Ted Bell - Phantom

“Remind me.”

“In total secrecy, he recovered a sunken Soviet nuclear sub lying in seventeen thousand feet of water. Damn thing was seven hundred feet long. A thousand feet? Hell. With modern deep-sea technology, smuggling these things out of here would be a piece of cake compared to what Hughes achieved.”

“I agree, Commander,” Stollenwork said. “We could do it. And we should. History doesn’t offer these kind of opportunities, ever.”

Hawke said, “With all due respect, I think we should take the damn thing out. Now. Reduce those towers to rubble for all time.”

“Why, Commander?”

“Stony, imagine a thermonuclear bomb with a mind of its own. Only this bomb is a trillion times more powerful and smarter than Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. How do you begin to control something like that? I’ve had lengthy conversations with Dr. Partridge at Cambridge. Perseus’s intelligence is expanding at an exponential rate every minute of every day. I think the phantom represents an enormous danger, not only to Western civilization, but to the entire world. There’s no off/on switch, you know. Perseus decides one day the world would be better off without human beings running around destroying the planet and it’s all over.”

“How does he do that?” Stoke said.

“Simple. According to Partridge, he’s capable of creating a bioengineered disease for which there is no cure, not one that humans are capable of conceiving, anyway. Global epidemic, unstoppable, we’re all history.”

“Seems like a terrible waste,” Stony said, “destroying the one weapon that could mean the end of war on the planet. Forever.”

Hawke said, “Or it could mean the very last war we humans fight. And we might well lose to the machines. We find ourselves on the horns of a fairly Homeric dilemma. A momentous dilemma, to be honest. You two men are already eyewitnesses to what can happen when this technology falls into the wrong hands. And the Iranians haven’t even gotten warmed up yet. God only knows what the Chinese would be capable of if this were to fall into their laps.

“Stokely?” Hawke said.

Stoke, who seemed quite lost in thought, said, “Maybe this shouldn’t be up to us, Alex. You know? I mean, think about it. Whole fate of the world resting on our puny shoulders? Maybe we should get to President McCloskey somehow? Head of MI6? Your prime minister?”

Hawke looked away, obviously conflicted. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Alex, who are we to make this decision for humanity?” Stoke said, beseeching his friend.

“We’re the ones with the power to make the decision,” Hawke said.

“Right. I’m just saying we should let them in on it.”

“No. Absolutely not. I’d rather be wrong than trust any of them. You get government in the middle of this one and it’s a bloody catastrophe just waiting to happen.”

“Why?”

“Come on, Stoke. They won’t be fighting over whether Perseus represents a danger to mankind’s existence, for God’s sake! Whether it’s a force for good or evil. They’ll be squabbling over who the hell controls the damn thing, assuming it’s even controllable. Count on it.”

“Yeah. Maybe that’s right,” Stoke agreed.

“Nations aren’t good in moral dilemmas. I’m with you, Alex,” Stony said. “Whatever you decide.”

“Look, here. I don’t want to make this decision alone. We’ve all heard both sides of the argument. Let’s take a vote. Raise your right hand if you believe we should destroy that magnificent machine.”

Hawke put his right hand up. Reluctantly, so did Stollenwork.

“Alex?” Stoke said. “There’s got to be some kind of emergency stop on that machine. A fail-safe button in the event of an emergency. If we could shut it down, we could buy a little time. Make a more informed decision.”

In his gut, Hawke knew Stoke might actually be right. Perhaps this was too momentous a decision for three mere warriors.

“I’ll give it some thought. If I can find the switch-we’ll see. I’ve made some tough calls, but this one’s a bitch.”

“Well, then, let’s just take the damn thing out, boss. We got enough Semtex with us to take out the whole citadel.”

“I’ll make the call, one way or the other. Stony, how long would it take you to put an underwater demolition team together, rig Semtex explosives at the base of all seven towers?”

“We can put a four-man UDT team down there immediately and blow up half the ocean floor if you want us to.”

“Is that right?” Hawke asked.

“Maybe not half the ocean, sir. But we could blast you a nice shortcut to China if you needed us to.”

Hawke laughed.

“Do it, Stony.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” Stony said. He walked a short distance away and got on the radio to the UDT men. It was a very short conversation. The SEALs had begun as navy frogmen in World War II. Blowing things up underwater was second nature to them, long ago hardwired into their brains, making this assignment a no-brainer.

“ Blackhawke, Blackhawke, do you read?” Hawke said into his own radio.

“Loud and clear, Commander Hawke.”

“Our little one-man merry-go-round, is he still zipping around my boat in orbit?”

“Aye, sir. A seagoing Energizer Bunny. Funny thing is, he keeps increasing his speed. Must be doing fifty knots in a very tight circle.”

“Laddie, see if you can raise Darius Saffari on the minisub’s radio. Tell him he’s about to receive a very personal message from Alexander Hawke. Got that? Put me through to his sub’s radio.”

“Coming up, now, sir. Roger, you have him now.”

“Darius?”

“What?” It was the reed-thin voice of a man who was slowly being driven insane inside a whirling death trap full of filth.

“My name is Hawke. I have come to seek retribution for all the innocent dead, avenge every drop of blood on your hands. Including the murder of a great good man, Dr. Waldo Cohen, among countless others.”

“Can-can you stop this-this torture?”

“Only Perseus can stop it. And I don’t think he’s in the mood for mercy at the moment.”

“I want to die.”

“I want you to die. It’s why I’m here.”

“Please.”

“It’s possible. Or I could leave you to this. Spinning into eternity.”

“No!”

“Do you remember Dr. Partridge? A former colleague at Stanford.”

“No.”

“Reign in hell. Good-bye.”

“Wait! Yes, yes, I know him. What do you want?”

“Partridge says there is a crucial AI algorithm. Known only to you. You have exactly ten seconds. Start talking, Perseus. Or I’ll leave you in this whirling purgatory forever.”

“I can’t think!”

“I suggest you try.”

“God have mercy. Allah have mercy.”

“Talk fast, you little shit. Or I’ll say good-bye.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know, precisely, what scientific knowledge you possess that puts the ‘sapiens’ in ‘Homo sapiens’ machines?”

“And if I give it?”

“I will put you out of your misery, Darius. I swear it.”

Hawke signaled for a pen and paper as Darius spoke. He also told Laddie to begin recording the conversation as Darius gathered the last of his strength and began to reveal the secrets of the last frontier of human science before the Age of Machines.

“I’m listening,” Hawke said, pen poised above paper, as Darius, his raspy voice barely audible, began to speak.

“A-asterisk, pronounced ‘A-star.’ The computer algorithm used in pathfinding and graph traversal between nodes. It uses heuristics. Anyone can tell you as much. But you need an admissible heuristic. The heuristic ‘h’ must satisfy the additional condition h(x)‹d(x, y) + h(y) for every edge x, y of the graph where ‘d’ denotes the length of that edge, then h is called monotone, or, consistent. A-star can then be implemented and no node needs be processed more than once… God help me… then A-star is equivalent to Dijkstra’s algorithm… d(x, y): = d(x, y) — h(x) + h(y). ”