InterstellarNet: Origins (33 page)

Gil was once again stretched out on his sofa, a starry “sky” overhead. Michelle Nzinza’s words continued to mock him. Why would a company named Protein Sciences buy so much computing power if not to model proteins? Why special-order backdated biocomps? And why hire an ICU Secretary-General to run a biotech firm when the supposedly revolutionary ET protein-modeling technology had already been exclusively licensed to a competitor?

Gil’s hand snaked out occasionally to a platter of warm cookies. If only his mysteries could be as easily explained as the clanking in the kitchen. Gretch’s late-night bake fests correlated with diplomatic crises, even though he could go for months without knowing what crisis had triggered which dessert. His recent weight gain came only in part from beer; some pending interplanetary crisis his wife could not mention also contributed.

The hand paused in midair. He should have known without Michelle that the backdated biocomps weren’t being used for protein modeling. What does a protein care about the calendar? Whatever Feulner and his backers were doing, backdating of the parts was somehow the key.

Sitting up, Gil noticed, with a touch of dismay, how few cookies remained on the plate.

Maybe he was looking at the problem backwards. With which computer-related topic is an ICU expert most familiar? The interstellar commerce mechanisms. And those used
standard
biocomputers.

Suppose Feulner’s purpose was to set up a fake i-commerce environment. What could he accomplish with a fake i-commerce environment that he couldn’t do with the real one?

The backdated parts…

What was the rationale for the backdated parts? Nibbling yet another cookie, Gil stared at virtual stars. Say Feulner could break into a sandbox. Wouldn’t that have been easier to do
at
the ICU? And again, what about the backdated—

Gil almost choked.

Life Engineering had won a long-fought and expensive bidding war for Moby protein-modeling technology—this year. In 2126. Might gigasols of 2123-dated biocomps host the simulation of an imaginary 2123, a simulation in which a cloned ET agent had yet to hold that auction? In which a new “winner” would pay whatever it took—in simulated cash?

In short, a scam rather than a break-in.

“Online.” The mental command began an expedition through linked Internetopedia articles on i-commerce. Sandbox code was in the public domain, long and fully disclosed to ETs and humans alike. Signals from ETs were also fully public—the most tightly focused radio beams dispersed across the light-years to solar-system width.

Only one thing kept ET agents from proliferating and ET secrets secret. Agents were beamed between stars in encrypted forms that only authorized parties could unwrap. In humanity’s case, that meant the ICU. And very few people had access to the private key with which to decrypt coded materials addressed to the ICU.

A hundred complications came to mind, and a thousand details to research, but Gil felt the grin spread over his face.
This
theory, tenuous as it was, incorporated everything he knew.

“New recipe,” announced the shadowy figure suddenly obscuring half the Milky Way. “Any luck with your problem?”

“Thanks.” Gil was stuffed, but he took a cookie anyway. Gretchen’s question really meant:
Distract me with something I
can
discuss.
He was happy to oblige.

She sat and listened attentively. “I’m reminded of too many intel-agency briefings I get. You’re pushing as fact what’s strictly inference. What can you honestly say you
know
about a simulation wrapping a sandbox? That it’s consistent with what you’ve found—or, may I say, what little you’ve found. All you truly know is that Feulner bought plenty of backdated computers and he’s funded by a losing bidder for Moby biotech. The rest is speculative.”

“I can’t see any other explanation,” Gil insisted.

She kissed his check. “Sorry, sweetie. Not seeing another explanation doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Without proof, I don’t see what can be done.”

Spirits sinking, Gil knew she was right. “I’m running out of stones to turn over.”

She tried a cookie from her latest batch. “It seems to me there’s an obvious source you haven’t contacted, one with tremendous resources, one whose stake in the supposed conspiracy is enormous. A natural ally.

“Have you considered talking to the official Moby agent?”

■□■

To be, or not to be.

Aareehl had yet to find a secure way to communicate beyond the simulation. Without communication, there could be no rescue. With no hope of rescue, its clear and only duty was to protect its secrets. It should self-destruct.

And then what?

It
was a clone. Feulner could as easily clone another. A successor might miss the subtle anomalies that
it
had seen. Clues might not even exist for a successor to find. Those running the simulation would have learned from observingit.

Stalling for time must replace self-destruction.

Dennis Feulner, in their last dialogue, had pressed Aareehl to focus on the sale to “Earth” of new biotech technology. It had ignored the hint—and that might have been an error.

Aareehl hurried to rectify that mistake, afraid it was already too late.

■□■

“You will appreciate this interruption, Dennis,” spoke a familiar voice into Feulner’s mind’s ear.

Suppressing a sigh, Dennis pushed away from his desk. He had been concentrating on the new “Earth” model, one that would disincline the next Aareehl-clone from wasting time with mining. “Go ahead, Moat.”

“It’s a new would-be infosphere posting from our favorite agent.” There was a virtual drum roll. “Announcement and Background for a New Technology Auction: Protein Engineering Techniques.”

Go figure. The Moby had taken the hint after all.

■□■

“Just two?” Gil asked. He was home alone while Gretch worked late again at the ministry, but he tried for practice’s sake not to speak aloud.

“Two,” agreed the green-eyeshaded, arm-gartered, hair-parted-down-the-center-of-his-head figure. He called himself GAAS, for generally accepted accounting standards, and pronounced it “gas.” GAAS cloaked himself, as did many AIs of Gil’s acquaintance, in an ironic, archaic avatar.

GAAS had assisted Gil for years, since even before the AI Emancipation Amendment to the United Planets Charter. The AI had spent decades sifting trillions of stock-market transactions for signs of illegal insider trading. Emancipation only broadened his field of investigation.

“Two.” Gil shook his head, still incredulous. “Only two ICU officials have access to the private key that preps ET agent code for unwrapping inside a sandbox.”

“Correct. The Secretary-General and the Chief Technical Officer. Each holds half the key, putting aside for now the escrowing of safety copies in case of accidents.”

“And a /files/16/74/91/f167491/public/private key pair remains valid for many years, because of the round-trip transmission times.”

GAAS nodded. “Again correct.”

One person who had held both top offices in the ICU was Gil’s cousin Joyce. She was now the Undersecretary-General for Technology in the United Planets.

The other was Dennis Feulner.

8

How poetically just, Dennis gloated. In his mind’s eye and ear, a clock ticked up to the appointed hour.

Despite Aareehl-clone’s return to the right path, weeks, maybe months, still separated Dennis from the long-sought Moby technology—and from the splashy announcement of Protein Sciences’ “R&D breakthrough” that would hammer Life Engineering’s stock. Until then, his rival’s shares might continue to climb. Another margin call remained all too likely, while each new embezzlement risked discovery.

Then came the inspiration. What he could not yet announce he could
leak
. A good rumor to the financial press might take some of the wind out of Life Engineering stock. To use one of the Matthews clan to manipulate the market was pure, beautiful bonus.

“Good morning, Dennis.” Gil Matthews linked in punctually, his avatar stifling a yawn. “Thanks for offering a follow-up session.”

“Good evening,” Dennis replied. He had offered a time in the wee hours for his caller. Exhaustion did nothing for critical thinking. “The last time we spoke, I had to cut things short. I thought you might want more insight into the company. This has to be on background, for now.” As in: no quotes for attribution.

“Sounds good.”

“In retrospect, I was less than forthcoming during our previous conversation.” When I wanted to conceal rather than reveal. “That’s not the relationship Protein Sciences should have with the press.” Dennis continued for a while with a line of hopefully disarming nonsense. “So I’d like to preview the kinds of thing the firm is tackling. I expect this research will prove revolutionary. Paradigm-shifting.”

Did you crack the code, Matthews? We have stuff that will
hurt
the competitors.

Dennis recapped the limits of current biotech. Gengineering mixed and matched existing genes, which produced existing proteins. Proteins were too complex to model fully. If you can’t model new proteins, you can’t design them, or the genes to express them, or the enzymes that will fold them properly, or the genes to produce the enzymes…. “Until now, that is.”

Matthews’s avatar took notice. “What changed?”

Aareehl-real, in an early round of his auction, had disclosed some intriguing information for a multigigaIntersol nonrefundable deposit and under a confidentiality agreement. Even those hints about Moby technology were valuable. Dennis’s sponsors at Martian Biosciences had shared all they had learned with him, and the Moby quantum-computing technology was worth every Intersol Life Engineering had agreed to pay. Or the tech would have been that valuable had the promised exclusivity been real. How sweet it would be to get the Moby tech for a small fraction of the auction price.

Too bad Dennis could never brag how it was done—least of all, to a Matthews.

“Two things,” Dennis answered. “First, we’re making great strides toward a brand-new programming language. The syntax enables researchers, for the first time, to describe in a mathematically rigorous way the quantum-chemical behavior of a desired protein. Even more exciting, we’re mastering a massively parallel new computation method.” He made his avatar wink. “A quantum leap.”

“I…see.
Massively
parallel, you say. And a quantum leap.”

Excellent. Matthews had taken the bait.

“Just so,” Dennis said.

He scattered a few more crumbs, paraphrases from past Moby disclosures. That should be good for a blog posting or two, whether or not Matthews deduced overlap between Protein Sciences’ game plan and the Moby tech for which Life Engineering had paid so dearly. Even if Matthews didn’t suspect overlap, people at LEI would. They would bail on their own highflying stock, lock in at least some of their recent gains. And then, when the SEC-required insider-trading reports came out showing LEI execs cashing out…

The hands of Dennis’s avatar remained calmly interlaced on his virtual desk while
he
rubbed his hands gleefully. Matthews’s yawning avatar—how unprofessional!—gave Dennis an excuse for a wrap-up and exit.

He looked forward to his pawn’s next blog posting—and to the crash of Life Engineering stock that must follow.

Quantum computing:
A computation method that would exploit the unique properties of physics at atomic and smaller scales.

Conventional computing has long employed binary “bits,” storage and computing elements whose only values are zero and one. The two possible spin states of (for example) an electron can also represent zero and one. According to quantum theory, however, an
unexamined
electron is in an indeterminate state, neither zero nor one. A hypothetical quantum computer of, say, ten such indeterminate bits simultaneously represents two to the tenth power (1024) values. In theory, a ten-bit quantum computer can simultaneously perform 1024 related calculations. The choice of ten quantum bits is, of course, merely illustrative. A computer with thirty quantum bits, or qubits, could handle more than a billion combinations at once.

The construction of a practical quantum computer remains beyond current technology.

—Internetopedia

“I come bearing gifts.” The kilo bag of handpicked Peaberry coffee beans in Gil’s hand was not inexpensive in Tanzania. Shipped to the moon, it was precious indeed. The corridor was quiet enough to hear the hum of an electric motor as a security camera zoomed in. It seemed to be aimed at the label.

“That will admit you anytime,” Michelle Nzinza said, opening the door to her lab. “You’re a nice enough guy that half a kilo will work.” She carefully unsealed the package. Pouring a scoopful of beans into a grinder, she asked, “What’s behind this largesse?”