Ian Douglas - Dark Matter

“So . . . are there any questions?”

Several hands rose. McCabe pointed at one.

“Sir,” Lieutenant Wes Fargo said. “Our ships can’t stand up to technology like that! Just what in hell are we supposed to do about these . . . ­people?”

“Unknown, as yet,” McCabe replied. He sounded grim, and Gregory realized that he didn’t have any answers, and that the lack of answers worried him. “All we know is that the Rosette Aliens, as we call them, are coming in through a crack in space, quite possibly from an entirely different universe. They may be a million years in advance of us . . . they may be much more. They may be so far beyond us that meaningful communication between their species and ours is impossible.

“And intelligence believes that their emergence only sixteen thousand light years from Sol is a matter of extremely serious concern. . . .”

And Gregory was forced to agree.

Emergency Presidential Command Post

Toronto

United States of North America

1322 hours, EST

“Recombinant Memetics,” Konstantin said, “may offer you your best hope for defeating the Confederation relatively quickly. Speed is, of course, essential if you are to have a chance of an alliance between Geneva and the Sh’daar.”

President Koenig studied the system’s schoolteacher avatar in his inner window and wondered about the AI’s programming. How did Konstantin pull off that kind of magic, anyway?

Not that the carefully crafted image conversing with him inside his head would yield any clues. The lunar computer network had not been directly programmed by humans; Konstantin, he knew, was an artificial intelligence-­programmed machine, an AIP. Given that, how much could Konstantin possibly know—­or guess—­of human behavior?

“I notice,” Koenig said carefully, “that you tend to emphasize the fact that you are not human. When you’re speaking with me, you always say ‘your war,’ ‘your nation,’ as if you’re not one of us.”

“A fact that should be self-­evident,” Konstantin replied. “I am not human. This is not my war. And while, technically, this facility was funded primarily by the United States of North America, I was intended, I remind you, to work on problems affecting all of Humankind. War is the single most wasteful, tragic, and senseless of human activities, and is not within my purview.”

“But you have been helping us.” Konstantin had been instrumental in formulating strategies against the Confederation, and in using its data-­mining capabilities to gather intelligence from the Global Net.

“I have,” the system replied. “My function—­my higher purpose, a human might say—­is to gather, assess, and provide information. It is up to human agencies such as your government to determine what to do with that information.”

Konstantin’s mandate was to provide information useful for all of humanity, or at least so ran the claim. So far as Koenig was aware, though, Konstantin had been providing intelligence to the United States of North America and not to the Confederation. Was that because Konstantin had been designed and funded primarily by the USNA government, and by USNA-­based corporations like Bluetel and Simmons-­AI? Or were there other, deeper motives . . . perhaps motives not even remotely comprehensible to brains of mere blood and tissue?

“And the Confederation government? Do you provide them with information as well?”

“I maintain covert links with certain Confederation communications and AI networks, of course. Doing so requires that I provide certain information, yes. IP eddresses and DNS registration, for instance, as well as synchronization pingpackets.”

“Okay, Konstantin,” Koenig said after a moment. He knew better than to try to get the hyperintelligent AI network to say anything it was not prepared to divulge. “But how are you planning on using memetics?”

That was the real question, he thought—­how well could a silicon-­based intelligence understand the complexities of recombinant memetics? A machine figuring out the most effective buttons to push, to change human cultures, to reshape Humankind . . .

That, Koenig decided, was a truly chilling concept. . . .

If you had enough small and disparate bits of information, if you could conduct Big Data mining on a large-­enough scale, could you accurately and consistently predict human behavior?

Koenig knew the official answer, of course. Predicting the actions of a handful of ­people or, worse, of an individual, was possible only in fairly limited situations—­if the subject was a sociopath, for instance, and following the dictates of his disease, and even then, predictions could all too easily be lost in the randomness of background noise.

Large groups of ­people, however, were another matter altogether. As with large numbers of atoms or molecules acting within the rules laid down by quantum dynamics and basic chemistry, the actions of large populations were more predictable.

And where actions were predictable, it was possible—­if you were both careful enough and skillful enough—­to guide them, to change the shape and course of those actions to achieve a desired outcome. The science was called recombinant memetics, the science of using one set of memeplexes to alter another. In much the same way that recombinant DNA can change genetic structures and give rise to whole new types of life, it was possible to identify particular memes within a social unit and change them into something else entirely.

But identifying and targeting key memes within a given culture could be tricky, requiring data mining on a scale only possible for an AI as complex and as perceptive as Konstantin.

And changing them was trickier still, requiring selective manipulation of memes within the target culture.

The word meme had been coined four centuries before by Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist who first suggested them as units transmitting cultural practices, ideas and concepts, or as symbols passed from mind to mind through writing, speech, rituals, mass entertainment, or imitation. Like genes, memes spread from person to person, and like genes they compete, vary, select, mutate, and attempt to ensure their own survival. Put another way, a meme is like a virus, propagating through a population, infecting individuals, and spreading by means of the behaviors it generates in its hosts.

The question in Koenig’s mind was how a computer network, no matter how complex, could understand how memes worked, how memes could infect and affect human populations without possessing a key human ingredient—­emotion.

And if a silicon mind like Konstantin’s could understand memetics, it gave AI systems an absolutely incredible power with which to manipulate human civilization.

“Several possibilities present themselves,” Konstantin replied. “I could foment revolution within the Confederation by building upon the impetus already generated by the defections from the Confederation’s ranks—­Russia and North India. Or I could create a new religion . . . one that would require Geneva to embrace peace.”

That statement rocked Koenig back on his figurative heels. A religion?

A cluster of related memes working together and supporting one another was a memeplex; religion was the perfect example. Religions evolve, spawn new and different offspring, become set or rigid in their ways, or they mutate under cultural pressures which are themselves memeplexes.

“I see. And how are you going to get around the White Covenant?”

“The White Covenant prohibits attempts to proselytize,” Konstantin replied, “and it directly prohibits the use or the threat of force to effect conversions as a basic violation of human rights. It does not prohibit the establishment of a new faith.”