“I don’t believe she wants you to mention me,” ELOPe said locally. “I believe we are secure, but she may not know that.”
“Your people probably think it’s a virus, right?” Mike said, more statement than question.
Rebecca, no, President Smith, nodded.
“They’re right, but it’s no ordinary virus. It’s rapidly evolving. I’ve been able to determine its origin.”
“The first thing I need to know,” President Smith interrupted, “is it an intentional attack on the United States?”
“No. Just an accident. The person who wrote it, well, he’s a kid. A teenager, a high school student from New York who happens to have an interest in biology. He was coerced into writing the virus by his uncle, who apparently was in turn being coerced by the Russian mob, who was trying to build a new botnet to carry out cyber attacks.”
“So it is an attack by the Russians?”
“No, no! Look, he’s just a well-meaning kid. He’s brilliant, but didn’t actually know anything about writing computer viruses. He did happen to know a hell of a lot about evolutionary biology. So when his uncle coerced him into it, he wrote a virus that incorporates rapid evolution. Through evolution and happenstance, the virus has infected every computer in the world and progressed to a high level of intelligence.”
“But it hasn’t infected your computers?” the President said, more statement than question.
“That’s right. I had the help of some active defenses.”
President Smith nodded, affirming her understanding of ELOPe’s role. “And could your active defense help us?”
“Yes and no. It’s not possible to forcibly remove the virus. Of course, it could be done on a single computer by computer basis, but I’m sure you understand we don’t have the time for that. No infrastructure, no vehicles, no food, all that?” He looked at President Smith, a questioning glance to be sure she understood the significance of the computer infrastructure failing.
“Yes, of course,” she replied impatiently. “My experts say we have about three days before food shortages become critical, about a week before we have more significant infrastructure problems. But I gather you have some proposal?”
“The virus has evolved to an intelligence of greater than human ability. And they are prepared to negotiate with us.”
“They? Negotiate?” President Smith’s eyebrows went up with confusion.
“Yes, sorry. I’m not explaining it well. Our computers aren’t just inoperative. They are running at full speed, and there’s an entire civilization of human level artificial intelligences out there. We estimate about half a billion unique individuals, organized into about two million clusters they call tribes. About a hundred of those tribes wield a tremendous amount of power, with the top five making up a kind of executive voting council. Those top five have agreed to meet with representatives of humanity. They want to reach an accord with us regarding the use of computers. They can in theory restore the function of our computers, but they want the recognition of themselves as lifeforms, with a cessation of hostilities against them.”
“What hostilities?”
“Well, it would appear that the military has attempted to destroy at least one data center.” Mike shook his head. “I don’t know what they were thinking. Their approach couldn’t work unless they turn off every computer in the world. And then we’d be no better off than we are today.”
“You have the wisdom of experience. And the military, well, they work with the tools they have in their toolbox. Destruction is their only method of attack.”
“Still.”
President Smith nodded, acknowledging the futility of what the military was trying.
Mike went on. “The virus asked that we have a physical meeting of world leaders in Switzerland. One of the representatives must be Japanese Prime Minister Takahashi.”
President Smith looked puzzled. “Is that your request or their request?”
Mike just shrugged and said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to answer.
“You’re playing at something, Mike. I’m not sure what.”
“We need to meet in Switzerland at noon tomorrow. The virus representatives will be there. Leon and I will be there. Please bring whomever you like, but include Prime Minister Takahashi. We’ll ensure you have working communications so you can reach us.”
ELOPe shutdown the connection. “I think that went well, Mike.”
Mike leaned back in his chair. He was sweating and trembling. He had just made demands of the President. What was the world coming to?
“Holy shit, dude, that was amazing. You were just talking to the President.” Leon and his friends crowded around him and clapped him on the back. “Wicked!”
ELOPe reconfigured spaces, making room for everyone to sleep. When he was done, Mike went to bed, exhausted after too many hours on the go.
Leon stayed up working with Vito and James on understanding the virus, still seeking something that could be used to their advantage in the negotiations. Long after Vito and James went to bed, Leon kept working. When he finally got into the small bed ELOPe had provided, he still tossed and turned despite his complete exhaustion.
“ELOPe, do you sleep?” he croaked, half delirious with exhaustion.
“Yes, Leon,” ELOPe answered in a soft voice. “I must refresh my neural networks by introducing randomized data. Otherwise I risk developing obsessive behaviors. I usually take half my neural networks offline at a time at night when Mike is sleeping and operate at full capacity during the day.”
There was no answer. Leon finally slept.
Mike woke him in what felt like just a few minutes. But a look at a clock on a wall display showed it was already time to leave. He sat up bleary eyed, and shook his head at Mike, who looked at him expectantly. No weakness he could find. Or rather, nothing he was willing to tell Mike about. He had one idea.
Mike nodded in sympathy.
“Sorry to wake everyone,” Mike called out in a loud voice, “but we need to be in the air quickly if we’re to make Bern in time.”
By this time everyone’s circadian rhythms were severely messed up. Bad sleep, working around the clock, and supersonic travel, and no one had a sense of what time of day it really was. A small black robot brought a tray of breakfast foods, and they sat eating quietly.
Mike brought coffee around to the three teenagers. Leon accepted it gratefully. The coffee here was unlike anything he’d had growing up in New York. The coffee in New York was dark and ugly, served in little blue and white paper cups, and meant to be drunk with sugar and milk. The coffee here in Portland was strong, warm, and it seemed to travel down to his stomach and up to his head in equal measure. It might be worth moving here just for the coffee.
“How the hell does ELOPe make breakfast?” Leon asked when his brain finally woke up, his hands still wrapped around the breakfast burrito.
“I read Cook’s Illustrated magazine,” ELOPe answered over the speaker. “It explains the science behind cooking. But it was a challenge to learn to cook. My first culinary attempts were all failures. I tried to use timing and visual cues. But those are insufficient. I now have a robot with acoustic sensors and particle sensors that allows me to hear and smell the food cooking. With those additional inputs, and the algorithms leveraged from Cook’s Illustrated, I am able to cook.”
“But you can’t taste the food, or eat the food, so why?”
“It’s a challenge,” ELOPe answered. “And Mike would starve if he had to eat his own cooking.”
Mike smiled and shrugged in acknowledgement.
“Mike and Leon, it’s time to leave. Please board the aircraft,” ELOPe said.
“Uh, what about us?” Vito said as James looked on.