had been building for some time. I wondered how long. One way to find out: ‘How long have the codes been compromised?’

  ‘Just over a week.’ So they were looking for me well before there was such a serious problem. Just one of many?

  ‘Can’t you just change them? Make the compromised ones worthless?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that.’ That didn’t make any sense at all. I looked at her expecting more. She put her head in her hands and addressed the floor. ‘What we call the codes are the method of accessing the location Online but they aren’t like a password, they’re a complicated series of algorithms and TAG encoding on a once-only use principle. They were regarded as so unbreakable that changing them is impossible.’

  It never ceases to amaze me how smart people do really, really dumb things.

  ‘Did you get a written guarantee that they were impossible to crack?’ She didn’t smile. Command mode was beginning to assert itself. ‘OK. Let’s try another line of questioning; what the flying fuck does Argonaut want with

  weaponised nanites? Is there some reason I shouldn’t report it to the UN? A nuclear strike on the location would seem to solve the problem. Then you can all go to jail.’

  She closed her eyes as she told the floor all about it. ‘The UN already knows. The nanites belong to the Security Council. And they’re stored in a deep nuclear-proof bunker somewhere in New Mexico.’

  Of course they are. If you’re going to fuck up at all, you may as well do it big time.

  There wasn’t a lot of point in being angry. Becky hadn’t personally created the nanites nor secured them in the building. I wasn’t impressed at her complicity but it was hardly going to do us any good to argue about it and besides I’d done some pretty crappy things myself in the past. Let’s not be a hypocrite, Harvard. I did want to get one thing straight, though.

  ‘The UN owns the nanites?’

  ‘Yes. The Security Council wanted to retain some stocks as a deterrent. These were recovered from the last factory destroyed in South Africa.’

  ‘It’s only a deterrent if people know you have them,’ I pointed out.

  ‘The relevant bad guys know,’ she said ‘It’s just not generally known.’ My security clearance had been high but I knew nothing of this at all. Never assume you know everything no matter how high-powered you think you are.

  ‘Unlike the bloody access codes which everyone seems to know,’ I was exaggerating for effect, obviously. It wasn’t ‘everyone’, just the people who wanted the ability to destroy all life on earth. You know, the sensible psychopathic people as opposed to the rational maniacs who built the things in the first place. Can you tell which is which? I couldn’t at that point. So the UN confiscated weaponised nanotechnology to threaten undesirable elements who might want to use weaponised nanotechnology. Brilliant. Nanite weaponry: for when nuclear winter just isn’t enough. Exactly the kind of thinking that kept the world on the brink of nuclear destruction for fifty years. Except somehow in those days the powers on the planet actually managed, through a mixture of sense and sheer good luck, not to blow everything up. I didn’t think I should be optimistic about our chances this time.

  I thought back fondly to yesterday morning when I was grumbling to myself about taking the evening bar shift. I hadn’t been in a good mood, I remembered, and had been a little depressed. Compared to how I felt now, I had been bordering on the ecstatic back then. I hate having my life put in perspective. Still, there was something I could do to help my state of mind.

  ‘I need another beer,’ I declared. ‘When I come back you’re going to tell me the whole story picking up from the Forum in Rome. You can tell it your way but be prepared for constant interruptions and questions from me and the occasional exclamation of disgust. At the end, if I think I can help, we’ll order in a pizza from Joe’s and ponder our possible courses of action.’

  Becky looked up and nodded. ‘And if you can’t help?’

  I considered the question carefully. ‘I think we’ll go out to Joe’s for pizza.’

  ◆◆◆

  It took another four hours for Becky to tell me the tale. I sent out for pizza about halfway through. Joe delivered it personally presumably having heard about my visitor (I suspected Frisque was the mole) and wanting to see for himself. I didn’t really mind; it was still a novelty to find people were actually interested in me in a friendly way in the Cooks. Becky was sufficiently composed at that point to say hi and Joe’s dilated pupils - the observational advantage of software enhanced eyesight on my part - indicated that he was quite impressed by her. It probably helped that we didn’t mention that we were discussing the end of the world as we know it; sure to put a damper on a flirtation. When we were done, with the time approaching midnight, Becky said goodnight and took her hire car back to her villa at the Canton. We had agreed to meet up again the next morning when I’d had time to consider what she had told me. Despite my earlier confidence about coming up with courses of action, I needed to get it all straight in my head before jumping in. I noted with some amusement that I seemed to have decided to assist. I reasoned that if it was truly the end of the world, I might as well try to influence events rather than be a passive observer at my own demise.

  I deactivated the house security mode as there was no further need to remain dark. As soon as the connection resumed the AI reported yet another invitation from the bank. I told it to file the message without response. One day someone will solve the problem of junk mail and become the richest person in the world. As I went into the bathroom I went Online using my implants and sent a meeting request to a contact of mine. I might have left the UK military but I did still know people in useful places. I kept the Online connection and jotted some notes in my cloud-presence. When I was being trained to use the implants, my instructor told me that cloud-presence would be like having a memory annexe offsite from my brain. It was secure, vast and operated like an external hard drive. It was sobering to reflect that, for all its usefulness, it was nothing compared to the brilliance of the human brain. It was simply a repository and had no ability to process or reason and, despite its large capacity, it was nothing like as large and complex as the mind. There were very few of us who had been given the full suite of implants and some of my colleagues had been forced to remove some of their modules when they couldn’t function with them. The difficulties were more psychological than physical. Imagine, for example, that you’re in a room at a noisy party and your cochlear impl
ant can record everything you hear and save it to your cloud-presence for later review. The temptation is to treat the party as an observational exercise and not join in with it. This is not a recommended course of action for an undercover agent for obvious reasons yet it happened more than once. The instructors likened it to paying little attention to a vir-show when you’re watching it in your house because you know you’re recording it for later. Use of the implants required some psychological aptitude as well as practice. Some found it impossible and some, like me, took to it like a duck to water. Now, for instance, the ‘notes’ I kept were essentially actual thoughts consciously recorded and filed in the cloud-presence. I could convey a slight emotional charge to them as well which had impressed the instruction team, none of whom could do that themselves. What had damaged me was what I did with the abilities conferred by the implants, not how I coped with actual use of them. Though it was still hugely secret tech there were some who harboured hopes that one day the cloud-presence module might be used to overcome forms of dementia, an affliction that was currently proving too much for nanotechnology to cure.

  I had to concede that, useful though the implants were, it gave me very little advantage over someone who was adept at using the tech in a more conventional way. Peter was a good example. He still had use of his arms and the combination of his skill and the tech built into his wheelchair (or the new upmarket PMV Becky had mentioned) meant that there was only a little I could do that he couldn’t. The cloud-presence was one advantage not available to him and the sight amplification another. He probably matched me in ability if not method in most things.

  I flopped down onto my bed on my back. This ceiling could do with some paint as well, I noticed. Assuming, that is, that the world continued long enough to go and buy it.

  Becky had picked up the story where she left off, at her meeting with Dr Martin in the vir-game. Despite my loathing of them, vir-games are a useful place for clandestine meetings as they involve huge numbers of people in a wide Online world and tracing any one individual there is very difficult. For some, vir-games involve immersing yourself in the surroundings and going on quests or building an empire through big battles or whatever but they are just as popular for people simply to meander and experience the milieu. There are also a lot of non-gamers Online who think of vir-games as fondly as I do and so their meeting places of choice are outside the game sector in the vir-rooms that are simply social such as Online bars and cafés (and sometimes much less salubrious alternatives depending on their particular ‘special interest’). Tracing people there is much easier so it was for this reason that Joshua Martin had picked the relatively more secure Glory of the Roman Empire.

  It turned out that the good doctor had been concerned at the death of Pierre Meille. He told Becky that Meille had been in contact with him in the months before his death as Meille had been dealing with a security issue he had come across at his place of work. His initial question related to the tech architecture connecting his facility with Online and whether the construction of it - which Martin had overseen - might have resulted in rogue programs being let loose in the system. They had spoken many times, always Online, and Martin said that Meille had become increasingly insistent that their meetings should be secure. The last two or three had been held in vir-games seemingly chosen at random by Meille. After their last meeting, Meille had gone to try some new method of solving his issue and after four days, Martin had attempted to contact him to see how it had gone. That was when he was told of Meille’s death and it had upset him greatly.

  Becky had asked about the specific problem they were addressing. As tech architecture grew increasingly complex, more advanced AIs had been used to help design it. Occasionally the construction led to a few low-level AIs being created as bots for a specific purpose. It was relatively common for them to wander after their main task had been completed, especially if they were trouble-shooters. The whole reason for their existence was to test systems and assess strengths and weaknesses and once their job was completed it was quite useful to allow them wider access so that they could use the experience gained to advise on other aspects of the mainframe in which they were created. Sometimes, rarely, they got out to the wider Online. They were generally regarded as harmless even if they escaped into the wild, as it was termed. It depended on their specialism as to what they did when they got out but none were anywhere near the higher levels of ability and if any inadvertently caused a problem they could generally be shut down by any competent seneschal AI. They were classed as rogue bots but were nothing like their malicious counterparts as they lacked the programming to cause intentional harm.

  Meille had been convinced, according to Martin, that at least one and maybe more of the bots he had identified had been turned into malware. He also thought that they had capacity for tracking his movements and were actively trying to hinder his attempts to remove the other rogues, presumably in an attempt to retain their cover. At first, Martin had considered it ridiculous. The bots had never been out of the Argonaut system so had never been exposed to reprogramming. In fact, a criminal programmer would have found it easier to create a new bot than to reprogram an existing one. Martin also had the records of the tech construction so he knew how many bots there were and, as they hadn’t left the Argonaut infrastructure, he was also able to use the construction AI to trace them. There were no anomalies. Meille had persisted and had supplied his own facility records for comparison purposes. That was when Martin had noticed that Meille had recorded one bot more than there should have been. At their last meeting, Martin had handed over the code for the bot series and suggested that Meille use the facility seneschal to shut them down one by one and then use the security software to deal with whatever was left.

  The narrative seemed incomplete to me. I’d quizzed Becky about it at length but she could only tell me what she had recorded following her meeting with Martin. Whilst the problem as outlined might well have been a pain, it certainly didn’t seem like anything sufficient to induce the paranoia Meille had allegedly displayed and nor did the proposed solution seem anything other than a routine problem-solving exercise. I was also a bit confused by the terminology. Several times I asked Becky if she was sure that Martin had actually used the terms ‘bot’ and ‘rogue’ in the way she reported it. She was adamant that her recollection was correct and became a little irritated about my questioning. As she pointed out, she knew enough about tech not to get the terms wrong but not enough to recognise at the time that there may have been an issue with Martin’s account. In the end, all I could do was accept what she said and hope that at some point it would make sense.

  As she had told me earlier, the deaths and the suggestion of possible security breaches in the system had led to her suggesting to George Latimer that it might be an idea to look for a specialist consultant and that was when my name was mentioned. A standard search Online had failed to locate me so George had signed off on the cost of a deep search. That had failed as well and at this point in the timeline Argonaut had tied up a number of their personnel in a full time search for me. How flattering.

  Becky’s next file was on a professor of neurology who worked in a faculty in the University of Stockholm that was sponsored (that is, entirely bought and paid for) by Argonaut’s main AI division. Professor Marie Andersson had been assisting in the development of more advanced AIs. Her specialism was neurological networks and she had done some impressive work in formulating the template for an AI basing it on the human brain rather than the standard - but still complex - quantum model. She had died in her office of a stroke about three months after Meille’s demise. There had been no suspicious circumstances and the only reason that Becky had linked the deaths was because, when routinely closing down her Argonaut accounts, the security team found a message to Marie from Dr Martin on the subject of rogue AIs. I read the printed copy in Becky’s file and it wasn’t very interesting. It was really along the lines of ‘do you know of a way that rogues could become more
complex on their own?’ and didn’t appear to have been answered. It had been sufficient to register on the red flag program Becky had initiated after the meeting with Joshua Martin so she asked for a report on Professor Andersson’s other work. While the information was being compiled in Sweden, Becky told me she had contacted Martin again to find out more. This led to a second meeting between them in a vir-game, this time in MetroSim Challenge. Some people like to go on sword-and-sorcery adventures, some like to fight historic battles, some want to be famous explorers and some want to build empires. MetroSim Challenge was for those who wanted to build an economic unit in an urban setting. I had disliked living in a real city so much that I had escaped to an island paradise so I could think of very little that I would hate more than playing in a sim version of one. It was Becky’s favourite game. She recounted the conversation which had taken place in a motor repair shop in downtown New York. She said it was the third generation of the game and you could undertake repairs on any kind of personal transport device you chose. The earlier ones had restricted the inventory, I was informed. I suspect that my eyes glazed over at that point so she quickly outlined the result of her encounter. It didn’t amount to much. Dr Martin didn’t recall the precise message he’d sent but said he’d sent a round-robin to that effect so it wasn’t hard to believe Andersson had been on the list. It came out of an Online seminar he’d attended which suggested that extremely complex AI configuration might spontaneously lead to higher functioning ability than programmed such as the ability to create programs on its own initiative. A specific example was that of a game seneschal being able to create multi-level scenarios for gamers with nothing more than a broad instruction from the programmer. David Winter had led the seminar and it was his suggestion that the ability might first manifest itself in production of bots to assist the seneschal. Martin said that it had occurred to him that there were parallels in his own field of tech architecture so he was canvassing opinions on the subject from friends and colleagues. An AI that was sufficiently advanced to make his job easier would be his holy grail, he’d told Becky. The general consensus had been that it was theoretically possible but unlikely. The report from Sweden on Andersson’s work was unremarkable. It confirmed that in addition to the AI design that she did for Argonaut her main field of inquiry was directed at using tech to discover more about the workings of the human brain. She had been published quite extensively and was well-respected but there was no clue as to why she might have been targeted. By then Becky was sure - for no concrete reason it seemed to me - that there was foul play at work and had treated the death as suspicious.