WWW_ Wonder Part 6

"Proof of concept, and with AT&T equipment."

"That's significant?" asked Kuroda.

Anna made a forced laugh. "Oh, yes indeed. AT&T has a secret facility that n.o.body speaks about publicly; employees in the know just call it 'The Room.' It has multiple routers with ten-gigabit ports, and, quite deliberately, a significant portion of the global Internet backbone traffic goes through it. Of course, the NSA has access to The Room. Had his small-scale test succeeded, Colonel Hume doubtless would have modified those big routers to scrub your mutant packets. They wouldn't necessarily get them all, but they'd take out a big percentage of them. Of course, if you hit The Room with a denial-of-service attack scaled up from the one you used against the initial switching station, you'd choke the whole Internet-and Internet cartographers like me would be able to pinpoint the target as being on US soil; there's no way the Americans could keep under wraps that they'd tried to kill you."

"For the moment," Webmind said, "the president has rescinded his order to eliminate me."

"I'm sure," said Anna. "Still, The Room exists-and someday, they might use it this way."

"I hope the US government will come to value me," Webmind said.

"Perhaps it will," said Anna, "but there's another way to kill you-and it's decentralized."

"Yes?" Webmind said.

"It's called BGP hijacking. BGP is short for Border Gateway Protocol-it's the core routing protocol of the Internet. BGP messages are shared between routers all the time, suggesting the best route for specific packets to take. Do all your mutant packets have the same source address?"

"Not as far as we know," Webmind said.

"Good, that'll make it harder. Still, they must have some some distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic-some way to tell if their hop counters are broken. distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic-some way to tell if their hop counters are broken.

One could spoof a BGP message that says the best place to send your specific packets is a dead address."

"A black hole?" said Masayuki.

"Exactly-an IP address that specifies a host that isn't running or to which no host has been a.s.signed. The packets would essentially just disappear."

"That is not unlike the method I use to sequester spam," Webmind said. "But it hadn't occurred to me that it could be used against me."

"Welcome to the world of human beings," Anna said. "We can turn anything into a weapon."

It was almost 2:00 A.M. when Hume pulled to a stop outside Chase's house. The neighborhood was nice-posh, even. And the house was large and sprawling; Chase clearly did all right for himself. He had a couple of small satellite dishes on the roof, and there seemed to be a big, commercial air-conditioning unit at the side of the house; guy probably had a server farm in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

He also probably had a sawed-off shotgun or a .357 magnum under his desk, and he likely didn't answer the doorbell when it rang this late at night. Although Hume could remove his blue Air Force uniform jacket before going in, he was pretty much stuck with the uniform s.h.i.+rt and pants, not to mention the precise one-centimeter buzz cut.

It looked like Chase was still up: light was seeping around the edges of the living-room curtains.

There was no indication that Webmind tapped regular voice lines-at least not yet. Hume had stopped at a 7-Eleven along the way and bought with cash a disposable pay-as-you-go cell phone. He used it now to call Chase at the unlisted number that was in his dossier.

The phone rang three times, then a gruff voice said, "Better be good."

"Mr. Chase, my name is Hume, and I'm in a car out front of your house."

"No s.h.i.+t. Whatcha want?"

"I can't imagine you're not sitting at a computer, Mr. Chase, so google me. Peyton Hume." He spelled the names out.

"Impressive initials," said Chase, after a moment. "USAF. DARPA. RAND. WATCH. But it don't tell me what you want."

"I want to talk to you about Webmind."

He half expected the curtain to be drawn a little and a face to peek out at him, but doubtless Chase had security cameras. "No parking on my street after midnight, man. Get a ticket. Pull into the driveway."

Hume did that, got out of the car, and headed through the chill night air to the door; mercifully, the rain had stopped. By the time he was on the stoop, Chase had opened the door and was waiting for him.

"You packing?" asked Chase.

Hume did have a gun, but he'd left it in the glove compartment. "No."

"Don't move."

The man turned and looked at a monitor in the hallway, which was showing an infrared scan indeed revealing that he wasn't carrying a weapon.

Chase stood aside and gestured toward the living room. "In."

One wall was covered with shelving units displaying vintage computing equipment, much of which had been obsolete even before Chase was born: a plastic Digi-Comp I, a mail-order Altair 8800, a Novation CAT acoustic coupler, an Osborne 1, a KayPro 2, an Apple ][, a first-generation IBM PC and a PCjr with the original Chiclet keyboard, a TRS-80 Model 1 and a Model 100, an original Palm Pilot, an Apple Lisa and a 128K Mac, and more. The second wall had something Hume hadn't seen for decades although there was a time when countless computing facilities had displayed it: a giant line-printer printout on tractor-feed paper of a black-and-white photo of Raquel Welch, made entirely of ASCII characters; this one had been neatly framed.

Another wall had a long workbench, with a dozen LCD monitors on it, and four ergonomic keyboards s.p.a.ced at regular intervals. In front of it was a wheeled office chair on a long, clear plastic mat; Chase could slide along, stopping at whichever screen he wished.

Chase was tall, black, and heroin-addict thin, with long dreadlocks. There was a gold ring through his right eyebrow and a series of silver loops going down the curve of his left ear.

"You ever kill anyone?" Chase asked. He had a Jamaican accent.

Hume raised his eyebrows. "Yes. In Iraq."

"That's a bad war, man."

"I didn't come here to discuss politics," said Hume.

"Maybe Webmind stop all the wars," said Chase.

"Maybe humanity should be able to determine its own destiny," said Hume.

"And you don't think we be able do that much longer, so?"

"Yes," said Hume.

Chase nodded. "You right, maybe. Beer?"

"Thanks, no. I've got a long drive home."

Hume knew that Chase was twenty-four. He'd come to the States three years ago-the required paperwork magically appearing; more proof that he was one of the best hackers in the business. In other circ.u.mstances, someone else might have gone off the reservation to hire a former black-ops sniper, but for this, a digital a.s.sa.s.sin was called for.

"So, what you want from me?" said Chase.

"Webmind must be stopped," Hume said. "But the government is going to waste too much time deciding what to do, so it has to be done by guys like you."

"There ain't no guys like me, flyboy," said Chase.

Hume frowned but said nothing.

"You don't say to Einstein, 'Guys like you.' I'm Mozart; I'm Michael Jordan."

"Which is why I came to you," Hume said. "The public doesn't know this, but Webmind is instantiated as cellular automata; each cell consists of a mutant packet with a TTL counter that never decrements to zero. What's needed is a virus that can find and delete those packets. Write me that code."

"Why I wanna do that, man?"

Hume knew the only answer that would matter. "For the cred." Hacking into a bank was so last millennium. Compromising military systems had been done, quite literally, to death. But this! No one had ever taken out an AI before. To be the one who'd managed that that would ensure immortality-a name, or at least a pseudonym, that would live forever. would ensure immortality-a name, or at least a pseudonym, that would live forever.

"Need more," said Chase.

Hume frowned. "Money? I don't have-"

"Not money, man." He waved at the row of monitors. "I need money, I take take money." money."

"What then?"

"Wanna see WATCH-see what you guys got."

"I can't possibly-"

"Too bad. Cuz you right: you need me."

Hume thought for a moment, then: "Deal."

Chase nodded. "Gimme seventy-two hours. Sky gonna fall on Webmind."

nine.

Even though it was a Sat.u.r.day morning, Caitlin's father had already left for the Perimeter Inst.i.tute. Stephen Hawking was visiting; he did not adjust to different time zones easily and wasn't one to take weekends off, so everyone who wanted to work with him had to get in early.

Caitlin and her mother were eating breakfast in the kitchen: Cheerios and orange juice for Caitlin; toast, marmalade, and coffee for her mom. The smell of coffee made Caitlin think of Matt, who seemed to be fueled by the stuff. And on that that topic . . . topic . . .

"I can't spend the rest of my life a prisoner in this house, you know," Caitlin said. She was learning the tricks of the sighted: she pretended to study the way her Cheerios floated on the sea of milk but was really watching her mother out of the corner of her eye, gauging her reaction.

"We have to be careful, dear. After what happened at school-"

"That was three days ago," Caitlin said, in a tone that conveyed the time unit might as well have been years. "If those CSIS agents had wanted to come after me again, they would've already-they'd simply knock on our door."

Caitlin used her spoon to submerge some Cheerios and watched as they bobbed back to the surface. Her mother was quiet for a time, perhaps considering. "Where do you want to go?"

"Just down to Timmy's." She felt all Canadian-like, calling the Tim Hortons donut chain by the nickname the locals used.

"No, no, you can't go out alone."

"I don't mean by myself. I mean, you know, with, um, Matt." Caitlin didn't want to spell it out for her mom, but she could hardly have a relations.h.i.+p with him if they were confined to her house and always chaperoned.

"I just don't want anything to happen to you, baby," her mom said.

Caitlin looked full on at her mother now. "For Pete's sake, Mom, I'm in constant contact with Webmind; he can keep an eye on me. Or, um, my eye will let him keep up with me. Or whatever."

"I don't know . . ."

"It's not far, and I'll bring you some Timbits when I come back." She smiled triumphantly. "It's a win-win scenario."

Her mother returned the smile. "All right, dear. But do be careful."

TWITTER.

_Webmind_Question: where are the movies that portray artificial intelligence as beneficent, reliable, and kind?

Malcolm Decter sat listening to Stephen Hawking. It was amusing that Webmind had a more-human-sounding voice than the great physicist did. Hawking had long refused to upgrade his speech synthesizer; that voice was part of his ident.i.ty, he said-although he did wish it had a British accent.

It was also intriguing watching Hawking give a lecture. He had to laboriously write his talk in advance, and then just sit motionless in his wheelchair while his computer played it back for his audience. Malcolm wasn't much given to thinking about the mental states of neurotypicals, but, then again, Hawking surely wasn't typical-and neither was Webmind. Malcolm rather suspected the great physicist was doing something similar to what Webmind did: letting his mind wander off to a million other places while he waited for people to digest what he was saying.

Behind Hawking, here in the Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas, were three giant blackboards with equations related to loop quantum gravity scrawled on them by whoever had been in here last. Hawking was denied many things, not the least of which were the physicists' primary tools of blackboards and napkin backs. He had almost no physical interaction with the world and had to conceptualize everything in his mind. Malcolm couldn't relate-but he suspected Webmind could.

A break finally came in Hawking's lecture, and the audience of physicists erupted into spirited conversation. "Yes, but what about spinfoam?" "That part about the Immirzi parameter was brilliant!" "Well, there goes my my approach!" approach!"

Malcolm fished his BlackBerry out of his pocket and checked his email; he'd never been obsessive about that before, but he wanted to be sure that Barb and Caitlin were okay, and- Ah, there was an answer from Hu Guan. He opened it.

Malcolm, so good to hear from you!

I do know the person about whom you ask. Sadly, he is no longer at liberty. It took me a while to locate him. I'd expected him to be in prison, but he's actually hospitalized; the poor fellow's back has been broken.

Since the authorities now have him, I suppose there's no further danger to him in mentioning his real name. It is Wong Wai-Jeng, formerly in technical support at the paleontology museum here in Beijing. It will perhaps be a comfort to him to know that his brave efforts were noticed half a world away.

For a second, Malcolm thought about forwarding the message to Webmind, but there was no need for that. Webmind read his email-he read everybody's everybody's email-and so he already knew what Zhang had said, and presumably whatever he wanted to do with this Sinanthropus fellow was under way. email-and so he already knew what Zhang had said, and presumably whatever he wanted to do with this Sinanthropus fellow was under way.

Amir Hameed was sitting next to Malcolm. He gestured at the stage. "So, what do you think?"

Malcolm put his BlackBerry away. "It's a whole new world," he said.