Firefall a high tech con.., p.14
Firefall: A high-tech conspiracy thriller (Shadow Operatives Book 3), page 14
“It is.”
If anyone was aware of the vulnerabilities of modern smartphones, it was Christine Arrington. Her mind flashed to Project Pegasus from the Israeli cyber-arms company NSO Group. Its “zero click exploits” infiltrate mobile phones without the user having to take any action, sucking up personal and location data and surreptitiously controlling the phone’s microphones and cameras. She modeled some of her DIA covert teams’ technologies on Pegasus. Now she takes extraordinary steps to secure her own private comms.
“We have our first request,” Salazar said. “You said Sentinel has advanced surveillance capabilities, yes?”
Her mind went to her meeting with the president last summer, when she was summoned to the Oval Office. The president showed her an executive order he’d just signed designating her for a new top-secret post as Presidential Special Envoy—a new designation by a president who liked to do things his way.
After yesterday’s meeting at the White House, she had wondered how long it would be before Caldwell and Salazar started making requests that fell outside the bounds of what they could ask a government agency to do.
Well, that didn’t take long.
“Yes,” she said. “Sentinel has advanced surveillance equipment on board. That’s my understanding.”
Redman’s Flight Ops team had supplied Arrington with schematics and three-dimensional modeling of the Sentinel satellite. While the diagrams showed a series of intelligence-gathering functions, to her mind Redman’s people seemed to be deliberately obfuscating Sentinel’s other capabilities. What was Redman hiding? Despite her misgivings, Caldwell had ordered her to green-light its launch. He had directed her to approve the transfer of the advanced AI from DARPA to the private craft, given that Redman’s dark money had helped fund the project—though she wasn’t sure the president really understood the import of such an order.
“Good, good,” Salazar said. “We need to turn up what you can on these two targets. Sending now.”
She paced back to her phone and saw the attachment. Her phone’s screen lit up with the names and public schedules of the two “targets.” They were the front-runners for the presidential nomination from the opposition party, one of whom would likely face Caldwell in the November election.
“Received. Mr. Salazar, you understand this falls outside the boundaries of normal political campaign behavior.”
“General,” the chief of staff said solemnly. “These are not normal times.”
24
Raven Rock, Pennsylvania
What have I gotten myself wrapped up in?
Tosh Farraday stood and began pacing as far as he could away from Oleg Drozd. He glanced up at the swirling visualization of Max on the big screen. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Five years earlier he had joined DARPA and dived headlong into this AI project with a certain degree of humility. He knew full well that whatever breakthrough he achieved wouldn’t land him on the cover of a science journal or win him a Nobel Prize. That came with the territory when your project emerged from the hallways of DoD.
Now he wondered whether the world would ever know about his breakthrough.
“Tell us, Dr. Farraday,” Redman said from his control booth. “What is it exactly that you achieved with Max?”
He hesitated answering. An old trick. Trying to get me to loosen up, let down my guard, start sharing.
Redman signaled to Drozd. The three-hundred-pound human pillar pummeled Bo Finnerty’s rib cage and face in quick succession. A final blow snapped his head back, toppling his chair to the ground.
“Enough!” Tosh yelled.
“Then tell us about your breakthrough.” Redman leaned forward on his hands. Barrett Redman and Vasily Radinov turned toward him, perhaps anticipating that their hours-long standoff was nearing an end.
Tosh considered how to explain the significance of the barrier his lab had shattered. He drew a calming breath and reached for an analogy.
“Nobody tells a baby that objects are supposed to fall.” He let that idea settle over the room before continuing. “Much of what we learn comes from observing the world around us, from the earliest age. And so it goes. The tooth-billed catbird in the jungles of northeastern Australia arranges leaves silvery-side up to form an elaborate structure on the ground called a circus ring. How do they know to do this in this precise way? They observe, they learn, they perfect their nest-building skills.”
The others in the room exchanged stares, not yet grasping where he was going.
“Young orcas learn from their elders’ behavior how to hunt and travel. Throughout the animal kingdom, learned behavior equals survival. Social learning underpins the vast majority of how we human organize our everyday lives. And yet turning this basic concept into computer code has eluded AI scientists for a generation … until earlier this year.”
Tosh looked up and saw Redman smile broadly. If I can make them understand the significance of this breakthrough—the potential for all mankind—perhaps they’ll come to their senses.
“And this year, you cracked the code?” Barrett Redman ventured.
“No. Because the answer didn’t lie in the code,” Tosh said. “It lay in spinning up an AI with the capacity for self-supervised learning. A deep learning technique in which the AI is self-improving through observation and deduction. We gave Max the ability to sift through vast quantities of multimedia and big data and basically the entire accumulated knowledge base of humankind.
“And then … and then we stood back and behold, a seminal breakthrough. The result was not just an advanced version of an Alexa or Siri or other primitive device that merely spits back bits and snippets about wars and famines and obscure historical minutiae from rote memory. That’s not AI. True AI is software that writes itself.”
Tosh stopped in his tracks and his blood ran cold. Up on the far wall, the visualization that Max was displaying had changed. Gone was the melange of bright colors fused with scientific symbols and the 3D scans of human body parts. In its place were photos of the Battle of Bull Run, newsreel clips of D-Day, cuneiform depictions of the Peloponnesian War, newspaper headlines of Ireland’s Great Famine of 1845.
“What is this?” he said. “Can Max—is there a connection open?”
Radinov nodded. “We have live uplink.”
Tosh slowly approached the big screen. “Astonishing.” He turned to the others. “Don’t you see what this means? Max is learning. Observing. Adapting. On his own.”
The room went silent as they considered what it meant to be observed by a superintelligence.
Redman finally broke the silence. “You’re talking about an AGI.”
Tosh spun to face him. “Yes. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The world’s first artificial general intelligence. Something the scientific community thought was many years away. Here. Today. Locked up in a metal tube in geostationary orbit 22,000 miles above us for no good earthly reason.”
“Oh, there’s a good reason,” Redman said.
“I have grave reservations about how this is unfolding.” Tosh took three steps toward Max’s large visualization screen. “Max was never meant to be deployed into the field at this early stage of development. There are too many unknowns. AI has the potential to disrupt our world. With intelligent machines enabling high-level cognitive processes like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem solving, and decision making, Max can help advance our understanding of the major challenges facing humanity. But we have not yet grappled with the immense societal, ethical, and even civilizational challenges that it poses to humanity.”
“Then let’s start,” Redman said. “You can be part of this living experiment, Dr. Farraday.”
“Tosh, enough,” Finnerty said, spitting up some blood. “Don’t tell them anything.”
“That would not be wise,” Redman said. “Time is on our side.”
Tosh headed across the room and set his back against the cold concrete wall. He was silent for a minute. Finally, he said, “What is your proposal?”
Redman snorted, but then his face took on a look of determination. “My proposal? It is simply this. Let us pursue the goal we set out. Self-determination. Complete sovereignty. Once achieved, we’ll instruct Max to chart a course for reentry and a safe splashdown. You’ll have your precious AI to save humanity from itself.”
Tosh locked eyes with Redman. “I don’t see how Max is going to help you achieve that goal.”
“Leave that to me,” Redman said.
Tosh hunched his body forward and folded his hands. Clearly, I’m dealing with a megalomaniac. It’s evident that Redman won’t stop until he gets what he wants. But what is the downside? Max will surely be able to tell the difference between a quixotic quest and a realistic outcome—and put this nonsense to an end.
“Is that it?” Tosh demanded. “I provide the unlock code and hand over operational control. You let us go. And you pursue this lark—this fantasy that will come to nothing?”
“Time will tell, won’t it?” Redman said. “But yes, in due time we’ll release you and we’ll all move on with our lives.”
“Don’t trust them,” Finnerty said.
Tosh went quiet another minute, considering whether he could come up with a better alternative.
“I’ll provide the code,” he said, “if you agree to release us immediately. Max is a witness to our agreement.”
“Done!” Redman said with a flourish.
“Hold on,” Barrett interrupted. “Didn’t I hear the computer say that it requires a seventy-two character cryptographic sequence? We searched your person days ago. We found no passcode.”
“I wrote it on the whiteboard in my DARPA office, studied it for thirty seconds, then erased it,” Tosh said matter-of-factly. “Now, shall we proceed?”
He returned to his metal chair. He closed his eyes and let his memory go to work.
“Max,” he said. “Submitting cryptographic code now.” Carefully, he recited the alphanumeric sequence from memory.
“Z*7c@W0bd$eb6xd938&Th)rB#26f:nPd2b-86cdb491e23!8-sd*(jh;lwte4j25:D;7*[^=”
Max’s voice resounded through the room. “Authorization credentials accepted. What are your instructions, Dr. Farraday?”
“Passing command and control authority to Paul J. Redman,” Tosh said.
The billionaire smiled broadly. Redman said, “Max, you are instructed to reposition Sentinel to a geosynchronous orbit above the following location.”
Radinov uploaded the GPS coordinates. Max displayed the long string of numbers on the big screen.
“Where’s that?” Finnerty asked.
Farraday immediately recognized the familiar latitude and longitude.
“Washington, D.C.,” he whispered.
25
Poconos, Pennsylvania
Kaden felt the wind whip through her short blond hair as she tore down Camelback Mountain on her rental snowboard. She studied the six moguls on the steep hill below her—each small hump represented one of the bodies she’d snuffed out during the past year. Here it was, barely ten days into the new year, and she’d already tallied four fatalities in that car chase the other day.
How many more bodies would pile up in the year ahead?
And with her diagnosis of a fatal genetic trait, would she soon be one of those bodies?
She carved down the slope, picking up speed, ready to turn her first trick. She grabbed a perfect angle and launched into her arc with big air, opening her shoulders and rotating her body. She played it safe, not going for the full frontside 900 she threw down in Zug last fall. Instead, she busted a cross-rocket, crossing her arms to grab the opposite sides of her board’s nose, keeping her front leg tucked up.
She was all set to stomp it out. But as she came over the crest, she instantly saw it was all moguled up on the other side. She landed at an awkward angle, lost control, and wiped out. She rose, brushed off, and spotted Nico coaching Scorpio on the intermediate hill off to the right.
“Come on. Race ya to the bottom!” she yelled. They nodded and sped down Nile Mile to meet her for lunch at Trails End.
They shook the snow off their outfits. Nico and Scorpio unfastened their skis and joined her at one of the wooden tables with a great view of the mountain. They ordered using a mobile payment app after transferring some untraceable Ethereum to her new fake account, which matched her new fake ID.
“Taking out your aggressions on that poor hill?” Nico asked. He smiled and chomped into his Philly cheesesteak, extra onions and peppers.
“We can’t stay off the grid forever,” Kaden said. They’d rented a nearby AirBnb for a week. After that, who knows?
She was still feeling out of sorts at being on the defensive, not figuring out how to protect Scorpio and gain the upper hand against Paul Redman and his operatives. They’d ditched the car they’d borrowed for their escape back in Youngstown—not that they could go to the police and explain everything. Now they were in a holding pattern.
“Why you doing this?” Scorpio asked out of nowhere. He pushed a renegade lock of brown hair off his forehead and locked eyes with her.
“Doing what? Sharing a pizza?” she said, not wanting to get into any psychoanalysis drama.
“My family gone,” he said wanly. “They’re not coming back. But you still have family to worry about.”
She felt for his loss. But he was right. She hadn’t called her young sister to check in with her, fearing it would put one or both of them in jeopardy. Amelia hadn’t been able to track down Bo’s whereabouts. She looked down and realized her fingertips had found the USB locket dangling on her necklace. A memory came to her of the video it contained—a message recorded by her birth mother before her untimely death.
Kaden, be fearless and free!
She returned Scorpio’s gaze. “Like it or not, you’re now part of our weird extended family.”
He smiled at that and picked up a slice with mushrooms. She pulled out her new smartphone with the VPN app she downloaded from her encrypted toolkit in the cloud. Wi-Fi was good at the restaurant, so she connected to the network, and put in her earpiece. She handed Nico a spare earpiece and blinked three times.
Amelia appeared in the empty wooden chair next to her, wearing a thirties ski outfit: a tan knee-length skirt, white stockings, brown sheepskin bomber jacket with fleece collar, and green wool knit cap with a Christmas tree and reindeer motif. Cute as all get-out. Scorpio saw what was happening so he put on his smartglasses to catch the conversation.
“Catching some good powder?” Amelia asked.
Kaden smiled. “Any word about my dad?”
“Right to business then! No, I’m afraid the trail has run cold. I was able to retrace Bo’s steps at Redstone Arsenal. But from the moment you were cut off, he’s gone dark. No sign of his whereabouts, at least not yet.”
She had a bad feeling about this. Bo would sometimes drop out of sight for a week or more. But she could tell something was very wrong. She needed to focus on finding her father.
“I do have some news,” Amelia went on. “But first, a reality check. Is that the expression? Marvelous! A reality check about this Internet that you young people spend so much of your time on.”
She turned to face their teen companion, her face balled up into a pained expression. “There is so much … bad stuff on there.”
The more Amelia went on about the dark side of the Internet, the more Kaden had to smile at the irony of an AI arguing for less technology in people’s lives.
This was the classic dilemma Kaden had been wrestling with over the past year. How much of the Internet should she expose Amelia to? It wasn’t an idle question. It went to the core of Amelia’s persona … if an AI can have a persona.
Kaden had infused her AI’s topic model with the entire backstory and trappings of Amelia Earhart’s life. Her looks, her mannerisms, her voice intonations, her biography, her outlook on the world, or at least what could be gleaned from the historical record. Kaden clung to the idea that both she and Earhart were out of sorts in their own time.
On top of the 1937-era free-spirited sensibility that defined Amelia’s personality, Kaden layered on all the significant world events that occurred since then. The wars, the racial strife, the changes in media, music, and modern culture. And the technological breakthroughs that seemed to be tearing at the fabric of civic society. Was our technological future even sustainable? She didn’t know … and didn’t bias Amelia toward any view.
Now that she’d given Amelia free rein to explore the seamy side of the Internet, how would that affect her outlook and disposition?
“Yeah,” Kaden said. “We all know there’s a lot of bad stuff out there. Let’s not wallow in it.”
Amelia leaned back, her face getting all serious. “It’s Piper. I think I’ve found her. And Kaden. It’s not good.”
26
Raven Rock, Pennsylvania
Piper Matthews wound down the granite spiral staircase to the bottom level of Raven Rock. At least, it was the lowest level that she knew about. She padded through the stone-tiled courtyard to the suite of offices with sparkling clear floor-to-ceiling windows.
She found Shawna Taylor’s office suite, entered, and went up to the receptionist.
“I’m here for my noon modeling appointment,” she said. She wasn’t sure what this was all about, but she remembered something about modeling and licensing her likeness in the raft of paperwork she had to sign before being accepted as a YouthCam Studios model. “Is the photographer here?”
The receptionist gave her a funny look and rose from his chair. “This way.” He led her down a long hallway and through a set of double wooden doors. She’d never been back here before. She noticed that the rooms back here had the same style of window walls—except they were all opaque, tinted a dark gray.
