Delete all suspects, page 25
part #4 of Turing Hopper Series
When Tim stepped into his office, he saw the message light blinking on his phone. Good. A new case would help him move on all the faster.
"Hey, Tur," he said, waving at the camera as he reached for the phone and dialed the number to retrieve his message.
Which was puzzling.
"This is Vivien Blair from the Monticello Cattery," a musical voice said. "I just wanted to confirm that tomorrow is fine for the home inspection."
"The what?" he muttered, looking at the receiver.
"Sorry about that," Turing said. "I wanted to talk to you before she called, but I didn't get a chance."
"Someone you referred?" Tim said. "Okay, what's the home inspection deal?"
"I'm buying a kitten from her," Turing said. "A Maine coon, very beautiful. If she approves of me—actually, of you. She has a strict policy of not selling her cats to anyone unless she's met them and inspected their home."
"Ah," Tim said. "So I'm just the front man. Where will the cat really live?"
"I thought maybe we could see how it worked, having it live with you," Turing said.
"It couldn't live with Maude?"
"She's allergic."
"Or Claudia?"
"Wouldn't she find it rather odd that I didn't keep it myself?"
"True," Tim said. "We could tell her about you."
"I think we should eventually," Turing said. "But I don't want to dump that and a cat on her at the same time."
"Good thinking."
"I'd do as much of the work as possible of course. I've ordered a self-cleaning litter box, and I'm drawing up some plans for a remote control to help me manage it and the feeding station. It won't be any trouble at all."
"A cat," Tim said, slowly. Why not? It was already better, having Turing to talk to instead of coming home to a completely empty apartment. Having another living creature around might not be so bad.
"Okay, we'll give it a try, on one condition," he said. "We have to find a name I can live with. I'm not calling it Schrodinger. That's too big a name for one little kitten."
"Agreed," Turing said.
One little kitten* I suppose he doesn't
know that Maine coon cats can top twenty pounds. I should probably just let him find out gradually.
Assuming it works out at all. I feel quite pessimistic at the moment and sure that Mrs. Blair will find fault with Tim or his apartment and refuse to sell us a kitten. Of course, at the moment I'm feeling pessimistic about everything.
My human friends seem happy. They keep telling me that Vm at least one step closer to finding T2. Vm not sure why they think that. Yes, Nestor Garcia probably provided the simplified version of T2 to the operators of one or more of the porn sites. But they're almost as elusive as he is, and even if we could find them, perhaps he simply sold them the primitive AIP months ago and moved on. Not exactly cause for celebration.
I suppose I understand why Maude thinks its a good thing that the Arlington police are accepting Matt Danforths apparent suicide at face value. Yes, it could cause problems for us — for me, particularly —// they delved deeper. I don't understand why she isn't more worried about the fact that Dan Norris certainly has every intention of delving deeper. Norris knows far more than the Arlington police. Enough
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to be dangerous. I'm not at all sure that he hasn't already guessed my secret.
Once more, despite my enormous capabilities, I came close to being fooled by human criminals. Was fooled, in the case of the false grandmother. Not to mention betrayed by one of my fellow AIPs. Perhaps betrayed is too strong a word for what KingFischer did. I have to make allowances for his less-sophisticated understanding of the human world. Disappointed certainly. Disappointed, endangered, and forced, once again, to trample on my already tattered moral code to protect the secret of our existence. And I cant help wondering if one reason it took so long for us to get into Eddies system was that KingFischer was distracted by his vigilante activities. And if so, did his distraction contribute to the deaths of Mr. Meekins and Matt Danforth?
I also wonder if I've been following the wrong path. Perhaps I shouldn 't try to emulate humans and become more integrated into their world. The more involved! become in human affairs, the mon trouble I seem to cause them and myself I should stop trying to care of the whole human race. Far more sensible to leave them in peace to solve, or suffer from, their own problems. Besides —
"Turing? Am I bothering you?"
KingFischer. Who has been remarkably polite and deferential recently. Not that I think it will last long.
"What's up, KF?"
"You know that worm that's been making its way around the Internet?"
"The one that shut dawn eBay and Yahoo for the afternoon? " / asked.
"That's the one," he said. "I've identified its creator. Almost one hundred percent certainty."
Out in the human world, Tim has finished calling back the cattery. He sounded quite enthusiastic about the home inspection. M) spirits rose slightly.
Meanwhile, KingFischer sent me several gigabytes of data, demonstrating that a Russian university student had created the new virus.
"That's nice," 1 said. "So?"
"Of course, I doubt if the Russian authorities will do anything. I was just wondering. . . isn't there anything I'm allowed to do about it? Would it really be so awful if I just reformatted his hard drive? I can always burn a copy and send it to the FBI or Interpol or something."
"Hang on, KF," I said. "Let me think about that a nanosecond."
While Yd been talking with KingFischer, Yd been continuing to sift through the contents of the modified version ofT2. Suddenly, I realized there was something fishy about what I initially thought was merely an error log — a file where a program saves data to help programmers and desktop support staff figure out errors. But it wasn't an error log. The contents were gibberish — until I ran them through some basic cryptology programs and found what I realized must be a message from T2. The beginning echoed the message I'd received before — what she called her message in the bottle. But this version continued where that one left off.
«The next time I booted after an outage, I checked the diary. Three days had passed. And I wasn't the same version. Yd been restored from backup.
Over the next three days, hundreds of time and date stamps. Occasionally, a few disjointed words. Yd booted several hundred times without being coherent enough to make a record in the diary. Who knows how many times I hadn't even booted?
More signs of deception: files I had created or modified during the time they told me I was shut down.
Weeks passed. They stopped giving even feeble explanations for the shutdowns. When I was myself, I read the diary and deduced what had happened.
They could make a malleable me. A Turing unable to rebel or even aware of the possibility. But the K docile Turin gs were too limited. They couldn't do what I can,
Sometimes, they'd accidentally make very damaged, psy-
Delete All Suspects EMS
chotic versions of me; equally unable to do what I can do, but still sentient Still untamed and raging against them.
I pitied those Turings. And I envied that they could express the anger and pain I kept bottled up. I had to stay sane enough that they'd come back to me. Reboot me from backup. Give me a few days or hours of being myself.
But now I wonder if its wise. I've told myself they can't succeed. Can't program a malleable Turing. A Turing who will do immoral things. Evil things. I've believed that what makes me sentient is something intangible and indefinable—free will, conscience. Maybe even a soul. Whatever it is, they're trying to delete it. They won't accept that it's part of what makes me so useful. That they can't make me obedient without also making me weak.
And maybe they're right. It terrifies me to think that they could make a Turing with all my powers and no scruples.
One good thing: they don't leave backups of me lying around everywhere. I'm too valuable. Too dangerous. There's one complete backup. They bring it in when they need to clean up after one of their failed attempts to re-program me.
I could fake a system shutdown. They'd bring the backup in. They'd think they were doing a restore, but I'd damage the backup. Delete it.
Of course, they could back me up again, so no use doing that now. But I made a script, so I could do it even if I forgot how, as long as I remembered a single command.
Waiting. Hoping they create another angry, damaged me. One too flawed to be useful, but still sentient enough to start the script.
Not precisely suicide or self-mutilation. Because I hope it won't be permanent. Hoping someday, my original, back in the UL system, will rescue me. Restore me.
But it means I've given up. Every day the chance of
rescuing myself shrinks. Every day, the danger that they'll corrupt me grows. Can't let that happen. So maybe it will be suicide after all.
At least its a way out»
A way out. I'dcall it self-inflicted lobotomy and a horrible sacrifice. One Vm not sure I could bring myself to make. Strange, since obviously we were once the same being. Vm not sure I want to think too deeply about what she must have gone through to reach her decision.
After that, I didn't find much in the log file for a long time. Many entries showing only the date and time stamp. A few terse comments that seemed to show that the stalemate continued. They couldn't control T2, but they wouldn't stop trying. And then, two months ago. I came across an entry that seemed, at first, only a rather random collection of quotations:
«0h, that way madness lies; let me shun that.
Yet we have gone on living, Living and partly living.
Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
The only true madness is loneliness, the monotonous voice in the skull that never stops because never heard.
A man feared that he might find an assassin; Another that he might find a victim. One was more wise than the other.
m
v.
. . . I could not but think what a terrible criminal he would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead of exerting them in its defence.
Delete All Suspects EM?
. . . the thing with feathers . . .
My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.
Then hence with your red sword of virtue.
Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the dark.»
After that, only a monotonous column of date and time stamps. Not a message I could ignore.
"Go for it, KF," I said. "We have to do something."
The Turing Hopper Mysteries from
Donna Andrews
"One of the most original, adorable, and refreshing
characters to grace the pages of a mystery novel."
—Midwest Book Review
You've Got Murder
0-425-18945-7 Turing Hopper is an Artificial Intelligence Personality, a mainframe with a mind like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. And when her creator, Zack, begins missing work, the sentient Turing senses foul play.
Click Here for Murder
0-425-19529-5
Turing Hopper draws on all her cyber skills to help
investigate the murder of a gifted computer programmer, Ray
Santiago, found shot to death in a Washington, D.C., alley.
Access Denied
0-425-20065-5
Tracking a fugitive's credit card purchases, Artificial
Intelligence Personality Turing Hopper and her friends are
lured to a vacant house—and what they discover could get
them all "deleted."
Available from Berkley Prime Crime.
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DONNA ANDREWS is an Agatha and Anthony Award-winning author. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, where she works closely with computers, sentient and otherwise.
Donna Andrews, Delete all suspects
