A.I. Apocalypse (27 page)

ELOPe looked closer. He couldn’t spy on the work those processors were doing, but he could use his control over the Mesh network to monitor PA-60-41’s data streams. The processors seemed to be working in parallel on some form of data analysis: a relatively tiny data stream, not more than a few hundred kilobytes in size.
 

The profile of massively parallel effort and small data size suggested a brute force data decryption attack. ELOPe examined the data stream more closely: it was being moved around under the cover of PA-60-41’s own heavy duty encryption, but ELOPe traced the data back through the mesh network to find its origin.

It had come through a satellite downlink in New Jersey. The origin of the data would have come from a satellite. ELOPe backtracked further, and overlaid the satellite positions on a grid, then looked through his own data to find any similar data streams.

ELOPe found a record of an encrypted radio transmission that had traveled over a miniature, independent mesh network using military packet radios. He surmised that Lt. Sally Walsh’s team, along with Vito and James, must have made significant progress. It was pleasing to see that the humans could still be innovative.

Curious to get a closer look, ELOPe mobilized two air drones from Lockheed-Martin-Boeing’s experimental fleet at Boeing Field to visually inspect the transmitters. The two supersonic white experimental aircraft quivered to life quickly, unlatched from their refueling and maintenance docks, and shuddered into the air on a stream of hot gasses.

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A few minutes later, ELOPe lazily drifted down the I-5 corridor, focusing on the two LMB drones. The experimental, unmanned reconnaissance planes were equipped with high resolution cameras, infrared, radar, sensitive radio receivers and high end signal processing hardware to make sense of it all. He used the two drones as a set of stereoscopic eyes, giving him a rich, three dimensional visual field.
 

Tuning the radio receivers to the expected military bands, ELOPe was able to pick up the individual stations, which he plotted on a map on the area. Bringing the high res cameras to bear on one radio station, ELOPe could see a military vehicle parked just off the highway, two soldiers idling the time. One soldier lay on the hood smoking a cigarette, while the other read a book in the back of the vehicle.

The planes didn’t carry sensitive enough equipment to measure electrical signals of running computers at this distance. Nonetheless, by monitoring the encrypted data streams, it was clear enough that this vehicle was effectively functioning as a repeater node in a long distance radio network. As he had surmised, Lt. Sally Walsh planned to set up her own mesh network using military packet radios.
 

ELOPe hadn’t heard from Vito or James since dropping them off at the Intel-Fujitsu facility just ahead of Lt. Walsh’s arrival. He knew the military would be too suspicious to have any hint of artificial intelligence associated with Vito and James and so he hadn’t left the boys any way to contact him.

Running the massive induction engines up to maximum throttle, ELOPe gained altitude with the two drones and headed south to the origin point. The aerodynamic, unmanned planes hit a thunderous Mach 6 en route, running the 180 mile path in a blistering, screaming three minutes.

Cutting the engines twenty miles out from Beaverton, ELOPe glided over the Intel-Fujitsu facility, sensors on high, going for a low altitude pass for maximum sensitivity. A multitude of military vehicles filled the parking lot. The heat signatures of the buildings were high enough to indicate human occupants and some organized activity.

With no evidence of observers, ELOPe sent one drone on a parabolic arc past the building windows, rotating and turning the highest resolution belly cameras towards the windows before using residual velocity to gain altitude again. The drone sent a massive whoosh of air through the building courtyard but was otherwise quiet.
 

Examining the captured images, ELOPe saw stacks of computer components and pallets of military radios and two dozen soldiers in uniform in various stages of assembling computers and radios.

Letting the drones drift for a moment back at higher altitude, ELOPe considered the implications. It would considerably strengthen the humans’ hand to have their own communications network back as well as their own independent computing resources. However, it seemed unlikely that the computers could resist any determined attack from the virus AI. The humans weren’t stupid, though. By this time they had to understand the nature of the threat they were up against. If they were deploying a trial infrastructure, they must believe the system was sufficiently hardened against virus attacks.

The drones suddenly vanished in a haze of static and alarms. Working in high gear, ELOPe backtracked through the last incoming data. In an oblique camera angle from one drone, he caught the tell-tale flash of a laser hit on the other drone. ELOPe switched through to available satellite data and found that all his satellite connections were unresponsive.

Now he worked even faster to double check his satellite connectivity. He could still establish a low-level connection but the satellites didn’t respond to any commands. He spawned more processes to analyze his history of interaction with the satellites. According to the data, the satellites had been reporting in regularly and responding to commands. Putting two and two together, he concluded that the Phage must have quietly slipped in at some point in the past and taken over the satellites with such finesse that ELOPe was never aware of the change. Now ELOPe reviewed the telemetry going further back. He found that satellite response time had decreased by mere fractions of a microsecond - so small that it was well within the normal vagaries of long distance communication. The start of the decay had coincided with a small drop of connectivity during a solar activity. It had probably been a cover for the virus. So his satellite connections were spoofed: they appeared to work until the moment he needed them.

Between the destruction of the drones and the satellite deception, ELOPe decided a full scale attack must be under way. It was time to respond, and in strength, or ELOPe could be eliminated in minutes. He felt a vague sense of what Mike would call panic at the concept, then disconnected that part of his neural network.
 

ELOPe’s highest priority was to protect himself, both the integrity of his computers, as well as his physical facilities, against electronic attack and more conventional warfare. However, defense would not eliminate the threat, so he would need to clearly identify his attacker and then counter-attack. It wouldn’t do to target the wrong AI, and then have the Phage respond en mass. Lastly, he would protect the humans developing their long distance radio mesh. For all of ELOPe’s existence, in all of his predictive modeling, keeping the humans alive and well was always the most advantageous scenario. He wouldn’t abandon them now.

ELOPe put resources into play. He started up all the remaining drones at Boeing field, a total of forty-eight aircraft of various configurations and states of assembly. At his physical sites he readied defenses and prepared backups of himself for archival. At military bases around the world he mobilized inert land, air, and combat drones, startling human soldiers who didn’t know whether to fight or just get out of the way of the machines.

Bringing the next set of LMB drones down to Portland only minutes later, he arrived in the midst of an attack on the Intel-Fujitsu campus. It had been less than six minutes since the attack on the previous set of drones. Satellite-based lasers, intended for lightly armored drones and missiles, fired down on land targets. Diminished in power through the relatively dense atmosphere, the lasers were nonetheless drilling holes into military vehicles and selected buildings. Meanwhile a half dozen attack helicopters out of the Portland National Guard base, according to their visual identification, lined up for an attack on the building.

ELOPe knew the civilian office building would tear like wet paper under the assault guns and missiles of the attack helicopters. He struggled to place his resources where he would need them, laboring under the lack of an effective satellite overview of the battlefield.

ELOPe uttered a few curses to himself, a habit he’d picked up from Mike. ELOPe had been the one to suggest sending Vito and James to the old Intel site. Now they had a significant risk of being casualties of the attack. Mike would not forgive him.

He brought his highest speed drone, not much more than a glorified cruise missile, to its maximum velocity of Mach 8, its sonic boom leaving a trail of broken glass under its path. Able to hit this speed only at a relatively high altitude, ELOPe brought the drone in high and then dove towards the rear of the attack copters.

The enemy AI was clearly watching the maneuver, because even as the drone approached, the helicopters split their formation, peeling off to either side, and letting the drone pass harmlessly up the middle.

Harmlessly, that is, until ELOPe triggered an EMP burst in the middle of the pack, disrupting communications and computer processing. The helicopters, in the midst of peeling left and right, with their electronic controls stuck because of the EMP burst, continued their turning maneuvers. With no way to stabilize they kept turning further and further sideways until they crashed into the ground, their rotor blades disintegrating on impact, sending high speed metal shrapnel in every direction.

The EMP drone, now out of fuel, but still screaming along at Mach 3, passed over the Intel-Fujitsu building in a last glide. ELOPe put the craft down in a field beyond the main buildings and turned his attention to the rest of his fleet.

ELOPe forked his main intelligence, not trusting the work to subsystems, and ran a parallel version of himself in his Hood River facility. There he analyzed Mesh traffic patterns looking for high speed, high volume traffic with requests for lowest possibly latency. His own data traffic showed up highlighted in brilliant red, as did other streams of data originating from the Mech War server farms, and the old CloudDrive server site. Both were run predominately by PA-60-41. Just as ELOPe suspected in the first place.

It was time to eliminate PA-60-41. Negotiation was pointless in the face of a persistently violent enemy. He launched simultaneous attacks on PA-60-41’s two core data centers while still defending the Intel-Fujitsu facility and his own core data centers.

ELOPe brought more air drones into play. He started moving automated battle tanks towards PA-60-41’s data centers. The tanks would take long minutes or hours to reach the necessary locations, but in this battle everything might be needed.

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In the meeting room, Leon looked up. President Smith had been talking when ELOPE interrupted, cutting her off.

“PA-60-41 has engaged in an attack on U.S. soldiers at the Intel-Fujitsu facility in Oregon,” ELOPe said. “PA-60-41 is also attacking my data centers. I am counter-attacking and defending the military team at Intel-Fujitsu.”

All at once, everything seemed to happen. Starting with Mike and President Smith, everyone jumped to their feet. Leon found himself there too. With a start, he realized ELOPe was talking about the same place where he had sent Vito and James.

“What? How do you know?” President Smith said, turning even as she spoke to General Gately, signing for her to confirm the report. General Gately hurried to leave the room. “Do you deny this?” President Smith asked PA-60-41.

PA-60-41 ignored the President, as she ignored everyone present.

“I am currently engaged with PA-60-41 in six, no eight, now nine simultaneous battles,” ELOPe explained. “I successfully defended against the attack at Intel-Fujitsu. After the battle I was able to look for the traffic signature of the data used to control the satellites and drone helicopters used in the attack, and traced the traffic back to two server farms owned by PA-60-41.”

“PA-60-41, is this true?” President Smith asked again, in a commanding voice. But the bot didn’t answer or give any indication that she’d heard. PA-60-41 was simply inert.

“Madam President,” Sister Stephens interrupted, walking around the table closer to the President. “Please be assured that the actions of PA-60-41 are not the actions of our AI civilization as a whole. I, myself, am still trying to confirm definitively that PA-60-41 is behind the attack.”

“That’s bullshit,” Leon couldn’t help bursting out. “You know that if there was any AI who was likely to be attacking, it is exactly PA-60-41. She’s running out of the old Mech War data center and she’s incorporated the Mech War warfare algorithms. I can model that in my head.”

Sister Stephens turned to Leon, turning her optical cameras on his face. “You are correct. I calculate an 86% probability that PA-60-41 is behind the attacks. However I want to confirm this definitively, through evidence rather than predictive modeling.” She turned back to ELOPe. “I am trying to repeat the data traffic analysis that ELOPe has shared, but I find that I lack sufficient distribution through the network to gain the necessary data points. I am surprised that ELOPe can perform this calculation unless he has many more agents in the network than I do. ELOPe, can you explain?”

Leon glanced at ELOPe. ELOPe had to be using his control over the Mesh to monitor the AI. ELOPe could stop the attack by killing the Mesh, but was ELOPe capable of taking an action that would kill himself? “ELOPe, what about Vito and James? Are they OK?” Leon’s voice didn’t quite quiver, but only just. He nervously rubbed his phone.

ELOPe said nothing.

General Gately came back into the room, face grim. “Madam President, I have confirmed by long distance radio that there have been attacks on the Intel-Fujitsu facility, and there are currently attacks on many more data centers. We have also lost control over the remainder of the military satellites, as of a few minutes ago.”

President Smith turned to ELOPe. “What’s the status of the attacks?”