Greg Bear - Mariposa

Jones Zero had taken five years to build and two to charge up; they had learned a lot from simply getting him to turn on and give simple responses to basic neurologic queries, Gödel number key code strings-lifeboat backups, net housekeeping.

Like HAL, Jones Zero had learned a birthday diagnostic song: not "Daisy" but "Sgt. Pepper's." That was how much artificial thinking had advanced in fifty years.

Of course, even the later versions of Jones were not real minds, not yet true thinkers-more like idiot savants. But after the launch, it soon became obvious that this was the best pattern recognition tool anyone had yet devised.

Jones Zero could not only comprehend any natural language and find matches in even highly degraded databases, but he could deliver highly reliable analytics as to dialect, accent, even birthplace and level of education.

He-they always referred to a Jones as if it were human-could tell whether a voice came from a native who had learned the language as a child, or from a highly educated person who had learned it in school-and even the age at which the language training had begun.

What was more, Jones could penetrate any false accent and pick up the underlying native tongue.

The Quiet Man and the Turing Seven had soon moved Jones Zero up to weather. He had learned quickly. In six months, the distributed competer in its liquid-filled boxes-made up of borax, glass, and gel-suspended rods of PNA and DNA-had quickly proved itself to be a master of winds.

Jones 1.0-smaller, faster, better-beat the best automated and human long-range forecasters.

The Quiet Man decided that Jones 1.0 could be duplicated and shipped to key positions around the planet, standing in for the next step, Jones 2.0, already in development. Jones 1.0 would act as the trigger for his successor, as an atom bomb is used to trigger a hydrogen bomb.

There was to be only one Jones 2.0, and his work was to destined be very important indeed: supervising the world's first nanosecond-updated, worldwide financial data network, collected by over five thousand mainframes controlling server farms throughout Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Jones 2.0 was about to become the quiet, humming heart of MSARC. Mind Design's connection with Talos Corporation was the biggest secret of all.

The Quiet Man kept Jones Zero in the basement of Mind Design as a kind of museum piece. Nathaniel Trace seemed to be alone with the machine in its concrete chamber. He felt almost shy in its quiet presence.

The Quiet Man-Chan Herbert-emerged from a rear cold chamber, where volatile Jones components were stored.

He pulled off a watch cap and unzipped his black windbreaker.

"Hello," he said.

Nathaniel bit his lip. Back on the couch, no longer traveling through memory's vivid album.

Seemingly live, in real time, Chan Herbert was being projected into their eyes.

"Hello, Mr. Herbert," Camp said.

Herbert looked up at a corner, eyes hunting, like a blind man. "Hello, Mr. Camp. I thought that was you. Hello, Nathaniel. How's the viewing?"

"It's fine," Nathaniel said. "Why the spy stuff?"

"Backdoor precautions. Always good when working with certain business types. I'm a little paranoid, naturally, and right now that's useful. Jones 2.0 has come online in Switzerland. They've run all their tests. He passed with flying colors. MSARC is going operational in fourteen days."

Actually, less than thirty hours. The Quiet Man was relaying old information.

"So?" Camp said, not reassured. "Off the hook. That's a good thing. Our work is done."

"Not yet. Something's gone wrong."

Nathaniel felt a weird twinge. "A programming glitch?"

"No. Besides, Jones 2.0 is well beyond our programming at this point. He's harder to get hold of than a venture capital broker. What can you tell me about Mariposa?"

"It works," Camp said. "But it adds stuff. Weird shit."

"You were test monkeys," Herbert said. "As always, Price thought he should kill two birds with one stone-repair the Turing Seven to finish their job, and at the same time, get positive test results for Mariposa. Now Dr. Plover has revealed who the first monkey actually was: the vice president. And he's not the only one who's flipped. Nick Elder. When I heard from Nick is when I called you and told you to get out of Dubai."

"Old news," Camp murmured.

"Jerry Lee is feeling odd, too. He's in Arabia Deserta, and he seems to be making a fuss-killing animals, I hear."

Jerry Lee hadn't been in Arabia in weeks, perhaps months. Nathaniel felt feverish. "Why are we here?" he asked.

The Quiet Man gave a little jerk before responding. "After 9-11, the telecommunications industry duplicated the fiber optic point of entry for Asia and the Middle East to a centralized commercial facility in San Francisco. Somehow, they forgot to deactivate the old junction stations-which make excellent listening posts. Three of them serve me as personal tin cans strung on all the world's data traffic. Every blockhouse has a Jones 1.0 analyzing traffic.

"Jones 2.0 has the option to tie in with one or more of his siblings. Sometimes I ask an older Jones-the one right next to you, for example-to pull up anomalies in government traffic. He knows how to behave like a blank pipe or a legitimate client. He's still pretty sharp, even though most people think he's past his operational prime.

"In fact, both Talos and the regulators at MSARC believe all of the earlier versions have been shut down. Tell me how you feel, Nathaniel."

"Different," Nathaniel said.

"Like you want to kill somebody?"

Nathaniel twitched his folded hands. "Mostly, I just feel free to choose."

"You're unpredictable. You can't be trusted. You need a fallback."

"Why tell us to come here, then?" Nathaniel looked askance at the Quiet Man. The projected image skewed. He looked back, and there it was again, but seeming less and less real.

Low-res.

Of course, his eyes might still be playing tricks.

"Because that's the only place you can still see me," Herbert said.

"You reluctant to leave Mind Design?" Camp asked.

"No," Herbert said. "Not reluctant. I'm dead, Mr. Camp. They killed me fourteen days ago."

Camp started to chuckle, a grim exhibition of bitter humor, but his chuckle gurgled out when Herbert faded from the distant basement laboratory.

"What the hell?" Camp blurted.

Herbert's image slowly returned. "I often use Jones as a kind of answering machine," the voice said. "I recorded phrases, then trained him to select and modify and assemble them. Images, too.

"I like being two places at once. Now I'm nowhere at all. Jones can still answer questions, give out my messages, but only for a while. Pretty soon, Jones will run out of my words. He's sophisticated enough to make up new phrases-but I don't know whether he wants to.

"If he doesn't-I'm afraid you're completely on your own."

Nathaniel blinked rapidly, blurring the image of the Mind Design lab-not at all sure any of it was real.

The Quiet Man looked around as if sharing Nathaniel's confusion, then continued. "Dr. Plover passed along the name of a woman from the FBI who was in the Mariposa program. She was one of the third stage patients. The Turing Seven were all second stage. Jones snooped and told me the president would chose this agent to investigate the vice president's little incident. If she now has the information Dr. Plover gave to you to deliver-then there may still be a chance to derail Price's plan. She may or may not be feeling similar side effects. It's a risk we have to take."

"Been there," Nathaniel muttered.

"I wonder how Jones will react to all this," Herbert mused. He looked thoughtful. "I mean, he isn't a sophisticated personality. But there's as much of me in him as any of you. If Jones learns that I have been hurt or killed, what will he do? What will that knowledge do to him?"