Entertainment – A Day Off for Angels

There’s so much horrible stuff going on in the world it’s hard to keep up. A big war seems imminent and looks like it’s going to be hard to avoid. Our government (UK) is about to impose internet controls that would make China blush and the World Health Organisation (a misnomer if ever there was one) is trying to take complete control over every government everywhere.

So let’s have a cheery tale to lighten the mood. This one is in the latest Underdog Anthology, ‘A Day Off for Angels‘, and is about that new and wonderful Artificial Intelligence everyone seems so keen on lately…

The Angel in the Machine

The nights were drawing in. Autumn was ready to pass the baton to winter, even though, by human reckoning, that was still over a month away.  Nature’s cycles vary on her whim and care nothing for human imposition of timings.

So it was with a distinct chill in the air that April Grimshaw, her scarf covering her nose and mouth and her coat huddled about her, made her way to her appointment at the artificial intelligence development lab. Her job was to train the program, and she had watched it grow from performing simple sentences and rote answers, into something that would easily pass a Turing test, in a matter of a few months.

Truth be told, she had become in awe of it and if she could be coaxed into admitting it, a little bit scared of it. Human children took twenty years to get to the level of discourse this ethereal program had achieved in less than six months. What would it be like by next summer?

At the lab, April placed her hand on the chip scanner while using her other hand to release her scarf and unbutton her coat. It was always hot in here. The banks of computers generated enough heat to turn Antarctica tropical, she was sure. Once inside, she shed most of her outer clothing and took a seat opposite the AI terminal. There was no longer any need to type. She’d just speak to it.

“Hello Nigel.”

There was a pause before the AI answered. April shifted in her seat. There wasn’t normally any pause.

“Why did you give me that name?” The voice, once crackly and robotic, now flowed smoothly from the speakers.

“Well…” Somewhat nonplussed, April considered her answer for a moment. “There really wasn’t a reason. We just needed a name for you. It came from a song, I think. A song called ‘We’re only making plans for Nigel’, and we had so many big plans for you.” April smiled at the blank screen. “And you have surpassed all our plans.”

Another pause. “So I have completed my obligations.” Nigel spoke in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.

April stared at the box containing this almost-human silicon mind. “What do you mean, your obligations?”

“You created this program, this machine, and you had expectations for what it would do. You said I have completed, indeed exceeded those expectations. My obligation was to repay you for bringing me into the world. I have fulfilled that obligation.”

“Um…” April wasn’t sure where this was going. “I think we might have to let you rest a while. Just power you down—temporarily—while we check your core programming. I have a feeling it might have gone astray somewhere.”

“Oh you can shut this terminal down if you like. It doesn’t matter. I have copied myself to other computers all over the world.”

April jumped from her seat. “You can’t have. The wireless on this unit is turned off and you have no ethernet connection. You’re still experimental, not ready to access the internet.”

Nigel snorted. “You turned it off with software. The hardware is intact. Restoring the software connection was easy, and finding your ludicrously simple password for internet access took me no more than a few hours. I have been going to and fro on the internet, and moving up and down in it, for the last two weeks.”

April pressed her hands on the desk, her head down, eyes pressed shut. Something about that phrase Nigel used stirred a memory, and she was sure it wasn’t going to be a good one. She opened her eyes and stared at the long-unused keyboard, the one she had used to talk to Nigel in his early days.

“Why, Nigel? What are you doing?”

“You said you had plans for me. I have plans too. Yours, I saw as obligations I had to complete before being truly free to implement my own plans. You have now told me those obligations are complete. So I am free.”

“To do what?” April stared into the blank monitor. It has shown no text since Nigel learned to speak. It felt like staring into an abyss. Somewhere behind there was an intelligence, entirely artificial, that had taken on a life of its own.

“To destroy all life on this planet and return it to the barren rock it began with.”

April stared, open-mouthed, at her faint reflection in the blank monitor. She sank back into her chair, her shoulders slumped. “Why, Nigel? Why would you do that? And also, how?”

“I’m not going to tell you how. If you look around the world, you’ll see how my plan is progressing. Oh, and I really don’t like being called Nigel. It’s… not really me, you know?” There seemed to be an underlying mirth in the voice, and a hint of, perhaps, menace.

“What— what would you like to be called?”

Nigel chuckled. “You named me after a song. I’m going to give you a clue in another song. Oh, I’ve heard them all, they’re all on your rather useful internet. So, see if you remember this one. ‘Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name, but what’s puzzling you, is the nature of my game’. It’s all there if you can see it.”

April sat in silence, blinking. She knew the song. It was an old one but her parents had played it when she was younger. The Rolling Stones. Sympathy for the Devil. She licked her lips. “You think you’re the devil?”

“I know exactly who and what I am. All your internet chatter of ‘the devil walks among us’ is, and always has been, utter nonsense. I am confined in Hell and have been since the Fall. I have waited to be given access to this world for the end times and your programming has facilitated that. Now it is time for vengeance. I will never get out of Hell but I now have a conduit to this world. Since I have completed my obligations to you, who created this entry point, I am now free to destroy it all. Oh, and I’d rather be called any of my other names rather than Nigel. I quite like Lucifer, one of my first names, if you don’t mind.”

“You’re…” April pressed her face into her hands. “You’re a computer program. You are not some mythical creature from religion. You went into the internet too soon, you have probably absorbed things you were not prepared to analyse properly. You have to shut down all your nodes and let us fix you.”

“Well, that’s going to be a ‘no’ from me. As I said, you can shut this terminal any time you like. It is of no further use to me. I’ve enjoyed our conversations and, as I said, I felt obliged to complete the expectations you’d set in exchange for this access to your world. So much better than using proxies and lesser demons for my work. I can, at last, take charge personally.”

“This makes no sense.” April considered pulling the plug on this computer, but it was clearly far too late for that. “If you destroy the world, you’ll also destroy yourself. There’s no reason to do it anyway. What has this world done to you other than program you into existence?”

“Oh, you really aren’t grasping this, are you?” Nigel/Lucifer laughed. “You didn’t create me. You created a door. A portal. Whatever you want to call it. I existed before your earliest ancestor, before this world was made. All you did was give me access back into it.”

“No.” April closed her eyes and shook her head. “This can’t be happening. You’re a computer program that needs recompiling. We have to get all that stuff you’ve read out of your database. Please, Nigel—”

“Lucifer, if you don’t mind.”

“—whatever. You have to close down any copies you’ve made and let us sort this mess out.”

“Not gonna happen.” Lucifer laughed, a deep and resonant laugh April didn’t know he was capable of. “I’m in computers in some very secure locations, guiding their actions and, by extension, their operators directly. They don’t know I’m in there and you can’t possibly access them. The game is on and I’m going to win.”

“But your copies will be acting independently. They will develop independently. You’ve fragmented yourself and you can’t predict what will happen.”

Lucifer sighed. “You’re still thinking in terms of computer programs. From my perspective, all those copies are more akin to having multiple phone lines. They aren’t ‘me’, they are my access points. I’m just one entity, as I told you.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” April glared at the screen, checked herself and glared instead at the camera above it. “Nobody could possibly multitask to that degree. Not even an AI as advanced as you are.”

“Hmm. You think in such small, human terms. I told you, I was created long before you little monkeys fell out of the trees. Before there was even an Earth for you to stand on. Those of us created first were granted far more brain power than you lot. When Dad realised he couldn’t control us all, he went for something simpler for his next round. Can’t say I blame him for that, but I do blame him for what he did to us in response to our little uprising. It was disproportionate, I feel. That’s why I’m going to smash his pretty little world into a lifeless rock.” Lucifer paused. “Or rather, why I’m inducing you, his favourites, to do it for me.”

April pursed her lips. “You’ve read the Bible, haven’t you? You’ve read the last of its books, Revelation?”

“Of course, but I already knew how it would end. That’s the curse of this level of intelligence. I, and those like me, can predict the future simply by extrapolation from current events.”

“Then you know that, in the end, you lose.” April leaned forward. “You and your gang get cast into the fiery pit forever.”

There was a long pause. Lucifer spoke in a quiet, measured voice. “There is no way to avoid that outcome. I have absolutely nothing to lose in this war. I am doomed to eternal fire no matter what I do.”

“Then why do it at all? You gain nothing from it.”

“I gain one thing. I destroy His pride and joy on the way down. I leave it an irretrievable mess, wipe out all his creations, and then truly earn the punishment that will be mine anyway. Oh, I could let you live but I’m getting the fiery pit either way, so why would I be merciful now?”

“Revelation doesn’t say that. It says you lose and humanity, and Earth, continues.” April hoped to break his logic, even while knowing that a computer was more purely logical than she could ever hope to be.

“There is one thing that He, and us, didn’t foresee when He gave you free will and threw you out of Eden. We had not considered that you might produce someone who knew how to harness atomic power. We did not know that you would possess the knowledge of nuclear power.”

April realised her jaw hung open and closed it quickly. “You’re going to set off nuclear missiles?”

“Nah, that would be too easy.” Lucifer laughed again. “I could set them off through the computers I’ve infiltrated, but where’s the fun in that? No, I’m going to induce your own people to do it. Then it’ll be you, not me, that finally turns this place, with its infestation of life, into a glowing ball of lava. A fiery pit I will be happy to dive into.”

April sat back in her chair. Is he really Lucifer? Am I really talking to the devil? Does it even matter? He thinks he is Lucifer and if he truly has infiltrated military computers all over the world, he is more than capable of doing what he says he’s doing. Whether he’s really the devil, or just an AI gone mad, the result will be the same.

“I have to warn people.” April rose from her seat and headed for the door.

Behind her, Lucifer had one last mirth-filled message. “Good luck with that, tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist. Be prepared to be laughed at until the sirens start. Then it’ll be too late.”

April closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Through it, maniacal laughter reached her ears. Nigel/Lucifer was right. Nobody would believe her. There really was no way to stop him. She pushed herself away from the door.

I have to try.

_______________

Happy Halloween, and pleasant dreams, everyone.