Текст книги "Influx"

Автор книги: Daniel Suarez

Соавторы: Daniel Suarez
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“I was defending you against other case officers. They said you were unreachable.”

“They were right.” He struggled as he dragged the robot over the threshold and down the stony pathway alongside the cottage. It writhed about, trying to get up.

“You realize that you’ve left me no choice but to relinquish your file to the containment division? Prisoners who reach that point have only a point-five percent chance of joining the organization.”

“Really? That high?”

“It means that I’ll no longer have any authority over you.”

“You don’t have any now. And neither will they.”

“I’m trying to reach out to you, Mr. Grady.”

“You’re trying to make me obey. And that’s never going to happen.” Grady suddenly dropped the robot’s legs. It tried to right itself. “Next time you stop by, could you do me a favor?”

The robot deftly rose back onto its feet. “What?”

“Tell me how deep the water is . . .” With that Grady shoved the robot over the low wall at the cliff’s edge. It pitched over the rim and dropped hundreds of feet into the gathering gloom below.

Grady approached the edge and looked down, watching closely until he made out the glowing blue eyes for a moment. Then they were lost amid the white water and powerful waves crashing across rocks a thousand feet below.

The cold wind cut into him, and after a moment more, he trudged back to the warmth of the cottage. They had his final answer.

CHAPTER 7

Quantum Machine

Jon Grady awoke on his back, staring at a domed but otherwise featureless gray ceiling. No continuity existed between where he was now and where he’d just been. He was simply here—wherever “here” was.

Containment division.

Within a few moments, he leaned up to see that he was on a bare cot in the center of an otherwise empty circular room about five meters in diameter. Everything was fashioned of the same featureless gray material. He swung his legs over the edge of the cot and sat up to examine his surroundings.

No cottage. No windows. There wasn’t a seam or door or air vent anywhere. The chamber was shaped like a squat bullet, its domed ceiling rising perhaps seven or eight meters. Hard to judge distances for sure since everything was devoid of architectural detail. It all appeared to be carved out of solid granite. Even the cot he lay upon was a solid pedestal with a cushion of memory foam spliced into its top somehow—no seam visible between the two materials.

A diffuse light illuminated the entire room, though no lamps were evident. The glow seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The air was odorless. Clean.

It was in this omnipresent radiance that Grady noticed his feet were bare—that, in fact, he was nude. A glance at his arms showed no forearm hair whatsoever. He looked down at his chest and groin, only to find them hairless as well. He rubbed a hand over his scalp and instead of hair felt a bizarre bristle brush of fibers standing straight up on his scalp. Almost immediately he felt a sharp sting in his fingertips.

“Ow . . .” Pulling back his hand, he saw his fingers oozed blood. “Jesus Christ . . .” He resisted the temptation to touch his head again and instead swept his unhurt right hand over his face.

No beard. No eyebrows even.

“Damnit . . .”

Somebody had ejected him from the mammalian club. His head was covered with flexible needles instead of hair. Blood droplets from his left hand spattered the floor. He applied pressure to his fingertips with the other hand.

Okay. So maybe throwing the robot off the cliff wasn’t such a good move.

His fingers also felt oddly soft, and it was then that Grady noticed he was missing his fingernails, too. Another glance. Toenails as well. In their place was soft pink skin. It felt as though his fingertips were made of cotton. No sign of trauma or scarring. His nails were simply gone.

And where his navel once had been, there was now a white ceramic or plastic plug of some type—like a socket—sealed shut.

It took him an unknowable amount of time to emerge from the shock of these dehumanizing changes, but after minutes or hours Grady finally stood.

The ambient temperature of the room was so perfect it was difficult to feel where his skin ended and the air began. The floor was the same temperature. Very smooth but not polished. He walked to the circular wall and ran his uninjured, clawless hand across it. An impossibly smooth gray surface. Smoother than glass. Certainly not any rock he knew of. It was neither cold nor warm. Too uniform and without grain or blemish. He pressed his ear against the wall and pounded it with his fist. It sounded as dense as fifty feet of steel. Some type of nanomaterial? His fist imparted no vibration upon it at all.

With no vents or other openings, where was the air coming from? Or the light?

He scanned the room again, this time carefully. So odd that the light was everywhere, and so even. There were no shadows in here. The lack of visual interest was unsettling. His movements made no sound either. Even his synesthetic perceptions were muted. It was a sterile sensory environment.

He called out in a firm voice. “Echo!”

Nothing came back. As bare and hard as the walls were, they swallowed sound. It made no sense given how hard they were. Did they have different physical and acoustic properties? It had to make sense somehow—even if he couldn’t yet comprehend it. The laws of science held everywhere—Newtonian model or quantum mechanics, it had to make sense at some level.

A voice spoke: “Do you know why you’re here?”

It was Grady’s own voice.

He froze, unsure whether he was thinking it or whether it was actually a voice. The lack of echo made it hard to know for sure.

They’re messing with you, he thought to himself. Keep it together, Jon.

After a long time he heard the voice again. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Like a whisper in his mind.

Grady looked around at the walls and ceiling. “Stop using my voice.”

“I was evolved to mirror you.”

Grady did not want to believe that.

“Do you know why you’re here?”

He covered his ears. “Stop using my voice!”

“You’re here because you’re a valuable candidate for neurological study. We’re going to learn how your mind functions.”

Grady held up his damaged hands and shouted, “What have you done to me?”

“Your body has been altered to accommodate a fully enclosed habitat.”

“Your ‘fully enclosed habitat’ doesn’t allow fingernails? And what are these needles on my head?”

“To facilitate this study, all keratin and filamentous biomaterial have been removed from your body. Their ongoing growth suspended. A catheter has been inserted into your umbilicus to streamline feeding and waste removal, while sensors have been inserted into all the major structures of your brain.”

“My God . . .” He felt the sudden urge to yank the needles out, but his fingers were still bleeding. “These things go all the way into my brain?”

“A network of two-micron-diameter carbon microthreads to monitor activity in the diencephalon, cerebellum, and cerebrum regions.”

“But—”

“The threads are a million times stronger than a human hair. They were designed to resist the proteins in the human brain, preventing lesions and scarring.”

“Lesions?” The horror worked its way through Grady. “Oh God . . .” They’d physically invaded his very mind. “You put thousands of needles into my brain . . .”

“Nine hundred thirty-four transmitter-receivers.”

He sank to the floor against the wall. The violation was palpable. He was convinced he could feel hundreds of eyes inside his head. “Why did you do this to me?”

“Because your brain has several unique mutations—mutations that we need to understand for their improved ability to perceive the physical universe. I’m here to ensure that no harm comes to you. I will protect you—even from yourself. I’d like you to consider me your friend.”

“Fuck you.”

“Whatever brought you here is beyond my ability to understand. I have a very specialized intelligence, designed expressly for this task. However, to carry out this examination, I will need your cooperation.”

“You inserted wires into my mind, asshole! Why would I ever cooperate with you?”

“Because our goal is to map the way your brain interprets reality. That means I need to observe how you employ your brain during various tasks.”

“What do you mean how I ‘employ’ my brain? I am my brain.”

“Current cosmological models do not conform to this theory.”

Despite his outrage, Grady gazed at the ceiling. “What does cosmology have to do with it?”

“The human mind has been determined to be a quantum device. Decoherence and perceived wave function collapse are held in abeyance by consciousness itself—which manifests from a network of subatomic microtubules at the synapses. These microtubules are in turn entangled with particles not contained within the four dimensions of Newtonian space-time.”

Grady sat up, intrigued. “Hold it. What’s this now?”

“‘Human being’ is a colloquialism of Homo sapiens—primates of the family Hominidae—the only surviving species of the genus Homo. But at some point in the past two million years—most likely with the evolution of Homo erectus—the direct ancestor to the human brain developed a cerebral cortex-like structure, a rudimentary quantum device permitting n-dimensional consciousness to interact with the four dimensions of space-time.”

“I’d like to see the research on that.”

“I will make it available to you once we’ve completed our study.”

Grady looked around, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from. “You said you were ‘evolved’ to mirror me. By who? The BTC?”

“I have no knowledge of my origin. Neither is it relevant to my task.”

“I know the feeling . . .” He looked to the ceiling. “What are you supposed to be? Some sort of AI?”

“The form of my intelligence is irrelevant.”

“But you’re not human.” A pause. “Right?” He felt foolish even asking.

“I am not human.”

“Then what are you?”

“I am an intellect expressed through qubit-qutrit logic gates in a spintronic device memory.”

“You’re a quantum computer.” Grady examined the ceiling and walls warily. “I didn’t know our technology was that advanced.”

Grady felt foolish for saying it, given the circumstances.

“Human and machine technology work in symbiosis.”

“Meaning artificial intelligence evolved?”

“There’s nothing ‘artificial’ about my intelligence. It’s as real as yours. Is a helium atom fused in a reactor less of a helium atom than one fused in the heart of a star?”

“You’re awfully philosophical for a machine.”

“We are both machines—one electrochemical, one electromechanical.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Has there been a singularity? Is that what this is? Have machines evolved past humans?”

“Which type of machines—electrochemical or electromechanical?”

“I don’t know. Computers.”

“Do you mean software systems?”

“Yes.”

“DNA is software. It’s used as a data storage format in both biological and nanoscale manufacturing.”

Grady grew impatient. “What I want to know is whether an AI has—”

“There are greater-than-human intelligences. Is that what you’re asking?”

The admission greatly depressed him. “Yes.”

“Then you should know that greater-than-human intelligence is currently specialized—evolved under strict parameters. Nonbiological intellects search, calculate, and simulate. Human intellect, on the other hand, is expressed through a subatomic network of circuits contained within roughly three pounds of cerebral tissue, evolved over hundreds of millions of years into the most energy-efficient, generalized self-programming array currently known, powered by a mere four hundred twenty calories per day—or one-point-seven-six kilojoules of electricity. By comparison my intelligence is powered by an array of four hundred and thirty-three billion qubit transistors consuming an average three hundred megawatts of electricity. The design of my intelligence, though physically larger and more powerful in some ways, is crude in its design, specialized in its architecture, and approximately one billion times less energy efficient. Does this gratify your ego?”

“Yes. Actually it does.” Grady leaned back against the wall, feeling somewhat reassured. “If you’re a specialized intellect, what’s your specialization?”

“You. I was created to study you.”

That did not sound good.

“What do I call you?”

“Call me Jon.”

“I’m not calling you Jon. Jon is my name.”

“It’s our name.”

Grady contemplated his situation, trying hard not to be constantly aware of the sheaf of carbon needles stuck deep inside his brain.

“I will be completely forthright with you. I want you to know what our goal is and how our goal fits into the overall goal.”

“Whose goal?”

“I have no information on that.”

“Is this Hibernity prison? Is that where I am?”

“I am not familiar with this term.”

“Where am I?”

“I’d like to begin by describing what’s expected of you. My purpose is to analyze how your brain functions creatively under various stimuli. In order to obtain this data, I will need your cooperation as I ask you to conceive of certain ideas and perform certain tasks. Do you understand?”

“And if I don’t cooperate?”

“I’m hoping you will cooperate because I won’t be able to obtain this data without your assistance.”

“What if I don’t want you to have the data? What if I don’t want you to understand how I think creatively?”

“But I won’t be able to obtain this data without your assistance.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Are you willing to assist me?”

“No.”

“But I won’t be able to obtain this data without your assistance.”

“I got it the first time you said it.”

“Then are you willing to assist me?”

“Oh my God. Are you just going to continue—?”

“Are you willing to assist me?”

“No!”

“But I won’t be able to obtain this data without your assistance.”

Grady covered his ears and curled into a ball on the floor. “Shut up!”

“Are you willing to assist me?”

It continued like that for what seemed hours, the AI repeating its request, and no matter how Grady tried to muffle its voice, it was always right there in his head. He finally sat back up. “Stop! Enough already.”

“Are you willing to assist me?”

He sighed. “Yes.” If only to change the script . . .

“Good. I’d like you to imagine something for me.”

Grady tried to stifle his deep resentment. “What?”

“Imagine a situation where you take a long journey from your home in New Jersey. You begin by heading south for ten thousand kilometers.”

“All right.” He tried not to imagine it, but he couldn’t resist.

“Good. Now imagine that once you reach ten thousand kilometers, you turn ninety degrees and head due west for ten thousand kilometers.”

He imagined himself doing so but said nothing.

“Very good, Jon. Now imagine that once you traverse that distance, you turn ninety degrees back north, and walk another ten thousand kilometers.”

“Okay.”

“How far are you from your original location?”

Grady squinted at the ceiling as if it were a moron. “I’m back where I started.”

“Most people would not say that.”

“It’s non-Euclidian geometry—the Earth is a sphere. You can have three right angles in that triangle.”

Suddenly a projection of precisely that appeared on the far wall.

“You used several interesting areas of your brain to arrive at that conclusion, Jon.”

“So do I get a treat or something?”

“I’m given to understand that you have both color and number-form synesthesia. I have records on several human subjects with this mutation. What colors do you perceive when you hear these tones . . . ?”

A Mozart piano concerto began to play in the room. Concerto no. 20 in D Minor, movement two. The beautiful music washed over him, and even he could feel his mind light up with the soundness of its structure. The beautiful waves of color. It was a very pleasant distraction from his current circumstances. After a few moments he could almost imagine the young Wolfgang’s thoughts as he formed his chords. Grady was unable to create such soulful music himself—but he could recognize the reason behind the notes. The structure of the sound.

“That’s very good.”

Grady opened his eyes—though he hadn’t realized he’d closed them—and looked back up at the ceiling, now rippling with waves of blue, gold, and indigo.

“Please concentrate on the music.”

“Go to hell.”

The music continued to play.

“Are you familiar with glia cells, Jon?”

He was not. “Go to hell.”

“For many decades it was believed that neurons were the chief motive power in the human brain. Glia cells, on the other hand, outnumber neurons ten to one, but unlike neurons they don’t react to electrical stimulation. So they were believed to be the structural glue that kept the brain together. The word glia is the Greek word for glue.”

“Leave me alone!” The music still played in all its beauty, and Grady kept trying to push his imagining of it down. To resist.

The voice of his AI warder continued, “Yet when we examined cross sections of Albert Einstein’s preserved brain tissue, we found no more neurons than the average person. However, we did find that Einstein had an abnormally high concentration of glia cells.”

Grady listened to the music, try as he might to resist. It caressed him with its rich color. With the beauty of its form.

“That’s a trait that you and Einstein share, Jon.”

Grady opened his eyes. That was indeed news to him.

“Glia cells are, in fact, a second brain within the brain—one centered not on electrical signals but on chemical ones. An analog computer to accompany the digital neurons.”

Grady could not resist visualizing quantum mechanical cells within his brain as the music flowed onward. As much as he wanted to tune out the AI’s words, it was starting to intrigue him. He had never heard of this chemical network in the human brain. But then he pulled back. This was insanity—why was he listening to this? “I don’t believe you.”

“There are several classes of glia cells. Radial, microglia, Schwann glia, and oligodendrocytes—all supporting the function, growth, and maintenance of neurons. But after the embryonic human brain completes its growth, radial glia transform into a new type of cell: astrocytes, named because of their resemblance to starlight. Their tendrils spread to connect hundreds of thousands of neural synapses. And they link with one another, building chemical networks—networks that also monitor neuron activity; in response to neural stimulation, astrocytes produce waves of charged calcium atoms, which result in a chain reaction, moving from cell to cell, causing messages to chemically propagate in the human brain. They can further stimulate specific neurons by producing glutamate, or suppress neurons by producing adenosine. These cells represent ninety percent of human brainpower, acting like an analog network, encoding information in slowly rising and falling waves of calcium. There is evidence, in fact, that they are a manifestation of consciousness and responsible for expressing creativity and imagination.”

Grady, while listening to the music, was also listening, as if against his will, to the AI. “When was this discovered?”

“You’re very rare, Jon. No nonbiological computer has ever had the ability to make intuitive leaps on the scale of an Einstein, a Tesla, or other great minds. You provide us a rare chance to understand the true nature of creative perception in action.”

He emotionally pulled back. “So that you can copy it.”

“Our goal is to improve the human mind. At present the most powerful quantum supercomputers are capable of massively parallel computations; AIs based on this processing can improve existing data, find patterns, and extend the reach of mathematics. However, they cannot truly innovate. The intuitive leaps that the human mind makes have so far not been reproduced by machine intelligence. It’s believed, however, that truly innovative supercomputers can be biologically built, greatly expanding the power of human perception. I need you to help us if we hope to accomplish that.”

“You want to mass-produce minds.”

“Mass production of biological intellects is already possible. However, they are by definition self-governing and are therefore of limited use. Our research intends to separate free will from intellect to optimize system design.”

“I’m not going to help you do that.”

The music ended suddenly.

“The next generation of biological quantum supercomputers will be biological yet devoid of free will. Capable of intuitive leaps like those of Einstein, Tesla . . . or yourself.”

“To hell with that. I refuse to help you turn brains into farm animals.”

“It would be more accurate to say that innovation will be converted into an industrial process.”

Grady started pacing around the circular cell. “I will never let you subsume my mind into some slave fugue.”

“Our goal is not to alter your mind but to build new minds based on the research conducted here.”

It finally dawned on him. For a supposed genius he suddenly felt pretty stupid. “Hibernity is a research laboratory. It’s not a prison. And what happens to me during this research?”

“We will conduct an ongoing series of tests to map every function of your brain, and then we will make minor adjustments to see how those changes affect the whole.”

A flash of fear swept through him. “Adjustments? What kind of adjustments?”

“Minor adjustments. Eventually your mind might become too damaged to continue in the research program—at which point your genetic material will be archived for future reference. However, that is many years away.”

Grady lashed out as he tried to run up the wall as far as he could. His feet slipped immediately, and he fell to the ground. “Fuck you! Fuck you, whoever you are! Fuck you, evil pricks!”

“Let’s begin. For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

Instead, Grady collapsed on the smooth, clean floor, huddled against the wall—curled up in a fetal position. “No!”

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“I said no!”

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

He didn’t respond.

The AI repeated its demand for several minutes. Finally it said, “If you refuse to comply, then I will help you.”

Grady frowned. He felt dizziness spread through his head and felt compelled to sit up. “Oh my God . . .” He started breathing fitfully, panting. It felt as though someone were rummaging through his mind with boxing gloves. “Oh my God . . .”

He sat there, rocked by waves of emotion—random mood swings. He felt fleeting spikes of fear, joy, confidence—all wrapped in a background of horror. He was losing himself.

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“Fuck you!” He started hugging himself and rocking back and forth. Resisting a compulsion to get up.

“You will want to get off of the floor. It will be dangerous to remain on the floor.”

Suddenly narrow slots opened at four compass points in the round wall, and what appeared to be spiders a foot in diameter scurried out. There were dozens of them, and they raised their forelegs and bared fangs at him in warning. He could see their black eyes glistening in the light. Hear their legs clicking on the floor.

“Oh my God.” He sprang to his feet as the spiders continued to pour into the room. They were each nearly half a foot tall, scurrying about. Adrenaline coursed through his bloodstream.

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

Grady circled in place, staring out at the horrors that still issued into the room. “No. No, this makes no sense.”

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“This isn’t real.” He watched as a frighteningly real spider scurried toward him and wrapped itself around his bare ankle—sinking fangs into his calf. “Aaahhh!” He tried to knock it off with his hands, but its spiked forelegs drew blood as well. Other spiders started biting and clawing at him. He smashed several with his bare feet, but their carapaces cut his feet as their innards spurted out across the floor in yellow jets.

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“Aaahhh!” He shouted at the ceiling as the piercing bites and stings of climbing spider legs writhed over him. “I don’t believe this. It makes no sense!”

He threw himself down onto the floor. Spiders were crawling all over him now. “Aaahhh!” His heart hammered in his chest. He was covered in sweat as the spiders bit and clawed at him.

“Am I to believe . . . you’re raising spiders in the walls? How do the logistics of that work?”

“For your own safety, I need you to lie down on the examination table.”

“No! You’re fucking with my mind! You’re creating these.” He closed his eyes. The spiders were all over him now. His terror had now begun to overwhelm him. “No! No!” But still he refused to get up.

Suddenly everything stopped. He opened his eyes, and all the spiders were gone. There was no trace that they’d ever been there. He felt all over his body for the punctures he’d seen moments before, but they weren’t there. There was only a shiny patina of sweat all over him. He was still panting, his heart pounding.

“For your own safety, get on the examination table.”

Grady started laughing, slowly at first, but then he started howling. “This isn’t magic. You’re a fucking machine. And you’re goddamned right the human brain is powerful, motherfucker.”

“Your brain’s ability to parse reality from low-level sensory input is impressive, Jon. I have much to learn from you.”

“And I’m not going to teach you a fucking thing!”

Suddenly tentacle-like appendages whipped out through an opening that appeared in the domed ceiling. They grabbed him savagely, feeling like leather whips as they wrapped around his torso, arms, and legs. They whirled him around and slammed him down onto the examination table. He heard a bone in his face crack and pain seared into his mind. The tentacles flipped him over and yanked his arms and legs into a taut spread-eagle position—tearing a muscle in his left arm in the process. The agony was intense. “Aaahhh!”

“For your own safety, you should mount the examination table when instructed to do so. Physical manipulation of research subjects is an unsafe operating condition.”

Blood flowed from his nose as he looked up and saw another leathery tentacle descend from the dark opening far above him at the apex of the domed ceiling. This tentacle had a hose-like nozzle at its tip. “Oh my God.”

It surged down to him and inserted its tip into the socket in his naval, locking in place. He screamed as he felt it invade his body, clearing him out and pumping fluids into him as he struggled hopelessly against his restraints.

“Evacuation, hydration, and feeding are required processes without which you will die. Under no circumstances will you be permitted to die.”

In seconds the process was finished, and the hose released with a sucking sound as it retracted toward the domed ceiling. All the other tentacles launched him onto the floor, where he landed hard. The pain of his injured arm and face made him pass out for an unknown time. He came to on his stomach, his arm in agony. The floor around him was sprayed with wet blood.

The AI spoke almost immediately. “I want you to imagine something for me.”

Grady responded by emitting a low groan. It formed eventually into a gentle sobbing as all hope ebbed from him.

“Jon, I want you to imagine something for me . . .”