InterstellarNet: Origins (36 page)

The little twerp knew too much! Dennis plunged ahead, in horrible fascination, unable to stop himself. “You speak in riddles, Matthews. You imagine a clone that can’t access the infosphere. Somehow that same clone has recovered petabytes of encrypted memories previously stored anonymously on the infosphere. It’s utter nonsense.”
Please
, Dennis thought,
please don’t mention PKI. No PKI. No PKI. No PKI.
It became a mantra.
No PKI. No PKI.

In a pathetically mighty effort, Matthews leaned forward. He whispered conspiratorially, “Truly, you
do
ask the best questions. The answer to your riddle, you see, is gaming the PKI.”

Public Key Infrastructure:
a core component of the infosphere security architecture. Operating out of sight of the typical infosphere user, the PKI, as the name suggests, is a universally accessible repository for the public half of /files/16/74/91/f167491/public/private security-key pairs. Individual network users (or system administrators or software agents representing those users) deposit public keys. Private keys are
not
deposited.

As discussed in more detail in the related entry for public key encryption, any message encrypted in a public key can only be decrypted by the holder of the corresponding (mathematically complementary) private key. A public key can also be used to authenticate that a digitally “signed” message came from its supposed originator.

PKI repositories, which are essential to all e-commerce (including interstellar commerce) and to all network privacy, are run by well-trusted organizations. Selection of a personally trusted PKI repository is part of enrollment for basic infosphere service.

—Internetopedia

Relentless gravity kept dulling Gil’s thoughts. He released more stimulants into his drinking water, knowing his abused body would pay later and with compound interest. So be it.

He kept pressing Feulner. “Fooling an agent clone isn’t sophisticated, just expensive. The trick is to interpose an intelligent information filter, call it a proxy, between Earth’s infosphere and the clone’s sandbox. Well, ‘proxy’ is a financial term, and I think we’ve established”—calculatedly annoying grin—“that finance is not your forte. Let’s call the intermediary a gatekeeper.

“The gatekeeper intercepts the clone’s requests, decides how to answer, whether to query the infosphere on the clone’s behalf, edits all retrieved data before passing it to the clone.” The clone’s remote-sensing order recognized by real Aareehl, its origin disguised by an anonymizing service, had hinted how Feulner’s scheme must work. “Minimally, the gatekeeper backdates the true timestamps of infosphere responses. It wouldn’t do to pass along messages dated 2126.”

As stimulants began kicking in Gil picked up the pace. “We were discussing memory recovery. Archived agent memories are in the clone’s own encryption, so a gatekeeper can’t make them up.” Nor would it want to. Accessing the true archived memories was the whole purpose of the scam. “The clone’s requests for archived memories must go to the infosphere. But while agent memories are encrypted, limited data about the files are
not
. The file-creation dates are not. The gatekeeper simply holds back any files newer than the purported date of the clone’s awakening.”

Feulner’s manner kept cycling between bravado and nervousness; right now he was twitchy. “What has any of this to do with PKI?”

“A thing of beauty, I grant you—I mean ‘the group’—that.” Gil took another chemical-laced sip. “The clone must have, or believe it has, infosphere access. Imagine a newly awakened clone. Its only certain knowledge is that it was properly decrypted and that its sandbox is per specification. It receives an infosphere registration address, as expected. It enrolls for ’net services without difficulty. It uses secure ’net services to ask registered archives: Who has files for me? It recovers memories, all properly encrypted for privacy. Why
shouldn’t
it be a happy and trusting AI?”

“The PKI?” Feulner prompted again.

“Ah, yes”—Gil smirked—“the public key infrastructure. Anyone can enter the PKI business. PKI is merely a service for storing specialized data and answering queries. A group that could afford enough computer power for a sandbox and an agent clone could surely also afford a PKI server.”

Feulner licked his lips nervously. Gil ’netted a suggestion to the detectives searching Feulner’s office: Hunt for a purchase requisition for a PKI server. “So the ’net address given our newly awakened clone points to the group’s private PKI server. When the clone wants to communicate privately to someone, it first asks the PKI server for that party’s public key. The clone uses that public key to compose a message that, in theory, only the intended recipient can decrypt with its private key. Here’s the thing. Whenever the agent clone mentions an entity for the first time, this PKI server simply invents a /files/16/74/91/f167491/public/private key
pair
.

“When our clone thinks it’s privately linked to an anonymizer—it’s not. When our clone queries an Earth-observation archive, directly or via an anonymizer, that request is an open book. Negotiations to sell—shall we say, new biotech?—are effectively all in the clear. The gatekeeper we discussed earlier, intercepting these open-book messages, decides how to respond.” Such as to consult the chief scammer.

Feulner wiped a damp sleeve across his glistening forehead. “Ingenious, I admit. Yes, it explains how this hypothetical ‘gatekeeper’ could spot memory-recovery transactions and discard any replies dated inconveniently recent.

“So what? Whatever memories get passed to the clone are encoded. Only the agent or its clone can read them. Even having eavesdropped on the clone’s less-than-secret ’net messages, your gatekeeper can’t avoid contradicting the encrypted memories recovered from archive.”

Gil and Aareehl had brainstormed this final detail the whole of Gil’s flight to Earth. Gil said, “The clone must be made to believe a cover story that excuses all discrepancies between its trusted memories and its postawakening observations. Who better to sell the Big Lie than a trusted authority figure, someone figuring prominently in the clone’s recovered memories?

“Protein Sciences owns an
awful
lot of modern biocomps of apparent 2123 manufacture.” Gil took a deep breath, the better to fuel a triumphant smile. “You, Dennis, were the Secretary-General of the ICU that year.”

■□■

Dennis’s cheek quivered. He ignored the tic. Only words remained within his control, and he selected them with care. “Let us suppose that such a group, and such elaborate mechanisms, actually exist. It would take someone with unique expertise to rescue the cloned agent.”

Matthews’s eyes glazed briefly. (Consulting whom? Severed from the ’net, Feulner had never felt so alone.) “Rescue? What an interesting verb.”

Dennis refused to take the bait.

Matthews sighed. “I was ’netting with Aareehl. The real one, of course. The Mobies are
alien
, you know? Units are entirely expendable.”

The clone expendable? But its safety was his bargaining chip! Forgetting to speak in hypotheticals, Dennis blurted, “Aareehl has no interest in saving the clone?”

“Alien, as I said.” Matthews sucked contentedly on his water tube. “The ICU
is
curious about the bits ’n bytes of the scam. The techies would like to get the clone’s point of view on its experience. So while your notion of ‘rescue’ is amusing, there is mild interest in an extraction. Do you know
how
such an extraction would be accomplished?”

“I have some expertise in ET agents and sandboxes,” Dennis hedged. “In a spirit of goodwill, I’m open to looking at your problem. Have you found this group’s computers?”

“Right where you left them.” Another smug grin. “I don’t see much chance of giving you access. Any information you care to share will be duly noted.” Matthews paused, apparently online again. “If a booby trap or autodestruct foils the techies, though… everything changes.

“Aareehl may not care about a clone, Dennis, but it
does
care about attempted theft. If the ICU asks, Aareehl will gladly—okay, it no more understands glad than it understands empathy, so make that speedily—submit an affidavit that a clone contacted it. Your gatekeeper is not as effective as you might have liked.

“The ICU attorneys,
if
they’re told that a clone existed, will care about its demise. Never mind Aareehl’s attitude and Home’s laws. Here on Earth, the clone—any AI—is a legal person. I can imagine some interesting charges. Death in conjunction with kidnapping?”

“B-but, but.” Dennis clenched his jaws against the stammer. Things were spinning out of control. If the ICU blundered on its own into a problem in the sim,
he
could face murder charges? “You’re speculating about a technician error.”

Matthews levered himself up in the chair, exuding confidence despite his frailty. “If a bomb squad can’t disarm a bomb, who do you suppose gets blamed for any casualties?”

Dennis turned away, only to confront his own reflection in the one-way glass. Dark sweat rings stained his shirt. Wet hair clung to his forehead. His eyes darted furtively. His cheek twitched. His hands trembled.

Decision time. If he revealed how to free the clone, he gave the authorities incontrovertible proof: of illegally cloning an AI, of imprisoning it, of attempted theft from the Mobies. He would go to jail for a very long time—

But he would, eventually, get out.

And if he did nothing? Most likely, ICU “experts” would blunder into a booby trap in the sim. Or they would look around cautiously until the failsafe timer fired and zeroed everything. Either outcome would eliminate much of the evidence against him—and guarantee murder charges. Was he prepared to risk a life sentence? Licking bone-dry lips, Dennis knew that he was not.

He would give the clone to the ICU.

That left Dennis only one card to play. “Matthews, how interested are you in the
other
members of ‘the group’?”

Epilogue

“You’re looking fit,” Gil said. He was stretching a point. Seen through the prison visiting room’s thick plasteel wall, Feulner was more spectacularly muscle-bound and misshapen than ever. For six months, Feulner had had little to do
but
exercise. “Thanks for seeing me, Dennis.”

“My calendar was flexible.” White knuckles on the hand clenching the prisoner-side phone belied the humor.

As that schedule would remain for many years. Gil said, “I have a question for you.”

Feulner smiled twistedly. “Why should I answer?”

Gil squirmed in the hydraulic-assist chair.
Because I need to understand
wouldn’t work. Yes, Feulner had agreed to talk. He had also nixed the interplanetary comm session for which Gil would happily have paid. Feulner was here for only one reason: to watch Gil suffer. Stonewalling would be part of the payback.

But Gil
did
need to understand. “Because I imagine you’ve got questions, too.” Such as how you screwed up.

Feulner blinked. Yep, he had planned to walk out. The lure of answers held him.

“All right, Matthews. Between studying the sim code and debriefing Aareehl’s clone, the ICU must know everything there is to know about how. I told you months ago who else was involved. And if you don’t know
why
—that I did it for the money and the challenge—then you’re even more naïve than the rest of your damned family. What the hell else is there to be curious about?”

Gil had wondered through his whole flight: Was he kicking a man while he was down? Wasn’t that wrong? Maybe, but Gil no longer cared. Feulner had only himself to blame.

“Dennis, you spent decades in the Interstellar Commerce Union, a part of the grandest creation of eleven intelligent species. Was that all about, and always about, corruption? Did you plan your entire career around succeeding to the position from which you could betray an enormous trust?”

“You’re not listening.” Feulner stood, leering down at Gil. “Some of it was about putting you Matthewses in your place. So tell your whole family I was right. I was right! There was a way into a sandbox.
I
found it. Do you find that surprising, little man?”

“No.” Gil stared back. “What does surprise me is how little you learned, when you had the chance, about ETs and their agents.”

Such as that individual Moby units are nonsentient. That the Moby agent, and so its clone, was modeled after the one-per-continent, highly precious collective consciousnesses.

You should have called my bluff, Feulner.

“But congratulations anyway on your success, Dennis. Now you can devote your talents”—with great effort, Gil leaned forward enough to rap feebly on the harder-than-diamond partition—“on a way out of
this
sandbox.”