Chapter 6: Two points

This inspection tour was making my head spin. But I gathered that, for the most part, it was all for my private personal, physical protection. Perfect as I realized I had strung together four words starting with the letter’ P,’. This was getting to be phantastic pretentious, preposterously paranoia. And this was the fourth on the list. So, was it some sort of portent, premonition, prognostication, possibly? I best stop before I begin yet again. Besides, my head hurt enough already.

Arriving at my next stop, an Intel wants to be. So, I met up with the Administrator for the company. A Computer chip design and manufacturer.

It was odd that this time it wasn’t with the owner or CEO. I would find out the reason for this soon enough. This was maybe one or two steps out from being a garage operation. Never mind that it was on the list. It bore looking into.

As I had noted before, the work was innovative but, in an industry, already dominated to a near-monopoly by two major players. This company would have to make a breakthrough product so extraordinary that it would create instant demand. One that would have to be genuinely unique. Something that just didn’t seem to be in the cards for it. Or was it?

It may have been more innovative than I realized. As this was not indeed my field. What I did know was that things within it kept changing at a breakneck speed. Unfortunately, I’m not an IT Geek, so the entertaining tour didn’t give me much to work with.

I’m not sure if a more intensive tour would have done me any good. For all I knew, what may have been presented as innovative at the beginning of said tour could very well be obsolete by its end.

What was here? Well, to be sure, what they were working on would be just the thing for any government to want to use, as it wouldn’t have untold thousands trying to hack it.

While the two controlling corporations had a lock due primarily because every known and popular program in the world had to run on their operating system. Any competing system would have to have its own programs created. There would be the cost of such programs and the even greater one of teaching those to use them.

That alone would have made it an insurmountable challenge.

The only thing that kept people trying was as good as the near-monopolies were. There were constant attacks by hackers. Many by enemy states that were becoming increasingly untenable.

This company’s hardware and software were utterly different from current electronic devices. Oh, there would still be attempts, but not in the tens of thousands as with Microsoft and Intel products.

It was the fact that there was no list of available past weaknesses or of the patches that had been needed to fix them.

The problem with becoming a monopoly was you became the only target of note. Just about everyone was out to get you.

Microsoft was still a near-monopoly with its lock on over 90 percent of the world market, with Intel the chipmaker that was the platform Microsoft’s OS it was designed for. Moreover, it was held with the government’s full support, although the government denied it.

It was because its operating system placed a spy in nearly every household and business the world over. China had understood this, and it became the main reason for the American-China cyber conflict.

The amount of data that could be mined was incalculable. Therefore, any reasonable expectations of privacy were imaginary. New encryption technics being developed, and enemy States looking to break them. Well, not just enemy states. Anyone with a computer seemed to be trying.

It became an encryption war that was needed to block it. The governments and, for that matter, anyone with the means could track anyone in the world. Anyone that was even remotely connected to the internet, and the internet seemed to be everywhere, even where governments tried to block or restrict it.

It was a constant race between hackers looking to find bug-related exploits against Microsoft’s many updates to patch them.

Also, to be sure, there were some exploits the government just didn’t want to be fixed for their so-called national security reasons!

The ‘Family’ had the means to do both. So, what could this company have that the family didn’t already have in spades?

Well, I was about to find out. As I said, the tour was nearly meaningless to me. I was almost sick of it now that I knew it to be a mere step up from meaningless touting of what anyone could find out with the simplest of web searches on the internet. Maybe it was just that I was still thinking of that last visit on my list that I felt so irritated.

It was a relief to finally be led to my grandfather’s office. I resolved that I would forgo the next tour and request to be taken directly to my grandfather’s office. Maybe not one of my better decisions

I shouldn’t have let my annoyance get the better of me, as I spent far longer trying to find the clues that would unveil the reason I was here in the first place.

In fact, I was not even sure that I had come close when I heard Adam’s voice say the room was secure after some time. Then Grandfather’s voice expressed how disappointed he was for having the attitude I was displaying.

I couldn’t help it; I called out, “What attitude, grandfather if that is who you truly are.?”

The response was immediate, “The attitude you displayed on your tour of this facility. Or have you forgotten that Adam is monitoring you now?”

What the hell? Was I now to answer to a machine?

“If Adam was able to identify your feelings so easily and then assign a reason to them, then most anyone watching you could do the same. So, buck it up, son; I will not always be here for you.”

This set me back, Grandfather knowing in advance how I might be feeling. And for him to have prepared those tapes long ago, the voice was too steady for him to have done it when he was more noticeably ill.

There was a pause.

“Ah, this has to do with your last visit. You sat under the helmet.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No!” I answered. I hadn’t. but then, not being sure, I looked to Wind Song, “Did I?”

She nodded.

“How long,” I asked.

To which Wind Song replied, “One-hundred-ninety-three seconds.”

Just over three minutes, and I remembered none of it.

“You said it was a teaching machine. What did it teach me?”

Wind Song replied, “It was more than a simple teaching device. It had many functions. Which ones it used I was not informed of.” She had used the past tense as the device was no longer useable.

“That might be because I was under it before you. And there was another before me. But, as with you, I’m not sure I know all that that machine did to me. There was a plan, an unbelievably detailed one. I’m not sure how I know this. Parts were revealed to me at need.” Grandfather explained or attempted to.

Okay, we may now have a reason for my unusual behavior. But the mystery had only deepened.

But the voice was right; I had let my annoyance get the better of me. I sat back and tried to calm myself. It wasn’t long before Grandfather’s voice returned, “That’s better, now do you want me to forgo our little game or not?

Annoyance that he should ask, “Grandfather, when have I ever taken the easy way out? An why would you even suggest it? I will solve the puzzle.”

My grandfather chuckled, “You didn’t really expect me to make it easy on you, did you?

He had gotten me again.

It wasn’t so much that I had been shamed as I had just relearned another lesson, but one I shouldn’t have needed to be reminded of.

I gathered myself, knowing I should never have let such a small thing annoy me in the first place. But was it really a small thing to have something alien mess with your mind? Alien, why had I thought that? There were issues here that were far more important. A just like that, thoughts of the device... what device? What had I been thinking about?

I took a few more moments to collect myself, knowing that I might not have the luxury to do so in the future.

I called out, “Adam, how am I doing?”

Adam’s response was, “Your readings have returned to normal.”

I supposed that was a good thing. I returned to the matter at hand.

I then had a thought, “Adam, I don’t suppose you could help me here, could you?”

Surprisingly, Adam responded, “What is it you need help with?”

Well, I said, “Could you tell me what it is I am looking for?”

Adam’s response, “I would if I knew what you were looking for.”

I shook my head again at Dr. Bellows, saying Adam had no humor.

I was starting to realize that I was going to have to be more specific. Still, I felt Adam should have known what I was asking for. But no, a computer with a voice interface was still a computer. When it comes to analytics, there’s an old axiom that goes “garbage in, garbage out,”

Then I asked, “Do you know where and what clues my grandfather left for me here?”

Adam’s response was, “Negative, I do not have a full record of his activities within this facility. I was not fully online when your grandfather was last here, as I was undergoing a shakedown of my upper functions.”

I had not asked why it didn’t have it, but it had voluntarily added that information. It was informative, but at the same time, odd. Why would it add information that was not explicitly asked for? I wondered if it would always be so forthcoming, or would I be pulling teeth with other inquiries, such as being more specific in my questions. Made me wonder if I would be getting garbage out when it didn’t want to respond. But, thinking that, did it have such an option?

That served to remind me that Adam was monitoring my activities. So, who did Adam report to?

I asked, “Adam do you have records of my movements, and who has access to them.”

Adam replied, “Monitoring of you was limited before initiating ‘Prime Directive Omega.’ Since its implantation, monitoring has intensified with visual observations. However, that was still deemed insufficient, with you not always being observable. It was the best available, but I considered it too limited and grossly inadequate, given the nature of my responsibility. It was not until you underwent the nano procedures that monitoring was deemed to be adequate. The addition of the suit you are now wearing has been a great aid to that as well. Additional upgrades will be made as they become available.

As for who has access, only your immediate security team and yourself. A historical record will be made available for those who need to know upon your death. You have complete control over who else may retrieve such data. Your grandfather set the initial specifications for those who were to have been granted access.”

Well, that was reassuring, all but the ‘death’ part. At least my life hadn’t become an open book. So, then I asked about my grandfather’s recorded activities as he was dead.

Instead of Adam’s voice, it was my grandfather’s voice that replied, chuckling, “Now, son, do you think you are entitled to full disclosure of my life? However, seeing how I am now dead, I suppose I can lift some restrictions on full access. I have been assured that an analog program has been created to grant you clearance on a case-by-case basis. As you grow older, even those restrictions will eventually be lifted.”

Something like this begs the question, ‘How does a dead person adjust restrictions on who has access to his files?” an analog program? Something to ponder later.

I thought about that for a while, seeing the truth in it. At this time, I really didn’t need to know every detail of my grandfather’s life. Any more than I would want to know the details of my mother and father’s personal life. Some things are just better off not knowing.

Still, I did wonder about my grandmother. But, since my grandfather didn’t talk about her, I would just decide on that later.

I went back to the problem at hand. I had checked the drawers of my grandfather’s desk and found them all locked, with no apparent openings. No surprise there. They were most likely keyed to my grandfather’s fingerprints or perhaps some other arrangement. While it looked like an ordinary desk, I knew it was more like a vault and would probably be harder to gain entry.

I then went to stand in the middle of the room again as I had in the other offices. Clearing my head of distractions, I slowly turned around, looking over, absorbing the room. I could have slapped myself when I finally spotted it. An autographed picture of Peter Graves and other members of the cast of ‘Mission: Impossible.’ On a shelf directly below them was a familiar tape player. Careful examination of the player showed the tape to be destroyed. I took it back over to the desk, wondering, as I felt sure this was the clue, and so taking a chance, I went ahead and pressed the play button anyway.

I was startled when the music didn’t come from the tape player itself. Still, from the room’s sound system, then came Grandfather’s voice from the recorder itself, “Greetings, Jim, I see you found your next clues to your mission here.”

This is a particular case in that the subject has special abilities yet might be regarded as unstable. Should you choose to accept it, your mission is to ensure he doesn’t stray and continues to contribute to the organization.

At that point, a drawer opened, revealing one of those manila envelopes that I had often seen in those programs. Grandfather went on to describe the mission. As I opened it and went over its contents, I found myself handling the pages much as I had seen on MI of that old Television show. Could I have been any less original?

On top was a picture of the Administrator, perhaps indicating that he was more capable than he first appeared. The information on the back of the photograph confirming that. The next was a technician. There were a few notes there of his interactions with the subject. A few other people that had dealings with the subject, and little else.

Then there was a blank page. It looked like the others. That is, it looked like photographic paper. Why would you take a picture of nothing? But curiously as I turned it over, there were no notes on whoever it was as well, not even a name.

I was reasonably sure there should have been. Why else include it?

Finally, I called in the Administrator of the development team. I got a rundown of what was officially called the ADAM project. He assured me his team was on top of its continuing programming and told me of their mission direction.

But he was also forthcoming that neither he nor the rest of the team had an inkling on how to recreate the AI’s source code, should they have to. So, while they had learned some of the higher programming techniques, they were still scratching their heads as to how the AI did what it did.