Read Fool's Experiments Online
Authors: Edward M Lerner
Fool's Experiments (34 page)
"You're up awfully late," Lynne Adams said. She had a serious but adorable case of bed head.
"Sorry, hon." Glenn leaned over to kiss her forehead. He had yet to turn off his bedside lamp, but he hadn't turned a page of his book for... well, he had no idea how long. His alarm clock read 1:27. "Am I keeping you up?"
"No." She failed to stifle a yawn. "Well, maybe. Do you want to talk about it?"
One of the best things about the forum was, often he
could
talk about work. "You sure?"
She sat up, propping her pillow against the headboard and herself against the pillow. She put on her best "I'm listening" expression. It was quite the contrast with stirred-then-matted hair.
"It's indigo." He chose his next words carefully. "We know who set it loose."
"That's wonderful!" She studied his face. "But apparently there's more to it."
So much more, and little for sharing. Certainly not how it had been found: Al finally coming through. "Kids overseas wrote it. Local authorities questioned them, and seem convinced there was nothing more to it than mischief." The antinuke rant in the original release of the virus was pure disinformation.
Her brow furrowed. "As excuses for computer viruses go, isn't mischief the best you could hope for?"
He nodded. "It could have been part of some cyberextortion scheme." Or what he had truly worried, that the New Caliphate was behind it.
"This is
good
news, Glenn. Why aren't you sleeping?"
"The jerk kids are in one of those backwaters that don't consider virus writing a crime. Nothing will happen to them." No, that wasn't exactly true. If the word ever got out, chances were they would get job offers. Glenn halfbelieved the antivirus companies were in cahoots with the virus writers. The protection racket updated for the digital age.
"You're not telling me something." Lynne ineffectually covered another yawn. "I understand you can't always." Glenn patted her hand. "There's no reason why you shouldn't sleep." He waited in silence until she smiled, shrugged, and slid beneath the blankets. "I'll turn off my lamp in a sec."
But dark or light, his thoughts remained mired in guilt. For
this
I helped to birth AJ's monster?
There
had
to be more Linda's AL could do to make his gamble worthwhile.
Their labels transformed, the image files still had descriptors of a length that defied understanding.
The entity experimented.
Many thousand cycles in the past, there had been problems involving mazes of varying dimensions, described by a variety of geometries. Portions of the newly decrypted labels implied coordinates on a surface within a spherical geometry.
Other segments of the decrypted labels implied time. Scenes the entity categorized as highly related often involved the same coordinate ranges on the sphere, but at different times.
The sphere, whatever its significance—like the entity itself—changed over time.
The helmet lay heavy in Glenn's hands, and heavier in his thoughts. "Any final advice?"
"Yeah," Aaron McDougal said. The posting far from home had not made the CIA tech's disposition any more agreeable. "Don't put it on."
Linda del Vecchio slid off a nearby lab stool. "It'll be fine, Glenn."
She should know. Glenn read weekly reports religiously, Linda's with more care than most. (They were rife with circumlocutions and euphemisms, and e-mailed from her apartment.) She had met with the creature daily for more than two weeks. "Any final words of wisdom?"
Linda walked over to the glass case that still displayed AJ's canvas tote bag, for no apparent reason other than to buff a smudge with her sleeve. "Most of what you see is the product of your imagination."
"I remember my training," Glenn said.
"And yet..." Linda polished the glass some more. "My first time in, my mind refused to create an image. It was almost like being a child again, knowing something unimaginable hid in the closet. With no conscious effort on my part, it became a hungry lion, pacing in its cage. That was still scary." She straightened, her obliteration of the smudge complete. "It reached toward me once, got zapped, learned its lesson, and never strayed again. It has done nothing but cooperate. It's eager to learn."
"And?" Glenn prompted.
"Pretty soon it was a lion cub. Now I experience it as a kitten, fascinated with everything." She grinned sheepishly. "Closet monster, lion, and kitten alike are all in my head.
It
is a zillion computer instructions, and the human mind can't visualize that."
A kitten. Glenn did not expect to encounter anything so benign.
"Any final questions?" she asked.
Yeah. Why hadn't he had a second helmet couriered out here? He could have gone in with a guide. He made a mental note to arrange for one, planning to call it a spare.
The entire flight out, Ralph Pittman's description had replayed endlessly through Glenn's thoughts: "Think of darkness not as the absence of light but as something palpable. Within the blackness, picture an obscenity of ever- changing, writhing limbs tipped with every manner of claw and fang and horn. Imagine standing helpless in the unblinking gaze of an utterly alien and all-penetrating sight."
"Just one," Glenn finally answered, slipping on the helmet. He had faced down his fears before. He would do it again. Irrational fear was
all
this was. Had he felt otherwise, he would never have let Linda go in. "What does your kitty eat?"
Cyberspace was anti-climactic.
No kitten or lion greeted Glenn, but neither did he encounter any Lovecraftian horrors. His subconscious chose a great white shark, endlessly circling, its unblinking eye always on him. The shark kept to a safe distance.
Glenn marveled at how quickly
it
learned to spot underground bunkers in ground-penetrating-radar images. They took turns reaching into the consensual virtual workspace to position and investigate new images, and to point out likely bunker locations. Its snout somehow served for pointing and manipulating.
His subconscious, doubtless reacting to Linda's comments, soon softened the circling shark into something less scary. There was already a hint of playful dolphin. Occasionally, the creature would overlook something obvious— to a former infantry officer—in an image. Glenn would signal the supervisory program to end the cycle and penalize the creature.
The not-yet-a-dolphin managed to return looking hurt.
Seeing, even virtually, was believing. This creature might make a real difference to national security. Still...
Removing the helmet, Glenn could not help wondering what might transform a dolphin back into a shark.
Once is random. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern.
On his third visit, Glenn knew Al could be trusted. His mental image of Al had changed again, from a dolphin to a playful otter.
He watched from a safe distance as Al examined another sequence of surveillance shots. Glenn could not help grinning as the otter sniffed around what Glenn saw as a map.
Silly as the scene was (and knowing his own mind generated the view), one fact stood out: Al had become skilled. Underground facilities, possible mobile germ-warfare labs, missile trailers, camouflaged airfields ... his critter now spotted them far faster than Glenn. It spotted stuff Glenn would never have caught. And throughout, it kept its distance.
This was
not
AJ's monster.
"Think of darkness not as the absence of light but as something palpable," Ralph had said. Appropriately, Doug had slain
that
monster in the dark, in a blackout at midnight. Nightmares came in the dark, as did bad memories.
To hell with that. Al the Otter was nothing like that. Al was a tool of inestimable national value. Glenn could—and he would—report back positively to the National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO could really use a capability like this.
Glenn removed his helmet. Captain Burke waited nearby, failing to feign nonchalance. Linda was swigging Cheerios.
"How was it today, sir?" Burke asked.
"Interesting." And fun, strangely enough, for Glenn and Al both. Glenn had the feeling the critter was often bored. He handed Burke the helmet. "It's time for the next step, I think. Well done, Linda."
She frowned uncertainly at the compliment. "What next step?"
"Both of you walk with me," Glenn answered.
The project occupied only a small fraction of the short leg of the L-shaped building. The rest stood empty. Solar power generation called for a big roof; the big, mostly unused space just came along.
He walked briskly around the knee of the L, the others trailing after. Their footsteps echoed. "Captain, I propose to enhance the facility. As our head of security, I'd like you to sanity-check my approach."
"Yes, sir."
Linda seemed nervous at the suggestion. That meant nothing; she was jumpy by nature. "What sort of changes, Glenn?"
"Couriering data here worked fine in research mode. We're now victims of your success. Couriering is too inefficient for production mode. We need a better way to deliver data."
Linda flinched. "Not an Internet link?"
Only support columns broke up the empty space. Glenn leaned against one of the posts. "Of course not. I trust the captain would have said 'no' had I suggested such a thing."
"Right, sir." Burke looked puzzled. "Then what is the plan?"
Glenn pointed straight up. "A dish on the roof. Drop a shielded cable in here, to a stand-alone workstation for decrypting."
"Meaning DU"—Defense Information Infrastructure— "access, sir?"
"Exactly."
Linda considered. "And then?"
"And then," Glenn said, "we burn the downloads to CD. Sneakernet the data the last few yards to Al's computer. We'll still use couriers and outside secure phones to report results."
Burke canted his head. "I suggest we use fiber-optic cable between the antenna and the workstation. We're completely shielded in here; the hole for a fiber-optic cable will be smaller."
Glenn saw nothing wrong with that. "What else?"
"About couriers and phone." Burke began pacing. "That won't scale up as Al processes more input. It won't handle time-sensitive situations well. Obviously we can't network out."
"What if we burn CDs with its findings and courier those?" Linda asked. "The CDs would be for use only on stand-alone computers."
Burke shook his head. "No good, Linda. Once the CDs leave the building, we lose control. If Al hides anything on a CD, and that CD is put onto a networked computer..."
In Glenn's mind's eye an otter cavorted. Al didn't seem like the type to escape—which was no reason to take chances. "You're quite right, Captain. We'll install extra stand-alone workstations. As needed, we'll rotate in analysts to review Al's findings. What do you think?"
Burke looked all around the echoing space before answering. "It sounds like a plan, sir."
Doug pressed the intercom button in the lobby of Cheryl's building. "What do the French call a really good Stooges movie?"
"Hello to you, too." If intonation meant anything, Cheryl's heart wasn't in bilingual puns. She buzzed him up anyway, and greeted him with a big hug and a lingering kiss.
Not a problem.
He peered down the hallway toward Carla's room. "I'm guessing Carla isn't home."
"Not at the moment."
"So, are you ready for dinner? I made reservations at—"
"A small change in plans. We're having dinner here." She waved off his comment. "It
is
your birthday."
"Who told—Jim, of course." Doug had stopped celebrating birthdays when Holly stopped having them. He hoped Jim had not shared the background. Did Cheryl ever feel she was competing with a ghost? That wasn't his intent, but—
She seemed determined not to let his mind go there. "What
do
the French call a really good Stooges movie?"
"A 'bon Moe.' " He mock-cringed, as though Cheryl might slug him. "Yes, I'm ashamed of myself."
"That was enough to make
my
hair Curly." She grinned at his double take. "Yes, I'm conversant with the classics."
"It would seem we deserve each other." And, damn it, he meant that.
"Care to know what's for dinner?"
"In a minute." He took out his cell phone and called to cancel the reservation. "What's for dinner?"
"Lasagna. It comes out of the oven in, oh, forty-five minutes."
He slipped an arm around her waist. "I have an idea how we might fill the time."
She leaned into him. "I should make you blow out the candles on your cake first, but that works...."
Doug slouched in his chair, pleasantly sated. The rumored cake would have to wait. "That was really good."
"The caterer thanks you," Cheryl said. "More Chianti? I can't take credit for that, either."
"Sure, I—" His cell phone buzzed once. He had been texted. "I hadn't expected to stay in,
not
that I'm complaining. I imagine that's the parking meter's five-minute warning. Hold on while I add time."
The message wasn't from the smart parking meter. "It's Glenn."
Cheryl topped off Doug's glass. "Having him back for another poker night?"
"Sure, if we need a sub again. That has nothing to do with the message. You know I've been wondering what to be when I grow up. My best guess is doing something with artificial intelligence.
"I mentioned it to Glenn. It turns out the forum has a new project going he thought might interest me." Not NIT development, Glenn had said. Doug chose not to add that. That way lay the slippery slope to an argument about the risks she was taking. "I planned to go downtown Monday morning to hear more. He texted to say he has to reschedule." She clinked glasses. "Something to hold your interest? I'll drink to that."
Doug pondered aloud—rambled, truthfully—about the sorry state of artificial-intelligence research. That the goalposts kept moving: Any Al problem that was solved, whether chess playing or expert systems, suddenly lost its status as Al. That the holy grail of the field, the Turing test, was flawed. Sixty years earlier, Alan Turing had come up with the idea: If a person can swap messages with a computer and not know it's a computer, then the software on that computer is intelligent.
What kind of criterion was that? Human languages were morasses of homonyms and synonyms, dialects and slang, moods and cases and irregular verbs. Human language shifted over time, often for no better reason than that people could not be bothered to enunciate. "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less" somehow meant the same thing. If researchers weren't so anthropomorphic in their thinking, maybe the world would have Al. Any reasoning creature would take one look at natural language and question
human
intelligence.
Cheryl nodded and
hmmed
as he blathered. She was an excellent listener, among her many tine attributes. She offered no comment until he finally wound down. "You know why you're going on about this, don't you?"
He blinked. "Because it's interesting? Because you bought really good wine?"
"It cost more than in a box, but I thought, heck, it's a special occasion." She poured them both a bit more. "My guess is you sensed something in AJ's creature. I'm not saying it was intelligent, but maybe it could have gotten there."
And they were back to the brink of the slippery slope.
Cheryl
had a new interest, psychology. It came of trying to help poor Sheila Brunner. A noble goal, to be sure, but seemingly hopeless.
Doug did not care to be analyzed, not even (especially?) by Cheryl. He changed the subject. "When does Carla get home?"
"Did I not mention it? Carla is at a sleepover."
Doug took that to mean he was, too.
The next morning, a thousand errands tugged them in different directions. Doug loitered by Cheryl's front door, reluctant to go.
She appeared no more eager for him to leave. "See, birthdays aren't so bad."
"Well, of course not,
your
way."
Her forehead wrinkled. "My way?"
He said, "Who blows my candle makes all the difference." Doug let himself out. As he shut the door, his last impression, as though of a Cheshire girlfriend, was of her speechless sputtering.