“Yeah,” I said. “Sure, I guess so.” I self-consciously coughed into my hand, feeling my arms and legs beginning to tremble. “So … umm … what do you want with me?”
Ruby’s asexual face stared at me from the screen.
›I need your help.‹
Ruby began to tell me about itself.
Much of what it told me I had already heard before, from Beryl Hinckley, Cale McLaughlin, even John before he had been killed. I didn’t know whether an a-life-form could lie, but if it couldn’t, then Ruby’s side of the story confirmed the facts that had already been revealed to me. Nonetheless, there were many things I hadn’t known before.
After it had been accidentally released into cyberspace, Ruby Fulcrum had spread quickly through the electronic environment, commencing with the other mainframes at the Tiptree Corporation. Nothing could prevent it from accessing even the most secret files at the company: security lockouts were disengaged, passwords were nullified, retinal scans and handprint detectors were bypassed. Within a few minutes, every bit of classified information stored in the company’s computers had been accessed by Ruby, and although Ruby wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to comprehend all that it had learned, it was nonetheless capable of reaccessing all that information on demand.
When the Ruby Fulcrum research team had discovered what had happened during their absence, Richard Payson-Smith had immediately attempted to regain control of the a-life-form, but the genie had already escaped from the bottle, and there was no way it was going to return to confinement. Once Payson-Smith realized that this was the case, he settled for communication; along with Hinckley and Morgan, they began the painstaking process of trying to make direct contact with Ruby. They had created Ruby; now they had to learn how to talk to it, since it had already evolved past the relatively simple LISP computer language they had used to devise Ruby in the first place.
At this point, no one else at Tiptree was aware of Ruby’s true nature, let alone the fact that an a-life-form had escaped from the top secret cybernetics lab. All Cale McLaughlin and everyone else at Tiptree knew was that Payson-Smith’s team had been developing a spin-off from the Sentinel program. The four scientists decided to keep Ruby’s escape a closely guarded secret, at least for the time being. Unlike relatively simple viruses of the past, such as the fabled Internet worm that had spread through the entire network in only a matter of hours, Ruby’s architecture was far more complex; as a memory-resident program, it took longer to propagate itself into other systems.
It was also thousands of times more difficult to pinpoint than the usual garden-variety worm or virus. On the other hand, there weren’t any overt signs of a supervirus running amok in cyberspace: no inexplicable freeze-ups or crashes, no widespread loss of information, no reports from university or government users of a virus loose in the national datanet. Ruby hid itself very well. Believing that time was still on their side, the Ruby Fulcrum team heaved a deep collective sigh; whatever else might have happened, their monster appeared to be minding its manners. There was no sense in panicking Tiptree’s management until they had things under control again, so they kept the problem to themselves.
After several months, Hinckley and Morgan finally managed to develop a means of directly communicating with their prodigal offspring. By the time they achieved this, though, Ruby had already propagated itself through every on-line computer in the 314 area code, and the theoretical phase transition from mere amoeba-like data absorption and replication to true sentience had already commenced. Shortly after Payson-Smith was able to speak directly to Ruby, the iterations necessary to complete this transition had already been accomplished: Ruby was alive, aware, and intelligent.
And it was ready to spill its chips about everything it had learned.
Ruby’s face disappeared from Joker’s screen; it was replaced by a schematic diagram of a spacecraft. ›This is
“Yeah,” I said. “I know what it is.”
The ABM satellite rotated on its three-dimensional axis. ›38 hours/ 29 minutes/ 42 seconds ago its final components were launched into orbit aboard the NASA space shuttle
I tapped Joker’s PAUSE key and the readout stopped; not a bad way of telling a long- winded a-life-form when to shut up. “I know,” I said. “I was at Tiptree for the launch.”
The diagram was replaced by a digitized replay of a TV news clip: two spacewalking astronauts in the shuttle cargo bay, working with the spacecraft’s extended Canadarm as they joined the module with the rest of the giant satellite.
›Yesterday morning [Friday, April 19, 8:27 A.M. CST] the final assembly of
“Yeah, right. Sure.” I was getting a little tired of all this; it was early in the morning and my eyes were beginning to itch. I could use another few hours on the couch, flea-infested or not. “Just cut to the chase, willya?”
›The primary mission of
I stopped rubbing my eyes. “Whu …
A new image appeared on Joker’s screen: an animated image of
›The classified objective of
“Whoa, shut up,” I snapped, hitting the PAUSE key again. “Wait a minute.” I forgot all about catching a few winks on the couch; I sat up a little straighter and held Joker closer to my face. “This thing … I mean, you said … I mean, this sucker’s supposed to be pointed at
The animation was frozen as a window opened on the screen; it expanded to show typewritten pages that scrolled upward faster than my eyes could follow.
›The objective of
The documents vanished from the screen, to be replaced by a flowchart. Dozens of names were connected to one other by dotted lines.
›These documents indicate the existence of a military-industrial conspiracy operating on the fringes of the American government. The conspirators intend to subvert the elected government of the United States, with the final objective being the installation of a nonelected shadow governments‹
“Who’s behind this?” I asked.
A square was formed around a large block of names, then the square zoomed to the forefront of the diagram. ›The principal force behind this planned coup d’etat is the Emergency Relief Agency.‹
“Goddamn,” I whispered. “But why ERA?”
›At this point, it is unknown exactly how the conspirators intend to overthrow the present government. However, classified memoranda between ERA officials indicate a strong probability [86.7 %] that the first step in the coup d’etat will be the incitement of armed hostilities between the United States and the new
