Chapter 33


Six floors down, the world's most tranquil place was also one of the hardest to reach. Draped along the entrance wall were the flags of every nation. Unfurled above them was the green, white, and blue banner of Earth. The motto in Latin read "The sum is greater than the parts".
  Visitors would have been most impressed, but only the fifty-four people who had ever been inside knew the place existed. Behind the grand entrance, strange machines stood guard in a great hall that faded to black, a secret extension of the Net.
  Staff members called the non-existent area Minus Six. It had turned their real lives imaginary.
  The secret section's task was to delay, and where possible to reverse the course of technological progress. Last year, the UN had spent ninety billion dollars suppressing new technology. Minus Six was an unofficial backup system, the last line of defense. The section made its own rules, and chose when to break them. A proxy member of the board guessed how the UN would have voted.
  They analyzed the Net for new software, internal reports, business memos, permits, mail and complaints. Every chemical plant was audited weekly, each gram of nuclear fuel weighed daily (soon it would be brought under a single ownership). One mistake had been enough: Moscow was a forest now, and Central Park had almost been dramatically enlarged.
  The PSii group spread rumors and organized grass-roots protests. Their most important agents believed they worked for various media and lobbying groups. Spread over many countries, scientific research was always illegal somewhere.
  Mostly, Minus Six collected nightmares. They had accumulated a long list. Pollution, climate change, self-organizing matter; viruses so bad it would be better to kill everyone and start over; surprises of evolution and long overdue natural disasters. In the last hours of the Cretaceous had come a meteor so large it had been hit by many smaller ones, falling from two million kilometers to less than zero in a day. Mountains had surfed like waves, waves had slid over clouds, and the earth's speed increased by a few centimeters per hour. Even more dangerous was the proposed solution to the previous problem. The second worst item was a wormhole feedback bomb, also known as a time machine.
  Most problems on the list were solvable in theory. By reducing wind speed, wind turbines could reduce rainfall far inland. Alternatively, they might improve desert climates.
  The UN used risk management to delay the future. They had banned gene viruses and chemical bacteria, but encouraged distributed technology like robotics. To them, the most important event of the twentieth century had been the nuclear destruction of Earth, or rather the 1 in 5000 chance of that happening. Officially, the current biggest problem was the vast amount of unorganized data. The second biggest problem was the absence of one, also known as poorly managed leisure time.
  When all else failed, Minus Six was willing to make innocent people suffer. Their biggest success had been the campaign against micron technology, the tiny robots that would eventually replace everything else. Microns couldn't balance their energy and motion budgets. Small moving parts locked up in seconds, and they burned their own weight in fuel, but by studying them, Minus Six had inadvertently made the field trendy again. Researchers began to get new ideas and fresh funding.
  The only solution was to take an even bigger risk: they would attempt to slow the rate of progress, giving the world time to adapt. This could not be done by force or persuasion, but would require something more extreme. In order for mankind to survive, all copyright and patent laws would have to be abolished.
  They had sponsored both sides of the debate, funding activists and ad campaigns. Free Information was driven by civil disobedience. At least four people had been assassinated, and many more lost their wealth. A few opinion leaders had mysteriously changed sides. When their manipulation had been exposed, Minus Six pretended to be a new type of spontaneous consumer group, which had impressed the public. It was time for a change.
  After protests from billionaires who wanted to become trillionaires, and politicians who denied they planned to use nuclear weapons to preserve the status quo, most forms of intellectual property had been allowed to expire in 2030. Other debts were also canceled, and the world began to change. Without the lure of patent and royalty fees, there were fewer struggling inventors and artists. Entertainment choices had temporarily plummeted, but productivity improved, as employment rose faster than living standards. Small, labor-intensive companies copied and modified drugs, cars, and factories with impunity. Fams formed closed economies, further eroding the tax base. In one year, the world had begun to fragment. Minus Six would reassemble the pieces at its leisure.
  Only in the past year had they realized their mistake. They called it the "Threshold Effect": dozens of new technologies had been delayed so long they could no longer be suppressed. The same discoveries kept being repeated. Minus Six could handle protein sequencers, self-emergent software, and Maxwell filters, but not all three at once.

  The eight persons closest to being in charge stood around a table surrounded by one-way glass. None of them was really here, but none could leave. Each member represented a different fear, and needed the others to compensate. Standard meeting software gave them exaggerated features and expressions, like being in an animation. Together, they could combine into the ultimate expert. Their leader was a mere outline who rarely spoke.
  "Ravi Jahan has requested a UN audit of all unnumbered sections, divisions, and outposts," said an exhausted-looking middle-aged man. "They will reach this floor by sometime tomorrow evening." Deep lines and shadows around his eyes made him look like a caricature, but that was his actual face.
  The duty officer wore a glowing pastel suit that sometimes turned black. "Could we infiltrate the task force, and gain a data source?" he wondered.
  "The UN will open an office here before they're done." They would find exactly what they expected, a world in which Minus Six could not have existed. The project would appear to be a failure, and the most important members would be forgotten. Their achievements would also be lost. "We can destroy our records, but they'll sense a gap, and never stop looking. Ravi's group might make a useful scapegoat."
  He was about to make a drastic suggestion, when the alarm went off. Worldwide, dozens of doors slammed shut at once.
  "Black Alert. beep Software Attack," the master AI said. Screens erupted with charts and moving lists.
  Half the visitors vanished. The glass walls moved outward and rearranged, as control chairs unfolded from floor and ceiling. Originally designed as a game set, the newly formed Situation Room was packed with interfaces, railings, and meter-thick walls. In their separate locations, the members activated their wrist-mounted motion sensors, each connected to a lethal vial, to prevent them from leaving. In twenty-four hours, the crisis or their lives would be over.
  Endlessly repeating a long series of simple steps, the network managers completed each others' thoughts, as data castles crystallized and collapsed.
  "Internal Affairs is attempting to seize our system," Stress Man said.
  "Safe Shutdown," The duty officer ordered. A network this big could not stop operating, only reorganize itself. In a controlled collapse, millions of systems disconnected from the Net.
  Victims of a scam always knew something was wrong. An ancient part of the duty officer's mind woke the rest, which solved the puzzle. "False alarm. Safe Reset," he said as fast as possible.
  It was only a simulated attack. Damon's friends in the Resistance had launched a virtual zoo of infiltration programs at Minus Six. Evolving at ten generations per second, they merged into larger organisms, some of which looked frightening. None of the infiltrators could reach the restricted data, but the attack would confirm some old suspicions. Damon had been a big fan of the Mole.
  The DO relaxed. It felt like falling. This would be the first second of a long recovery process.
  The second Black Alert in history was louder than the first. "Overloading A-CP Nexus 151, 1059 error. New attack source hacking RedList."
  Someone else had exploited their momentary weakness. RedList was a self-contained Expert system located in a vault on the Pacific seafloor. Surrounded by buried torpedoes containing nuclear waste, it was the safest place on Earth.
  RedList had one tiny flaw. As it reorganized itself, it swapped files through a placeholder memory, which made a back-up copy, which became imprinted as gaps in the outflowing data. The error was fixed one second too late. Their most valuable knowledge had been copied in a human-readable format by an unknown attacker.
  The Founder entered the simulated control room. The duty officer stood at attention, a thousand words behind the plan. His punishment would be to relive every error. Only the simulated gravity held him in place.
  Their only solution was to return to chaos. Minus Six was retroactively abolished, the codes to a billion files irretrievably scrambled.
  "There's no direct evidence RedList was copied," said Stress Man. "It's like the attack never happened."
  "That alone is proof enough." Had Anonymous returned so soon?
  Five minutes later, the duty officer showed the second attack had originated inside Minus Six, and he was the prime suspect. He typed his resignation still standing up.

  Rick wore a self-cooling suit over a bulletproof vest. He kept on his Mask, and used a false ID at Millipol's main entrance. They were on heightened alert because of the Chinese crisis, but the guided tours continued as scheduled. The guard installed there to impress the tourists asked him if he wanted the standard UN escort. Rick politely declined.
  The Headquarters complex had an austere, medieval grandeur. Under permanent tension, everyone pretended to act normal. He entered a lounge with a colorized 1960's decor, a scene from a lost future. Two agents in a corner spoke an inverted dialect. This was a public area, so his plan had probably failed. He couldn't reach Damon, but Ravi was heading this way.
  "Life's a bitch, and then you die, and then you go to hell," Donitz said in his earphone. "We just had a critical security breach, and your name came up. What have you done now?"
  Rick explained. Donitz shouted: "You actually attacked our main ally, without knowing the risk parameters, when we could have started a closed investigation instead?" He marveled at Rick's obstinacy. Some things were too hard to take. "You should always ask yourself: 'How will humanity benefit?'"
  "Should have" was as useless as clouds over the sea. Mars and Venus should have swapped orbits. Israel should have been carved out of Germany.
  "I'm handling the situation. I'll call back as soon as I know more," Rick told Donitz. When he got mad, he always tried to end the conversation.
  "We have diplomats because we learned certain behaviors are counterproductive," Donitz said tonelessly. His emotions were a tool. In a hostage situation, he could be the voice of reason. "I hope you have a plan to reverse the damage. If you succeed, I will take no further action." If Rick ever did something like this again, there was a chance someone would kill him.
  He had been in trouble before. Years ago, a fourth wife in a fundamentalist Muslim state had been sentenced to death for being disrespectful. Against the advice of everyone who knew better, Rick had inserted himself in the case, and successfully made matters worse. He had tried to persuade the woman to leave the area, as was her right under Article Two. Freedom of Migration recognized no borders, only quotas and violent crime exemptions. The woman was very submissive, but had refused to acknowledge Rick in any way, which he found intensely frustrating. He acted like the most emotional party there, and was roundly criticized by all sides. The matter was supposed to be handled at a higher level. His biggest mistake was that he hadn't considered the social context of the stoning - not that there could be any justification for it. The execution went ahead as scheduled. The woman never cried out, and lost consciousness after three minutes.
  Rick had replayed these events in his mind many times last month, when he first became aware of Player-0. Walking into the sunset, he had only seen danger ahead. Others would have happily ignored the threat.
  Like on most planets, Earth's moon rose slower than its sun. Soon it towered in the sky, a brilliant disk behind the clouds. He saw the shadow of his head on the path, and knew the sun was directly behind it, hidden by five thousand kilometers of rock.
  He had a lifelong premonition something big was about to happen, but the feeling had never been this strong. Maybe he really was infinite in some small way. He felt compelled to act boldly.
  One of the most important principles of physics was reversibility. All physical processes could be exactly undone, even quantum splitting. The same would not be true for his mistakes.
  Compact and powerful, Ravi Jahan approached on a collision course, his fists moving in their own tempo. Rick concentrated on not flinching. If he did, he lost. Ravi stopped at half a pace. Up close, they both looked older.
  Ravi said: "Your friends in the Resistance helped our enemies steal RedList."
  Rick had been trained not to act defensive. "The UN regrets it does not know what RedList is."
  "For the past ten years, a now abolished section of Millipol has created a catalog of the world's most dangerous technology. You helped our enemies release this list to an unknown group." For several seconds Rick didn't believe him.
  He sat in a corner of the empty lounge and read Ravi's censored memos. The least dangerous item on RedList could destroy the universe: it had too many dimensions, and the wrong shockwave could unravel them all. Collapsing fields would release their energy at light speed, forming new space and a sea of particles. This should happen many times per second, but perhaps our universe was unusually lucky.
  Other threats were more immediate. RedList contained detailed data about self-multiplying molecules, instantly addictive drugs, unnecessary weapons, and items not found in any UN archive.
  "Combining this information in one list allowed the section to spot deeper patterns," Ravi admitted. "The benefits of releasing it may outweigh the damage, but nothing can justify this attack."
  "Does RedList contain itself?" Rick asked.
  "No, but UN inspectors can themselves be investigated, not to mention executed for gross incompetence. We believe this release was your fault. The Resistance should be regulated or shut down."
  "Only an insider could have hacked Millipol. If not today, they would have found another way."
  "Many things went wrong at the right instant. The Resistance weakened us by strengthening a common enemy."
  Rick checked his hidden screen. "They witnessed the attack," he said, "and will help you recover RedList, if you reveal the truth about Anonymous."
  Ravi closed his eyes. Something seemed to roar inside. He spoke in a monotone. "For the past five years, the now abolished section believed they exchanged insights with an entity who may have been Anonymous," Ravi said. "There is no proof such contacts occurred. This morning, the Chinese army detected ultra-long wavelength transmissions from the Qiyuan coal mine. Supposedly, she offered to help them stabilize the situation. The signals were added to RedList before the theft. That is all I know."
  "Wait a minute!" Rick said. "You actually think Anonymous might be a supernatural being?"
  "Like you, we must consider every possibility. Let's stick to a mutually acceptable version of reality. She found new social problems in Qiyuan that we didn't even suspect. Society is fragmenting. It's already later than we think."
  "We're practically already dead," Rick agreed. "We both broke the rules, so let's cooperate."
  For Ravi, the only possible outcome of a debate was to become more right. He looked away. "Call your friends!" he said.
  Connecting many people at once, Damon typed fast. "I feel like sleeping for a billion years," Rick wrote.
  "You'll sleep a lot longer than that if RedList goes public." Rick might never leave this building again. There was a subterranean cell block nearby. Officially, he would become a "special consultant". He already felt nostalgic for last month.
  Damon seemed unaffected by the latest setback. "I'm proud to say we have a new enemy. We've already tracked him halfway home."
  When the call ended, Ravi was facing the other way. "The Resistance will do whatever it takes," Rick promised. "They discovered the RedList attack came from space." Ravi looked mildly interested. Rick continued: "Comsats passing over the Pacific or the South Pole have terabits of unused capacity. It's possible to store data in so-called Turing chains, long radio beams bouncing between distant spacecraft. A cheap way to store and copy AI memories." The first known use for empty space. "The RedList data was beamed to Mars Platform Two, where it will arrive in little over one minute. Someone made an appointment to bounce it back to Earth. Anyone with a two meter dish can receive it."
  "I have to respect this enemy," Ravi said, getting angrier.
  Rick wondered if Ravi would agree to his plan. Stress made people unpredictable, so it wouldn't change him at all. "The Mole can be found, and RedList can be neutralized," Rick said. "But I have to do it."