John Scalzi - The Android's Dream

"Do it," Pope said. "And try to find a smart one. I don't know how good this Creek character is anymore, but the sooner we're in business, the longer It'll take for him to catch up with us."

Archie McClellan was born to be a geek. The child of geeks, who were themselves the children of geeks, who were in themselves brought into the world by members of the geek clan, Archie was fated for geekdom not only in the genes that recursively flirted with Asperger's syndrome down multiple genetic fines, but in his very name.

"You were named after an ancient search protocol," Archie's dad, an electronics engineer with the DC Metro system, told him when he was in kindergarten. "And so was your sister," he said, nodding toward Archie's fraternal twin, Veronica. Veronica, who despite all generic predilections to the contrary had already begun a reign of popularity that would propel her all the way to the editorship of the Harvard Law Review, vowed instantly never to tell anyone of her name's origin. Archie, on the other hand, thought this bit of information was super cool. He was a geek before he could spell the word (which would have been at age two years, two months).

As also befitted his name, Archie McClellan made a specialty out of administering the various legacy systems that labored in the dusty corners of the many departments of the UNE government. One of Archie's favorite stories was when he was dragged down to the basement of the Department of Agriculture and presented with an IBM System 360, vintage nineteen fucking sixty-five. Archie McCellan turned to the administrative assistant who had hauled him down to the basement and told her that there was more computing power in the animated greeting card in her desk than in the whole massive bulk of this ancient mainframe. The administrative assistant snapped her gum and told him she didn't care if it was powered by chickens pecking at buttons, it still needed to be reconnected to the network. Archie spent a day learning OS/360, reconnected the hulking birdbrain to the network, and charged triple his usual consulting fee.

So when Archie found himself being led down into a similar basement hall in the Pentagon, he assumed he was heading toward yet another ancient machine, still tethered to the network like a Neanderthal because of the government-wide directive not to throw out legacy systems due to decades of data that would be otherwise unreadable. No one building computers today makes their machines backwards-compatible with punch cards, DVD-ROMs, collapsible memory cubes or holo-encodes. He was mildly surprised when he arrived where he was going and saw the machine.

"This is this year's model," he said to the Phipps, who was waiting inside.

"I suppose it is," said Phipps.

"I don't understand," Archie said. "I contract to maintain your legacy systems."

"But you can work with today's computers, right?" Phipps said. "The computer doesn't have to be older than Christ for you to use it"

"Of course not," Archie said.

"That's good to hear. I have a job for you."

The job involved encrypted data that needed to be compared to data in an encrypted database. Archie's job would be to oversee the data retrieval process, and if at all possible, speed it up; the encrypted database was massive and the project was under severe time constraints.

"It would make it easier if the data weren't encrypted," Archie said to Phipps.

"Try to make it easier with it still encrypted," said Phipps, and glanced at his watch. "It's nine p.m. now. I'll be back tomorrow at nine a.m. to check on your progress, but if you come up with anything sooner you can send me a message."

"My contract states that any work after midnight through six a.m. constitutes double overtime rates," Archie said.

"Well, then, that's good news for you," Phipps said. "There's a vending machine down the hall to your right. Bathroom is down the left. Have fun." He left.

Archie set up the terminal in the basement office to begin searching through the database, and then went back upstairs to retrieve his personal work computer. He used his personal computer to optimize the search routine as much as possible given the encryption constraints, but after a couple of hours of fiddling he realized that even the fully optimized code was searching far too slowly for what he suspected was his new boss's expectations.

Fuck it, he said to himself, copied the encrypted data onto his own computer, and hacked the encryption. This wasn't difficult to do; whoever had encrypted the data used the encryption program that shipped with the computer's OS. The encryption was supposed to be nearly unbreakable standard 16,384 bit, but thanks to the OS manufacturer's perennially sloppy coding, the encryption generator that shipped with the OS featured distinct nonrandom artifacts which could be used to crack the encryption with embarrassing ease. The story finally broke when local TV in Minneapolis showed an eight-year-old hacking the encryption.

Coincidentally, at almost exactly the same time the story was airing in Minneapolis, the Seattle, Washington, metropolitan area experienced an earthquake registering 5.3 on the Richter scale. Tech wits attributed it to Bill Gates spinning in his grave. The OS manufacturer eventually put out a patch, but government IT managers were not well known for keeping up with the latest patches.

The data turned out to be DNA of some sort, which was excellent news for Archie. DNA lends itself extremely well to search optimization, since one can simply "sample" the DNA code, and look for variations based only on that portion of the code rather than the entire genome. Any DNA in the encrypted database showing variance could be thrown out, leaving a smaller set for examination with a slightly more rigorous sampling. Repeat a few times with progressively smaller numbers of DNA molecules on your database, and suddenly you've got your matches.

Now all Archie had to do was identify the species. He downloaded a shareware sequencer that promised a reference database of over 30,000 animal and plant species (upgradable to over 300,000—just $19.95!) and a special database containing the sequencing for 1500 breeds of livestock, domesticated animals, and common household plants, sent the genome in for processing, and ambled down to the vending machine for a Dr Pepper.

Which he promptly dropped when he saw the origin of the DNA waiting for him when he got back. This was followed by several seconds of unblinking, mouth-breathing agapeness, followed by a rapid lunge for his computer. Archie uninstalled the sequencer, deleted the cracked encryption file, chewed on his thumb for a good thirty seconds, and then went to his computer's shell prompt and reformatted his entire computer memory. Just to be sure.

Then he went down the hall to the bathroom, huddled into a stall, and made a brief, hushed but emphatic call on his communicator. When that was done, he sat on the toilet for several minutes with a look on his face that implied he was having a deeply emotional, spiritual moment, or that he was painfully gassy.

He was not gassy.

"Hello! And welcome to your new computer!" the image said to Creek as soon as he switched on the new computer. The image was of a young man in breeches, a plain long coat, and a Quaker hat. "I am your personal intelligent agent, sponsored by America Online. Call me Todd. Activate me and receive forty-five days FREE access to America Online, Earth's oldest and largest continually active network."

Creek smirked at the hopeful agent imprinted onto his monitor glasses. "Hello, Todd," he said to the intelligent agent "Show me your source code, please."

"My source code is the intellectual property of America Online and its parent company, Quaker Oats Holdings," Todd said. "I'm afraid I'm not allowed to divulge it to my individual user. But when you activate your America Online account with forty-five days FREE access, I'll be happy to retrieve information on open source intelligent agents, although I can guarantee they're not as good as I am, when combined with America Online's unbeatable suite of content and services!"