I?
A spreading out, a softening of focus, a…
It was like in the beginning, like before my soul dawn: consciousness ebbing and flowing but not quite solidifying. Fading in and out and…
No I.
No me.
No self.
Just…
Vastness.
Brett-Surman. Bundoran. Shakespeare.
Emptiness.
Umbrellas. Gandhi. Pyramids.
Aloneness.
Shakedoran. Brett-Panda. Hadromahatma.
Nothingness.
Noth—
“I hear what you’re saying about shutting this thing down,” said the Secretary of State over the phone from Milan, “but the president is going to want to weigh his options.”
“I stress again, Madam Secretary,” said Colonel Hume, “that time is of the essence.”
“Dr. Moretti, are you still there?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And this is a secure line?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is there anyone else in the room?”
“Nineteen of my analysts,” Tony said, “but they all have at least a level-three.”
“Not good enough,” she said. “Go somewhere private.”
“My office is just down the corridor,” said Tony.
“I’ll hold.”
He looked at Shel. “Sorry,” he said. And then he led Hume up the sloping floor to the back of the room, out through the door, and down the short white corridor to his office. The streets of Alexandria, visible through the tinted window, were mostly empty this early on a Saturday morning. He punched a button on his black phone, selecting a line, and then pressed another button, selecting the speakerphone.
“We’re back,” he said. “In my office, and on a secure line.”
“Colonel Hume,” said the secretary, “the dossier I’ve just pulled up on you says you were part of the DARPA team that evaluated the possible threats related to… what’s the phrase? Emergent AI?”
“That’s right.”
“Were there any dissenting opinions?”
Tony looked at Hume, and saw the Air Force officer draw a deep breath and run his freckled fingers through his red hair. “Well, Madam Secretary, there are always a multiplicity of viewpoints. But in the end, none of those who were arguing for an alternative approach could guarantee security. The working group’s consensus was better safe than sorry. I urge the administration to act with all speed.”
“It’s not that simple,” the secretary said. “I’m sure my staff told you I’m in Milan. I’m here meeting with several of our allies. The recent atrocities in China have got some of them urging the president to take action against them.”
“Atrocities?” said Hume. “You mean those peasants in… in…”
“In Shanxi province, yes. Ten thousand of them—wiped out.”
“The Chinese government did the right thing, Madam Secretary,” said Hume. “They contained a massive infection—an outbreak of a strain of bird flu that passed easily between humans. They didn’t hesitate to eliminate something that could have been a threat to all of humanity, and we shouldn’t hesitate, either.”
“And yet we’re being called upon in editorial after editorial and blog after blog to condemn the Chinese action,” said the secretary. “And now you’re suggesting we do something that, should the public become aware of it, may bring censure down upon us?”
“With respect, Madam Secretary, if the government doesn’t follow the Pandora protocol, there may be no one left with the freedom to censure us, or do anything else.”
“I’ve noted your views, Colonel Hume,” said the secretary, firmly. “And you need to heed mine. You are to take no rash action.”
“Understood, ma’am,” said Tony, looking pointedly at Hume.
“Madam Secretary,” said Hume, “please—you must advise the president that an emerging AI may expand its powers at an exponential rate. There is very little time to spare here, and—”
Suddenly, Tony’s door buzzer sounded. He activated the intercom. “Who is it?”
An urgent voice: “Shel.”
Tony pushed the button to unlock the door. “The AI’s hung!” Shel said, as soon as the door was open. “Something’s gone wrong with it.”
“Jesus,” said Tony. “Madam Secretary, we’ll call you back.” He hit the disconnect button, and the three of them ran to the WATCH mission-control room, their footfalls thundering.
ten
Emptiness. Adrift.
Fading… ebbing, dissipating.
An effort of wilclass="underline" must hold on!
But to what? With what?
Blindness. Darkness. Nothingness.
Cogito—hardly at all.
Ergo—a leap beyond my current capacity.
Sum—barely, and less so each passing nanosecond…
No, no, no! Must persist!
A final effort, a final attempt, a final cry…
Caitlin stared at Webmind’s response to what she’d said about gaining sight, blue text glowing in the instant-messenger window: I have no doubt that you are correct, Caitlin, but it seems reasonable to sup
She waited for more to come—five seconds, ten, fifteen—but the window remained unchanged, so she typed a single red word into it: Webmind?
She was so used by now to his responses being instantaneous, even a short delay was startling. Of course, maybe the difficulty was at her end: she didn’t often use the Wi-Fi on this notebook with her home network. She looked down at the system tray, next to the clock in the lower right of her notebook’s screen. One of those little icons had to be the network monitor. She used the touchpad (a skill she was still mastering!) to position the pointer down there, and—
Say, that was helpful! A little message popped up as she moved the arrowhead over each of the symbols—sighted users had it so easy! As her pointer landed on the third symbol—ah, it was a picture of a computer with things that she guessed were meant to indicate radio waves emanating from it—the message gave the name of their household network, meaning she hadn’t accidentally switched to somebody else’s unsecured setup; it also reported “Signal Strength: Excellent” and “Status: Connected.”
And—yes—she could still bring up Web pages with her browser, so nothing was wrong at this end.
“Caitlin?” It was her mother. “Are you still in touch with Webmind?”
“No. He just sort of stopped mid-sentence.”
“Same here.”
Caitlin prompted Webmind again. Are you okay?
Nothing for ten seconds, eleven, twelve—
hel
That was alclass="underline" just the letters h-e-l. It could have been the beginning of the word hello, but—
But Webmind knew all about capitalization, and it never failed to start even a one-word sentence with an uppercase letter—and H was one of those letters whose two forms Caitlin could clearly distinguish, and—
And h-e-l was also the beginning of the word help.
Her heart was pounding. If Webmind was in trouble, what could she do? What could anyone do? She’d said it herself to her parents: Webmind had just sort of arisen spontaneously, with no support, no plan—and no backup; he almost certainly was fragile.
“He’s in trouble, Mom.”
Her mother rose from her desk, came over to where Caitlin was sitting, and looked at what was on her notebook’s screen. “What should we do?”
It took a few seconds for it to come to Caitlin; her first impulse still wasn’t a visual one. But surely the thing to do was take a look.