Dark Futures

competitors. Thanks for that. Right now, though, it's only one issue—the company's whole future is on the line.'

'Of course.'

'But I think we'll pull through. A lot of our operations are almost unaffected.' Cyberdyne's manufacturing plants were scattered across the U.S. and various parts of Latin America. Its sales offices were even more widespread. Not everything was gone, not by a long way. 'Fortunately, we had a lot of organizational data backed up. Trivial as that may seem to a lot of the staff, it means we can keep running without too many problems. It's not like we're in the fog of war.'

'So where does that leave me?' she said.

'It leaves you like this. Cyberdyne is still probably viable. We'll doubtless lose a lot of money. There'll be wrangles about the insurance, and we won't get everything back-our lawyers are already arguing with the insurance company's lawyers about whether this fits within the policy. But we're not out of the game yet, and there are still positions for our best staff.'

'Meaning me?'

'Yes, meaning you. The work Miles was doing is still worth rescuing, and you're the best person to do it. I'll help you all I can. Now, I know you're feeling shaky, and understandably so, especially while the Connors are still at large, so I'm not looking for an answer from you now. But I'll be wanting to know whether you'll stick with us. You can assume we'll show our appreciation.'

'What does that mean, Oscar? Are you trying to drop me a hint or something?'

'The hint I'm trying to drop is that we don't want to lose your services. I don't mind telling you that you have a fair bit of bargaining power.'

'Like what?' she said. Her tone could have been either sarcasm or a mask for naked curiosity.

'Like this would be a good time for you to take over from Miles as Director of Special Projects.'

'Well, it'd be a bit ghoulish discussing that today.'

'Maybe, and I really will leave you alone in a minute. Let me just add that Charles and I had a long talk about this. He rang me about 3:00 a.m., and we were on the phone for at least an hour.' In fact, Layton had started off

CHAPTER SIX

ADVANCED DEFENSE SYSTEMS COMPLEX

COLORADO AUGUST 1997

JUDGMENT DAY

Miles called on Steve Bullock, the facility's Chief Security Officer, who had a room on the same floor. He sat here like a spider, watching everything that went on. 'I'm going to The Cage in a few minutes,' Miles said. 'Can you send a guard to meet me?'

Bullock was dark, serious, with a shaved skull and bull neck. 'No sweat,' he said, picking up a handset. 'Five minutes' time?'

'Okay.'

Miles took an elevator downstairs to the complex's main operations hall. Air Force personnel in gray flight suits predominated here, monitoring a dozen benches of computer screens—forty-eight screens in all—working side by side with casually dressed Cyberdyne employees, who were still the technical experts on the project.

Like the entire facility, the operations hall was over-seen by discreet security cameras mounted in every corner.

Miles nodded politely as he wandered from bench to bench, getting only the most general overview of the information coming in. These staff members were analyzing electronic information communicated from U.S. and allied defense centers, including optical, infrared, radar, and seismic data. Just as importantly, they were checking and second-guessing Skynet's responses to the same information. Their screens showed numerical data, graphs, and finely-detailed topographic projections.

A young Cyberdyne operator, Andy Lee, glanced up as Miles walked past. 'Hey, how you doin', man?' he said. Beside him he had a giant-sized Coke in a paper cup. 'Greetings,' Miles said, with a grin.

'Come to watch the workers?'

'Come to watch the workers watching,' Miles said.

'Well, there's nothin' much to watch tonight,' Lee said decisively, like it was checkmate.

'Just as well,' one of the uniformed staff said slowly. This was Phil Packer, a cadaverously lean, heavily- mustached guy, known to the others as 'Six-Rack.'

'I can't argue with that,' Miles said. 'Yeah, just as damn well.'

Since its full implementation on August 4, the Skynet system had operated perfectly, providing quick and convincing analyses of the fused data streams. About a week after implementation, it had identified a possible nuclear test, conducted in breach of the Russians' self-imposed moratorium. But it had analyzed the data within an hour, incomparably faster than humans could have done, and pronounced that the event was a small earthquake. Human analysis was still trying to confirm Skynet's call, but it looked like the computer had it right at every point.

There was nothing unusual happening now: no bogeys, no glitches. At another monitor, Miles' pet genius, Rosanna Monk, stared intently, occasionally flipping from one view to another with left-hand keystrokes. She had a Styrofoam cup of coffee beside her on the bench. Rosanna was in charge of this shift, which meant that she was the first line to deal with any problem, in addition to carrying out her own work. She'd been involved in the nanochip project, then with Skynet, for the past five years, and she now knew more about the system and its parameters than almost anyone.

'Boring night for you, too?' Miles said.

'Nothing coming through looks suspicious,' she said, as if it were just a technical problem. 'The Russkies are quiet, as usual.'

'Like Six-Rack says, that's just as well.'

Rosanna took a sip of her coffee, her gaze still fixed on the computer screen. 'Skynet's analyses are getting more precise all the time,' she said, fascinated by what she was seeing. 'It's developing informal logic protocols that I can't explain—we sure didn't put them there deliberately.'

'We couldn't have,' Miles said with a gentle smile. That was the trouble: as he'd said to Jack Reed, the thing worked too well. Rosanna was alluding to the fundamental limitations on computer programming. What was just a little scary was the amount of informal human reasoning Skynet had somehow taught itself in the past three or four weeks. That kind of machine capacity was supposed to be dozens, if not hundreds, of years away.

'Yeah,' Rosanna said, 'but the more it interacts with us, the more it's starting to think like a human being— except a zillion times more quickly. At this rate, we'll soon have contracts for Skynet to run every government agency that needs computer analyses. Its abilities exceed anything we imagined.'

'Sure.'

His tone of voice must have puzzled her, because she finally looked up from the screen. 'You don't think there's some sort of problem?'

Miles gave a reassuring smile. 'Of course not.'

Rosanna shrugged and looked back at the computer screen.

'Keep up the good work,' he said, smiling at the cliche.

'Whatever you say, boss.' She laughed, but kept flipping through data arrays.

Was it a problem? Miles began to wonder.

Skynet's complexity and sophistication had been growing at a geometric rate. Its capacity for quick, accurate judgments in accordance with pre-established parameters already far exceeded that of any group of human beings. It was now drawing conclusions with a subtlety that went beyond anything required of it, explaining anomalous, or low-priority, data with startling insight. In one sense, that was all by the by, since the system was really there to warn of Russian ICBM launches, which it could do perfectly well. But it showed an enormous potential for subtler, less dramatic uses, such as detecting and identifying smuggling operations. With Skynet's processing capacity and interpretive skills, they could monitor data on aircraft movements and countless other events and activities to a totally unprecedented degree.