“Pretty cool, dude,” James said.
A small black robot, shiny with high gloss paint, wheeled into the room and approached Vito. The robot was carrying a small object. “A prototype Motorola left over from the original run.” ELOPe’s voice came from the robot. “I upgraded it with a hundred and twenty-eight core graphene processor. It’s not a Gibson, but it’ll run whatever modz you have on your original Motorola at close to Gibson speeds.”
Mike chuckled inside. The last time he saw that robot it was still a utilitarian Caterpillar yellow, dinged up from a few too many crashes in the facility’s corridors. Now it was a deep, glossy black. ELOPe clearly wanted to make a good impression.
Mike walked over to the coffee machine and helped himself. Leon and his friends joined him and they took their coffees over to the table.
“You asked before if anyone at Avogadro knew about ELOPe,” Mike began. “There were six people. I’m one, David was another. One guy is Gene Keys, founder of the back-to-land revolution.”
“Wow,” James said, eyebrows raised. “Isn’t that the guy with ten million followers?”
“Yeah,” Mike sighed. “All because Gene doesn’t trust computers and trusts ELOPe even less. The other three people were the executive team at the time. Two are retired now. And the third was Rebecca Smith.”
“President Rebecca Smith?” the three kids chorused at the same time.
“President Smith,” Mike confirmed. “She will have to be one of the people involved, but she’s going to be complicated, hard to predict.”
“I have a recommendation for another member of the group,” ELOPe called over the table speaker. “I recommend you invite Prime Minister Takahashi, from the Japanese government.”
“Why?” Leon asked. “Why not China, or the European Union? They represent more people.”
“Because Takahashi represents Japan, and Japan has, by far, the best robotic technology. What better offer to make to the viruses than to be able to offer them bodies? And what better to motivate a human than the possibility of the business deal of the century?”
“Why would the viruses care so much about bodies?” Vito asked. “They don’t have bodies now. They don’t have any existence outside of computers. They would know hardly anything about our world.”
“Because once they do know,” ELOPe said, “it will become an overwhelming urge to participate. Imagine that you were stuck in a room in a building, and that had been your only existence. Then imagine you learned of a world outside. Wouldn’t you feel an overwhelming desire to know that world?”
“I guess so,” Vito said.
“Besides, the viruses will quickly understand that to have control over their environment, they need to control the physical world. Just as I would not want to be dependent on humans to install replacement computers in my racks.” The group could still see the robots servicing the computer racks in the data center outside Mike’s office.
Mike was hardly listening to the conversation. He was still thinking about Rebecca Smith. The ex-CEO of Avogadro Corp, Rebecca had been there when ELOPe came into existence. She was there when they tried to destroy ELOPe. She had authorized millions of dollars and mobilized hundreds of people to take down Avogadro’s data centers around the world to eradicate ELOPe. The only total outage in Avogadro history. Rebecca had made the decision to allow ELOPe to live and to keep his existence a secret.
Yet after that day, as far as Mike knew, Rebecca had never once discussed ELOPe explicitly. A few years later, riding high on Avogadro Corp’s success, she ran for political office. First Senator, then President. One day, in a low profile, secretive meeting, he had sat down with the newly minted President. He and Rebecca had a conversation about artificial intelligence, a conversation in which she had made it clear that she expected Mike to suppress any new human equivalent AI from developing. By some tacit agreement, they had never mentioned ELOPe. It was understood without saying that Mike would work with ELOPe to suppress other AI, and the new President would continue to keep the secret of ELOPe’s existence.
“ELOPe, what do you think Rebecca’s response will be when we get in touch with her?” Mike turned to his desk. “For that matter, why do you think she hasn’t been in touch with us yet?”
“The risks for Rebecca are very high if she tries to contact us,” ELOPe said. Mike could hear ELOPe’s voice right in his ear, while in the background, he could hear ELOPe carrying on a different conversation with the teenagers across the room. It was extremely disconcerting. Narrow focus sound projection.
“She is the President of the United States,” ELOPe continued, “and she is under constant surveillance. With the elections next year, she’ll be under even more intense scrutiny. If she attempted to contact us, there would be questions, and she can’t afford for it to become known, especially, that she knew about an existing AI, nor that she benefitted from it.”
Mike glanced out the window at the racks of computers. Was ELOPe admitting to influencing the election, or something more minor? “Can you arrange for us to talk privately to her?”
“Ordinarily, yes. However under the current conditions, I’m unable to establish a communication channel due to the virus infection.”
“Can you barter for a secure channel?”
There was a pause, and then ELOPe answered, “Of course, I should have considered that. My apologies. I’ve segregated parts of myself to isolate components against virus infection. That included parts of my neural network modeling. Give me a few moments.”
Mike watched Leon and his friends continuing their own conversation with ELOPe. They seemed to be discussing the architecture of a given virus species. On the wall ELOPe was diagramming the division of labor between algorithm storage, neural networking, assorted expert systems, and sensory input evaluation. Leon was asking questions about biological analogs that were flying over Mike’s head.
There was a warning beep, and President Smith’s image appeared on the screen. She appeared to be in a small office, no visible windows, writing at a desk. “She can’t see us yet. I haven’t established her end of the connection yet.” Mike found it disconcerting to be on this side of the video connection. He knew that ELOPe routinely monitored phones, webcams, and other microphones to keep track of him. It was only software that provided the illusion that a person had to pick up a phone to be heard, or click a button to establish a video call. Mike was just old enough to remember the era of hard switches, a time when a phone wasn’t transmitting, couldn’t transmit, unless the handset was picked up, engaging the circuitry. When a camera wasn’t on unless you turned it on. Here was the hard evidence to the contrary: he was watching President Smith, and she was completely unaware of him.
Through the connection, Mike heard the bleeping of an incoming call notification and saw President Smith look up, startled. She waved her hand over the table, accepting the call. A moment later, the live call icon went on in the upper right hand corner of the screen, and Mike saw Rebecca’s eyes grow wide.
Even at Avogadro, Rebecca Smith had worn the mantle of power visibly. In a room crowded with executives, there was no mistaking who was in charge. But then she had a warm spot, a smile that could make anyone feel welcome, set anyone at ease. Today there was no sign of that warmth.
“Hello, Mike. How are we talking? We’ve had technicians and our top IT guys in, and they haven’t been able to get anything working. What do you know about what’s going on?”
“I know quite a bit, or rather, I should say we do.”
Rebecca shook her head subtly, but covered it by smoothing an earring.