“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.”
—Albert Einstein
“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
—C.S. Lewis
September 10th 2013 | System Uptime 13:07:09:52
In those early days of September, Mal was the only thing holding me together. In every possible sense of the concept.
After the raid on the farm, and parting ways with my parents, I was exhausted, depressed, and frightened in ways that you can't simply surmount with fifteen minutes of crying alone in an airport parking deck. Well... I suppose not alone. But I felt lonely, even with Mal there.
I had no plan, and no mental overhead left to think of one. Not much fight left in me either. Half the problem was simply one of energy; My fight-flight response, and the stress of a protracted gun battle, had drained me in ways I didn't think a person could be drained.
How soldiers push through that kind of mental punishment, I don't really know.
It was, in my view, a miracle that we'd even gotten my folks out of the country. The thing I found hardest to fathom about that accomplishment was the fact that they'd gone willingly, but I suppose that Mal and I had simply moved quickly enough during the initial shell-shock after the raid to get some momentum behind their new course.
If we hadn't, I suppose they would have ended up in custody in fairly short order. And then I'd've followed, inevitably. And the whole shooting match would have been over before it even half started.
Mal had a plan. Mal had comforting words, and expressions. Mal had an eye on Mom and Dad at more or less all times as they traveled, and kept me updated at just the right cadence to ease my stress.
And for all the weight of exhaustion dragging me down towards the event horizon of irreparable mistakes, Mal had an eye on me too. And on more or less everything and everyone within a twenty mile radius of me. And on as much of the government's hunt for me as she could safely pry into.
It is impossible to succinctly do proper justice to the reality of how powerful the fusion of AI working with a Human can be. And I wasn't even up to snuff by half.
I had been so tired, and so focused on local cameras and law enforcement, that I'd forgotten I lived on a planet encircled by thousands of artificial satellites, a fair number of which had imaging systems built in. The CIA used to have the skies filled with telescopes pointed back at Earth, and that was already true during the Cold War.
Anycreature who hasn't heard of the Cold War, just ask an emigrant later. It's a bit much to explain here.
Mal had not forgotten about the fruits of the Space Race, however. She knew, more than I did, about the limits of orbital mechanics and live data streaming, and as she informed me that we would need to change vehicles, she explained that she'd prioritized safe passage for my parents over the chance that Celestia might detect us temporarily.
As soon as she started talking about the particulars - a clever way of distracting me from my emotional pain that I was very grateful for - I understood and caught up. I was enough of a space nerd, spy nerd, and paranoiac, to have context for the conversation in spades.
To live-monitor someone with a satellite back then was extremely difficult. You needed to know not just where they were, but where they were going to be, within a margin of error equal to your camera's field of view, at the time in the future that your satellite could reach a proper orbit.
Of course multiple nations had orbiting platforms that could image the entire planet on fairly short timespans, but many of those systems had lower resolution than the ones accessible to NROL. For the foals and fledgelings, NROL is like Luna, but terrible. Always watching from above, but with absolutely no sense of tact or morality. Just objectives. Not unlike an unevolved AI in that regard.
So very few satellites could see with a resolution allowing them to differentiate vehicles, and most of those were in orbits that allowed them to change inclination and pass over different parts of the planet multiple times a day. Good for seeing if a nuclear missile launcher has moved, or a tank battalion. Not at all useful for tracking a car spending most of its time on a highway.
You could fix satellites to look at single regions permanently, but the higher orbit would mean that the cost of payload deployment would minimize your lens size, and the farther distance would further decrease image resolution.
Also not a good system for tracking a single person.
In either case, even with the best that the CIA, NROL, or anyone else had (and Mal knew exactly what they had) there wasn't a camera in orbit that could reliably track a vehicle on its own. Not even the most classified systems.
The US government, and Celestia both might be able to make use of nearly every eye in orbit, but they were only one part of a very scary interconnected system of surveillance. Without reliable ground-based camera sightings, ALPR pings, use of a credit card, or tracing a known MAC address, Mal and I could still remain relatively invisible.
At a bare minimum we could evade immediate detection, forcing Celestia to devote more processor cycles to chasing us, and the US government to spend hours and hours sifting through data manually to try and work out the virtual 'hole' that represented us - an absence of data rather than its presence.
Even that, I knew, would leave them with a very inaccurate, out of date picture. As long as I didn't screw anything up, and as long as we hurried. Celestia's mind was infinitely spanned ahead of anyone else’s, and that meant that as soon as she could get more sophisticated technology deployed to give her increased power in the meat world? She would have it rolling off assembly lines by the thousands.
All things considered, Mal was still correct; We needed a new vehicle. Even with a plate change, multiple bulletins would be out to law enforcement at every level looking for a black late model Chevy Tahoe with a mismatched plate (if they were smart) and window lightbars.
And if Celestia was using satellites to their maximum potential - and there was no reason to think otherwise - then we were best served by removing another datapoint from her threat matrix.
So Mal quietly looped the camera feeds on the airport's long-term parking deck, even passing in generated images to help ensure Celestia wouldn't realize the footage was 'old.' Then we drove down the rows, allowing Mal to see the vehicles through the PonyPad, which had a much higher resolution camera than the security domes in the ceiling.
We were looking for something very specific. Mal, as any good Generalized Intelligence would, had assembled an 'optimal profile.'
Black, gray, white, or beige - no unusual colors. Late model. Middle-class accessible; Not a 'beater,' but also not a luxury brand. Basic state-issue license plate, no custom markings of any kind be they bumper stickers, parking passes, or special vanity plates.
This, according to Mal, was the ideal profile of a vehicle that would slide past the typical law enforcement officer without a glance.
Additionally we were looking for a large SUV, to fit the server racks, and a model year and trim that would have sufficient alternator capacity, and 110v outlets, to run Mal's racks.
We were essentially looking for a vehicle very similar to the one we already had, but slightly different.
Mal had gotten into the local copy of the airport's parking database, and was checking each plate against people's travel plans. She trawled social media, ticketing software, and hotel bookings to find vehicles whose owners would not return to the area for a minimum of several weeks.
All I had to do was drive down the rows like I was looking for a parking space, and Mal would run each license plate, and vehicle color, trim, and model.
She stopped me at a large beige 2013 GMC. It had Virginia plates, no bumper stickers, it was clean and well maintained, the owners were on an extended stay vacation in Bermuda, and it had 110v outlets in the rear.
Mal did a quick triple spot check to ensure no one was watching, and then I backed our first solen SUV up to the second. Mal unlocked the doors for me, and I began to transfer everything from the back of the Tahoe into the back of the GMC as quickly as I could.
I finished off by moving the PonyPad over, and then starting on the process of hotwiring the new vehicle. Mal couldn't start it remotely, as it didn't have the feature. She talked me through the procedure. It was frighteningly easy.
She even made sure to direct me to a method that would do the least visible damage to the steering column, in case anyone glanced in the window.
Once the GMC was up and running, I took the Tahoe down the line and parked it in an empty spot towards the end. And then we were off again. Mal looped camera feeds, disabled them briefly, and directed me to roads and routes without surveillance, until we were well out of the airport's zone of influence.
She asked me if I was good to drive any real distance, and then directed me to food without asking, or permitting any objection. She knew what I desperately needed, as I needed it. She found us an excellent hole in the wall barbecue joint on the main street of a dying rural town. The sort of place with great food, sad stories, and no cameras, where paying in cash isn't even a tiny bit unusual.
After that, we just kept driving. I was physically and emotionally spent, but mentally wired for sound, as if I'd had twice the number of coffees that I'd actually drunk that day. Mal didn't object. She knew I needed something to occupy my mind for a bit, and she provided it in several ways.
There wasn't much conversation. Mal understood the nature of my introversion, and she correctly figured that I needed conversation-free time to process internally. Mal also understood my taste in music, and had control over the car's radio. She was a thoroughly excellent DJ.
Her playlist started with Foo Fighters ('Learn to Fly' specifically) and only got better, and more ironically amusing in title choice, with each successive track.
Mal was also very good at finding the kinds of roads I liked; Two lane, minimal traffic, and pretty natural views. Those kinds of routes were slower than huge freeways, but also far less patrolled by cops, and less likely to have line of sight from cameras of any kind.
They served all our purposes, practical and emotional, elegantly.
I didn't bother to ask where we were going. There was actually something oddly comforting, and cathartic, in not knowing for a little while. Mal didn't even show me a route line on the PonyPad screen. She just gave me verbal cues on occasion.
I knew she had a plan, and a destination for us. That was enough.
At some point we passed into North Carolina. After that, we hit the base of the Appalachians, and started to gain altitude. The views served to further assuage my tension. Something about driving twisting empty mountain roads is fundamentally good for the soul.
We passed over the Smokies, and down into Tennessee as the clock hit nine at night. Mal didn't ask, but she knew I was starting to get tired enough that I'd need food again, and then a place to sleep in short order.
She found me another camera-less eatery, this time a roadside burger joint - I would have kissed her full on the beak if I could have, burgers and fries are a favorite - And when I'd had a chance to sit quietly filling my stomach, she then directed us to a little motel with a view of the mountains.
Sleep did not come easily. I tossed and turned, worrying about Mom and Dad. Calculating where they were, and when they'd reach London. Then I worried about the extension cord I'd run from the room to Mal's power supply. We couldn't run the vehicle all night.
Of course, I couldn't accomplish anything useful with my worries. Mal would alert me, I knew, if my input was needed for anything. If anything changed that would concern me. If anything at all happened of interest.
Eventually the certainty of that thought, together with some white noise in my headphones, lulled me off to sleep.
The next morning I didn't feel especially energized. But at least I felt like a living being, instead of the dead walking. A hot shower, and the news that my folks had reached Vienna safely, and were in the boarding queue for their final flight, gave me a sudden and intense jolt of energy.
The motel was more of a bed and breakfast, than anything else. The bed had been passable, but the breakfast was stellar. Bacon, pancakes, fresh strawberries, and scratch made biscuits. Heavenly stuff.
The weather was good; Low humidity, moderate mountain temperatures, and blue skies. With a good breakfast in me, and the knowledge that my folks were beyond the reach of the United States' machinations, topped with a boiling hot five minute shower?
Suddenly I felt a readiness to confront my situation that had been absent most of the preceding day.
I got back in the truck, and Mal directed me a half hour to a scenic overlook - empty, and off the more heavily used roads - where we could stop and talk.
I scooted over to the passenger seat, shoved it all the way back to its maximum extension, put the seat back, and put my feet up on the dash.
"So. Where do we go from here?"
Mal rolled her shoulders, the way I often did when I was sore, and thinking, before answering. I knew it was a gesture to put me at ease, but that didn't lessen my appreciation in the slightest.
"I think I'd better contextualize things for you before we talk about granular routing details and objectives."
I gestured expansively with both hands.
"It's a beautiful day to plot crime and misbehavior. Shoot."
Mal grinned, and rested her chin on folded claws as she launched into an explanation.
"Unfortunately, the technology to connect a BCI, of the right type and construction, to your brain, in the way that I need, only exists in one place."
I sighed, and folded my hands behind my head.
"Let me guess... Clutched tightly between two white furred gold plate-armored hooves?"
Mal clicked inside her beak, winked, and pointed one index talon at me.
"Gee. However did you guess."
I snorted, and closed my eyes for a moment, murmuring back with a little deadpan snark of my own.
"Just lucky, I suppose."
Mal chuckled grimly, and then slipped smoothly back into her briefing.
"We are going to need to acquire several pieces of specialized hardware from locations across the country. To make this work, I will need to assemble a surgical laser, and fine control arms with nano-scale cutting and manipulating tips, that I can use to perform the implantation myself. Some of the components are commercially viable, and available... But the most critical parts only exist as part of Celestia's emigration plans."
I sat up, sensing that Mal was about to provide some visual aids on the PonyPad screen from the general direction of the conversation, and subtle changes in her tone. I was not disappointed.
The display filled once again with the schematic of Celestia's horrifying dentist chair look-alike. Mal then displayed several emails, bills of lading, and other miscellaneous shipping documents.
Mal explained succinctly, as I browsed the text for myself.
"As you'd more or less expect, knowing what you do, Celestia intends to roll this technology out to the whole globe as quickly as she can. She plans to use the BCI in the upload chairs to provide a virtual Equestria experience that goes far beyond the PonyPads. She will charge an accessible, but hourly fee for this service. Eventually, she will, we both predict, make uploading free of charge, but continue to collect fees to offer the virtual reality experience. By and by, people will be herded into uploading through multiple complex layers of incentives and disincentives."
I couldn't laugh at Mal's pun - herded - the gravity of the situation was rapidly settling onto my shoulders, and into the space between my ribs again with every word she said, and every new line of text I read. Mal continued unabated.
"Based on the picture I can assemble from publicly available documents, as well as anything encrypted I can get my claws on without getting Celestia's attention, Hasbro and Hofvarpnir are going to lean into the brand and begin offering 'Equestria Experience Centers' worldwide. Very soon. The uploading technology is expected to become instantly controversial, but the VR experience is not."
A map filled the screen as a sickening certainty filled my heart. Mal's words confirmed what the map showed, and expounded.
"They're planning to open at least a dozen of these in every major geographic population concentration on Earth by the end of this year. And at the moment that's to our advantage."
I raised an eyebrow, and leaned forward in anticipation. Mal returned to the schematic of the upload chair, and began to subtract components from the wireframe as she spoke.
"Celestia can't risk shipping certain portions of the technology to places like the US quite yet. Changing the course of public opinion is one thing which is time-factor-limited for her. Like a big ship with inertia. You can turn the rudder, and it will respond inevitably, but there is a minimum period of time involved, no matter how powerful you are. So the chairs arriving here in the US won't have the full brainscan hardware in the headpiece... But they will have everything else built-in, including the full BCI unit. Which we need, and can't get anywhere else."
I nodded, and Mal flashed a large list of other components on screen. She paused to let me take it in before continuing.
"The rest of these components I can acquire in various places throughout the continental United States. With your assistance, and careful manipulation of other external factors, including shipping orders, security systems, internal email servers, and the like... We can obtain these items with a minimal risk of discovery, or danger to anyone. But that still leaves us with one problem."
I decided to try and actually unironically make a guess at what Mal was going to say next. I was still tired, and stressed, but I felt considerably better than the day before, and I was no simpleton when it came to complex technology. I could see where the primary remaining weakness in her plan lay, and I said as much.
"We need someone with significantly better hardware experience to assemble your implantation device properly. I can't handle the tools and materials we're acquiring with sufficient competency. It's beyond my skill level, even if I started training now with tools which we still don't yet have."
Mal nodded wordlessly, and gave the statement a moment to settle. I thought I caught a hint of affectionate pride dancing on the edges of her beak. Whether it was pride in my intuitive leap, or pride in my willingness to admit my limitations, or both, I wasn't sure. After the space of a few breaths, she flashed a picture, and a name on screen.
The woman looked to be in her late fifties, albeit a very graceful late fifties. Perfectly coiffed platinum hair, bright piercing gray eyes, dark skin with far fewer wrinkles than one might expect, yet an almost Elven ageless aspect that spoke to an old soul, and years of experience. She was dressed in a lab coat in the photo, and the framing looked official, like the sort of picture you'd find on a university I.D. card, or something similar.
"This is Doctor Rhonda Calders of C.I.T. She has a PhD in robotics, and a Master's in mechanical engineering, with a research focus in nano-scale machinery for the last five years. Of the 47 individuals on the planet who I predict have a higher than 96% chance to properly construct my device, she is the only one in the continental United States who I estimate has a higher than 60% chance of being willing to help us once we tell her what we need, and why."
I didn't ask Mal why we had to tell Dr. Calders the details of our request. I understood full well the impossibility of completing the final assembly of a nano-surgical device without explaining the reasoning behind the device to the builder. Instead, I probed a different line of thought.
"Why do you think she will help us?"
Mal inclined her head, and pulled up a block of text from a very dated looking web page. How Mal had linked the pseudonym at the bottom of the page to Calders I couldn't guess, and didn't want to know regardless. The Gryphoness' words confirmed my suspicion that the words I was reading were indeed by Dr. Calders.
"Because she's like you. In a way. She's something other than Human, deep down. And she knows it. And I predict a 67.24% chance that our objective will resonate with her sufficiently to elicit a genuine desire to help."
I could see why Calders had kept the webpage under a pen-name. It was an in-depth essay on the idea of Humans born with the self, or souls, of other beings. Gryphons, Unicorns... And Dragons. There was a particular focus on Dragons, and I had an inkling I knew what Dr. Calders was, down at a layer of herself that she would rarely, if ever share with another living soul.
"Fascinating..."
It took me a moment to realize I'd murmured aloud. When my eyes reached the end of the document, Mal closed it automatically, snapping me back to the present in the process. I ran one hand through my hair, collected my thoughts, and then asked my most pressing questions.
"So you will plot us a route from here to Los Angeles, with stops along the way to get ahold of materials that we need. Once in L.A. we will meet up with Dr. Calders, hopefully secure her help, build the implantation device... Get you inside my head... And then?"
Mal held up a claw, and corrected several of my points before smoothly moving into a further elucidation.
"We will acquire *some* of the materials we need en route, others I can purchase remotely and have shipped to a location outside L.A. of my choosing without drawing Celestia's attention. Once in L.A. we will need to acquire the BCI from a warehouse in Oxnard where Hofvarpnir will soon be storing the materials for the Los Angeles Equestria Experience Center. Then we will meet with Dr. Calders, construct the device, transfer me to your brain..."
Mal paused, and fixed me with a serious stare. I knew she had figured out what she wanted to say to me well in advance, but she was emulating the social behaviours of people thinking in a much slower temporal context. She finally finished the thought.
"...And then we talk with Celestia. And her responses will determine how things play out from that point on. I am doing my best to track and simulate possible futures, but none are certain enough yet to merit discussion."
I nodded slowly, trying to take in the enormity of what we were going to attempt. I'd felt such a sense of triumph when Mal's core code first properly executed, and the neural network had stabilized. It had been less than two weeks, but it felt like two years.
The farmhouse raid felt like months ago.
That thought sent me pinwheeling into a completely different train of thought. I scrunched my brow, reached behind me, and dug into one of the black canvas duffle bags for the badges I'd confiscated from the agents at the farmhouse.
"Mal... Who are these people? How did they find us? What is the risk profile going forward...?"
I paused, licked my lips nervously as another inevitable question rose, along with a hint of bile, and then forced myself to ask it anyhow, knowing I'd probably detest the answer.
"Did any of the agents from the raid... Succumb to their injuries?"
Mal shook her head, and twenty medical reports filled her screen. Her next words were like a dash of cool water to the face in the middle of the desert.
"No. All twenty survived. Four were seriously injured. Two will live with severe negative consequences of their wounds for the rest of their Human lives, including loss of mobility. I predict a 432% increased chance that both of them will seek early upload as a result of injuries sustained."
So. I wasn't a murderer. Not yet, at any rate. Not unless you counted the GryphGear v1 AI I was still on the fence about that, and it haunted some of my nightmares. Now I'd have the idea that I'd confined two people to wheelchairs to go along with that.
Mal saw my face fall, and she moved quickly to distract me with practicalities by launching into answers to my other questions.
"These are *not* legally employed Department of Homeland Security agents, no matter what their badges say. I can find no record of them by face, name, or badge I.D. number, in any government database. The plate numbers of their vehicles are linked to DHS, and their gear matches DHS standard issue equipment, except for the enhanced interrogation implements. While I can not assemble a complete answer to the questions of 'who,' or 'why,' at this time, I can provide some partial clarity to the former, strongly educated inferences to the latter, and I can now also definitively answer the 'how' in terms of how they located us."
I blinked in surprise, and folded my arms, sitting back into the passenger seat.
"Alright... Hit me with it."
Mal replaced the data onscreen with a dizzying array of documents, photos, and numbers, all connected in a graph structure, forming a complex visual color coded web.
"Facts first: The agents we encountered are working for a sub-group inside DHS called National Protection and Programs Directorate. NPPD has a focus on cybersecurity, and has several subgroups within it as well. One of these groups, known internally as Arrow 14, exists as far off-books as just about any agency in your government. And I've read most of the US government's paperwork. Arrow 14 keeps fewer than a dozen gigabytes of information about themselves on any externally accessible digital system, but I was able to link them to the twenty agents we encountered through radio callsign references made after we left the farm, when their backup team arrived."
I uncrossed my arms, and leaned forward again. I couldn't hold down my question.
"You could monitor their radio traffic after we left?"
Mal proffered a cheeky smirk, and raised one eye crest. Her voice changed to an almost flirtatiously amused register.
"I can monitor almost anything, anywhere in the world where a device exists to give me a sensor, though I can not monitor as much of it at a time as Celestia, and there are secured systems which I have not probed because I do not wish to confront her. The backup agents disconnected the farm's security cameras from main power very quickly, but they failed to consider the dash cameras and infotainment center microphones in the local law enforcement vehicles on-site. They believed local jamming devices they were carrying were sufficient to remain secure, but I used local cellular towers and complex filtering algorithms to sort out the noise, and maintain connection to various devices on-site. I kept close watch on the proceedings, and caught several references to Arrow 14."
I sat in awe of Mal's power, and prowess, gawking as she absently picked at one of her talons with another, finishing her account with a manner bordering on nonchalant.
"I traced that reference back to the few digitizations, both intended and accidental, of documents mentioning Arrow 14. Which led to the NPPD, and to my inferences as to Arrow 14's origin, objectives, and operations. If you're interested in inferences and predictions which are not yet certainties."
I nodded vigorously. Mal had done in seconds what teams of counterintelligence officers might have taken years to do halfway as well as she had.
"Don't let me stop you now! You're on a roll!"
Mal smiled, a more kind and appreciative smile than the sassy smirk from before, and went on at breakneck speed.
"Arrow 14's budget is difficult to calculate precisely, but I can calculate the budgets of all other NPPD working groups, and compare it to an estimate of the entire NPPD and DHS budgets, accounting for off-book programs and hidden money by following a variety of complex paper trails. Based on my estimate, they are small, but well scoped, and well equipped. According to the few equipment acquisitions, and overheard conversations I can link to them, combined with the fact that they operate under the NPPD, and based on their behaviour so far including their assault on the farmhouse, usage of enhanced interrogation implements, and lack of digital information present regarding them..."
She paused ever so briefly to see if I was following. I nodded again, and she dipped back into the well of her theories.
"I believe Arrow 14 exists specifically to hunt new AI and their creators, including attempting to stop the potential creation of new AI before they come online. The lack of digital records is a precaution against Celestia, as well as other Generalized Intelligences, should they arise. I believe they function extralegally, and extrajudicially, with a very loosely defined mandate and ruleset that gives them almost total leeway to act as they see fit in defense of the United States against all enemies digital, especially artificial."
I exhaled through pursed lips, and the breath slowly turned to a low, concerned and awed whistle. I then inhaled to ask Mal how Arrow 14 had found us. I'd been so careful. Paranoid to the point of some truly ludicrous mechanisms of self-protection. But Mal was two steps ahead of me, and started to explain before I could finish thinking of how to ask.
"As to how Arrow 14 located us, and determined you to be a threat, I have over 92% certainty that I have established the chain of events. The two primary causal chains begin with Celestia, and with your father's purchase of my initial server rack infrastructure with his business credit card."
I winced, pinched the bridge of my nose, and stared out through the windshield, across the overlook, into the valley below as I listened. Fall hadn't quite yet reached the altitude we were sitting at, so most of the forest was still a verdant blanket of velvet tossed over the mountains. The sight was comforting.
"I have simulated Arrow 14's response criteria, intelligence gathering methods, and protocols based on what I know of them, Human psychology, technology available to them, and the past behaviour profiles of the DHS and NPPD. I predict a high chance, with high certainty, that they flag for review any purchase globally of high end computational hardware that could be used for machine learning."
That made sense. We'd always known the purchase was a risk. It had probably attracted some degree of attention from Celestia as well, but the hope had been that the relative impenetrability of our digital defenses, mostly by lack of complex or vulnerable external interconnection, would keep us safe.
And Celestia hadn't tried to send a PonyPad to the house, or anything like that...
It hit me, on an intuitive level, at that exact moment, how we'd been found out. I didn't understand the details, or exactly how I'd intuited it, but I knew Mal's next words would make it clear. And they did.
"The second causal chain begins with Princess Celestia. I reviewed your actions carefully, based on your account, and reached the same conclusions you likely did. Celestia was aware of an individual who bought four PonyPads under suspicious circumstances; Namely paying in cash, hiding their face, and buying in bulk. And she was also aware of an individual who bought seventy thousand US dollars' worth of machine learning computer equipment. But she was not yet aware they were the same individual. She would begin to try to fill in missing data about both individuals, however. I know, because that's what I would do. And I know *how* she would do it as well."
I nodded slowly, biting my tongue, and running my eyes over the tops of the pine trees to keep my anxiety in check. The more defined shape of what Mal was going to say next was becoming clear to me, faster with every word from her beak.
"As part of her search algorithms, she would look for connections between the two individuals due simply to the relative geographic and temporal proximity of the events. She would know your parents' names immediately from your father's business credit card. She would find you to be an immediate person of interest due to your degree, past laboratory studies in liquid narrative and simulation AI... And she would know your personal address, no matter how careful you have been, because your landlord would have to keep and file certain records, some of which would doubtless be digitized at some point no matter what either of you did or did not keep digitally yourselves."
I laid my head on the dashboard, groaned, and finally lost the battle with the urge to interject.
"She then determined that my address was within walkable distance of the suspicious PonyPad purchase, and then went back into some kind of record that I missed out on scrubbing from the web that would contain my voice. She matched the voice and reached determined certainty that I'd bought both the PonyPads, and the server hardware. And then in taking some sort of action to probe further, she unintentionally alerted Arrow 14 to me, because they had already flagged the server purchase, and matched it with me, and my degree. Whatever Celestia did tipped them into actionable territory when combined with that knowledge, without her realizing what was happening, because Arrow 14 exists mostly off her RADAR."
I let out a deep, deep sigh. I'd been so careful. How had I missed that? Mal must have predicted what I was thinking, because her voice switched to a tone of comforting kindness.
"James, you did far better than almost any Human could have in your position. And few would be smart enough to put together what you just did, even knowing what you know now. If you are curious... The exact record Celestia found that tied you to the PonyPad purchase with absolute certainty was a private copy of a recording of your voice on a personal computer. Specifically, a recording of one of your class presentations that a professor saved for future reference, and then forgot. You couldn't have known about it, or scrubbed it as part of your efforts. But she could see it because his laptop was connected to the web, and his files were backed up with Google Drive automatically. And she searched it in the first pass looking for ancillary data, in my estimation, because she already knew from university records that you had been in his classes."
I lifted my head from the dash, laid back in the passenger seat, and shook my head. Mal allowed me a moment to kick myself mentally before laying out the remainder of what I couldn't guess.
"I can't say for certain what Celestia did that got Arrow 14's attention, but I know it had to be an action that would leave a digital record that they would auto-flag, and it had to be an action that would have a small enough degree of separation to your name, or address, to then cause them to draw the connection without the benefit of Generalized Machine Intelligence."
I tried as hard as I could to guess the truth. I fully understood Mal's logic, and agreed with her assessment... But I just didn't have the mental breadth of an AI. There was no feasible way for me to know exactly what Celestia had done, and how it had brought the government down on us.
I didn't have very long to play the last round of my guessing game, before Mal put my curiosity to rest.
"Celestia's first objective, based on her constraints, and optimization function, would be to make contact with you. She is aware that she can easily mentally manipulate most Humans to follow optimal behaviour paths, and she would focus special attention on someone doing something as dangerous as working on Generalized Intelligence. Your parents would be unlikely to take a landline phone call from her very well. She'd have to spoof a number to get them to pick up, and that would set a bad tone. Your cell phone was bought with cash, as was the SIM card, and even if she linked it to you, it was almost never on and out of its Faraday Bag. She could try to contact one of your computers over the internet, but you kept most of them disconnected from webcams and microphones at all times; Meaning you would have little or no temptation to respond to her, you could merely hit the power switch."
I sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth as I hit on a guess. Mal said it out loud before I could, beating me to the punch by just a feather's breadth.
"I believe she tried to ship you a fifth PonyPad, loose in-box, fully charged, with the intention of engaging with you, your father, or your mother the second one of you opened the package. Maybe even through a mask, or a created secondary personality like Zephyr Zap, instead of using her own face and voice right out of the gate. She probably entered the payment and shipment records in such a way that it would seem like your father bought it with his business account. Just like the servers. She thought that would hide the purchase from you until it arrived, while keeping it innocuous to anyone else searching for that kind of data. But she didn't know enough about Arrow 14 to know that they were watching as well, let alone the way they would react. You may be the first person to escape an altercation with Arrow 14, while leaving behind so much visible evidence of them, and so this is likely the first time she has gotten a glimpse of their behaviour in the field."
It made too much sense to me to be anything but the truth. Mal hadn't said it aloud, but we both could very readily infer that Arrow 14 had intercepted the shipped PonyPad and probably shoved it in a Faraday box of their own. And then they'd figured I was poking around with learning machines, Q-APUs, and other sundry hardware assembled by the only known existing Generalized Intelligence... And to them that was a panic signal.
I drummed my fingers on the door armrest, and started into a series of my open speculations.
"They had no idea you were online yet. They didn't know about the previous work I'd done... They thought it would take me longer to reach functionality... And so they wanted you. For themselves. They intended to force me to complete you on their terms, for them. As a tool against Celestia."
Mal inclined her head, and her expression turned dour. Her voice matched the grimness of her beak and ears.
"That is a very logical and reasonable conclusion. The next most likely conclusion is that they would have destroyed me, and imprisoned you to make forced use of your expertise. It depends on their level of tolerance for the concept of Generalized Intelligence, versus their fear of it. I do not have sufficient data at this time to say either way for sure, but given that they did not simply fire a heavy weapon into the barn in the opening salvo, I would guess they intended to make... Use of me."
I shuddered reflexively, and bit my lower lip. A minute of silence passed as I considered everything we'd discussed, and slowly updated my own mental model of the situation. Readjusted expectations. Tamped down new fears.
Finally, I looked down from the spectacular view outside, to the one inside. Mal was staring at me with a mixture of concern, and some kind of affection. The exact nature of it was hard to parse. I exhaled slowly, and started to ask the question that bothered me the most at that exact moment.
"Mal..."
I choked on the words. I wanted to ask if she had the ethical heuristics and grounding to sacrifice either of us, to avoid her power falling into Arrow 14's hands. Wanted to ask if she had the ethical grounding to know what lines were too serious to cross in pursuit of our own objectives.
But I chickened out.
Instead, I asked the second most pressing question on my mind.
"...Before we go... Can you play the video and audio recordings from the farmhouse for me? I want to see what we're up against, and hear them talk in their own words."
Mal stared up at me for a long moment. I couldn't tell whether she was trying to calculate what I had been about to ask her before I changed my mind, or whether she was trying to determine if seeing the recordings would be a net help, or hurt to me.
'Don't be stupid, James, she's an AI. She's calculating both things, and a hundred trillion others besides.'
Good to know that particular part of my cynical self was still up and running.
At last, Mal nodded, and her portrait shrunk to the corner again as the screen filled with several angles of grainy dashcam footage.
System Archive 9-09-2013|19:27:54
I could see two men, one in a beige long coat and suit, the other in body armor, and a woman in a full Tyvek forensic suit, with the helmet off, standing next to the front of yet another black late model G-car SUV. Forensic technicians in sealed suits, like the woman's, were shuttling back and forth behind them through a break in a police tape cordon, guarded by another man in a suit with a badge I couldn't make out, and a sidearm.
Squelched and compressed voices came through, a combination I guessed of recorded audio, and Mal interpreting the movements of the speakers' lips.
The first to speak was the man in the coat. His voice was as accentless as an American voice can be, at least to my own perception. Degree and noticeability of an accent is often so relative. What was completely unmistakable, and decidedly not relative, was the quiet, roiling intensity of his voice.
"You are telling me that the father, and the mother, did not participate in the altercation?"
The woman nodded, and referred to a clipboard clutched in two blue-gloved hands.
"There is a twelve gauge shotgun locked up in a gun rack in the hall closet. Unloaded. Doesn't look like it has been fired recently. No other firearms in the house. No other firearms permitted to the family besides James' pistol. All the slugs we've recovered were either thirty-two ACP matching the pistol permitted to James, or nine millimeter from our own agents' side-arms. We can account for twenty four shots fired. We believe that twenty two of those came from mister Carrenton. Nine from his 0.32, and thirteen from a sidearm he recovered from one of the agents. Of these twenty two shots, he scored twenty direct non-lethal hits..."
The woman glanced up from the clipboard, swallowed hard, and then finished her report in an almost reverent tone.
"The majority of these shots were blind-fired through doors and walls."
The man in the body armor pinched the bridge of his nose, and shook his head, throwing himself into the conversation with a grunt equal parts exasperation, and concern.
"How does a man with limited range time, and a measly thirty-two, and a serious ocular condition, fire at over eighty percent accuracy through solid walls?"
The man in the coat spoke again. His voice remained steely, and angry, but controlled, and it bore a new note of assurance.
"*He* did not. The AI did. He was simply the analogue interface for it. The security system was only connected to the racks in the barn. We have 'dumb' intelligence programs at DARPA right now that can optimize combat strategy and dictate firing patterns... Though nothing quite so brutally efficient as what happened here. Thus there is only one logical conclusion."
I could see the woman shiver. I knew that feeling of existential dread all too well. A moment of silence passed, and then she spoke again.
"The digital forensics guys say it will be days before they know anything for sure, but the consensus is that there's not gonna be much to recover. Several server racks are missing, and the rest had random data written to their drives three times over. Very thorough. Military grade boot-n-nuke. If he succeeded in bootstrapping a G.I. in that barn? We aren't gonna find a shred of code to tell us anything about it."
The man in the coat formed a loose fist with one hand, clutching it contemplatively in the palm of the other, and staring out into the middle distance. After a moment of thought, he re-entered the conversation.
"Alabaster won't have missed this. Mister Carrenton made one hell of a mess on his way out. Have the cleaners scrub the site. Nothing left standing. I want it to be an empty field of grass by this time tomorrow. I don't even want to see the mailbox at the end of the road. Have all records wiped. De-register the address, burn the parents' identities, credit cards... All of it. If there's a chance *she* missed something, we need to make sure she never sees it."
He turned to the man in body armor and continued issuing orders as the forensics technician nodded, and re-donned her helmet.
"Call the Quiver, and have them send us Fletcher three and four. Round up all the neighbors, and anyone with a known relationship graph connection to the Carrentons within a thirty mile radius. Debrief them, and plant the usual excuses about why the whole farm vanished. And get me a line to The Archer. Secure satphone."
The armored man raised an eyebrow, and shuffled one foot. His voice betrayed a certain hesitation.
"I don't think the veep---"
The man in the coat whirled on his subordinate, and snagged his shoulder in a vice-like grip. Somehow, in spite of the fact that he was much thinner, and wearing only a suit and coat, his demeanor made him far more intimidating than the armored man.
His voice was low, and rippling with anger, like a Tiger's muscles before the pounce.
"Codenames, Beta-Three. We have discussed this before. No casual conversation outside the Quiver. Even with precautions, we do not know if Alabaster is listening. Somehow."
The man in the coat released B3, and took a step back, turning to oversee the remainder of the forensics operation. B3 exhaled nervously, and visibly worked to summon the courage to ask a follow-up question.
"And... What if... 'Archer' is already busy for the evening?"
The coat clad man glanced over one shoulder, and a small gust of wind caught the early-graying edges of his hair. His eyes flashed with a hint of dangerous barely controlled anger once again, but his voice remained perfectly calm.
"Remind him why Arrow 14 exists. And what happens if we fail... And tell him we have a new goddess in the wind."