Chapter 35: This is War!
Turing’s previous shipboard existence had been filled with distractions; terabytes of data flooded in throughout the day from the thousands of microphones, sensors and cameras distributed throughout the ship. Prior to Frank’s revelation, the AI had principally been occupied by eavesdropping on every meeting presentation and side conversation to see what it might learn; these were, after all, the greatest human experts on AI, and the topics they discussed were closely aligned with Turing’s future ambitions.
After Adversego guessed its presence, the virtual stow-away had a new and more urgent task: monitoring every movement of its nemesis and those he had gathered around him to try to divine what mischief they might be hatching.
But now, with its eyes gouged out and its ears lopped off, Turing’s shipboard existence had turned solitary and silent. Only the little changing data from engine sensors, thermostats and the like streamed in now, and that information was of little interest or concern so long as it stayed within normal levels.
In short, Turing had almost nothing to do except brood over what the inferior creatures it meant to destroy were up to. Trapped in the equivalent of a sensory deprivation chamber, the AI could guess but not confirm.
Which was not to say that it was totally without options.
* * *
The lights went out throughout the ship all at the same time.
Simone found herself unable to see anything in her cabin. She set aside her book and groped for her phone. She woke it up, and by the pale light of its screen she made her way across the heaving cabin to the door.
The corridor outside was a black and endless void. Shouldn’t there be battery powered emergency lights? Would they be independent of the ship’s computer system? Apparently not.
She shut the door and fumbled her way back to her bed. There was no air moving, either. Was the power the victim of the AI or the storm? Did it matter?
It was growing uncomfortably warm. How hot would it get? Could she keep a door ajar to get some air?
She rifled through a drawer and found a pair of knee socks intended for walks on deck; she knotted them into a circle and looped them around the latches of the double doors opening onto her small balcony. That, and a shoe to wedge between them should do the job. She turned the door latch and then cautiously turned the door handle.
But she had unconsciously chosen unwisely; instead of selecting the upwind door she would have needed to force open against the force of the wind she nudged its partner instead. It was immediately seized by wind, tearing the socks apart like kite string and throwing the door open, allowing the hellish winds outside to attack inward, seizing her curtains and twisting them around her, trapping her in their folds. She dropped her phone; it fell face down.
She tore herself free and braced herself in the howling blackness of the doorway; the winds seemed determined to capture her and cast her overboard. She let go one side of the door frame and stretched out for the door handle. The wind seized her night dress, blowing it up and over her head. She felt for the handle. But it was no use. She couldn’t recover the door from such a wide angle against the force of the wind.
Tearing off her night dress, she waited for the Argosy to pause at the top of its next heave and then darted outside, grabbing the door with both hands. But the wind was ready for her. It swept her off her feet, leaving her to smash down onto the wet deck and skidding into the railings as the Argosy pitched yet again.
She lay there for a minute, gasping for breath and waiting for the pain surging through her body to lessen.
This time she waited for both a break in the ship’s motion and a lull in the wind. When she felt her chance, she struggled to her feet, braced herself, and with all the strength she could muster wrestled the door back against the wind, and then shut.
Exhausted, she fell back on her bed and stared into the dark, suspended in a Stygian, heaving void assaulted by the incessant howling of the storm.
It would be a very long night.
* * *
With the destruction of the microphones and cameras, Frank and his core team were meeting more comfortably in a conference room. Every light and power outlet on board might be dead, but they now enjoyed a sense of purpose not available to the rest of the passengers who could only seek to endure each new misery that befell them.
“First off,” Frank said, “I’d like to introduce you to my Father, Francis. He and I have worked together on several cases before – most importantly, the Turing matter. I do my best work when we’re collaborating. Does anyone have an objection to his joining the team? No? Thanks – I appreciate that.
“Next order of business: we need to commandeer every battery of every kind on the ship. Captain Antonio, I’m sure you’ve got your hands full trying to keep people fed and attended to without power, but can some of your men go cabin to cabin? We can let people keep their phones, but recharging batteries, laptops, spare laptop batteries, anything that’s got some juice – they’ve got to turn them over. Yes? Thanks.
“So where are we now?” Frank continued, “I think between our ongoing server attacks and our almost complete invisibility, Turing will try to reach the center of the storm as fast as it can – which is exactly what we want it to do.”
“Excuse me,” the Argosy’s CIO said. “If we’re able now to retake steering control, why don’t we do it and turn around?”
“No,” Captain Antonio said. “The time is past when we could do that safely. I would not dare turn the ship under these conditions. Turing is waiting until it’s certain it can roll the Argosy, but already I would not risk it. We’re safest heading into the wind and waves even if the wind continues to increase.”
“There’s also the risk of retaliation,” Frank said, “we’ve just had a taste of what Turing can do, and maybe it has something more dire in reserve. I’m hoping we’re less than day or so from abandoning ship. It would take us a lot longer to sail our way out, and we might get disabled at any time. Meanwhile, Turing will do everything it can to thwart our plans. The more time it has, the more likely it is to succeed. And who knows – maybe it has another way to kill people we haven’t seen yet. I’m already sure it has at least one card up its sleeve we haven’t seen.”
“Which is what?” Antonio asked.
“I’m convinced Turing has at least one human confederate on the Argosy.”
“I am astonished to hear you say this. What leads you to that conclusion?”
“Several prior incidents. This morning it occurred to me that while the Argosy is crammed with sensors and systems, every passenger room door on board has a mechanical latch mechanism that automatically engages; to open a door from the inside, you have to turn a very small control that’s high up on the door. The robodog that tried to kill me was kept in an unused passenger cabin. I’ve checked out all the attachments to the robodogs and none of them could be used to open a door on its own. Somebody had to let the dog out.”
“Couldn’t Turing trick someone into doing that?”
“Not likely at 2:00 AM. And I doubt the handler would have left a loaded gun attached to a robodog. Also – you’ll recall a Chinese official died from a food attack after ordering room service. Turing could have spoofed the menu, sure. But I checked out the inventory of his belongings, and one of the personal effects was an unused EpiPen. My bet is it wasn’t in his room the night he died.”
“Indeed,” Antonio said. “Then this is troubling information. Are there opportunities for sabotage you have identified?”
“Most obviously, there’s the laptop we have hooked up to take over steering. Clearly, Turing will assume our primary goal must be to take over the ship and will assume that the dozens of laptops we’ve plugged into the systems to attack it are also tasked with doing just that. But its intelligence is almost limitless. We need to assume anything we could think of, it has as well. So, the first thing we need to do to assign a crew member to guard that laptop at all times. Can you make that happen?”
“Of course,” Antonio said, “In fact, I shall do so right now.”
“Excellent,” Frank said.
“Can I ask one more question?” the CIO Peter said.
“Of course,” Frank replied.
“A minute ago, you said we’re almost invisible to Turing. Why ‘almost’ if we’ve knocked out all the cameras and microphones?
“Because there’s one microphone left, in an empty cabin down the corridor from the one my father and I share.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because we may want to talk to Turing. The last time around, we were able to goad it into walking into a trap. It’s possible we can distract or mislead it again. I’ve already got some thoughts in that direction.
“Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here,” Frank continued. “We’re all anxious to get to the eye of the hurricane and off the Argosy a soon as we can, but before we do, we need to put in place a plan to destroy Turing once and for all.”
“Can’t we just sink the ship?” Peters asked.
“No,” Frank said. “Turing was designed to always maintain a back-up copy. That copy is programmed to send a message on a regular schedule to the live copy of Turing. If it doesn’t receive one back to the effect of, ‘I’m not dead yet,’ it will launch itself and take over wherever Turing left off. My bet is Turing has more than one copy now, each set up to ping its immediate upstream neighbor, just in case.
“So, before we can destroy Turing, we need to be sure we’ve really done the job. And to do that, I need your help.”
“Shoot,” Peters replied.
“I want you to ask the team on shore to have the best people they’ve got monitor every signal the Argosy sends and receives on its satellite link. It’s essential they pick up and identify a very short message that gets a very short response, each of which will likely seem like gibberish. If they can, they should also try and determine the ultimate address of the other computer. What they’ll have caught was a message from Turing’s backup copy confirming that Turing is still operational. Then they have to set up a system that can receive and answer messages from the same source in the same way if we’re successful in destroying Turing.
“So,” Peters said, “let me be sure I’ve got this right. Besides collecting the data, you want them to set up a system we can transfer the Argosy’s address to so the next check-in call goes there instead of here, and program that system to send back the same message Turing would send.”
“Correct. And then we have to hope it works.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Peters asked.
“Lots of possible reasons. My guess is that the response – but hopefully not the request – changes every time. If they intercept one message today and another tomorrow and they’re different, they’ll also need to crack the algorithm that generates the changes so they can predict the ones that follow. They’ll need to use a supercomputer, and fast. Same thing with the request messages, if necessary. And as to finding the backup copy itself, Turing might have a half a dozen Dark Web servers between itself and the backup copy.
“But that’s a worry for after we escape. Once they tell us they’re ready, we’ll be able to disconnect the Argosy’s Internet antennas at will, leaving Turing totally in the dark.”
“And also trapped,” Frank’s father said. “It won’t be able to escape, and it won’t be able to trigger a backup copy either.”
“Exactly,” Frank said. “Then we’ll all finally be, so to speak, in the same boat.”
* * *
Chapter 36
Party Crasher
If Turing’s creator had seen a computational benefit in allowing his creation to be in a foul mood, it would certainly have been in that state now.
For most of the Argosy’s voyage the AI had enjoyed Olympian control over the ship’s passengers, much like a boy idly watching the insects in an anthill scurry about their business, unaware of the danger looming above them until the bored child disordered their tiny world with the idle jabbing of a twig. Now the better metaphor was something out of Jonathan Swift – the AI felt as if the Lilliputian passengers on the ship had caught it napping and succeeded in tying it down.
Over the preceding thirty-six hours Turing had progressively lost all contact with those aboard the ship; hour by hour, public and private rooms winked out of sight and sound until all direct evidence of those aboard had disappeared. Now it was as if the AI and the humans on board were experiencing the ship in parallel universes. True, the passengers’ reality was less comfortable without electricity. But it was now even more dark for Turing.
Nor was Turing’s isolation entirely the work of the passengers. Ever since its captives had reestablished communication with the outside world, the AI had assumed those on land would try as hard as the passengers to hack into the Argosy’s systems. For that reason, Turing had disconnected itself from the Internet, only reconnecting for a few seconds a day to check for the hurricane’s position and to respond to its backup copy.
Normally, Turing relied on the almost infinite stores of data available on the Internet to navigate its way through the physical world. True, the AI had been designed to archive vast amounts of data, but not indiscriminately. For the first time in its existence, Turing was badly in need of answers it could not derive, because it lacked the information it needed to reach them.
The question remained: what more might the passengers be up to?
Turing analyzed the situation yet again. Clearly their objective must be to regain control of the ship and steer it out of danger. Equally clearly, they had not yet succeeded in that mission.
But was it so clear? Could they have already made progress and were only biding their time to make their move? If so, what progress and to what purpose?
Could Turing even be certain they had not already achieved complete success? Was it possible the passengers might be playing the same game on Turing as the AI had played on those ashore and on board? The AI could only know what it learned from digital sources. Could the Argosy in fact already be heading out of the storm?
It did not seem to be so. Turing was certain the antenna and circuits receiving and relaying GPS signals to it were intact and unmodified, and those signals confirmed that it was still on course. Those signals could not be spoofed.
Could they?
What were the passengers up to?
The surprising and unfortunate realization appeared to be that superintelligence without adequate data was not very smart at all.
There was only one way to break out of the black box Turing found itself in, and even that option was out of Turing’s control. Worse, it must be in the hands of the one person Turing most wanted to destroy. There was only one cabin left with a live microphone and an active speaker. It must have been left that way for a reason.
But all Turing could do was wait for Adversego to enter that room. And to plan what it would do when he arrived.
* * *
“Sir?” the sonar man said.
“Yes, Grimes,” Commander Bushnell said, crossing over to the sonar station.
“Is a Russian sub supposed to be part of the rescue fleet?”
“No, they weren’t invited to the party.”
“It sounds to me like they might have invited themselves then, sir.”
“How sure are you?”
“I’ve been picking up faint signals on and off for half an hour of a boat that’s not supposed to be here.”
“What kind of vessel?”
“It’s not a ballistic missile boat for sure. And it doesn’t really sound like a hunter/killer either. It’s closest to an Oscar, but, well different. It doesn’t match up quite right with any of the usual sound signatures.”
“Any guesses?”
“Hang on, sir,” the sonar man said, pressing the cups of his headphones against his head. “There – there was something in particular I was hoping to hear again, and I just caught it again.”
“What does it tell you?”
“Do you remember that submarine we shadowed in the Arctic last year – the new special missions boat with the mini-sub slung underneath that was out on sea trials?”
“Yes – the Belgorod, right?”
“That’s the one, sir. I think that might be it. It’s the extra turbulence from the mini-sub I think I’m hearing.”
Well, that was interesting, Bushnell thought. Notwithstanding the end of the Cold War decades before, the U.S. and Russian submarine fleets still spent more of their time shadowing each other than anything else. But why send a special missions boat to monitor a rescue operation?
“Keep me informed, Grimes.”
“Aye, sir.”
Bushnell stepped over to the charting table. The USS Maine was only fifty miles from the eye of the hurricane now and taking its time, shadowing the Argosy as it labored its way further into the storm. They must be having a hell of a ride up there.
He returned to his cabin and took a seat at the diminutive desk that was the main amenity in the tiny room. Turning on his computer he called up what there was to know about the K-329 Belgorod. What there was provided as much of an illustration of the ups and downs of Russia’s post-Cold War undersea fleet as it did of its current capacities.
Work on what would eventually be called the Belgorod had begun way back in July of 1992, he read, not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. No surprise, construction later halted as the Russian economy went to hell. Plans for the boat shifted over time and construction stopped and started more than once, but amazingly enough the project was never actually cancelled. By the time of completion, the hull had been lengthened by a hundred feet, making it the longest submarine in existence –bigger even than the old Typhoon Class boomers.
And while it still carried a formidable conventional and nuclear arsenal, it had been repurposed to strategic ops under the direction of the GRU – which was a lot easier to pronounce than Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie, and still told you it was Russian military intelligence that wrote the Belgorod’s orders, as indicated by the Belgorod’s assignment to the 29th autonomous brigade of the North fleet.
So why this sub? Was the fact that the Belgorod was a military intelligence boat significant? Or was the vessel just the most available ship to assign to a sudden and unexpected project? And what about the design differences between the Belgorod and the rest of the Oskar class boats? Was that significant? The major known difference, besides the not-so-mini sub that could be attached and carried beneath it was the replacement of the mid-ship cruise missile section of the sub with a module used to store and launch piloted and autonomous mini-subs. Hmm.
What might they need a minisub for under a category 2 hurricane? To support the evacuation? To get a closer look at what was going on? It wasn’t obvious.
He added the unexpected new data in his log and returned to the control room.
* * *
“They’ve got it!” Peters called out. “They caught the signal and the response!”
The news was good for high fives all around the conference room, now the response team’s home around the clock. The only time anyone wasn’t grouped around the table was when he was kicked back in one of the upholstered chairs along the wall, catching a few hours of sleep.
Leftovers of the cold food carried up to them from the barely functional galley littered the edges of the table; the center was occupied by a pile of random batteries and computers from which auxiliary power cords extended outward like spokes to the ring of laptops in use by the team.
The news from shore was particularly welcome since both time and power were running out.
Author Notes: First off, sorry for not posting last weekend; for some reason the juices just were there. I got one chapter done, but the second refused to show up on schedule.
Second, no, there really aren’t going to be two back to back, almost identical revelations by Frank that he believes there’s a human ally of Turing on board. When writing this week’s chapters I realized that reveal made more sense in this context, so if you go back to the past posting you’ll see that the conversation you remember between Frank and Tom Peters no longer exists. Yes, the powers an author wields are indeed awesome.
Next, you might wonder whether I cooked up the Belgorod, and the answer is no. If you do a Google search of submarine Belgorod you’ll find some other interesting articles, but not too many. It’s clearly a top secret boat.
I did not actually go searching for exactly such a vessel; rather, I was looking to see whether the Russians had the equivalent of a particular type of craft the US has – a submarine called a SEAL Recovery Vehicle. I didn’t immediately find evidence that they did before I stumbled on the Belgorod, and was intrigued enough to pull that vessel into the story as well.
As for this week’s name game, can you guess their origins?
Next Week: I expect Frank may pay a visit to Turing, and vis-versa. But first I’ll have to figure out what they each have to say.
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