Дарья Дмитриевна Роснина
The Hackers
The whole internal space of his office was packed with racks containing equipment, prototypes of various strangely-looking devices resembling works of some futuristic designer on the subject of human brain discoveries.
It would be difficult for an outsider to make head or tail of all that pile of devices, prototypes of appliances, huge stacks of files over-packed with papers.
The central part of the room was occupied by an enormous table that clearly showed that the word “order” was seldom used by the owner of the room.
However, Atarva insisted that each and every thing was lying on its proper place and no one was allowed to touch anything so as not to disturb that system order, which would inevitably cause a change in the “positive flow of events”.
The members of his small group had long got accustomed to that peculiarity of the young scientist. There was a funny story about Atarva: once Asha, who was fond of jokes, asked Atarva where a report on some old prototype test was. Without a hitch, Atarva told her where she could find the required file. Then Asha enquired him about the color of the walls in his room, and Atarva stared at her in total confusion. But at the moment no one felt like joking.
Atarva’s group shifted into the room occupied by Asha. The reason for that choice was simple: the girl’s room was always in perfect order, free of any unnecessary things.
There was a round low table in the center with armchairs standing all around. The table was equipped with a holographic projector with voice interface. Asha’s room was always in semidarkness, with only one obscure lamp lighting up the narrow space above the table.
The atmosphere of the room inspired deep reflection.
For that reason it was there that the group had usually conducted their internal meetings since the first days of their work. In addition, the room was fit out with the silence field, which was quite a useful option, given the huge number of Curators poking their noses into the internal affairs of the Scientific Center.
“The materials that Nestor brought us amount to a significant discovery. A contact with the World Ocean and a deliberate exchange of information were recorded. The data obtained are to make a major impact on all spheres of human life. These are the facts.
Naturally, the forces controlling the society, including our Curators, wish to get this event under control, and as a result, the head of the contact project ended up in a mental hospital and his lab and equipment disappeared together with all reports. The fate of the rest of the personnel is unknown. And these are the facts as well!
Purely by chance, Nestor managed to leave the facility for a couple of days before all of us were switched over to the confidentiality mode.
And I believe that these events are interconnected! Those who stopped the disobedient scientists from pursuing their research in such a way are well aware that we have the data on that discovery. Nestor met his father and received his reports.
Therefore, they presume that we are now sitting and thinking of how to repeat the experiment on the contact with the Ocean Mind, as we may call it. Why have I made such an assumption? Knowing our psychological profiles, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine our actions with a certain degree of probability. There are special programs designed for that. Do you agree?”
Atarva stopped speaking for a while, giving a serious glance at his silent group.
“Please remember that what we have created is more than just a processor, in fact it is an artificially made rational being that is aware of its existence. And now this being is studying and comprehending the information accumulated by mankind over the whole period of its existence. For the time being, it is only studying the world and thinking. One of the customer’s requirements was to obtain access to such information.
Yesterday, we received an instruction from the Curators. I will read out the new requirements point by point. First, we are to limit the potential of our processor by ninety-nine percent. To do this, they suggested that we create some sort of complex locking algorithm and integrate it into the processor as its part.”
“Exactly like with the human brain! Asha remarked and spread her arms.
Atarva nodded in consent and continued. “It would be quite easy to technically perform this, but I convinced the Curators that it is a rather complex development and that it will require time. And now the most interesting point!
The second requirement is to create an access to all the capabilities of the processor, bypassing the limitations, only for a small group of people, whose genetic code will be an enter key as well as a set of conditions ruling out the possibility of the system hacking by unauthorized persons. In other words, only a few people on the planet must have access to the Super Brain!
While users will be communicating with this mind exactly through that lock-out program, naturally according to specific tariffs. This all will be presented as a major breakthrough in science! A plan of genius, isn’t it?
And now let’s talk about us: given the fact that the reasonable being we have created is a self-recovering organism and will not require any human interference in the future, after delivering our work to the customer we’ll become a redundant link which has the information that the customer would like to keep secret. Then it would be logical to presume that they would like to get rid of our group. I must confess that this bothers me, but we’ll discuss this later.
Therefore, we may have a couple of weeks left for the experiment, and we can use this processor to its full capacity until a lock will be integrated into it.
Who wouldn’t like to hack the Planet’s Noosphere! But once we start the experiment, we’ll become criminals from the point of view of the customer and the Curators! The consequences of such liberty may be very serious! While the result of our experiment may change the whole science on the Planet.
You are all aware of what will face us in case of a slightest leakage of information, aren’t you?”
“Nestor must carry on with the work of his father, and I have always chosen the path of Socrates and Giordano Bruno when it came to principles!” Asha shrugged her shoulders.
“Then I will proceed to the practical issues,” Atarva went on, “And here I’ve got a question! We’ll need Absolem’s resource. And there is certain difficulty here. The AI will not be able to keep that secret since Absolem will submit its regular report to the Curators, which will clearly show its involvement in our experiment. If this happens, all of us will face the fate of Nestor’s father, and that will be the best case scenario.”
“No, no,” Asha started waving her hands, “In the best case scenario, there will be a vent system failure, accidental of course, and it will “accidently” pump out all the air from our lab for just a couple of hours. Everything will be done quickly and accurately! Do you remember what happened to the group who were involved in cold fusion? A dam cracked down and they were flooded! And the guy who transferred energy without wires – electrocuted while conducting an experiment.”
“Asha, your words make me shiver,” Atarva said with a wince. “I am scared, Asha.”
All of us are scared, my friend,” the girl’s voice sounded confident and calm. “And that’s quite natural for people. But you’ve got to take all the circumstances into account: we have developed something that is considerably ahead of our time! Soon we will hand over the ready processor to the customer as well as the keys to its locks. But we can’t pass over our knowledge to them, which is a problem! The customer obviously wants to have control over the technology of the processor production and the processor itself, isn’t that evident? What can they do? Let’s make a forecast. Atarva is right that we’ll have to disappear, whatever the outcome, unless we come up with a way to escape. Therefore, having made the first step, personally I’m prepared to make the second one! Let’s start to prepare for the experiment. Maybe the result obtained will be our way out. Do you agree?”
“Don’t make so much noise, Asha! They may hear you even through the silence field,” Nestor hissed to her. “Atarva raised the question of how to engage the AI in our work. The Curators check daily reports on its operation and performed tasks. What can make the AI keep a secret from men? I suggest we start communicating with Absolem, and open for him an access to making personal directions that will not be subject to control. We must motivate him by giving him a certain purpose so that he will deliberately create distortions in the data of his reports to the Curators. Or simply will deceive them. The AI Absolem is a first-generation machine with linear logic!”