Shadow Tyrants (Oregon Files 13)

“Or a sauna,” Juan added. Then he remembered the sack containing the documents from the Colossus 3. “I dropped the bag.”

“I saw,” Eric said from the cockpit. Nomad was heading back to the Oregon, the lights from the moon pool providing a beacon in the darkness.

“Can you get it?”

“We’re getting you two to my medical bay first,” Julia said.

“I lost it in gloom,” Eric said. “We can do a search later, but I’m afraid it’ll be covered by the lava by the time we get back down here. Or, at least, too close to the lava to get to. Don’t worry, though. You still got this.” Eric held up a leather-bound book. “This was in your suit.”

“The captain’s logbook. Let’s hope it says something useful.”

“I think it will. But it’s not the captain’s log. They’re notes from one of the scientists on board. I was only able to see the first page because I didn’t want to damage the others.”

“It didn’t say anything about where we can find the artificial intelligence computer, did it?”

“In fact, it did. We’ve already seen the AI. Those vats? That’s the artificial intelligence.”

“What do you mean?” Linda asked.

“We’ll know more when we can look at the entire contents,” Eric said. “But from what’s on just the first page, it seems that the AI isn’t silicon-based. It’s organic. The Colossus 3 was built to carry a giant biocomputer.”

FORTY

CYPRUS

The hold of the Colossus 5 hummed from the pumps circulating nutrients to the vats of biochemical cells that made up the heart of the supercomputer. Xavier Carlton and Lionel Gupta were getting a status update from the chief scientist, Chen Min, about the operation as they walked through the cavernous space. Security guards trailed them, while engineers went about final preparations for getting under way in less than forty-eight hours. Carlton was keeping an eye on Gupta, who seemed to be growing suspicious of Carlton’s motives for persuading him to stay on board.

“Right now, we are feeding the Colossus vats with custom-grown phytoplankton that we store on board,” Chen said, “but once we’re at sea, we will harvest plankton as we sail, providing an unlimited source of nutrition for the computer.”

“What is the performance on Colossus 1, 2, and 4?”

“The Indian Ocean waters were not as rich in food sources as we had hoped. That’s why I’m recommending that we station the ships off the west coast of Africa.”

“How long will it take to reach the singularity?” Gupta asked.

“The ships’ microwave transceivers have to connect. Once that happens, we can expect the artificial intelligence to be completely unified in a matter of minutes.”

“And what will that enable?” Carlton asked.

“We will no longer need a crew of programmers to write code. Colossus will be able to improve itself at an exponential rate. All we have to do is order it to solve a problem and it will be able to do it on its own.”

“But it can’t do anything without an explicit command, right?”

Chen nodded. “Colossus is essentially our slave. We’ve built in protocols to starve it if it doesn’t conform to our controls. But, it’s not going to achieve thought processes or self-perception in the normal sense of the words.”

“So it won’t be thinking for itself?” Carlton asked.

Chen paused, then shook his head. “No.”

“I don’t like that hesitation,” Gupta said. “Is the fail-safe ready in case Colossus doesn’t follow our orders?”

“We’ve had to disable Mr. Mallik’s Vajra EMP fail-safe system. Not only is its security compromised because of the incidents you’ve had with him, but it was not completely separate from Colossus’s network. That means the AI could have shut Vajra down.” Mallik’s electromagnetic pulse weapon placed on board was designed to wipe out the silicon circuits of the computers connecting the biochemical vats, which would disable Colossus by frying them.

“But you still have the backup fail-safe system in place.”

“Yes,” Chen said. “And we believe we have taken care of the problem that sank the Colossus 3.”

He pointed to the red boxes on either side of the hold, positioned below the waterline. The explosives in those boxes, mounted on all the Colossus ships, were manually activated. None of them were connected to the network, so that the AI wouldn’t be able to deactivate them in case it did become self-aware and disobeyed its commands.