God's Dogs Book 2

By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

The inter-stellar war was over. The mediators and the onsite SpecOps contingent were sufficient to deal with the remaining issues. The Coyote team was released with uncharacteristic speed. They hopped aboard the returning destroyer that replaced the one they rode on the outbound journey.

Tzai accompanied them. Once they were settled aboard ship, Tzai met with them in the ward room.

A steward passed around menu tablets, and Moss asked, “Why the bum’s rush, Tzai?”

“I don’t understand the idiom.”

Quinn translated, “They pushed us out as soon as they could.”

Tzai frowned. “Yes. They did. Some thought you would be liabilities for the peace process going forward. Some others feared what you might do next.”

“You showed them the shuttle’s recording,” Pax pointed out.

Tzai’s frown deepened. “The sensors failed to pick up the exchange with Poseidon.”

“I wondered about that,” Quinn murmured.

River agreed, “We don’t have the instrumentation to pick it up, why should the Congress?”

“So the delegation has no hard data,” Moss summarized, “just our side of the conversation and our word on what happened. The war is over, but is it really? The council is in a long meeting, and who knows what will come of that? And we are responsible for all the confusion.”

“That sums it up,” Tzai said in a soft voice.

“Now what?” Quinn prompted the elf.

“Your contract is complete. You may return to Penglai.”

“Sounds good to me,” Moss said and smiled as his dinner arrived.

Once the team was back in Lu’s office, Moss sat in an alcove chair and asked, “How did it end up at Oolong?”

Lu settled himself before answering, “The war they started is over, but the native population slipped into disarray with your intervention. There are five or more sentient races on Oolong, including mammals – cetacean analogues. When the dust finally settled, they all decided Poseidon wanted them to care for one another, regardless of race. The Ooli are having trouble adjusting to their new reality.”

“That is an enlightened outcome,” Pax said.

“Well,” Moss interjected, “I still don’t know how they became a star-faring people. They can’t use fire to manufacture anything. They have tentacles, so how do they miniaturize anything?”

Lu raised a hand to stop him and said, “Bio-manufacture, Moss. They grow what they need.”

“Wow. Really? But how – on second thought, never mind. It might give me nightmares.”

The others chuckled at his squeamishness, and Lu resumed his briefing.

“Your next assignment is a civil war. It seems this world, Reward, is home to people who spend much of their time in virtual reality. The differences among the inhabitants intensified in the virtual world until there were two competing factions. Then it spilled over into the real world.”

River, the team’s hacker, said, “Sounds like a tech problem more than a physical problem.”

“There is a tech team,” Lu replied. “It was they who asked for a Coyote team.”

“Why?” Pax asked.

“Two people, one on each side, downloaded themselves into the virtual world and are now the war lords of the opposing factions.”

“Can’t they unplug them?” Moss wondered.

“Not at this stage,” River clarified. “They wouldn’t be isolated in one location anymore. The real problem, though, is they will be insane.”

“How so?” Moss asked.

“You can download the brain,” River said, “but nothing else. Since so much of who we are is biological, or emotional, or spiritual – like, the belly brain, or empathy, or intuition – when you pull one part, the brain, out of an integrated whole person, the best you can hope for is insanity.”

“Correct,” Lu said. “The tech team must know about your sentient implant A.I.s, as they think a coordinated response, both virtual and actual is the solution. They tried using Class 1 A.I.s to interrupt the virtual war, and it accelerated real-time combat. And vice versa with marines trying to stop the real war. The virtual war became more intense. Infrastructure was lost.”

“So a coordinated attack is the next step,” Quinn said.

“Yes,” Lu confirmed. “Raina and her father were tasked with strengthening your implant security. Your first stop is her lab. When she and her dad are satisfied that your security is up to the task, you’ll head for Reward and join the fight.”

Raina met them at the loading dock when the team arrived at the research space station. She hugged each of them and bounced as she led them around the docking ring to an elevator. It took them down two floors to their cabins, which were near Raina’s lab.

After dropping off their bags, she led them into the lab. It was a tidy but substantial array of work benches in the center and computer desks along three of the walls. A dozen people were working, some huddled over work benches, others sitting at computer stations, but Raina’s dad, Don, stood with a thin smile awaiting them.

Don didn’t look his fifty-plus years, due in no small part to the longevity treatments available to citizens, but the top if his head was bald, and graying red hair circled from ear to ear. He wore the light blue ship-suit that was the working uniform for the residents of the station. It sported the station logo on the right breast and his name on the left.

It was he who designed the implant A.I. in Raina. Of that model, though, only Raina’s became sentient. It was still a mystery as to why. The ‘how’ of it was now understood, but Raina’s A.I., Grace, was the first, and it was a spontaneous event rather that planned. In fact, now there were safeguards in place to make sure implant A.I.s did not become sentient.

The fear was that a sentient implant would compete with the human consciousness because both occupied the same brain. The feared result of that competition, and why it wasn’t attempted, was a destructive psychosis would ensue as each battled for ownership of the brain.

When that didn’t happen with Raina and Grace, the study for ‘why not’ began, and Don was integral to that inquiry. As such, he was the foremost expert on the workings of implant A.I.s, and more importantly for the team’s purposes, implant security issues.

The ASI Solomon became involved in the search for ‘why not’ a psychosis with Raina and Grace, and he figured out the ‘how’ of it and uplifted the team’s implants. Those new sentient beings were welcomed into existence by the well-trained and compassionate minds of the Coyotes. Even so, a Vision Quest was what joined each pair into a shared purpose.

The researchers were still studying a phenomenon they didn’t understand, and would end up with what was mainly a caution: to only raise implants to sentience in a disciplined mind, or the expected psychosis might occur. It was still new territory, and the scientists were proceeding slowly. At this point, only Coyotes carried sentient implants.

Don shook their hands and led them to a computer station. As he punched up the information he wanted on the screen, he told them, “We will upgrade your software to our latest military grade firewall and security programs, but we don’t think that will be enough.”

“How so?” River asked. “Is a digital entity that dangerous?”

“Possibly,” Don said. “To make sure you’re safe, we will also install nanobots to attack an incursion.”

“How would that work?” River pushed.

“See here,” Don pointed to the screen. Filaments radiated out from the core of the implant to weave through the folds of the brain pictured on the screen. “The hacking signal has to come along one of the strands to get to the core. Some of those strands are false trails, and the outer defenses will break more easily than the real ones. Once the intrusion occurs, the entire false string englobes the intrusion and tears it apart. It will do so systematically, read the code, inform the implant, and self-destruct. Other nanos will take the debris and rebuild the string.”

“Well,” Moss said, “that’s pretty ingenious.”

“We hope so,” Don commented. “We’ve tested this, but it is still experimental. I would like more time before field trials, but I also wouldn’t feel right about sending you out without this added layer of protection.”

The team’s implants were busy with Grace downloading the new software as well as the specs for the false filaments.

Becky told River, [The math works and the specs have redundancies that make it safe. As long as the intrusion is through a wifi connection, it should work.]

River nodded her head and asked, “What if the intrusion is by direct link?”

Don grimaced. “Then the software has to hold. I recommend you don’t jack into anything.”

Moss chuckled. “No getting captured by the bad guys. Got it.”

They received their injections of nanobots, and after a light lunch in the cafeteria, began practicing with their new defenses.

An escalating series of attacks gave their implants the opportunity to fine-tune the nano-programming along the filaments. With each destruction and reconstitution of the filaments, the A.I.s learned and evolved the intrusion protection.

They also shared what they were learning through Grace, who also carried the defensive system. By dinnertime, the A.I.s were in agreement that they had reached the limit of the protocol’s power.

The humans monitored what they could and gave input as needed. Eventually, all were in agreement that they knew the system and were confident with it.

They spent the night on the station, had breakfast with Raina in the morning, ran through everything one more time in the lab, and departed by shuttle to meet up with Satya for their ride to the League world, Reward.

The planet was a mix of sophisticated infrastructure, automated farms and ranches, and neglected nature. A single small moon orbited it causing small tides on a few inland seas. The planet was a rocky world with small mountain ranges, steppes, savannas, and woodlands. Rivers flowed from large lakes, and much of the civilization lived in cities along the rivers.

A few space stations supported asteroid mining, and it was that industry that kept the population going. The asteroids were rich in expensive heavy and exotic metals, so that a few miners could support the lifestyle of those planet-bound.

There were agricultural operations and ranches, but those were mainly automated with a couple of resident managers. In all, the residents of Reward saw their reward for living in such a low labor world as an invitation to live in a virtual world.

Satya docked at the main space station and the team exited to a squad of marines.

Moss called out, “Gunny Murphy.”

“Yeah, Moss, it’s me,” the red-faced, stout Gunnery Sergeant drawled as he waved a half-hearted salute to the team. “I suggested you guys when the geeks flipped out.”

The team fell in with the squad as Murphy led them from the docking ring to the business section.

Murphy went on, “From what I can tell, the geeks went after one of the uploaded guys and got slapped down hard. It was nuts in there. They were jumping around like the wedding cake flopped at a gay wedding.”

Moss snickered. “How did they get slapped down?”

“No idea. But they went all a-twitter when it happened.”

They reached a secure area and Murphy entered a code and the door swished open. They marched down a corridor with about a dozen rooms connected to it. Murphy turned right into the second room.

It was a medium-sized office with a lieutenant behind a desk and four ratings at monitors along the walls.

“Lieutenant Mann,” Murphy said, “this is the Coyote team: Quinn, Moss, Pax, and River.”

Each nodded to the square-jawed lieutenant when introduced. Then Mann stood to say, “We’re glad you’re here. We’ve run out of options. If we fight, they go to ground. If we employ a cyber attack, they win.”

“Are the uploaded humans that good?” Quinn asked.

“Yeah. Fast, multi-pronged attacks, and they overload our systems. Then they bash down the firewall and we have to unplug.”

River cut in, “The uploads hate each other, but do they combine forces to attack you?”

“We don’t think so,” Mann said. “We went after each separately.”

Pax queried, “From what we could ascertain from the briefing notes, it’s those two uploads that are the driving forces behind the war. If we defeat them, the rest of the followers will revert back to happy gamers. Is that a correct assessment?”

“We think so,” Mann equivocated and moved from around the desk. “Let’s go talk to the geeks.”

They left the office and entered a larger room with six marine computer techs working at consoles. One of the looked up and smiled.

“Finally,” he breathed in relief and stood. “Who’s your hacker?”

River stepped forward. “That would be me. Show me what you’ve got.”

Moss turned to Murphy and Mann as they retreated to the corridor. “Might as well show us where we’re staying. This will take a while.”

Murphy chuckled. “You’re better off staying on your ship. Security here is a joke. Everybody that works here is a gamer. The work barely gets done, and they jump us if we aren’t in small groups.”

“They hate each other,” Mann added, “but they seem to hate us more.”

Moss wondered, “How did the League get roped into this mess? Seems like we just quarantine the planet, let them settle it themselves, and deal with the winner.”

“It’s the uploads,” Mann answered. “Their control over their followers is coercive. The mission is to kill or capture those two.”

“Is that possible at this point?” Quinn asked.

“We don’t know,” Mann admitted. “That’s why you’re here.”