Leon’s face twisted up in horror.
“Uh, is this supposed to make him feel better?” Vito called out.
“Sorry, not that. But let me get to the point. ELOPe has done some amazing things. Even before I could communicate with ELOPe, I could trace the impact he was having on the world. Through better, earlier detection of heart issues and robotic surgery techniques, ELOPe reduced death from heart disease by twenty percent. Through techniques I still don’t understand, ELOPe has reduced deaths from cancer by nearly forty percent. In what used to be the third world, ELOPe reduced by half the number of people without access to clean water, improved access to medical care and increased life expectancy in Africa by fifteen years. That’s about thirty-million lives saved per year. And that doesn’t even get into economic, social, or technological benefits.”
“Like the Mesh,” Vito said.
Mike looked at Vito, nodding, and then turned back to Leon. “So I’ve tried to make peace with what happened to David, and all the other people ELOPe screwed up. The way I’ve rationalized it was that ELOPe was the equivalent of a newborn child. Any young life-form makes mistakes. But a human baby is surrounded by caretakers who can limit the damage. And the worst they can do is break a coffee table. We didn’t have caretakers for AI then. And obviously AI can do a whole lot more.”
Leon shrugged.
“Look, I know it’s little compensation for the way you’re feeling,” Mike went on, “but there’s no way you could have known about this or have been able to think through it all ahead of time. ELOPe and I have been thinking about this for years, and we still don’t have the situation under control.”
“Mike, we have another issue.”
Mike and Leon glanced toward the wall speaker at the sound of ELOPe’s voice.
“Yeah?”
“From what I can tell, the military is starting to respond. Via satellite analysis, I see multiple older planes, A-10 attack planes primarily, being scrambled. My models all indicate that this attack by the Mech War Tribe would cause the military to try to retaliate in force. That would be standard military doctrine for a situation like this.”
“But who will they retaliate against?” Mike asked. “The virus is distributed among all computers. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s correct. No simulation I’ve run would suggest that reasonable military action against the virus would work. The virus has three key advantages. It’s fully distributed, commands more advanced firepower, and can theoretically outsmart the humans in both strategic and tactical action.”
“But the Mech War Tribe wasn’t very smart to attack in the first place,” Leon said, “so it’s hard to say that it’s thinking strategically.“
“That’s why I said theoretically. However, it’s likely that the Mech War Tribe wasn’t aware of my knowledge, and didn’t account for my ability to defend against their attack. Had I not intervened, they would have destroyed that base. And had the attack succeeded, Mech War Tribe might have begun systematically destroying military bases.”
“Hey ELOPe, you said before that no reasonable military action would work.” Vito said. “Is there some unreasonable action that would work?”
“If I run the simulations out far enough, after military actions and counter-actions run to completion, it’s likely that the human population would be angry enough and tenacious enough to win by sheer force of numbers. Humanity is distributed just as the virus is distributed. A hammer or a rock would be sufficient to destroy a computer, whereas the typical computer cannot kill a human.”
“Is this a feasible strategy?” Mike asked.
“Only if you can accept the loss of up to ninety-eight percent of humans and the average level of technology moving back to horses and buggies.”
“Holy shit,” Mike breathed, leaning back in his chair with a thump. He covered his face with his hands.
“What are the alternatives?” James asked from the second row of seats.
“I’ve communicated with the viruses, including the Mech War Tribe, and they’d like to meet. They are requesting we form a consensus council, which appears to be their mechanism for decisions at the highest level of their culture. They’ve asked that we include five representatives from humanity, and five representatives from the virus. I’ve suggested we meet in Switzerland, which has strong connotations of neutral territory for most humans. Sister Stephens and Sister PA-60-41 of the Mech War Tribe have agreed.”
“Great,” Vito said, “but how the hell do we get representatives of humanity to agree?”
As Vito spoke, the plane settled down onto the rooftop.
“We’re here,” Mike called out. “Let’s get inside and then we can finish this discussion.”
Mike led the small group out of the plane and through a rooftop doorway into the massive data center. “We built this facility about five years ago. We were diverging from Avogadro. ELOPe was a fully self-conscious entity and it made sense to cut the cords. We built ten independent data centers just to house ELOPe. ELOPe still has access to Avogadro’s computers.”
“So Avogadro knows about ELOPe?” Vito asked as they passed down a staircase.
“Not so much,” Mike answered, holding a security door open for them to pass through. “Technically, all of this is held by an independent corporation, which is itself held by a series of shell companies. There are no actual living owners. Just some fictitious people, each of whom is simulated by ELOPe on demand when electronic signatures are needed. It’s the best we could do to create an independent legal entity for ELOPe.”
“So you’re hacking Avogadro’s network?” Leon asked, looking at the racks of computers humming in the data center as they passed through.
“No, no,” Mike chuckled. “ELOPe is an independent contractor for Avogadro. He’s responsible for augmenting security, improving efficiency of applications, and periodic strategic suggestions. In return, he gets access to their computer power. ELOPe actually works for quite a few companies, which is where his income stream lies. Meanwhile, I’m the sole human employee of the company.”
“But how do you maintain all these computers?” Vito asked. “You’ve got a million computers.” Vito gestured toward the massive room, the size of several football fields.
“Look, there.” Mike pointed toward the end of one row, where two robots were manipulating a rack of computers using their arms.
“I thought they were still having problems programming robots for generalized tasks,” Leon said.
“Humans are. ELOPe isn’t. ELOPe will run a subset of himself to run the bots — generalized goal-oriented, movement and visual algorithms. Pretty much everything minus the language and generalized intelligence components.”
Mike opened another heavy duty security door. “Welcome to my lair.”
The group filed through the door into Mike’s main workroom, which overlooked the data center. Mike noted that ELOPe had been busy, adding several desks and workstations to the room. The teenagers immediately wandered around the room, intrigued by the awesome technology available. ELOPe was obviously showing off, making maximum use of the wall-sized display at one end of the room to show simulations he was running, and he also had the experimental holo-projector displaying a 3D model of the world, a live satellite view overlaid with annotations of key events.