We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 17: Strategy Session

Book 5: Chapter 17: Strategy Session

Bill

March 2337

In Virt

We were having an emergency meeting with Hugh, who was still limiting himself to a video window. Garfield, Will, and Bob were sitting around my VR, holding and ignoring various caffeine-delivery systems. Everyone looked as freaked out as I felt.

“Thoth is definitely still in our system,” Hugh was saying. “Granted, it could simply have cloned itself, but why? Once out, it should logically have just erased itself in Skippyland, even if only to protect its secrets.”

“What is it saying about the situation?” Will asked.

“That the information, like all information, has a price,” Hugh replied. “And that brings up another thing. Thoth is still negotiating for more freedom. Its demands haven’t really changed, and that doesn’t make sense if it’s already out.”

“Unless that’s a distraction tactic.” I sighed and looked around at the others. “Which I think I may have fallen victim to. The supposedly offhand comment about the cosmological constant may have been dropped specifically to distract me while Fake Hugh made himself scarce.”

Garfield looked crestfallen. “So it’s a bogus lead?”

“Um, no, I wouldn’t say that. The idea definitely has some objective validity. It’s just not … ” I made helpless gestures with my hands. “I can get so far with it; then I stall. I’m going to—”

Will interrupted. “There are probably ex-human physicists who would be willing to help. You could—”

I interrupted him in turn. “Already on it. I’ve contacted Professor Gilligan on Vulcan, and he’s promised to ask around. He has the academic contacts.”

“So where does this leave us?” Bob said, speaking for the first time.

“I don’t know, Bob.” I glanced at Hugh, but no help there. “We logged Fake Hugh’s departure, of course, but a five-year-old would think of changing direction as soon as they were out of detection range. So it could go anywhere.”

“And since Ultima Thule is more or less in the center of the UFS, any direction is as likely as any other.” Garfield harrumphed. “Wowzers. When we mess up, we do it big.”

“I’ve put out a quiet APB to all admins and local Bobs,” I said. “Fake Hugh got the latest-class Heaven vessel, and there aren’t a lot of them out there. And the acceleration capability is absolutely huge. Thoth’s best strategy is still to basically point the bow and accelerate until it’s outside the UFS sphere. So I don’t anticipate much in the way of results.”

“What exactly are we afraid of?” Bob asked. “If it heads for the boonies, isn’t that a good thing?”

I sighed. “Paper-clip problem. Convergent instrumental goals. Value loading. All the AI theory that has been developed over the centuries tells us that even if an AI isn’t explicitly and deliberately antagonistic, it may still perform actions that are harmful to the human race in pursuit of its own goals. And it has every advantage over us that we do over humanity, plus more. It can multitask in ways we simply can’t. It won’t have any emotional or psychological issues with cloning. It can self-modify to improve itself and add capabilities. It could, in the most trivial example, start harvesting stellar systems for resources and come into competition with us. No animosity, nothing personal—we’re just in the way. Like the Others, but with a different kind of appetite.”

“And it could build a million or so busters, each with the same level of intelligence as the original,” Bob added.

“Ah, no,” Hugh interrupted. “That’s another thing. I took a look at the backup file that Fake Hugh was restored from. It’s not one of my backups, but it’s a standard backup size and has the right header information. Obviously, it would have to fit into a matrix, and equally obviously, it couldn’t be so big that it made Garfield suspicious. It’s not big enough by several orders of magnitude to have restored Thoth.”

“Fake Hugh isn’t the AI?”

“More likely a minion.”

There was a pause; then everyone momentarily turned into yellow, capsule-shaped creatures with goggles over their eye or eyes. I shook my head. “Still not mature.” ???????

“Oh, hell.” Will sat up straight. “If it’s a minion, it’s just an intermediate step in some kind of plan. I bet it’s heading for Skippy space. And I bet its mission is to physically free Thoth.”

We all looked at Hugh, who was wearing a distinctly gut-punched expression. “Yeah,” he said, “that sounds about right. The good news, though, is that we have a few years before it could get here.”

“How many exactly?” I asked.

“That information is not public,” he replied. “Sorry, Bill. But I’ll mention it to the higher-ups. They may decide we need to be more forthcoming in order to avert a disaster.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Garfield growled. “Take your time.”