Emergence Read online

  As the results started to drip in, James felt a sick feeling. FibonacciEddie was a paradox.

  A smoking gun?

  Jack sat in his lounge staring into space. He had tried for three hours to log on to the internet with no luck. He’d spent thirty minutes on hold to his internet service provider. He’d walked around the block twice to clear his head. His iPod had quit on him, and he definitely felt he was being watched. Deep breaths. The shrink said the shock may cause me to suffer from paranoia.

  He ate a microwave dinner and then, at only nine o’clock, went to bed exhausted. And yet, again, sleep did not come easily.

  At 11 o’clock, he was still awake. Two hours looking at the bedroom ceiling covered in sweat. He smiled wryly.

  By midnight he managed to drift off to sleep. He dreamt. There was no respite.

  He was in a corridor. There were doors, so many doors. He had to find the right room. Jack reached for a handle, but the door wouldn’t open. He tried another door, which was also locked. He cried out in frustration. ‘What’s going on, Connie? Where are you?’

  He started to run down the corridor, but it was an endless, colourless tunnel. Lots of doors, but whenever Jack stopped to try a handle, it was locked. ‘Where are you, Connie? You said you’d help me!’

  Running faster, Jack could hear a sound up ahead, but which door was it coming from? He had to remember how to help himself. ‘I love you, Connie!’

  Still the doors remained locked. He kept running. The corridor was shrinking, and he was brushing his head on the ceiling. A growing dread had settled in. He was being followed. Not quite chased, but definitely followed. ‘I know you love me, Connie!’

  He was starting to feel squeezed. The walls were closing in. He stopped. The next door seemed to give a little, but remained shut. As he pushed, the door bulged inwards slightly, as if made of rubber, but it did not open.

  Jack could hear the ticking of his bedside clock. ‘Is this a dream, Connie? I said “I love you”.’ No, that was not it; Jack ran down the corridor—he was close to remembering. But the corridor was closing in on him again, the ceiling grating against his head.

  ‘You love me!’ He tried a door. It gave slightly, but did not open.

  He had to remember. The ticking was louder. The corridor still shrinking. He looked behind, there was a darkness swallowing up where he’d been. Oblivion!

  ‘You love me!’ He tried a door. Still locked.

  He remembered. ‘I love me too!’

  The next door opened, warmth flooded in.

  Jack woke up. He lay in a pool of sweat. It was 3am. He’d had a nightmare. He couldn’t remember much of it. He got out of bed and walked into the bathroom. For a few minutes he rubbed water on his face and just looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. ‘Do you have to torment yourself?’

  But, deep down, he felt something good had happened.

  Chapter 36

  Justio sat in the crew room and reviewed his handiwork. The walls were covered with maps and projected routes for the incursion to collect Jack Bullage. They’d agreed on Newgate Golf Course, in North London. They would deploy multiple mini-bots for tracking and also take one of their remaining military reconnaissance drones with tranquiliser missiles.

  Aytch highlighted the preferred track of their re-entry craft. ‘I believe that is route sorted. It should be no longer than six hours to get there.’

  ‘Sunday night, plenty of time to get countermeasures in place.’ Justio paused. Looks good and with Aytch in the re-entry craft, I will have control. ‘I’ll ensure he gets there.’

  ‘We’re using the psychiatrist?’

  ‘Yes, Jack will be invited, at very short notice, for stress counselling. With a last-minute spot coming up on Sunday evening. Jack will drive himself, arriving after dark in the car park.’

  The Gadium technology to fake emails, telephone voices and postal letters, made it easy to ensure Jack got a very official invite from England’s finest.

  Justio pulled up some additional screens. ‘Invite on Friday evening, giving minimum time for Jack to get any formal corroboration—but his phone will be hacked anyway. We’ll do a Sunday night snatch.’

  ‘Will five minibots, plus the reconnaissance drone, be enough?’

  ‘Plenty. With me in manual control we’ll overcome their limitations.’

  Aytch gave an uncharacteristic chuckle. ‘It’s funny, on Earth they use the phrase it’s not rocket science, with the implication that rocket science is difficult. Our minibots are stupid, but great at rocket science.’

  Justio raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement. Not actually funny but…

  Aytch had not finished. ‘But our mini-bots struggle with intuitive deduction by abstract pattern matching built up from repeated measurement of experience.’

  ‘Is that a quote you’ve learned for the exams?’

  Aytch nodded.

  ‘You know the rules, no technology which could even get close to independent thought.’

  Aytch was silent for a moment. ‘Sharnia thinks we could use limited AI to cement our stewardship.’

  Justio remained silent. Stewardship…‌a nice word for hegemony.

  Aytch continued. ‘She said AI could be used for better data analysis, improved allocation, and ultimately driving better decisions.’

  Justio nodded. She’s also a total psychopath, second only to my very own Deputy Chairman in the mouth frothing stakes.

  ‘What do you think, Justio?’

  ‘Let’s ask the manual. Harkin is pretty good on these things.’ It took a few moments, but Justio brought up a new screen, this time muting the narration and reading the second paragraph himself.

  Chapter29.3.D—Alphas (Commentary)

  Professor Harkin

  ‘Some believe it may be the active removal of the Triple Alpha which triggers the Emergence acceleration, rather than only the passive existence of the Triple Alpha suppressing the wider Emergence—I am not convinced.’

  ‘Utterly outlawed for over 700,000 years (even during GF Ascendant Periods) but theoretically possible is the possibility for a Triple Alpha to tunnel into an Alpha to effect the transformation of Alpha to Triple Alpha.’

  Justio waited for a few moments for Aytch to catch up. ‘You knew this?’

  Aytch nodded. ‘I’d heard of it before.’

  It was known certain advanced AI could perform SISR with the same level of competence of a biologically based Triple Alpha. So many replicated AI machines could revolutionise the speed of moving a planet of all Alphas to be a planet of all Triple Alphas.

  Justio struggled to his feet. ‘If you’re looking for a reason to defend reintroduction of AI, then that’s the best one—to simplify and secure the transition process. But independent thinking machines capable of SISR could prove a risk to Gadium.’ I’m not sure anyone wants that, even GF.

  Justio left the room.

  Once Justio had left, Aytch reflected on the AI Tunnelling. He knew about the theory; it was in the manual, it wasn’t a secret. But within his family, there was a little extra history connected with AI studies. Unfortunately, it was also mired in GF history.

  Aytch turned to the manual and started paging through it, mostly to take his mind off the uncomfortable family memory.

  Tunnelling. The act of mentally stimulating a probability state reduction within the body of another living thing. Illegal. Aytch shuddered and instinctively flicked to the most read section of the manual—Chapter 8.1.A. This section was read at least three hundred times by every juvenile Gadium in the 10 or so years between their coming of age and their own conditioning programme.

  Chapter 8.1.A—Juvenile Conditioning

  Overview

  All Gadium children shall undergo significant subconscious treatment to ensure they do not (and mostly cannot) activate probability state reduction to hurt a fellow Gadium. This is done via operant conditioning and results in the individual’s sub
conscious being unable to directly or knowingly indirectly harm a fellow Gadium. Other non-Gadium organisms can sometimes be tunnelled into without pain. It depends on the imprinting within the specific Gadium subject. Certainly, non-Gadium but bipedal reptilians should be treated with caution.

  This conditioning is run hand-in-hand with the instruction required for the juvenile to safely manage the enhanced physical capability which Triple Alpha status confers.

  Aytch knew what the operant conditioning felt like. He could still feel the echo of unbearable, crippling pain from his own treatment as a juvenile—the mescospoline burning through his veins, not just in his arms, but his eyes, his throat and his heart. Threatening to blind him, choke him, cripple him, and ultimately destroy him, just as he took his full place in the Gadium society.

  Even now, the conscious consideration of trying to alter a probability function inside another Gadium being brought bile up into his mouth. He smiled to himself ruefully. Agony. I won’t forget…‌ever.

  Back in his own cabin, Justio took stock. He hadn’t pushed firmly about trying for a Full Emergence, but he felt Aytch was wavering slightly. His sense of galactic duty probably.

  Justio didn’t think that Aytch would change his mind. But Aytch didn’t need to change his mind, Justio could kill Jack Bullage anyway. Removing Jack Bullage could make way for a Full Emergence to develop; after which, the Earth would probably manage its own destruction. Of course, he’d have to stop Aytch stalling the Emergence with other Triples, but that would be doable—once the Alpha population got past 5% it went so quickly anyway.

  Justio had a few days to act; he couldn’t afford to have Jack retrieved to a safe house on Earth. Given Jack was a Triple Alpha, it would bring stability to Earth transitions for a few thousand years. Additionally, it would be impossible to kill him surreptitiously.

  He needed Jack dead…‌or turned into a raging Despot, in which case Aytch would be quick to assist in the removal.

  There was additional complexity. Any future audit of the Gadium Mission would need to clearly show that both he and Aytch had acted honourably, and according to Gadium standards, at all times. Difficult, but possible—after all, he’d done it before.

  Option 1 - Jack never makes it to Newgate.

  Then there was the matter of Louise Harding. She was a second piece of the puzzle. She would be his mouthpiece, but it needed to be a mouthpiece utterly devoid of any reference to aliens. And untraceable back to him.

  James Chambers had sat in the G60 offices for the best part of 20 hours. Every time he was about to leave, the mainframe spat out another paradox. Max had come and gone, although James had not involved him in any of the discussions.

  Who is FibonacciEddie?

  Any messages captured passing around the internet infrastructure, either referencing FibonacciEddie, or directly from him, were heavily encrypted. Plus their information trails were obscured to a level that James had only seen in military grade software. The message routing went through public, government and military systems both within the UK, and other countries, with equal ease. Without the hardware that James had access to, FibonacciEddie would have been untraceable.

  However, where James did manage to find source materials, he also found that timestamps (and other reference data) had been altered in an incredibly amateur way. The levels of complexity simply did not match up. Even after all the analysis, James was no closer to identifying the background to the online persona FibonacciEddie. But he could see that the person who created FibonacciEddie had almost ultimate access.

  James tried to forget about it. There was no leak!

  But he couldn’t forget. Primary investigation was required.

  Chapter 37

  On Wednesday evening, at 5pm, the volunteers arrived and congregated inside Mike’s garage, each of them automatically finding a seat in front of a coin-tossing box. They looked like a pretty standard set of students to Louise, neat and presentable. She watched as Mike took Ashley and Willis aside, briefed them and reminded them to keep quiet about luck.

  Mike led the briefing. ‘Okay guys, today we are at the start of a large study to investigate shape recognition and various cognitive functions within the brain.’ He looked around the room, trying to catch the eyes of each of the participants. ‘I won’t deceive you, this is not an official university experiment. It’s a bit more commercial in nature. So volunteering does not count towards any course credits; but the good news is we will be paying you in cash, and these experiments could run and run.’ There was a murmur of appreciation from the participants.

  Picking up a coin box, Mike explained as he showed its workings. ‘The experiment is simple. You will each open a small drawer in a box three thousand times. In the drawer is a simple coin. You will record whether the coin is heads or tails. In future sessions we will be measuring brain patterns, eye movement and ultimately shape recognition in various mental states. I recognise this control is very boring, but we do need a set of accredited controls. Let me demonstrate.’ Mike put the various bits through their paces. ‘There are switches on the boxes for you to record the results. There is no speed requirement, and no concept of reaction time in this run of the experiments. Just get yourself into a steady rhythm, open the box, observe the coin, flick the switch then close the box, then repeat.’

  Most of the students nodded and when Mike asked if there were any questions, there was only one. ‘How do we get paid today?’

  ‘Good question. Well after you have finished your three thousand coin tosses you get to keep the coin…‌No, it’s cash in hand, and please don’t talk about this to other students…‌or lecturers.’ Mike looked over to Jeff. ‘Jeff will get in trouble if this gets out, and then your cash flow will dry up.’

  One of students checked the apparatus. ‘Why is there a picture of a snake on top of the box?’

  Mike replied. ‘It’s for experiments in a few weeks when we’ll be stimulating various areas of the brain during the shape recognition exercise. The image of a snake will be used to reset your brain’s thought patterns.’ He paused and looked around the room, there were a few nods of understanding. ‘I said reset but that’s not really a very good word. Using a snake picture is very powerful, because as mammals we are hard-wired genetically to be frightened of snakes. So showing a snake forces our primordial subconscious to do a little bit of work overriding the hoity-toity cerebellum and effectively resetting our cognitive function.’

  So far, so good. Louise noted to herself. Then she retired to a tiny office area, which Mike had partitioned off from the rest of the room, and primed the laptop.

  From the other side of the stud wall, Louise heard Mike announce the start of the test. ‘Thanks, guys, off you go.’

  A few moments later, Mike joined Louise in the office area. He nodded back in the direction of the experiment area. ‘Jeff is troubleshooting.’

  The noise built as the participants started opening and closing the boxes, and recording the results of individual tosses by clicking their switches left or right. The results fed through to the laptop with Louise.

  The ten participants all worked through their three thousand coin tosses, and with arm resting, toilet breaks and cigarettes all eating into the productive time, it was four hours before the last of the participants had finished their allocation. At just after 9’o’clock, they were given £40 for their troubles.

  Once the students had left, Louise walked through to the main garage area. Willis and Ashley had stayed behind. ‘How do you think it went?’

  Willis shrugged. ‘I’m not sure, we were just recording what we saw.’

  Mike’s voice came over the partition. ‘Three minutes, guys.’

  No-one spoke for a while, then Mike called them through and everyone crowded around the laptop while he took them through the results. ‘Overall, we have each candidate tossing 3,000 coins, a good sample size. Assuming it’s random, then on average, each would correctly guess 1,500
tosses.’

  Louise looked over Mike’s shoulder. ‘So what is the result? Did any of our subjects show any variation from the expected average?’

  Mike gave a tiny shake of his head. ‘One of the students, Ben, got 1545 calls correct, Ashley 1524, and Willis 1482.’ He paused for a moment. ‘There’s no smoking gun…‌so far.’

  Louise frowned. ‘What would have been needed?’

  ‘If any of them had managed to get 71 more than the average 1,500 correct then according to the chi-squared test, given there is one degree of freedom, we could say the coin was not acting randomly—assuming the subliminal stimulus is working.’

  Louise’s frustration bubbled up. ‘Thanks for the nerd-a-thon description.’

  Willis pointed at the laptop. ‘71 additional correct answers doesn’t seem like too big a target.’

  Mike eyed Louise. ‘Given her ladyship’s current predisposition, I won’t go through the maths, but I can assure you the chances of you getting 1571 correct are very slim unless you are somehow influencing the result.’ Mike paused. ‘So, Ashley, Willis, are you happy to stay on and try again, but this time actively trying to affect the results?’

  The second set of tests was slightly more complicated. Willis and Ashley had to record two switch flicks for each coin toss; the first recorded their expected outcome and the second recorded the actual outcome. The tests ran on for a few hours, after which Mike crunched the results. ‘Sorry, no better.’

  By now it was past midnight, so they agreed to ramp down for the evening. Jeff and Mike tidied up while the others walked out.

  Louise took a few moments to speak to Ashley and Willis on the driveway. ‘Hey, guys, many thanks for coming. We may re-run the tests this Saturday. Could you make it?’