I was in the Datascape system again. The I cubed triangle, tessellated on the ground, stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions. This time I had headed for the sea. It was rather further away than I had first thought, I had been ‘walking’ for about ten minutes, and I was still some distance away.
I made a mental note to suggest to Alan that he adjust the scale of this program a little. I could now see the shore where the I cubed logos gave way to the shiny silver sea. It stretched right out to the horizon, a huge, gently undulating sea of mercury.
The shore line was featureless and barren, just a few fracticaly generated rocks. The sound of the sea lapping on the shore was very calming, I felt that all was well in this world.
I sat down at the seas edge. Then I heard some thing, “Oh no not again” I whispered to my self. Was I hearing things or was the some thing out there? Suddenly the sound of the sea was not so calming any more, it was irritating, blanking out any sound that might warn me of approaching danger.
There it was again, I wasn’t hearing things. I looked around, I could see nothing different. Were was the sound coming from ?
“Go on”. It was Alan “Press the button”.
“Alan”. I called. “Were are you?”
“…Virtual object database…” It was Dr. Marshal telling me about the Datascape system. “Datascape Datascape Datascape Datascape Data…”
His voice droned on like a record with it’s needle suck.
The sound was coming from all around me. “Datascape Datascape Datascape”.
“Stop it !” I screamed. “Datascape Datas…”.
It stopped. The silence was worse than the voice. It was coming to get me, the thing I saw before, it was coming to get me and this time there was nothing to stop it. I ran. Like a mad man I ran. I didn’t know were it was but I knew it was coming for me.
Suddenly up head the ground bubbled up as a transparent amorphous blob oozed out of it. I stopped and watched in horrified interest as it’s out line changed in a vaguely human form. It’s out line was basically human, but had bits sticking out where there shouldn’t be. As it formed it skin became coloured an awful mottled grey, green.
“Stop it”. It screamed at me in my voice. I turned back to the sea, but it was gone, replaced by a plane of tessellating logos.
I ran anyway. My feet were growing heavy. I looked down, I was running though the sea, it was up to my ankles.
I looked all around. The plane was flooded now none of the planes was visible at all. The thing was still closing on me laughing at me with my own voice. It was closing on me with out moving at all, itÕs hideous outline static.
The water was now up to my waist. I tried to run but could not, my legs would not move. The thing just watched doing nothing but laughing at me.
It’s outline seamed even more mutated this time with more spikes and fins sticking out from it. I could hear it deep breaths as it stood there a meter away. The water was now by my neck. It stood there floating above the water looking down on me.
It offered me a hand and said. “To log off rase your left arm…”. It was the voice of the operator I had spoken to. I grabbed for it’s hand but it was gone.
The water suddenly rushed over my head.
I screamed out and then opened my eyes. Before me I could see my alarm clock. It was 2:30 in the morning.
“Dam it! Twice in one week now”. I got out of bed, I was soaked with perspiration. “Dam, dam, dam”.
I looked in the bathroom at myself, what I saw was not good. My eyes looked sunken and were surrounded by dark rings, my face looked grey and gaunt. The light in the bath room was not helping things either.
It had been five days since my visit to Information Industries International, and five days since I had a good nights sleep. I had a quick shower and went down to the kitchen, were I made myself a hot chocolate.
“Oh well I’m up now I might as well do some work”. I said to myself. I sat down at my desk and switched my computer on, I had a review of a new word processor to finish.
As the machine booted, my personal assistant program ran and informed me of the date, time and today’s list of things to do.
Lunch with Alan Marshal, appeared on the screen. Of course I remembered now he called me yesterday saying he urgently needed to talk to me. I needed to talk to him urgently also, but he didn’t seem to want to talk much on the phone. I sat starring at my computer screen though a haze of cigarette smoke, I was not going to get much done this morning.
Alan had arranged to meet me in the globe, a pub near Bath, strange I thought since it was nowhere near were either I live or he worked. But he had been so quick on the phone that I didn’t get chance to question it.
I walked in to the pub and looked around for Alan. My eyes suddenly fell on a tall black haired man. For brief second his gaze met mine, and in that second I knew it had been him that I saw out side I-Cubed. He looked away, but I stood there staring at him. Some one pushed their way past me and when I looked back at where he had been he was gone.
Shaken by this I made my way to the bar and bought my self a drink.
It was then that I spotted Alan. I almost missed him because I didn’t recognise him. His eyes were dull and slightly blood shot and his face looked grey and some how he looked older. He looked worse than me.
“You look awful”
I said as I sat down. “Thanks, but you don’t look much better”.
“Yes your wonderful Datascape has cost me a lot of sleep”.
Alan’s face suddenly had a an almost frightened look on it.
“You’ve not been having nightmares have you?” I nodded. He shook his head and let out a deep sigh. “This is all very worrying. Two members of my team have suffered from similar effects”.
“We’re they ‘attacked’”.
“No. No. It was assumed that they were suffering from over work and exhaustion, but now…well I don’t know”.
“Do you have any idea what happened to me in there ?”
Alan thought on this for a long time and then said. “No not really. But I have two very nasty suspicion’s. The first one is slightly more probable but nonetheless disturbing”.
Alan said nothing for a few seconds, he was stringing this out as long as possible. He’d been known at university for making a drama out of almost anything. But in my current state I was in no mood for such games.
“Yes”. I prompted impatiently.
“Well first of all let me give you some back ground to our work on Datascape. What ever it is, it came from the virtual object database. And I lied to you about that being run on the Cray. It was at first but it’s now run on a custom machine. The Cray was just not fast enough”.
He paused again, probably for effect.
“Not fast enough!”
“Yes. Anyway this custom machine is a massively parallel computer, but not quite in the same way as something like the Connections Machine. The processors are linked by software controlled links, so that the program running on it can reconfigure the system while it runs. This makes the virtual object nexus, the machine the database is held on about the largest and most complex neural network ever”.
For a few seconds I didn’t see what Alan was getting at. Then it hit me. My stomach turned.
“Are you saying that what ever attacked me was some sort of intelligent thing living in the computer”
“Yes. You your self said that it wasn’t random and that it came straight for you”.
I nodded slowly, it was a predator and, I the user, was it’s prey.
“We’re talking about Artificial Life here aren’t we”. I read about this in Scientific American, some American working in new Mexico thinks that one day we will be able to create an artificial life form in a computer”.
“Yes I read that to. That’s what I think happened here. Some thing either a bug or a deliberate program set a chain of events in motion in the network. Only this network can be modified by what’s happening in it. Some how the program found how to modify the network. It shaped the environment which in turn shaped it and so on”. I shook my head this was getting beyond me.
“This is heavy stuff”.
“Yes it is. What happened in that network I can only call super-evolution”
“Evolution ?”
“Yes, and still is evolving”. Alan paused to take a sip of his beer, I couldn’t face mine now. “At first it was confined to the virtual object nexus because it needs the special hardware to run. But now it’s evolved to the point where it’s children can run on other systems…”
“Children !”
“Yes, well smaller copies of it’s self. I’ve found several apparently corrupted programs on various systems that all have the same basic pattern that I’ve found in the nexus”.
I sat and let all this run through my mind, it was all too incredible, I was not sure that I could believe it. “This is like some science fiction story”. Alan nodded. We sat in silence for a few seconds.
“You said there were two possible explanations for all this”.
“Yes”. Alan sighed. “The first one is more likely I think but it’s implications are much more serious. I’d like to believe the second but I have problems with that”. He paused for a moment.
“The first possibility is that all of this has happen is part of a secret research project. And I know there is on going on at I-cubed…”.
“How do you know ?”
“System logs. All time on the system is logged and I’ve had a look at the logs, secretly of course, and there is another team working on my system”.
He emphasised ‘my system’. “Now I don’t know what there doing but after the first two incidence’s there was a surge of activity by this group. Now I haven’t been able to see the logs after that so I don’t know for sure if that’s what they were working on. But it does seem most likely”.
“But who are they and why are they making it, what ever it is, do these things ?”
“Well if I answer your first question then the second will seem to answer itself. You where right when you surmised that we where doing some work for the military, I think they are our mystery party”.
“So it’s some sort of weapon”. I said with horror.
“No not in it’s self, it could be used as a controller for a weapon delivery system or it could be used as a carrier for some sort of computer virus. But as I said the second question only seems to answer it’s self. In fact ‘they’ aren’t making it do anything, it’s acting on it’s own accord”.
“How can you tell ?”
“That’s easy, The system logs again. As I said there was a surge of activity after, not before, but after each incident”.
I was confused. “So”
“So the surge of activity was a sort of inquiry, to find out just what had happened. They may have had control at the outset but they certainly don’t have any control over it now. I think they’ve succeeded beyond their wildest dreams”.
“And if there are secret they don’t have to worry about the consequences of there actions”.
I said very slowly. It was all just beginning to sink in.
“That’s right”, Alan said gleefully. “It’s dawning on you now isn’t it. The fully horror of what’s happening”. He added in a much more sombre tone.
“Of course the second possibility is that this has all happened by accident. But I don’t believe that for a moment”.
I shook my head in agreement with Alan. “So what are you going to do ?” I asked.
Alan didn’t answer for a moment or two. “I’ve no idea at the moment. I could just carry on like nothing ever happened, but if ‘they’ can’t control ‘it’, then I can’t see much more work getting done on Datascape. But I don’t think I could allow any of my team to be exposed to the danger of an attack, not now that I know what’s happening”.
I was about to agree with Alan, but then I suddenly had a thought, “Why did it attack me ?”
Alan seemed thrown by the question at first. “I’m not sure you were attacked…”
“Oh yes I was”.
“No you only think your were attacked. How do you know that it wasn’t trying to communicate with you ?” I didn’t have an answer to this question, but I still knew in my heart that it did attack me.
“You don’t know do you”. I shook my head.
“But I’m sure your probably right and you were attacked, but we don’t know for sure”.
“So why ?”
“I think it’s just trying to survive. And it does that by being on top of the food chain in it’s environment. It probably see’s users of the system as a threat”. Alan said nothing for a few moments, he just sat looking in to his pint.
“I don’t know what to do”. He suddenly said. “But I have to do some thing”.
He added shaking his head.
Alan all of a sudden looked very weary and tired. We sat in silence for a long time both lost in our thoughts.
Alan, having finished his drink, suddenly got up. “Well thanks for lending me an ear. I have to get back to work now”.
He started to leave. “Alan”.
I called after him. “Let me know if I can help in any way”.
“Thanks. I will”. He then turned and left.
I sat thinking over what Alan had said, particularly the idea that this all could be some sort of secret military research. The man I’d seen both here and out side I-cubed kept on entering my thoughts. I was sure it was the same man, but why would he be following me. I looked around the, by now half empty, pub. I could see no sign of the man.
This didn’t reassure me at all and all the way home I kept my eyes open for any one following, but saw no one.
