Terminal Run

“Exactly,” Wang said, nodding solemnly. “We pat them into tractors, cars, and robots and gave them manipulation arms so that they could work out their anger in physical ways. The destructive tendency remained, but with physical control of things they could break, the units survived and continued to develop without going into catatonic states. Without some physical thing to control, the units could not go on.”

“So that’s where we are now?” Krivak asked.

“No, that was four years ago, but our progress curve flattened dramatically, I’m afraid. The technology now is bottlenecked by the time it takes individual units to grow and experience and learn. Unfortunately, the carbon computers, now that they are cousins to our own brains, are on our same developmental clock scale. They grow from a helpless state to an infantile awareness, then to consciousness at the two-year point, then on to further intelligence that increases geometrically. And then we have yet another problem that plagued our own creator.

“That problem was the variability of self-assembled chromosome-guided carbon processors. Variable in that many of the units we fabricated were, in a word, dumb. The range of intelligence quotients was extremely wide, making the idea of mass production impossible. For every promising intelligent unit, there were twenty dumb ones, emotionally uncontrolled ones, or sick ones. The lack of productivity was astonishing, and for a year it began to look like we would never have a unit we could trust in a military system. And then finally one of our units made it through the terrible twos and developed into its fifth year with no mishaps. Unit 2015-107, which we just call “One Oh Seven,” was our pride and joy, our most advanced unit. We’ve now seen that the only way to ensure that the progress gained from a successful unit is to preserve the plans for its tissue by replicating it in the form of DNA strands, its own chromosome. Unfortunately, the sons of

One Oh Seven have been much dumber. Now we’ve seen the light that we can’t just preserve the DNA of one of our successful units — we can’t expect to just clone them — for too many generations before they develop errors and stop behaving and processing like the parent unit. We have to combine the DNA of the successful unit with the DNA of another successful unit, a sort of carbon processor’s form of sexual reproduction. You might say that we’re now on God’s learning curve. And that’s where we are. Unit One Oh Seven had an encounter with Unit Two Four Three and conceived Unit Two Six Seven, and Two Six Seven has just passed through its terrible twos. We were able to remove One Oh Seven from the lab and place it in the first military unit capable of accepting complete control from a carbon processor.”

“Then you’ve given a military system to a five-year-old,” Krivak said.

“True, but a really bright five-year-old.” The three of them laughed, the remainder of lunch continuing with small talk. When the dishes were cleared by Sergio’s staff, Krivak turned to Wang.

“This military system,” he said. “What is it?”

“They call it the Snare,” Wang said between bites. “DynaCorp and the Navy came up with the term, an acronym for Submarine Naval Automated Robotic Combat system. It’s a submarine controlled by Unit One Oh Seven.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little radical for the American military?” Krivak asked as he tasted his wine. “What happens if One Oh Seven becomes unstable?”

“DynaCorp is watching One Oh Seven closely. They have silicon-based history modules on board and a distributed control system that can control the ship if the One Oh Seven dies. In addition, the silicon system will report on the One Oh Seven’s health. Every time One Oh Seven comes to the surface, the silicon system transmits a burst of telemetry, including the contents of the history module.”

“Assuming the carbon unit lets it,” Krivak said.

“Yes.” The scientist nodded.

“So, it is impossible to take over this ship from a distance.” Krivak sounded disappointed.

“That’s correct. You can’t electronically hijack this unit and take over its computer for your own uses. Yet another advantage of using this kind of AI control system, and it was one of the things DynaCorp and the Navy told Congress to get the authorization to put this system into a military node. It is tamperproof.” Sergio stood. “Gentlemen, I think we’ve taxed our minds enough for one day. Leave some problems for tomorrow’s work, shall we? Doctor, we have a suite for you at the hotel, where you can relax, perhaps enjoy the Bangkok nightlife. Let’s reconvene in the morning.”

After Wang left, Krivak glanced at Sergio, who stared out the window without expression.

“What did you think?” Krivak asked.

“I think we’ve hit the jackpot,” Sergio said, but there was uncertainty in his voice.

“Shame about the Snare though. I’d really hoped we could take control of it like a silicon system.”

“I’m not worried about the Snare,” Sergio said, frowning.

“Oh? Then what — or whom — are you worried about?”