Silver's Gods Read online

  He pressed his lips together. “Did she talk about Cuba at all?”

  “Cuba? No, why?”

  He smiled at her. “My questions, please. Anything about the Gulf, Nicaragua, Zapata? Ring a bell?”

  “No, nothing like that. Just about the coffee, the shooting, why they guy might have done it, the Antai people. Why she wanted to have coffee with me. She seemed to think we might help each other.” She finished, sitting back. Wishing she’d asked for a water bottle when she came in. She was exhausted.

  “Help each other? How?” He leaned forward, interested.

  “She didn’t say. I think as reporters, is what I took it to mean.” Maybe. “I thought for a minute she was making a pass at me, you know, but I told her I wasn’t into girls, and she laughed it off.” Garcia’s typing faltered, the pattern falling off rhythm just briefly, before picking back up again. Clack clack clackity clack.

  “Did she give you a way to reach her? Email address? Business card? That sort of thing?”

  Jessica fished in her purse, handed over the silver embossed card. “See, expensive. That sort of thing costs money.”

  He smiled at the card and took out his phone, encased in a worn brown leather bifold case, and snapped a photo with an alacrity surprising for such a large man. “Thank you,” he said, handing it back to her.

  “Did you want me to call it?” She asked. “Try to get her to meet me again?”

  He looked pained. “Oh, well, maybe. At some point. Don’t do anything like that yet, please. We need to consult with our superiors before we do anything like that.” He flipped open the phone case and produced a card, passing it to her. “If she calls you, you call us.”

  “That’s it?” She asked.

  “Well, for now it is. We have everything we need for now I think,” he said, nodding to himself.

  “Oh, of course, please keep everything we’ve discussed to yourself.” He moved to stand. “Secret stuff, you know.”

  “Wait,” Jessica said, surprised at the force in her voice. His eyebrows went up. She gathered her courage and continued. Be a reporter. “I need to know more about this. You drag me all the way up here on a day I should be working. I could get fired for being late on this story, you know. You’ve got to give me something.” She sighed, appealing to them. “What’s with the X-Files business, anyway? She’s not an alien or ghost, is she?”

  “Computer glitch, most likely.” Garcia spoke, looking up from her keyboard. “Her face triggered an anomaly report. We get those. Lots of faces on file, from the archives.” Her face was serious. This woman does not fuck around, thought Jessica.

  “Garcia,” Roberts began. But she waved him down, a curt gesture with her hand. Garcia continued. “She popped up, the system generated a report. Thing is, she’s not wanted. But she had been. Or her face had been. In the past. Computer said high match score, and this, combined with the case, uh, type, flagged it. So we called down to the local office, put a tail on her. This was several days ago. We saw you with her, so we asked the staff after the shooting for the names of the people attending, and who had seating with the press. Agent on the scene reported you getting into her car, but she lost him in traffic. She drives fast.”

  Jessica considered this. “What kind of case?” she asked. She might as well try to get something useful out of this, she thought to herself. Never hurts to ask.

  Roberts looked pained, but said nothing. Garcia spoke. “The kind we can’t share with you.”

  “She’s a spy, then? For who?” Jessica asked. “Or is she some kind of terrorist?”

  “Ms. Powell, you know we can’t tell you this.” He glanced at Garcia. “We’ve told you more than we should have already.”

  “Germany.” Garcia said. “You might say she’s a terrorist, but from before the most recent crop.”

  Jessica stared at her. “Not Cuba? Kennedy? That’s a long time ago. She’s only, what, forty?”

  Garcia shrugged. “Like I said, computers can be wrong. Garbage in, garbage out.”

  Jessica turned to Roberts. “You think she’s from, what, 1960? Like a time traveler or something?”

  He winced. “Nothing like that, just following up a lead. Thing like this, it’s weird, I agree. But she’s an odd duck, anyway you look at her.” He sighed, seemed to reach some conclusion. Nodded to Garcia.

  He stood. “Ms. Powell, thank you for coming in. Agent, uh, Chomsky will show you out.” He squeezed from behind the table and moved to the door, moving gracefully for someone of his size.

  Jessica noticed his feet, tiny compared to the rest of him. Dancer’s feet, she thought. He put out his hand.

  She took it. It was dry and cool. “Thank you.”

  She nodded to Garcia, who nodded back, but did not rise. “I’ll call you if I hear from her. And let me know if you need more of my help.”

  “We’ll do that,” Roberts said.

  And that, was that.

  Chapter Eight

  Dreams. What are dreams? Despite what people say, nobody knows. Priests and physicians are all liars when it comes to dreams. No one knows what dreams are, really, or from where they come. It was just a dream, they say, as if dreams are not substantial, not real. But, upon examination, why should we consider dreams any less real than what we ordinarily call real?

  Our perception of the world happens through our senses. Eyes to see, ears to hear, the nose to smell, tongue to taste. Hands to touch and feel and change the world. But perception happens through our senses, not in them. Our fingers are mere probes for touching the world and moving objects around in it. Our eyes, fluidic cameras, for capturing signals bouncing around in a narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum. And so on. Perception happens in the brain, and not in the brain alone, but in the mind. Our brain is just so much hardware, to use the analogy of the day.

  The mind perceives. Our minds dream. One is real; we dismiss the other as illusion. There are those who give much credence to their dreams, but these people are fools and children. Or madmen. Crazy people who believe their dreams mean anything to the real world. In the past, before our enlightened age, dreams were portents. They meant something. They were real. But still private.

  We can share perception. If I show you a banana, you see a banana. We share this perception. Oh, you might have a different perspective on the banana, but you wouldn’t claim it was an orange, if you follow me. We see the same thing, touch the same piece of fruit, share the same world.

  But my dreams, they are mine. You can’t share them. I produce them from my mind, not yours. And vice versa. But their reality, their realness, is not debatable. They happen. Some people claim to never dream, but this is false. They do not remember their dreams. The wise know this.

  Some claim that dreams are the mind entertaining itself while our bodies rest, perhaps the byproduct of processing recent input. This is possible. I am not claiming to know the truth of these phenomena. I am simply, in this account, relating my experiences and opinions. There is little one can observe from the mind while dreaming, perhaps that this region of the brain is more excited than normal, this section less so. We lie down to sleep, close our eyes, pretend to sleep, and then we do. We dream. Knowing how the brain works during this process is perhaps useful, but for me it is missing the point. This is cataloging how a fire burns.

  I am ridden by my dreams. This is the only way I know how to describe what happens when I sleep. I have, probably, the most experience with dreams of any person, more than you or anyone you will meet. When I sleep, I dream. Often I remember them clearly, and other times I forget quickly. All normal, just like you, you say.

  But sometimes my dreams carry with them signs, and portents, and urgency towards some action I cannot explain. It has always been this way with me. I dream of things that happen far away, or long ago, or which might yet occur. Sometimes I am so beset with a need to go somewhere that I have left my bed, dressed, and set out on a journey to this place, seen in my dream, which I never knew existed.<
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  Other times I have encountered people in my dreams and then sought them out in my waking life. I have felt, this man is in London. I need to meet him and talk about such-and-such with him. Or, she is in Alexandria, and needs help to understand a complex problem. That I have neither knowledge of who they are, or where they live, or what their names even are, doesn’t matter. I have, upon many occasions, met people this way, and done the things my dreams suggested, or ordered, or manipulated me to do. It is, perhaps, a form of madness, although one I have never encountered in others.

  My waking life is, as I have said, also sometimes dreamy. I have often awakened in strange places, engaged in some activity or other, fishing, or cleaning a house I have no memory of living in, walking in a strange city, but not knowing where I was, or why, or even what name my companions knew me as. As if coming out of a dream, I am somewhere and someone else, to them, someone new and frightening.

  Much like my parents and sisters saw me, I have seen this look in strangers who act as if I ought to know them. It is, perhaps, the worst thing that can happen to someone, I think. Sometimes it is clear that I have lived a false life as someone they knew for some time, perhaps even years. I have been married, or a lover, to them. It is maddening when this happens. It happens to me, and I awake with clarity, knowing who I am just as I do now, but having no memory of them or the city I am in or why I am there. Perhaps I am mad, and these are all illusions and the ravings of an insane person. You must judge, not me.

  If so, I have been mad a long time. And now, I think, I know a secret.

  Chapter Nine

  Jessica did not hear from the FBI again after her interview in San Francisco, but that event nudged her, she thought when she looked back, down certain paths in her life. In her work, she became focused on the new advances in AI, what Frontiers was doing in the aftermath of Jurgen’s murder. She followed the trial of Anton Yermenko, his killer, with interest, even attending the trial. He was short, dark-haired, and clearly a fanatic. Antai for sure, she thought. He claimed to have acted alone, but investigation into his background revealed he belonged to several groups with strong Antai views. They all were young, mostly post-millennials but some slightly older, academic background, and gave themselves grandiose titles. The Human League. Friends of Humanity. The Committee. The Turing Heat.

  There had been a contraction in Silicon Valley, or it was ongoing, she learned. It was hard to gauge but there was less demand for technical workers, just a dip of a few percent of hiring was spooking people. Jessica was fascinated, and dove into this world, meeting people, learning their views. She wrote an article on the trial and the Antai scene for Futura, which was well received, and then it was reprinted in the Atlantic. She worked on her book, using the Jurgens murder as a catalyst, drawing broad parallels with other notable assassinations. There was, in her thesis, pre-Jurgens, and now, post. Antai were rising in prominence, at least in the media. She interviewed dozens of people around the Valley, and back in New York. She started getting invited onto podcasts and radio shows. Once she even did a panel discussion on an old-school broadcast network. She stayed busy.

  Silver, she left out of it. The FBI, she didn’t mention, or any relationship to the Jurgen murder. It was, as the woman Garcia had said, probably a computer glitch. Old files, common facial characteristics. Roberts and Garcia, she decided, were some sort of Loser Squad, given shitty follow-up jobs and the weird cases nobody else had time for. Bottom feeders. She threw Silver’s card into her drawer and tried to forget about her. That she seemed to know the FBI had been hunting her, she put down to a coincidence, a joke which had turned out to be accidentally prescient. She repeated this to herself whenever she reviewed the incident, until she almost believed it herself.

  She dated, occasionally. Set up by friends, the men she met were boring, either media executives, software types, or once, a banker. None of them interested her for long. Once, on a layover in Dallas, she met a woman who looked vaguely like Silver, tanned and brunette, in the hotel bar. Her name was Kris, and she worked in sales for a marketing software company. The woman had, surprisingly, ordered her a drink without asking, and, after that one, offered her another. Jessica had blushed, smiled, and agreed.

  They talked. When, after their second drink together, the woman had invited her to her room, Jessica had decided what the hell, you only live once, and agreed, surprising herself. The sex was nice, different than with a man, of course, but not just mechanically so. It was more subtle, softer. She had liked Kris, but didn’t pursue it after that.

  People in general were difficult for her, and relationships doubly so, with her travel schedule and tendency to want to lock herself up and try to write for long periods, not exactly the most social of activities. Kris didn’t press, and after a while lost interest.

  She worked on her book. She wrote a series of articles profiling leading AI researchers, including the late Jurgen, digging deep into their pasts, their research, what they accomplished, and public statements they had made about AI. Interviews with former students. They were well researched, thorough, and captured, or tried to, some of each subject’s humanity. They were well received by Futura, and they were nominated for several awards. She started getting more TV bookings, which was great as, while they didn’t pay anything, they got her name out there. It was nice to be recognized as a serious journalist, and not a washout, military press wannabe.

  She was home one evening, home being a cheap apartment in Alexandria, after a long day in DC, trying to work some info out of various congressional staffers she knew. People barely had time for her, but her recent TV spots helped, and she was trying to parlay a few quotes out of representatives and senators into a favorable mention the next time she was on TV. I am such a whore, she thought to herself. Grasping. One of her contacts, a Lieutenant in the Pentagon, was leading her on, she suspected. The last time she had met him over drinks at his insistence and her reluctant agreement, he had hinted that there was lots of chatter about AI. Big stuff, he said, trying to impress her, lots of hush hush, say no more, need to know stuff going on out of his office. Secret data centers being built, hidden away in the mountains, that the government was either watching or helping with. The story changed over the course of a few drinks, so she suspected he was bullshitting her. “With their own dams,” he had said. “You know, for power supply. Off the grid.” She had thanked him, and paid for her own drink.

  The thing was, she was sure there was something going on. There was chatter. She sat down after looking over her printouts of her articles, and realized something. All of them, the researchers, were positive at some point the big breakthrough would occur. Some thought soon, some thought in decades, some thought in hundreds of years. But all of them were quite sure this was inevitable. Someone, somewhere, would invent a system that led to General AI. General AI was, of course, the holy grail. The so-called “Last Invention,” a label Jessica hated. It was pompous, and aggrandizing, and, frankly, too appealing in its heroism. It smacked, to her, of the kind of schoolboy heroic engineering stories she had always hated reading about. Hero worship. The race to build the bomb. The Apollo program. NASA. Elon fucking Musk, who was one of them, she thought sourly. The cheerleaders.

  One of them, she repeated to herself. Them. The ones who, in claiming the inevitability of general-purpose artificial intelligence, were making it that much more likely. Statements like “It’s centuries away, so don’t worry about it” were all that some folks needed to hear. Some dude was going to take that as a challenge to make it happen sooner. A bunch of them were. It only makes it worse.

  She needed to finish her book, she thought. Damn it. She had been going at a good clip, writing it, but had gotten distracted with work, and then a couple lines of research she wanted to investigate had popped into her head, and with trying to get quotes out of Congress, fending off the creepy staffer who wanted to talk about it over drinks, the book had taken a back seat.

  But some of them, at least, seeme
d concerned about it. There was an undercurrent in their public statements and writings, you could tell, she thought. An undercurrent of fear. Escape to Mars? Sure, why not? Upload yourself into a computer? Sure, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right? There was fear, here, she thought. People were concerned. Afraid. These guys were, frankly, afraid. Some spoke up, but most of them looked uncomfortable when it came up, and clearly had no real plan for even trying to think about engineering benevolence into AI. Of making it safe. They were engineers, and software engineers to boot. Dealing with a new toy, a new type of toy, something already that was new in the world, they were not concerned with what, to them, smacked of an optimization. Get it working, get it working right, get it working fast. Automate. This is the mantra of the iterative software developer, ingrained in this tribe from apprenticeship. But AI was fundamentally different, so their default paradigms were, frankly, dangerous. Their perspective was skewed, looking at the problem all wrong. It was terrifying to her, honestly, how blasé these people were.

  She picked up a printout, a PDF of a government threat assessment strategy recommendation already three years old. She put it back down, picked it up again. It recommended trying to program human-friendly values into a machine nobody understood. Nobody understood how, beyond the most basic neural networks, these systems even worked, and they were getting more and more opaque with each generation. Each improvement. Program values, into…what? A machine you don’t know the inner workings of? How would you do that? Where to start? Talk to a philosopher first, to get a definition of what a value even was. She frowned at the printout, at her circling and highlighting. There was even discussion of abandonment of AI technology now, before it was too late. She shook her head.

  The jargon was strong in this document, but there it was. Somebody, somebody credible in the field, was seriously proposing that they try to get the industry to stop AI research altogether. Because it was dangerous. Stop progress? Ask the military and the techies in the Valley to stop work on what was arguably, demonstrably, their greatest triumph? AI was working, finally, after a half century of false starts and dead ends. Sure, it was narrow, and didn’t seem easy to broaden, to generalize, but that was the challenge, wasn’t it? Stop now? Abandon the most promising thing since the web itself? Now? Are you nuts? Not gonna happen, she thought. Nobody was giving this idea the time of day.