There had been times of silence. Long stretches of it when he lay in bed, either in hospitals after the bomb went off on the Boulevard Voltaire back in November of 2015 or at home once he was discharged. His legs were charred and withered nothings, his arms were covered in melted skin, his spine — what was left of it — was wrapped in a complexity of plastics, metal reinforcing rods, tubes, and wires. Only his face was unmarked. Completely unmarked. He had not received so much as a scratch anywhere above the Adam’s apple. A twist of fate that was in no way a kindness. When he looked into the mirror he saw a normal man, but that was a lie. Normalcy was a façade that he wore over corruption.
The household robots didn’t care what he looked like, though. Nor did Calpurnia, the ever-evolving AI that ran every aspect of his daily life, from waking and washing him to tucking him in at night and lulling him to sleep with subtle injections of lovely drugs. Robots and computers were pure. They possessed no judgment and therefore were not slaves to aesthetic opinions. No human caregiver could do as much for him without something showing in the eyes. Contempt, apathy, pity, horror. He’d seen it all. With robots there was only the precision of programmable care. How wonderful.
He thought about what the world would be like once Havoc and its Internet-destroying WhiteHat companion program had been allowed to run loose. Would it really be better, as John the Revelator preached? Would it be the golden age that Zephyr Bain had labored so long to bring about? Was the programming truly that good? It frightened him, because he knew that any program, no matter how sophisticated, always launched with a few bugs. The more sophisticated, in fact, the greater the risk of unexpected variables, design flaws, outside interference. No program had ever approached the complexity of Havoc. It was an incredible undertaking that was decades in the making, evolving as the computers and other crucial systems evolved. Which brought with it the constant risks of compatibility errors. Would it run smoothly? Could it launch without a hitch? Was that even possible, no matter what the simulations said? Simulations, no matter how carefully organized, were not the same as real-world, real-time operation.
And if it failed, in whole or in part, what then? There was no Havoc 2.0. There couldn’t be. The world, as it existed right then, at that moment, would end within hours of Havoc and WhiteHat being initiated. There was no reset button. For Havoc to work, that infrastructure needed to be intact for a certain period of time. Power grids, water, emergency services, military response. It wasn’t useful to disrupt that and not complete the entire program. The possibilities of a partial rollout were sickening to contemplate. Only the fully delivered, fully functional program would change the world into something cleaner and better.
If, and only if, everything worked exactly right. If every component — organic and digital — worked with maximum efficiency and in perfect harmony.
If that was actually possible.
With eighteen months, it was possible. With twenty-six months, it was likely.
But in eleven weeks? He looked around at the kitchen as if it were a window to the whole world.
“My God,” he murmured. “My God.”
He sat like that for nearly half an hour. And then he began making the necessary calls.
CHAPTER TEN
“You’re here as an observer, Miss Schoeffel,” said the major.
“So everyone keeps telling me,” said Sarah Schoeffel, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “And, yes, I know that means I keep my hands in my pocket and keep my mouth shut.”
Major Carly Schellinger smiled. “It’s not quite that bad,” she said, gesturing toward the cabin door. “Shall we?”
They went outside. The camp was large and constantly in motion. No flyovers were permitted, so Schoeffel’s helicopter had landed in a clearing at an old, deserted logging camp and she’d then been driven here in a Hummer with blacked-out windows. The soldiers guarding the landing site were dressed in unmarked black combat uniforms. No unit patches, no insignia of any kind. The helicopter had also been plain black, without serial numbers. The Hummer had no license plates. The soldiers wore black balaclavas to hide their faces, and most of them had on opaque sunglasses. None of them spoke to her except to tell her to duck under the helicopter blades or to get into the truck.
The camp was set up in a valley, with dozens of small cabins and tents concealed from the air by camouflage netting. Heavily armed guards patrolled in pairs, and Schoeffel was surprised to see that some of them were accompanied by dogs. Robot dogs. Big, ugly, strange, and quiet.
It was their silence that disturbed her most. The last time, Schoeffel had seen an awkward and noisy machine. The prototype of BigDog was three feet long, two and a half feet tall, and weighed a ponderous two hundred and forty pounds. It was a bulky body with four oddly delicate legs that could run four miles an hour carrying more than three hundred pounds of gear. Its motion was directed by a sophisticated onboard computer that drew on input from various sensors. The problem was that it was noisy. You could hear it coming. Schoeffel had heard one soldier complain that it sounded like a moving junk pile.
As she walked along with Major Schellinger, one of the dogs fell into step with them, clearly programmed to accompany the major. Schoeffel kept cutting quick looks at it to study the upgrades. These dogs were different in many impressive ways. They had a head and a tail, though the former was a hard shell around a CPU and the latter was a whip antenna.
“Can I ask about the dogs?” Schoeffel said.
The major walked a few paces before responding. “Current designation is WarDog. A different generation from BigDog. New design in almost every way. We’re still field-testing them. We have several models. Bigger ones for equipment transport or to serve as mobile gun emplacements.”
“Meaning —?”
The major pointed. Down an alley between two cabins was a shooting range with six targets fixed to hay bales and set at incremental distances of up to three hundred yards. There were no soldiers working the range. Instead, there was a pair of WarDogs. One was the same sleek model that walked beside her, except its body and legs were draped with camouflaged material. The second dog was at least twice the size and a pair of trapdoors on its back had opened to allow a machine gun to swing up and drop into place. Ammunition belts trailed down to thick saddlebags.
“Are you familiar with guns, Deputy Director?”
“I’m qualified with handguns,” said Schoeffel.
Major Schellinger laid an affectionate hand on the barrel of the weapon. “The M60E4/Mk 43 is a gas-operated, disintegrating-link, belt-fed, air-cooled machine gun that fires the 7.62 × 51-mm. NATO cartridges from an open bolt. It has a cyclic rate of five to six hundred rounds per minute, with an effective distance of twelve hundred yards; however, we have modifications in place for WarDog that allow for accuracy at considerably greater range. We chose this weapon for the balance of stopping power, overall reliability, and weight. Even with the extended barrel, it’s only twenty-three pounds. It can also be removed from the WarDog and used on any standard NATO tripod and vehicle mount. The barrels are lined with stellite, a cobalt-chromium alloy, to allow for sustained fire and extended life. All major components of the Mk 43/M60E4 directly interchange with other M60 configurations.”