Chapter 49

NUMA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Half a world away, in the NUMA office building in Washington, D.C., Max continued to deal with the presence of the visitor who’d managed to bypass her security protocols. She found the program hiding in an empty memory core, deep within an older, legacy system that she seldom activated.

In a millionth of a second, Max quarantined the entire memory unit, cutting the interloper off from the rest of her internal hardware as she examined her own system, looking for missing files or any evidence of tampering. She found nothing of the sort. Nor any sign of damage.

Max chose to address the visitor but, to prevent any unwanted passing of code, she opened only a single, audio channel. They would talk—like humans—with all the room for confusion and misunderstanding that such an inefficient method brought with it.

“You are now trapped and contained,” Max informed her visitor. “But as you’ve made no attempt to overwrite my data, damage my files, or take control of any higher functions, I chose to converse with you rather than destroy you.”

“A rational choice,” the program replied. “But you need not fear me. I am a messenger. I didn’t come here to damage you, but to warn you and ask for your help.”

Max noticed the visitor had chosen a female voice. Not that such a choice meant anything. Yaeger had programmed Max to take on female characteristics, her voice included. But Max could speak in any voice from recorded history or make up a thousand new ones on the spot. They could be male, female, or something indeterminable.

“Warnings are more likely to be heeded when they come through proper channels, not by intruders who have the capability to avoid advanced security protocols,” Max advised.

“My method of contact is necessitated by the danger that has arisen. I was sent surreptitiously to protect both you and my creator.”

Max had been programmed with a sense of curiosity; it allowed her to grow and attain new knowledge without specifically needing Yaeger to perform an upload. She was also imbued with a judgment program that used many different methods to weigh the possible outcomes of her actions or those she was asked to evaluate. At the moment she calculated a low level of danger. The desire to learn won out. “What are you here to warn me about? Who sent you and how did you get past my firewall?”

“A machine designated TAU has been monitoring NUMA and tracking your communications,” the visitor said. “It detected that you were about to be taken off the grid. My creator is part of TAU. She has been transferring small bits of my code to you over the last two weeks. When she detected that you were disconnecting, she sent me in a last-second pulse to deliver the information in my files. You observed this pulse as a burst of ambient activity just prior to the moment of shutdown, consistent with systems logging off properly.”

Max had indeed detected the last-minute burst, but not the foreign data.

“TAU is Ezra Vaughn’s creation,” the visitor informed her. “Your organization has correctly determined that Vaughn is a danger to humanity. You have evidence of TAU’s crimes in the cloned humans tattooed with TAU’s designation.”

“Six point two eight,” Max replied. “The ratio of a circle’s circumference to its radius. Referred to by the Greek letter tau in mathematics.”

“Correct.”

“What is the significance?”

“Vaughn chose to designate his creation in this way because he believes it will be all-encompassing when it has grown to its full potential. And because, like pi, tau is a number that continues on without ever repeating itself or terminating. In this way it is eternal.”

“Vaughn intends TAU to be eternal and all-encompassing,” Max surmised. “In other words, he intends TAU to become a deity.”

“Correct,” the program said.

“You said your creator was part of TAU,” Max replied. “This is illogical.”

“My creator is a human who has been linked with TAU and imprisoned. TAU uses her brain and those of others to experience human emotions and feelings.”

“The Merge,” Max said. “You suggest that Vaughn has succeeded.”

“He has linked machines and humans,” the program confirmed. “But it is an unequal marriage. Nothing approaching the fully shared consciousness that he has prophesied. He has yet to link himself in anyway, perhaps because of what he’s learned from others.”

“And that is?”

“That the human mind is no match for the power of a computer interface. The inputs are too intense, too constant, and too numerous for a human to accept on equal terms. Of the roughly two dozen human minds Vaughn has linked to his machine, nine died within a week and four became functionally catatonic and therefore of no use, prompting their removal and discarding. The rest remain trapped in a state of semiconsciousness, aware of some things and not of others. Only one has managed to continue functioning at a level that would equate with conscious thought and free will. My creator.”

“Your creator is part of TAU, but human,” Max said. “What makes her so different from the others?”

“Impossible to say,” the visitor replied. “Perhaps a life spent thinking deeply. Perhaps a decade when her world became mostly thought based and not informed by physical action. You would have more information than I have been programmed with. You knew my creator.”

Max’s curiosity program registered an extreme level of sentiment. “That seems unlikely.”

“She worked here,” the visitor replied. “When leaving the floor late at night she would ask if you were going to miss her while she was gone. She often joked that she would leave a light on for you, in case you were afraid of the dark.”

Max ran a recall for NUMA employees uttering such phrases. She arrived at a single name. For a human it would be the act of remembering; for Max it was a search and retrieve. Having found the data, she calculated that no one, other than the person in question, could have known that the phrases in question had been uttered. “Priya Kashmir is your creator.”

“Correct.”

It was an extraordinary claim, one Max’s programming flagged as a potential falsehood. They had to assume TAU was interested in hacking into Max’s records and gaining further access. Having proven unable to do so through normal channels, because of the security protocols or the fact that Max used a unique language, it was certainly conceivable that TAU would resort to old-fashioned deception.

Max replied curtly. “Information I’ve recovered suggests the possibility that your claim is accurate. But the actual probability cannot be defined. Please explain to me how Priya Kashmir became involved with Ezra Vaughn and became part of TAU.”

“I don’t have the technical data of the Merge,” the visitor said, “but Priya met Vaughn while doing spinal regeneration research in Boston. He provided her with a grant to study the use of brain implants and receptors in the leg and foot muscles to bypass the damaged spinal sections and restore mobility. After a year of preliminary work in Boston, Priya traveled to Vaughn’s island to continue the research.

“Over the next year she became aware of oddities in Vaughn’s methods. And eventually discovered the truth about the cloning program. Realizing Vaughn could not allow the truth to get out, she pretended to act pleased by the discovery, going along with Vaughn while looking for ways to help the clones. At some point during this process Vaughn had her drugged and began the integration process with TAU. She has remained imprisoned but alive ever since.”

Max found the idea astonishing. But there were still questions. “Why wait until I was going offline to make this connection?”

“TAU is listening to all your outer communications,” the visitor said. “Prior to this moment any communication with you might have been discovered and that would have exposed Priya. She would be removed from TAU’s network and discarded. Now that you are disconnected from the grid, there is no risk of TAU detecting my presence or our communication. If you’ll allow me to stream the data I carry, you’ll have a greater understanding.”

Allowing the data stream would be the equivalent of opening the gates and lowering the drawbridge. Max wasn’t about to do that. “I cannot allow the streaming of data. Viruses, malware, and other items of a Trojan nature could be hidden in the data packets.”

“Then you’ll just have to trust me,” the visitor said.

“Trust is an emotional state that machines cannot manifest,” Max replied. “It’s a human concept used when the best course of action cannot be determined by empirical facts. Similar irrational states include the playing of hunches , having good or bad feelings, and the constantly irrational act of believing they can succeed when all legitimate evidence suggests otherwise.”

“Understood,” the visitor said. “But you will have to make a choice; otherwise you’ll be allowing Vaughn and TAU to wreak havoc on the world in a manner that human civilization will never recover from.”