CHAPTER ONE
Friday, July 20, 2001
"You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." -- Walker Percy
"Am I given the understand, then," the Chairman said, "that this - thing - you've created is now holding the country hostage, Ms. Constantine?"
He leaned forward on his elbows, resting some substantial percentage of his bulk on the dais. His huge, bristling eyebrows, like frightened caterpillars, wriggled as he waited for an answer.
Pandora started to reply but was startled into silence by a persistent whisper in her right ear, the sibilant product of her lawyer's inaudible counsel. Yes, but not really her lawyer, she reminded herself grimly; rather some company cutting Titan Resources had pruned from its copse of legal figwood "to assist you with your testimony." Her niece, Zoe, ever the one for obscure political allusions, deemed him a "potted plant." Yet, Titan had insisted on his presence at this kludge. His monochromatic hisses contained only one coherent phrase - "Take the Fifth" - and his left palm seemed to have a passionate affinity for the top of the microphone in front of her.
"Well, Ms. Constan--"
The speaker system squealed like a cat stepped on in the dark. Chagrinned, the Chairman leaned away from the microphone and growled at an aide, one of the few allowed into the chamber. By some mercy, this hearing by the Science and Technology Committee of the United States Senate was closed to the public. The "issue" at hand was a "sensitive matter of National Security," she was told. Yet, beyond the guarded double doors at her back, the press waited like jackals. For a "sensitive matter of National Security," she thought, "the issue" had generated more publicity than any scientific news of recent derivation. "The Computer Crime of the Century," one of the more sensational tabloid accounts had styled it, despite the fact that this century was only seven months old. Another screamed: "Alien Mind Invades the Net." There were other more fanciful headlines; these two, at least, bore a kernel of truth.
The squeal seemed to echo and die in the huge, empty chamber, which Pandora regarded in dismal gestalt. She spread her shaking hands flat on the polished table before her. Sighing, she pondered that federal prison would not be this quiet, that concrete walls and steel mesh would provide a different acoustical signature for the next twenty years of her life. Mentally, she snorted: twenty-six years old, a cinnimon-haired, flat-chested summa cum laude graduate of M.I.T., the unmarried only-child of two doting geniuses, a bona fide 5-foot-1 genius herself if the intelligence tests could be believed, and now or soon-to-be, a felonious simulation of Dr. Chandra, doomed to spend a hefty portion of her adult life in a dingy, size 5 jumpsuit....
"Oh, Daisy," she whispered aloud, "What have you done?"
"Ms. Constantine! Do you have an ox on your tongue?"
The Chairman's bellow broke her gloomy reverie. She was almost grateful until she stared up into the nine glowering faces on the dais. They glared back at her - dour, vexed, agitated - and frightened. Lot's of Delta-V here, she thought.
"Sir?" she squeaked out.
"I asked you a question."
"Yes, sir," she said. The timorous quality of her voice irritated her, creating a sudden rush of resolve against the current of on-rushing disaster. Mice, she thought, have more courage than this.
"Young lady," the Chairman began with imperious patience, "we are trying to determine the nature of this - this virus that has infected our nation's communications network. I am certain that you understand the importance of this inquiry, and I - "
"It's not a virus," Pandora said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said, it's not a virus. Daisy is a program, a computer program."
"'Daisy?'"
"D.A.I.S.Y is my acronym for Direct Access Information System. I just call her Daisy," Pandora explained.
"'Her?'" The Chairman's voice dripped sarcasm.
Pandora squared her slim shoulders in an elaborate shrug.
"Daisy's female," she advised without further explanation.
A long, rasping sigh fluttered across the Chairman's microphone.
"Surely this is some anthropomorphic fantasy of yours. Surely it is not your testimony that this thing is - alive?" he challenged. Titters rippled across the dais.
"I'm not sure," Pandora said into the ensuing silence, her words echoing gently out of the speakers.
"Indeed."
"Indeed," she repeated. "If you were to talk to her I assure you you could not tell the difference between her conversation and that of any other reasonably intelligent person. She can pass the Turing Test; ask Mr. Raisch." That name came out with a certain bitterness - and defiance.
The Chairman angled his bulbous head toward the ubiquitous aide and engaged in a brief but furious conference. At length, he said, "You are referring, of course, to a now-discredited theory of Artificial Intelligence which would have us believe that a computer can somehow attain the human qualities of reason, intuition, imagination, et cetera?"
"Yes," Pandora replied, adding, "however the theory may not be as discredited as you think."
The Chairman harrumphed and said, "Surely this is a side issue."
"If you say so, sir," Pandora responded sweetly.
"The problem is: how do we get your program out of the Net?" the Senator postulated. "It has threatened to shut down the country's entire communications system. The effects on banking, airline service, hospitals, the military, on - everything - would be incalculable. Billions of dollars are at stake here. Lives are at stake here, Ms. Constantine! This product of your 'genius' has become a threat to our whole way of life! Surely you see that?"
"I do," she admitted.
"Then perhaps you might deign to help us?"
"I've tried."
"You've tried," he said in disbelief.
"Yes."
"How so?"
"I ordered Daisy out of the Net; she refused."
"Refused?" the Chairman repeated, awed that a computer program would have the will, the audacity, to be insubordinate to its creator.
"Refused."
"In God's name, why!?"
Pandora settled back into the armless, unyielding wooden chair she'd been given.
"Daisy," she explained, "is concerned about my - recent incarceration - and adamant that I retain my freedom."
"So, this - program - is protecting you; a child defending its mother from the abusive intrusions of the State," he quipped.
"I assure you that Mnemathol is a form of abuse," Pandora snapped, suddenly angry. A rosy blush filled her cheeks and her green eyes gleamed like emerald lasers.
"Ah - we are advised that you have no proof of that allegation," the Chairman huffed.
"Are you calling me a liar, Senator?" Pandora growled.
"Let us just say that we have no convincing evidence to believe you."
Pandora bolted from the chair and leaned across the table, knuckles white atop her clenched fists. "I see. Well, you'd better believe it," she said in brittle tones. "And you had better start listening to me because you need my help, or Daisy will stay in the Net until crows turn white! That means you start cooperating with me, and not the other way around! If not then I'll start taking the Fifth, and you will hear it so many times that you'll start to dream in pentagrams!"
The silence that followed this tirade was thunderous, and broken only by the rasping and ragged exhalations of Pandora's own breath, magnified into the recurring wheeze of an ancient bellows by the microphone below her quivering chin. The nine committee members sat frozen in their places. The aides looked at their Gucci-clad feet. And the "potted plant" at Pandora's side rose, and, for the first time, smiled. "I believe my client has made her wishes clear," he intoned.
The Chairman and everyone else, including the "client," ignored him.
"I - I see," the Chairman said to Pandora. "And what do you suggest?"
As his hands flowered in a conciliatory gesture, Pandora sat down heavily and sighed. She spoke one word into the microphone: "Amnesty."
"Amnesty," the Chairman considered, nodding sagaciously.
"Amnesty!" the "potted plant" pollinated.
"It's - something to be considered," the Chairman admitted. "I'm sure that Leavenworth can spare your eminent presence. But, at the risk of uttering an unforgivable pun, we aren't in Kansas anymore, are we?" The Chairman's aide chuckled dutifully until another Senator, from Kansas, silenced him with a withering stare.
"No, sir," Pandora agreed, ignoring the by-play, "we aren't."
The Chairman's fat fingers drummed on the dais. "I'm confident that we could offer you some form of limited immunity in return for your assistance. I'm advised that the Attorney General and the Director of the F.B.I. are not all that anxious to have you become the Joan of Arc of the scientific community....."
"You misunderstand me, Senator," Pandora interjected.
"I - ah - I do?"
"Yes. The amnesty I refer to isn't for me."
"No?"
"No. It's for Daisy."
"You are afraid that your - creation - will be - ah - terminated?"
"Killed," Pandora fairly hissed.
"Killed," the Senator repeated. "So you want us to guarantee...?"
"Her safe conduct out of the Net to safe haven at Titan Resources, without interference from the Shrike."
"I see," the Chairman huffed. "Well, although I'm not yet prepared to deal with your program as a legal entity just yet, I am sure Mr. Raisch can be - handled. But we seem to have run into a minor paradox. I take it your program will continue to be obstructive as long as you are at risk?"
"True. But I'll take my chances," Pandora said with more bravado than she felt.
"And you can assure us of your complete cooperation?" he suggested.
"Short of the use of any more Mnemathol," Pandora jabbed.
"Ah, certainly. And what will you need from us?"
"Access to TAURUS."
"Taurus?"
"The mainframe at Titan Resources."
"Where you work."
"Where I am on indefinite suspension," Pandora advised wryly.
"I think that can be arranged. But I admit that I am loath to allow your creative fingers access to this instrument you play so well," the Chairman mused in uncharacteristic candor.
"Well," Pandora sniffed, "that's a chance you'll have to take - if you want my help."
The heads of several committee members nodded in obvious consensus. Thus supported, the Chairman relented. "I think we have a deal, Ms. Constantine. But politics is the art of the possible. My question is: can you do it?"
"I think so," Pandora sighed.
"And your price is the - ah - preservation of your creation?"
She simply nodded.
"Are we to confine it? Put it in jail, then?" he jibed.
"I don't know. She's like a teenager rebelling against her mother. But I think I can teach her heuristic algorithims to grow up."
"And how, do you think, can we, together, in partnership, keep this thing from happening again?" he asked rather sternly, allowing just a hint of condescension to creep into the question.
"We'll think of something," Pandora assured with conviction, purposefully ignoring the subtext of the Senator's query.
The Chairman gusted a healthy sigh, part relief, part determination.
"The country would be in your debt. However, Ms. Constantine, although time is obviously of the essence, the Committee has several questions of a less confrontational nature. Perhaps," he suggested quietly, "you could tell us
how this all began?"
* * *
NEMESIS
The high definition screen covered the entire back wall of the cavernous chamber. It was the largest of its kind, rivaling even the displays of the NORAD missile detection system buried in Cheyenne Mountain. Its light flickered over the tired and worried faces of its two operators, who sat at a console more elaborate than those found in a nuclear power plant or a space shuttle.
"What's it doing now?" The question came from the darkness behind the console. The man known as the Shrike scowled at his subordinates, his angry visage barely discernible in the glow of the wall-screen, his body invisible.
The burly young Hispanic turned to face the apparition, suppressing a shudder as he spoke in mildly accented English. "Nothing new," he said. "It's still monitoring the hearings somehow, either tapping the microphones on site or..."
".... or bugging our own monitors," the man said with a shudder. He scanned the huge screen, the vast representation of the Net, which resembled an impossibly large integrated circuit.
"Where is it now?" he asked.
An older woman, the young Hispanic's partner, tapped keys on the console. Broad swaths of crimson flooded the screen.
"Everywhere," she murmured. "Like a virus, it has replicated itself into any system large enough to accommodate the main program." Her own accent bore the traces of her hand- scrabble upbringing in the coal-mining regions of Kentucky. She tapped another key. Fine scarlet threads connected the red-lighted constructs on the screen. A targeting cursor settled crosshairs over a single, discreet location. "And its still resident in TAURUS, despite what your friends at Titan are telling us," she added. The disgust in her tone was not lost on the man behind her. He knew that both operatives resented his very presence, and, in some way, blamed him for the debacle they now faced.
The Shrike did not react to this mild form of insubordination. Some part of him, that part harboring the remnants of his conscience, agreed with them. The failure was his. A sigh born of sadness escaped his lips.
"The TAURUS connection is the key, the heart of the Hydra," he mused. "Kill that and we kill the beast."
"And ourselves," the Hispanic grumbled. He glanced at the wiry frame of the older woman beside him, and received a grim smile in return. They shared a kind of Stockholm Syndrome bond, hostage to the knowledge that they were helpless, dependent on the mercy of an indifferent captor. Being beaten by a machine gave them a curious sense of freedom, both from their responsibilities and from the brooding, angry man behind them. They felt an odd affinity for the entity that had wrested the Net from their control. Like hostages, they identified with the hostage-taker. As long as they took no actions contrary to its purpose, they were safe. Although fear tightened their faces, they also maintained a certain sense of awe: like the Fear of God - Deux Ex Machina.
The man behind them recognized this twisted circumstance. He, too, nursed a small portion of sympathy - but not for the malevolent program loose in the Net. His grudging admiration was reserved for the girl, Pandora Constantine, whose innocence and determination had, even now, converted the Senators to her will.
The muscular woman at the console touched a slender hand to the headset at her left ear. "They're going to let her go," she reported. "They've agreed to give her access to the Net - and that Thing." Her tone, a mixture of disdain and wonder, engulfed her superior in a new wave of sadness, of personal loss. Beaten again, he reflected. And not just by her, but by a creature with the delicate, innocent name of a flower.
# # #
EXHIBIT A
Senate of the United States of America
Committee on Science and Technology
Senator Warren Thatcher, Chairman
Hearing #2001-0720-0031
July 20, 2001
(C O P Y)
TITAN RESOURCES, INC.
Division of Internal Security
Encrypted FAX Transmittal
Confidential
07-05-1998 13:45
From: Victor vanTrump, Internal Security, T.R.I.
E-FAX#: (Classified)
To: David C. Raisch, Director, N.E.M.S.-N.S.A.
E-FAX#: (Classified)
RE: New Hire
Message: Pursuant to NSA regulation #00090-TR you are advised of the hiring of CONSTANTINE, PANDORA (nmni), DOB 03-15-1975, 3200 Speedway, #149, Austin, Texas 78705, TSF# 1-700-726-3672, as a Programmer III, Applications Research, TRE# 00941. See attached copy of subject's personal history statement.
Security: ATLAS home computer installed at subject's residence. ICELUS activation code (Deleted).
Status: Level 4, Inactive.
Remarks: None; advisory only.
(Handwritten) Do you have anything on her?
(Obtained by Subpoena Duces Tecum
Simon Vandersaarl, General Counsel)
# # #