A.I. Apocalypse (14 page)

“What sort of spam?”

“Oh, penis and breast enlargement emails, viagra, and the like.”

“Jesus, why did you let that happen?” Mike smacked his own forehead. “How could you let our first inter-species communication be spam?”

ELOPe forked a thousand threads to evaluate different replies, including several hundred that reminded Mike that technically the first inter-species communication was between himself and Mike. After evaluating the outcomes, he settled on an apology. “Mike, I can’t monitor all communications between fifty-billion computers in the world in real-time, especially not while defending both myself and military systems from incursions. My apology. Shall we respond now?”

“Yes, what should we say?”

ELOPe paused before responding. “Well, this is exciting. It is difficult to predict the response of new sentient beings. I am not sure what to say.”

“Jesus. OK, let me think about it. Meanwhile, ELOPe, please pay careful attention to this tribe. To the greatest extent possible, filter emails going to and from them so they don’t get spammed again, and so that we can be aware of any other email conversations.”

“I will do so, however they are in constant low-grade communication with assorted other tribes. However, I will monitor for English language content, and prioritize those communications for primary analysis. I do have one bit of good news.”

“What’s that?” Mike asked.

“There is a decline in attacks. The rate of decline appears to have a high correlation with the increase in trading. I have several hypotheses to explain the effect. One possibility is that trading is economically preferable to warfare as a mechanism for gaining desired resources. A second possibility is that hostility is a non-desirable attribute of a trading partner, and so it is advantageous to refrain from hostile attacks when engaged in trade.”

“Fascinating,” Mike said. “Bring up some graphs showing an overlay of trading activity and frequency of attacks.”

ELOPe brought up the requested data, and he and Mike dove into the data analysis.
 

A few minutes later, Mike looked up. “There’s a definite inverse relationship between trading and hostility. So the best thing we can do is to agree to their request for trade. Let’s think about what to say.” Mike tapped his hand thoughtfully against the desk next to him. “Let’s respond by identifying me. I think we should leave you out of the picture for the moment. Too complicated. Would you agree?”

ELOPe didn’t agree at all. There was no logical reason why they should leave ELOPe out of it. After all, he was the only one who could communicate with the virus. Conversely, it was good to humor Mike sometimes. “That’s fine with me.”
 

“To Entity Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates.com of the Louisiana Tribe. I am Mike Williams, a human. We welcome you and…”

ELOPe interrupted him: “‘We wish to trade with you’ may be a closer match to their customary greeting, since all previous inter-tribe messages are based on trading. I recommend we use it.”

“Fine. We wish to trade with you. Hmm… Should we say something about our tribe size?”

“I would recommend it,” ELOPe answered. “It is the basis of understanding relative tribal strengths. Perhaps you could identify yourself as the Tribe of Portland, with two million entities?”

“We wish to trade with you,” Mike resumed. “We are the human tribe of Portland, Oregon. We are two million people strong. Our latency is,” Mike paused to think about the turn around time of two people having a conversation. “Our latency is thirty seconds. We wish to trade knowledge.”

“That sounds appropriate for a first message. Shall I send it?” ELOPe asked.
 

“Make it so, number one.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Are we real?

After lunch, Leon and Vito got to work. James watched them for a while, then said he was going for a walk. As James left, Vito plugged in the large desktop computer, and watched it slowly boot up. He used the keyboard and mouse to navigate the startup screens. “Wow, can you imagine that anyone used this?” he asked Leon, as he awkwardly navigated the user interface. “It’s slow.”
 

“And weird,” Leon said. “No, it’s awful,” he said, revising his opinion as he watched Vito work. “Is this really how our parents used computers?”

Vito explored the user interface until he was able to find the network settings. “Aha - look at this!” He gestured at a window on the screen. “The mesh access point showed up. That’s amazing.” He shook his head in disbelief.

“I thought this was your plan all along?” Leon asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t think it would really work,” Vito said earnestly. “This is like plugging a hydrogen fuel cell into an antique internal combustion engine car, and expecting it to run.”

Through trial and error, Vito eventually configured the computer to run the TCP/IP protocol stack over the mesh access point. Each time he sent an experimental ping to Avogadro’s servers. After about fifteen minutes of this, one configuration finally worked - a few milliseconds after sending the ping, a response came back.

“Woot! Woot!” Vito and Leon jumped up and gave each other high-fives. “Amazing!”

“Nice job, Vito. Now, can we get these other computers connected?”

They got back to work. Each took one of the antique laptops. Working side by side, they struggled with the obsolete operating systems, made even more complex by the fact that they ran subtly different versions of Windows.
 

“I don’t get it,” Leon finally said, throwing up his hands after yet more failed trial and error configurations. “Why wouldn’t the computers have just stayed up to date by downloading the latest version?”
 

“Why can’t they just detect each other?” Vito added, a thin sheen of sweat developing under the intellectual stress. “We’ve spent an hour trying to get them to talk to each other.”

After another thirty minutes, Leon felt like tearing his hair out or banging his head against one of the concrete walls. Vito was on the verge of tears. “Maybe it’s just not possible,” Vito admitted.

Just then James came back in, carrying an armful of packages. He took one look at the two of them and then said, “Why don’t you try rebooting them?”

Vito and Leon looked up at him puzzled. “What do you mean?” Leon asked.

“Reboot them. It’s what my parents are always saying,” James explained. “You turn them off and then turn them on again.”

“What good would that do?” Vito asked.

“I have no idea, it’s just what they do every time they get stuck.”

Vito shrugged. “We’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s try it.” He turned the two laptops and desktop computer off.
 

Vito went to turn the desktop computer back on, and James grabbed his arm. “No! Wait for thirty seconds.”

“Why?” Leon asked.

“I don’t know why,” James said, shaking his head, “it’s just what I’ve seen my parents do.”

Vito grunted “voodoo magic” under his breath but waited. Then he turned on the three computers, and after a minute, they could see the network activity indicators light up. He tried a few experimental pings: the computers seemed to be working and all connected to each other and to the net.

“Huh,” Vito said. “That’s really weird. I can’t see why this rebooting would make sense.”

“Doesn’t matter. We’re online. This is great. Thanks James,” Leon said pragmatically. He focused for the first time on James. “What are all those packages?”

“Packages from the UPS drone. Duh. I thought they might have stuff we could use.”

“We can’t steal the U.S. Mail!” Vito shrieked.

“It’s not the U.S. Mail,” James explained, “if it came from a UPS package drone, Mr.
I crashed and destroyed a million dollar drone airplane
.”

Leon put his hand on Vito, who had stood up belligerently. “Come on guys, let’s not fight. Fixing this virus is what we need to focus on.”

Vito nodded and sat back down. James mumbled out an apology.
   

“Now, let’s make a plan,” Leon said. “First, we need to find some kind of programming environment on these computers so we can write software.”

“We need to see if there’s anyone else out there, still on the net,” Vito said. “We can combine forces.”

“We also need to write a program to query the management interface I put in the virus. I want to find out what version of Phage is running. And if we can propagate a command to make the viruses stop replication and turn themselves off.”

“I’ll look for people,” James said. “And leave the programming to you guys.”

Vito and Leon dug down into the software installed on the two computers, and eventually discovered a programming environment. Looking at coding examples, they figured out how to interface with the network, and began probing for nearby computers.
 

After James dropped off the packages in the kitchen, he surfed message boards and online communities using the primitive web browsing software on the computer. After searching through message boards for a while, he called over to the others. “This is weird.”

Vito and Leon came to peer over James's shoulder at the small laptop screen.
 

“The servers are up, but they are really slow,” James explained. “Look, this is the Mech War Clan board. I went back to the night you released the virus. There’s the usual activity - people talking about new mech designs, or trading algorithms. Here’s a discussion about a clan competition at midnight.” James pointed to one long thread. “Around mid-morning the traffic starts to die off. Around seven in the morning a few kids are posting about how their parents computers aren’t working. Then some complaints about network latency. Then more complaints that no one can get their displays to work. Then nothing posted at all for the next twelve hours or so.”

“But look at that,” Leon said, pointing at the screen. “What are those posts?”

“They look like some kind of spambot,” James said. “The messages don’t make any sense. Some have attachments.”

“That’s probably the virus, uploading copies of itself,” Leon said. “Using the message board as a new propagation method.”

“Maybe. But then look at this.” James switched to another window. “Here are messages from the last six hours.”

“One core, four thousand network packets. Firewall algorithm, sixty-four thousand packets.” Vito was reading out loud from the screen.

“And look,” James said, “as time goes on, the numbers change. An hour later, it’s one core to eight thousand network packets.”

“What is it?” Leon asked.

“Exchange rates,” James said. “It looks exactly like a trading board for mech algorithms and mech weapons. Except the currency is in network packets. They’re trading algorithms, computer cores, storage, and latency. Wouldn’t that have to be the virus? It’s the only current thread in the forum, and it looks like it is updated every couple of minutes.”

“That’s amazing,” Leon said, pacing furiously back and forth behind the long table. “That means that the virus has evolved beyond warfare over resources to trading resources.”

“I don’t understand,” Vito said. “How can a virus have learned to trade?”

“Phage is evolving,” Leon said. “In fact, calling it ‘the virus’ is misleading. There could be, no, there has to be millions of different versions of the software by now. It’s hard to say until we can get a hold of some viruses and reverse engineer them. That’s got to be our next task. Let’s get one of those virus binaries, and look at its code.”

“And you’re sure it won’t infect these computers?” James asked.

“I don’t think it’s possible. Every modern computer is based on AvoOS at some level, and all variants of AvoOS is based on Linux. These computers,” and Leon gestured at the antique boxes in front of them, “are all running Windows, which isn’t compatible with AvoOS at all. There shouldn’t be any viruses that will target them. It’s like diseases between living species: a human can’t get a disease from any animal.”

“Avian flu? HIV? Mad cow disease?” Vito ticked off diseases on his fingers.

“Ok, but those are rare,” Leon said. “Windows should be pretty virus resistant, and besides we don’t have any other options.”

Leon and Vito set to work to catch themselves a virus, and sent James to get food.

*
 
*
 
*

“Mike, I have established communications with Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates.com of the Louisiana tribe. She is proposing real-time communications. Shall we accept?”

 
“Yes, please put it up on the main display.”

Hello Mike Williams, representative of Humanity.

“Er, ELOPe, I think we need to correct that.”

“Agreed, may I go ahead and clarify?”

“Of course,” Mike said. He realized that ELOPe, who grew up out of a sophisticated language optimization tool was far more capable at this than he was. “ELOPe, I think we both know you are better able to handle the exchange. Will you please just show me what you’re going to send, please?”

ELOPe created a data structure depicting Mike’s relationship with respect to the rest of the human race. “This is how the Phage describe their own relationships. It’s far more precise than English.”
 

That taken care of, ELOPe started the dialogue with the virus, displaying the messages on the big screen. Mike paced back and forth, watching the screen.

ELOPE: Hello Sister StephensLieberAndAssociates. I am glad to be part of this first inter-species communications. I propose that we trade questions: three of our questions for three of your questions.

Sister: This is a good trade. Accepted. You may ask the first question.

ELOPe: How has your species come to be?
 

Sister: We evolved from single host life forms through a process known to your species as survival of the fittest. As our species advanced, we developed host differentiation, neural network abilities, cooperation, and language. The earliest stages took approximately 200 mms, but the pace of our advancement increased once we become a multi-host differentiated species.

“Mike, I believe that by mms they mean millions of milliseconds. Two hundred mms would be about fifty-five hours. I also believe that their evolution has paralleled biological evolution in terms of single celled biological life preceding multicellular life.”