Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [61]
The Man In Black spoke first. Even his voice sounded not quite right, a pirated copy of the human. Donovan wondered what irony underlay this simulation of a simulacrum, or whether it was a genuine attempt to intimidate.
‘Good evening. I am an agent of the Science, Technology and Software Investigation Service of the United Nations. You may refer to me as Bleibtreu-Fèvre.’
Donovan felt as if he were a cat watching a snake: he and Stasis had the same enemies and the same prey, but he regarded the agency, with its allegedly enhanced operatives and its undeniably advanced technology – more advanced than the technology which they existed to stamp out – as dangerously close to the kind of evils which for years he’d feared and fought. There had been occasions in the past when the Carbon Life Alliance had had to collaborate with Stasis, and they’d always left him with a crawling sensation on his skin.
‘Dr Nguyen Thanh Van, Research Director, Da Nang Phytochemicals,’ the Vietnamese man said. The voice and lip-synch had a thin quality that indicated either primitive kit or heavy crypto masking.
Donovan and Lawson introduced themselves for Van’s benefit, and Bleibtreu-Fèvre continued.
‘This afternoon,’ he said, ‘I personally intervened in an emerging situation involving some dangerous drug applications which were – inadvertently, I do not doubt – being developed by a, shall we say, subsidiary of Dr Van’s company. Earlier today, and unknown to me at the time, the security of that research was compromised by a swarm of information-seeking software constructs. Shortly thereafter, as I am sure you are well aware, a series of transient and potentially catastrophic events took place in the datasphere. One might be prepared to pass this off as coincidence were it not for two facts. One is that the focus of the disturbances has been traced to the facility in question. The second is that, while the disturbances have affected a wide range of services and enterprises, a statistically improbable number of them have centred on research programmes which in one way or another are associated with Da Nang Phytochemicals.’
Dr Van’s fetch flickered slightly, as if he’d been about to say something and thought better of it.
‘Almost but not quite the most disturbing feature of these events is that a considerable volume of research data, much of it hard-to-replace genetic archive material held at widely separated sites around the world, has simply disappeared. The most disturbing aspect of the problem is this:
‘A preliminary analysis of the scope and power of the source of these disruptions indicates that we are dealing with, at best, a virus of unprecedented sophistication and at worst with a manifestation of an autonomous artificial intelligence.’
‘The Watchmaker,’ Melody Lawson murmured.
‘That is indeed a possibility,’ said the Stasis agent.
‘Why have you contacted us?’ Donovan asked in as innocent a voice as he could manage.
‘Don’t fuck me about!’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre snarled. The vernacular vulgarity was a small shock after his previous stilted diction. ‘You know very well that the West Middlesex cell of your organization attacked the artificial-intelligence research unit at Brunel University last night. The drug laboratory was broken into around the same time—’
‘Nothing to do with me,’ Donovan interjected. Bleibtreu-Fèvre acknowledged this but continued implacably.
‘—and that one of your penetration viruses – illegal, and hazardous in its own right, I may add – was destroyed within that very area a few hours ago. Immediately thereafter your own interface with the system was crashed, presumably by the new AI. You then triggered a retaliatory demon attack, which by another coincidence destroyed the lab that I had been investigating. You, Doctor Van, are legally responsible