Transhuman (2 page)

I took a calming breath before speaking. "There's plenty of news available. Television, radio, voice, mail, web—just no multimedia or interactive content."

"There's carrier pigeons, too," said Dan, his broad Australian vowels amplifying the statement's sarcasm. The pudgy little engineer was in charge of the station's physical plant. "They're just about as effective." I ground my gum between my teeth. "You don't understand the seriousness of the situation. Any breach in data security could be catastrophic."

Sochima rolled her eyes. "Then why do we have all that antimalware stuff clogging our systems? Or isn't it as good at stopping malware as it is at preventing my people from installing the software they need to do their jobs?"

"This isn't an ordinary malware infestation," I said, deciding not to list the worms, leeches, and pornobots my defenses had stopped on computers in Sochima's group. "It's an outbreak of unknown, possibly intelligent experimental software. We don't know what it can do. If it gets inside the firewall, even adaptive filters might not be able to stop it before it infects our whole network. The whole city of Harbin's fallen off the net."

Kristina looked up from her phone. "It's not just Harbin. Shu-Yi just messaged me that the outbreak has spread to Beijing and Shanghai."

The temperature of the room dropped at that announcement. My chest tightened a notch, and Sochima and Thuy suddenly seemed a little less sure of their priorities. Dan stood up from his place at the table. "I think I ought to go run a test on the backup life support systems. Now." Thuy nodded, uncharacteristically silent, but as Dan headed for the door she said, "After you've done that . . . better run a preflight check on the ELEC."

Dan swallowed. "Right." He closed and carefully dogged the door behind himself. I cleared my throat to interrupt the uncomfortable silence that followed. "Uh . . . what's the ELEC?" Thuy looked me right in the eye. "Emergency Lunar Escape Craft. It can get us to Earth orbit in two weeks."

"Assuming," Sochima added, "there's anyone there to meet us."

I scrambled back to my office as quickly as I could. I'd mostly adapted to the gravity in my first week, but when I tried to hurry I still ran into walls sometimes. Network and Software told me nothing noteworthy had happened on our local network in my absence, but I had Software run a full integrity check on all connected systems and Network tighten down the internal checkpoints still further—no data sharing, no conferencing, and no software installs at all other than mandatory security updates. Once those were running, I turned my attention to the DMZ—an old acronym no one had ever been able to explain to me, though I guessed it stood for Data Moderation Zone or some such. This was the space between the inner and outer firewalls where those systems that required access to the outside world resided. Firewall was the only sub permitted in that space. I called him up on the big monitor right in front of me.

"I want you to find and immediately terminate any nonessential processes in the DMZ," I told him. As I spoke, I turned another screen toward myself and raised his priority to maximum. "Essential functions are defined as communications with Earth and data security." I thought a moment. "Furthermore, communications through the external firewall are to be limited to text-only messages and security software updates. All other incoming data is to be intercepted and destroyed."

"Interruption of critical scientific data channels requires an administrative override, sir." I bit back a curse; I should have remembered that. I paused and formulated a new command. "Modify definitions of essential software and permitted communications to include critical scientific data until override is obtained."

"Yes, sir."

"And notify me immediately, Priority One, if anything unusual occurs. Dismissed."

"Yes, sir." Firewall's face vanished, replaced by a standard DMZ status display. It was already much less crowded than usual, and most of the remaining green and yellow indicators went dark as I watched. The last few nonsystem processes were associated with Kristina's and Sochima's priority projects, and I'd need Thuy's thumbprint to terminate those. I called her and left a message with one of her subs asking for her authorization.

As soon as I hung up on Thuy's sub, Personal began beeping urgently for my attention. He'd done what he could to mollify the staff whose processes had been terminated and communications interrupted, but many of them were demanding to speak with me in person and he couldn't hold them off forever. I told him to continue blocking, then I composed and sent out a broadcast message explaining the situation and begging for patience.

As I waited for the message to have whatever effect it was going to, I walked down the hall to my computer room. The only truly secure computer is one that's turned off and disconnected, and I meant to put as much hardware as I possibly could into that state. I entered my authorization code and the armored door slid open.

When I'd first arrived, I'd been surprised that the computer room roared with chilled air, same as any similar room on Earth. The one difference was that the heat exchanger was a radiator lying in a sunless chasm a couple hundred meters away rather than a blower on the roof. So as I moved along the closely spaced equipment racks, powering down unused systems, routers, and hubs, I was buffeted by deafening gusts of cold air.

I returned to my office and found that my request for authorization had neither been approved nor denied. This was an unpleasant surprise, but I knew Thuy's habits. I turned right around and headed out to find her.

As I'd expected, I found Thuy in the gym, leaping and kicking in a frenetic series of moves she'd described to me as "battling the invisible ninjas." The lunar gravity transformed her into something from a fantasy martial arts movie, bounding four meters high and caroming off the walls and ceiling with fluid grace. It was a spectacular way of dealing with stress, and I envied her the ability to do so. As soon as she noticed me, Thuy finished her sequence of moves and thumped to the mat right in front of me with a bow. Her black gi was soaked with sweat. "I need your thumbprint," I said without preamble.

"What for?" She picked up a towel and rubbed it through her hair, breathing hard.

"To interrupt critical scientific data channels."

Thuy picked up her phone from atop her folded clothing at the corner of the mat and turned it on. "Our counterparts back in Geneva are depending on that data," she said. "With our limited bandwidth, even a few hours' interruption would put them so far behind they'd take weeks to catch up."

"Yes. And if this outbreak catches us with open holes in our firewall, we could lose all that data permanently. Or worse."

"It's really that bad?"

"It could be."

"Kristina will kill me." But she swiped her thumb across the phone's print reader and told her sub to grant the authorization I'd requested.

"Thanks," I said, as she buckled the phone onto her wrist.

She started to say something in response, but her eyes widened as she read the words on her phone's screen.

"What is it?"

It took her a moment to find her voice. "It's spread to Tokyo. And Bangalore. And half of Russia." She looked up. "They're saying this could be the Big One."

We looked at each other. The Big One—the Infocalypse, the Singularity, the Millennium, call it what you will—had been a theoretical possibility since before the turn of the century, but in the past five years it had become a real concern. And a real point of controversy. "Thuy, I know it might be a violation of policy to ask, but is anyone on the staff a Millennialist?" Some people—defying not just the law, but the human instinct for self-preservation—actually supported the development of posthuman technology. I needed to know right away if there were any of them inside my firewall. Thuy dropped her eyes. "No. No one I've talked to about it, anyway." I didn't like the implications of the way she'd said that. I had to know who I could trust. "Are you?" She still didn't look up, but after a long moment she shook her head. "But my parents are." Her hands knotted tightly together. "I . . . I like technology. You'd have to, to work in a place like this. But I've seen the kind of unintended consequences it can cause. I could never . . . believe the way my father does." At last she raised her eyes to mine. They burned with anger; they glistened with tears. "Don't worry, Mister Patterson, I'm not going to open the firewall to some rogue AI with a clever story." Now I was the one who had to look down. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up any . . . uncomfortable issues."

Thuy rubbed at her eyes with a knuckle. "You're only doing your job. It's just . . . I worry about my daddy. Ever since he started getting all serious about the potential of machine intelligence, I've been afraid he might do something illegal." She blew out a breath through her nose. "It's like he changed into a different person."

That brought back unpleasant memories. "I know how that goes." She quirked a questioning eyebrow at me. I hesitated. "My ex, Jessie," I admitted at last. "Right after we got out of the service, she told me she really, really wanted children. It came out of nowhere. But I . . ." This was hard to explain. "Look, you know how when your friends have kids, it's like they vanish behind a wall? They turn into completely different people? I didn't want to vanish." I stared at the mat, remembering a crummy little military apartment where I'd been happier than ever before or since. "I didn't want us to change." What an idiot I'd been.

We stood together for a while in awkward silence. Thuy broke it by folding her towel. "I'll ask my staff if they're aware of anyone with Millennialist tendencies, and if there are any I'll call you right away."

"Thank you." I automatically glanced at my phone, to check that it was active and charged. A Missed Message indicator blinked silently on its screen; the ringer must have been drowned out by the noise in the computer room. I clicked through and viewed the message.

What the hell? It was a Priority one notification from Firewall, dated almost ten minutes ago. If I failed to acknowledge a Priority one message within one minute, all my subs knew they were supposed to follow up—they could even sound sirens in the halls if necessary.

The text of the message was "VERY LARGE INCOMING DATA STREAM ON SCIENTIFIC

CHANNELS. UNKNOWN DATA FORMA"—it cut off in the middle of a word.

"What's wrong?" said Thuy.

My heart pounded. "I think the firewall may have been penetrated."

"Oh my God."

I ran out of there as fast as I could.

As I hustled down the hall, caroming off walls, I used my phone to tell Network to close all the internal partitions—cut off every subnet completely from every other subnet, especially the DMZ. I had Software, Hardware, and Storage begin full top-to-bottom diagnostics on their subsystems. I told Personal not to interrupt me except for the most dire emergencies.

By the time I arrived at my office the initial results from the diagnostics showed nothing obviously wrong on the internal network, and I allowed myself a moment of relief. Maybe Firewall's cut-off message with no follow-up was just a glitch, not an incursion.

But I didn't want to take any chances.

I got out my old clipboard—I hadn't used it in weeks and it had nothing of value on it any more—and yanked its wireless card with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Then I found a network cable at the back of a drawer and connected the clipboard to the dusty patch panel behind my desk. Finally I had Network open a single connection from that patch panel to the DMZ.

I swallowed and powered the clipboard on.

The image that appeared on the scratched little screen was not the face I'd selected for Firewall. It was the firewall's default skin: a knight in shining armor, carrying a shield with the manufacturer's logo. This wasn't good. This was not good at all.

The knight saluted. "Ready to defend!" it said, in that gratingly chipper voice I'd turned off five minutes after I'd installed it the first time.

"Report status."

"All firewall functions operating normally. Intrusions blocked in last twenty-four hours—twenty-one thousand two hundred nine. Incoming packets—fifteen hundred sixty-three per second. Outgoing packets—eight hundred ten per second."

That all sounded reasonable. The data volume seemed low, but that would be expected if the text-only restriction I'd placed was still in effect. "Summarize your most recent operational orders."

"Find and terminate all nonessential processes in the DMZ. Intercept any incoming data other than text-only communications and security updates. Notify you if anything unusual occurs." I blew out a breath. At least it remembered my orders. And it knew who I was, because it had said

"you" instead of "Jeff Patterson." But I had other concerns. "You sent me a priority one message over twenty minutes ago. I didn't acknowledge it. Why didn't you follow up?" The knight had no face. Its metallic visor was implacable. "I sent no such message. Nothing unusual has been detected."

I licked my lips. "Why have you reverted to your default skin?"

"No appearance changes have occurred."

My heart started to beat faster. If I couldn't trust my firewall . . . "Open diagnostic interface."

"Password required."

That set me back on my heels. If it knew who I was, and it did, it should have known I had full authorization. I racked my brain for the password I'd used to configure the firewall in the first place, popped up a keyboard on the clipboard's screen, and typed it in.

"Sorry, please try again."

I tried again. Same result. I tried several other passwords. No good. "Security admin override," I said.

"Patterson, Jeffrey William. Accept thumbprint." I swiped my thumb across the clipboard's reader.

"Sorry, please try again."

Shit. Shit shit shit! I reached into my pocket, but the empty gum packet crinkled between my fingers. Gritting my teeth, I wadded it up and flung it toward the wastebasket. It fluttered impotently to the floor before it got halfway there.

Okay, I told myself, calm down. I checked my other screens; there was still no sign of anything unusual on the internal network, and the only open connection to the DMZ was the clipboard in front of me. Whatever had gone wrong with the firewall, it was trapped in the DMZ.