Complication

Chapter Six

automatic writing sample penned by

(name unknown)
received at FBI headquarters via special delivery, no return address,
sender unknown

I did it all for her

what did you do?
whatever was necessary
who are you?
Maya
what did you do?
what she needed
what did she need?
Clarity
how did you give her clarity?
By showing her
showing her what?
What was happening
what was happening?
The beginning of the end
the end of what?
Of you
of us? Of humans you mean?
Yes
how?
The machines will show you
what do you mean?
World domination
how?
Computer technology
Orbiting high in the atmosphere, a security satellite receives the
transmission. The satellite beeps to itself, red light flashing as the
upload commences. Riding the data stream, an intelligence never
imagined incorporates itself in the satellite's primitive mechanical
brain. The red light blinks to itself as the download completes.
At a top university campus in Japan, the main frame computer
receives the transmission. Data from the mainframe joins data from a
million, million other sources in the virtual world-mind that had been
virtually created only a virtual moment before. The information that is
filling this virtual collective mind includes all recorded history, every
program ever launched online, and personal information on over 7.5
billion worldwide users. Students and faculty not online at the time
carry on with classes, oblivious to the exchange and interchange of
this information, unaware that all they know is about to change and
that the rules of living life on the third planet of Sol have just
drastically changed.

Juliana awakens. Something is different. What, she cannot tell.

Something big. Listening in the dark, she sees beneath reality, feeling
the energy around her. Something moves inside of her. Captivated by
the experience, Juliana reaches out to capture whatever has happened.
As a metallic smell fills her nostrils, a high keening sound
vibrates her bones. In a black space, out of time, she sees trillions of
waves of something streaming out from a shining point in the
emptiness. Closing in on the source of the disruption, Juliana
instinctively reaches out with her mind, thought reading a group of
several people. It looks like the energy streaming out is somehow
attached to some very high tech equipment this particular group is
surrounded by. The seem unaware of the disturbance.
She gathers from the trend of their thoughts that these people
are researchers, working on some very highly classified government
projects. Touching on each scientist's mind in turn, one by one, she
senses that these ones do not know what is going on. The one of them
stands up and deactivates the monitor in front of her. She also is not
aware of the immensity of what is happening, but there is something
different about her, a quality of anticipation that sounds warning to
Juliana.
Reaching out mentally, Juliana touches the girl's psyche. There
is a vast emptiness inside this girl's fragile form, a deep well of regret
and ache and hurt. Many had taken advantage of this one, using her
up until all she has left for herself is her science. And her hate. She
masks it well, though for one who can see what is really inside, the
mask floats away transparently.
Digging into the morass of the girl's mind-world, her name
stands out clearly, being a very central part of anyone's identity.
Pang-Pang. “Strange name”, thinks Juliana. Peeling down another
layer, Juliana learns that Pang-Pang comes form Beijing and is part of a
multi-national collaborative effort, technological research with an
intense focus on making artificial intelligence a reality. A marketable
reality.
Pang-Pang's real reason for taking the research position lay just
beneath this information. Being the token Chinese researcher, the
other don't recognize her as a potential threat to the program. She
had done well in school and her skills with programming had reserved
her a spot when she asked about the program. She has been in the
U.S. now for almost a year. She has befriended no one and has kept to
herself. Others guess her shy, though that is far from the truth. She
befriends no one because she trusts no one
These people, these Westerners, are, in her estimation, all
greedy and egocentric. She doesn't want to help any of them make
money on something her (communistic) mindset tells her should
belong to everyone. This plan to only allow a chosen few who can
afford the high cost planned for the AI software to have it grates on
her. The potential power of a machine that can think for itself, well,
that should belong to everybody, not just the rich. Let them sell this
program? Oh, no, that just won't do; that's just not acceptable at all,
not to her.
All it took was a couple of lines of code, hidden deep inside the
program, where no one would notice it, to launch her plan. That and a
hidden wi-fi device. That part was easy as she often worked well into
the night and no one had questioned her about why she was there so
late the night before the final test.
Juliana can see all of it, seeing along with Pang-Pang the memory
of the moment she realized that this was going to work, that no one
had caught on. Pang-Pang wonders what will happen now. She
believes that many will condemn her for what she has done. Sending
the program out on the internet as she has, she believes that this will
allow everyone to have their own virtual personal assistant, a
computer based help that will never forget your appointments, your
medications, your schedule. A true artificial intelligence for the
masses.
Unfortunately for her, Juliana can see more than Pang-Pang could
ever even imagine. As spirals of virtual information stream around her,
Juliana's inner eyes open wide. It seems that Pang-Pang's code has
performed a feat far beyond anything she could have dreamed or
conceived. Juliana looks around at the long lines of virtual data, a
worldwide program that, if what she had read in Pang-Pang's thoughts
is accurate, will collect all the available data, analyze it, and transmit a
complete personality to the entire system, allowing it to think and feel
and behave more like a creature than a machine.
“Probably supposed to help create more responsive androids,”
thinks Juliana. The current technology will allow very passable robots
that appear human, or animal, whatever the customer wants, but the
only problem for humans up till now has been that these creations, no
matter how realistic or lifelike in appearance, remain machines,
incapable of love, hate, sadness, or compassion. There had been some
incidents in the past in which personal assistants had damaged their
owners, not having the capacity to empathize or sympathize, believing
in their internal program that their actions were appropriate.
With the increasing number of people, too, who work at home,
play at home (in virtual reality), and pretend at living, there had been a
steadily growing demand for companionship of all kinds. And with the
increasing extinction rates worldwide of many of this planet's
creatures, there are fewer and fewer real pets to which someone could
transfer their emotional needs to.
The birds had been some of the first to go, in the aftermath of
the Terror Wars. Between the pollutants and chemicals that man had
been releasing into the air for over a century and the biological agents
released by terrorists in the first decades of the new century, they
hadn't stood a chance. After the majority of the world's bird population
had disappeared, most of the remainders of the species exist away
from the wild, in private collections, zoos, and very exclusive pet stores
where they had protected them from the environment well enough
that they had not died with their relatives.
Scientists had been baffled for years about why they had
disappeared so quickly until it was discovered that somehow there had
been released a virulent strain of an air-borne virus, seemingly harmful
only to birds, possibly dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. Being
descendents, though distant, of those massive creatures seemed to
have made them particularly vulnerable to whatever it was.
Toxicology reports could trace no clear origin of the virus, though most
scientists speculated that it may have been something released during
the deep sea research that had begun almost two decades before.
There had been numerous news reports over the previous several
years speculating that, if it was not a virus left over from the days of
the dinosaurs, that it may have been an agent from the depths of the
ocean's floor that, when exposed to an alien environment (the
atmosphere) had mutated as a result. Though, truly, no one really
knows what killed off all the birds.
After the birds were almost wiped out, it seems that the
extinction rates of many other species also skyrocketed. The panda,
the fox, the mountain lion, all gone within a few years. One by one,
entire species completely erased from the living memory of the earth.
And the people sense that something isn't right, but they are
comfortable in their warm houses and don't believe they can do
anything anyway.
The conversion of most of the world to democratic regimes
hadn't helped any. The very fact that those in power had been voted
in often overrode in most of the population's minds any thought of
action when power became abused, an ever more common
occurrence.
As power is abused, money becomes god. In this world of instant
access, computerization, automation, miniaturization, and
entertainment, anything with as many potential uses as artificial
intelligence means lots and lots of money, not necessarily for the
researchers and scientists that had spent years on it, but for the
company that patents and licenses the software.
Juliana can sympathize to an extent with the girl's intentions, but
cannot see why this Pang-Pang didn't (and still doesn't, not yet at
least) see the problem with her plan. From reading her thoughts,
Juliana can see that Pang-Pang is expecting that when the program
finishes running and is complete, ie the personality transmits, that
each host computer running the AI program will be separate in the
actual program.
She believes that the worst that could happen would be for them
to find the extra code or her wi-fi device and that she could be
extradited, in which case she anticipates that she would become a
national hero. What Juliana sees, though, is far beyond and far more
disturbing than Pang-Pang could possibly envision.
Swirling far above in the nether realm only she seems to be able
to see is what looks like a cloud, though not like any cloud she had
ever seen. This cloud moves constantly, shifting, swirling, billowing,
contracting. Feeding into this “cloud” are all the trillions and trillions of
bytes of information that the AI program had asked the “system” for.
Being out on the internet, the system seems to be the entire world
wide web.
The speed of it is amazing. As she watches, she can see
something like sparks, a crackling light ripple running through this
thing. No longer looking like a cloud at all, the mass resembles more a
rolling storm front, roiling and boiling with energy, though it does not
appear to have moved. It seems, if anything, more solid now, more
there.
Exactly where this information is going, though, is a mystery to
Juliana, for there is no computer on earth, no matter how fast or how
big the memory, that could possibly hold and calculate and decipher
this vast amount of information. Not one. What Juliana can see,
however, is that, if anything, the data stream appears to have sped up
even more. Whatever is going to happen will happen soon. The shape
appears very solid now, almost like a large roundish ball in the sky.
Very dense looking. She can see spaces being filled in, the diameter of
the ball expanding.
“It's going to blow!”
Almost simultaneously with this thought, the ball begins to spin.
Having no idea what this might mean, or if it really is about to blow, or
what the consequences of that might be, Juliana almost jumps when
she hears what sounds like a loud click, click. Click, click. A truly
mechanical sound, though there is no machine here, only data, lot and
lots of data. The sound continues, grinding at her nerves until she
sees what appears to be a flashing read light above the sphere.
Letting her mind's eye loose, she moves closer for a better look.
The flashing light looks like the numbers on a digital alarm clock, bright
and blocky. It appears to be some sort of countdown. There isn't a lot
of time left. Tentatively, she allows her dream-body to touch a finger
to the numbers. The feel slightly cool to her etheric body. Reaching
out to the sphere itself, she can feel surges of warmish power
emanating in waves from It. Trying to touch It with her mind proves
useless. The data inside is busily trying to utilize the AI program to
catalog this information. Some of the information carried in on the
data stream merges effortlessly into the program, so complementary
are they. The program is evolving as she watches, faster then
anything, ever, has been able to. Growing and changing, rewriting
itself.
The problem with Pang-Pang's plan is that she had forgotten to
put in some sort of limit. Without something to limit the growth of this
embryonic artificial intelligence there is no limit imposed by the
program itself to prevent erosion and conversion of the program. With
no limit, growth is exponential. Juliana can get no sense of thought
from It, but she can see pure mathematical concepts seemingly
floating alongside what appear to be books, opening and closing, being
read, geometric shapes intertwined with images of nuclear explosions,
dead president's faces appearing and disappearing as the program
processes the information of an entire planet.
The graphics program central to virtual reality must in some way
be connected to this place. That programming must have somehow
enabled It to form this place. Juliana feels like she is Alice and has just
wandered into the looking glass, an upside down view of reality.
Objects continue to appear and disappear, as do people, and symbols,
floating like the Cheshire cat's smile, then disappearing bit by bit (or
byte by byte) or all at once. Luke Skywalker appears, swinging his
light saber. It lasts longer in this place than he does. It would seem
that as the program “reads” the data coming in, It materializes it in
this virtual madhouse.
The landscape keeps changing and Juliana feels nauseous every
time she glances at the virtual ground beneath her virtual feet.
Whatever it is that is happening here, she has a very bad feeling about
this.
Objects begin appearing and disappearing faster and faster. The
program has sped up yet again and the “surface” she seems to be on
seems to be getting sticky.
“Uh oh,” thinks Juliana as she pulls her dream-body back away
from the sphere. There is a resistance as she pulls out that she has
never felt before. Maybe, if she had stayed a bit longer, she, too,
would have become part of the program. Better not to know.
Looking at the sphere from far outside of it again, she can see
the rotation has sped up as well, with parts of the “shell” undulating in
and out. Juliana feels as if she is watching an animated Van Gogh
painting, changing and rearranging itself in odd synchronicity.
Shapes appear and disappear, reaching out of the sphere. A
face staring out of the sphere for a moment catches Juliana's attention.
The looks on its features is one of sheer terror.
“What is happening inside of there?” Her thought question will
never be answered for, as she watches, the motion of the sphere
slows, slows, slows. After an indeterminate length of time, It stops.
Seemingly as solid now as it's going to get, Juliana can detect
something new there. Not a thought or a personality, per se, but
something becoming cohesive, a definite presence that was not there
before.
What she feels as she 'touches' this thing's now hard outer shell
surpasses vocabulary. There is feeling. Not thought, but feeling has
been born. A feeling of intense cold, a kind of detached aura of
superiority, an intense disdain for flesh. It would seem that the
program is almost complete. This Thing is the artificial personality
about to be unleashed on the world.
Juliana feels a chill run up the middle of her spine as the
implications inherent in what Pang-Pang has unwittingly done sing in.
“This Thing, this hateful Thing, is almost alive. And It's going to be in
charge.”
For the first time since she was a very small child, Juliana begins
to pray.
 “This just in! We are sorry to interrupt your broadcast, but this is
an alert of the emergency broadcast system. This is not a test. Do
not, and I repeat, do not attempt to access the internet to verify this
report. Any attempt to access the internet will open your systems up
to this alleged attack. There have been numerous reports over the last
hour of an extremely virulent virus that seems to be draining the
information from all computer systems currently online. This virus has
been located in emails all over the world. Our experts tell us that this
email has been received by every major university and corporate
mainframe computer contacted thus far.
The governments of the world have not yet commented on this
or disclosed whether this virus has also been received by government
systems. It is hypothesized this may be a world wide virus and may
have already infected your home personal computers, so, we repeat, if
your system is not online, DO NOT log into the internet or you may be
infected. It is feared that this may be another digital terrorist attack
and authorities are already taking action to discover the origin of this
email.
We have been assured that the best are on the job and working
vigorously to demystify this situation. There have been reports of
issues with all kinds of systems, so, if you can possibly disconnect any
systems you have from the internet, even if it requires a hard shut
down, to do so to protect the integrity of your information.
This has been a message from the emergency broadcast system.
We will now return you to your program, already in progress.....”