The Benefactor Read online

  The authoritative figure on screen before him replied, “Zeke, I appreciate your concern. Unfortunately, I need her attention to this code as soon as possible. It is a necessity. I will monitor her whenever possible.” Isis paused, then continued, “Marsh, with this warning, I ask that you call me if you see unacceptable behavior on Anne’s part. Are we good, gentlemen?”

  Isis summarily signed off, assuming an affirmative response.

  Zeke turned off his phone. “Marsh, you’re frowning. Are you good with all that?”

  “Yeah, Zeke, I’ve just never been called a gentleman before.” Marsh actually smiled at his friend.

  *****

  Before they left the Denton Ranch, Anne said, “Marsh, I trust you have food and coffee for an all-nighter or more.”

  “Anne, I brought MREs, a bag of coffee, bedrolls, and a book,” he said confidently.

  “Then I hope it’s War and Peace. My experience is that fixing a coding glitch is often long and involved.”

  With that, the two rode their horses toward Hamilton. Marsh forced himself to engage in small talk to get better insight into Anne’s mood. The trained observer found nothing in her behavior to rule her out of performing her present assignment. But, Marsh asked himself, what’s normal for a computer geek?

  At the computer facility, Marsh greeted the guard. Fred was a friend of Stanley. He was from a group of ten, separate from Stanley’s. Fred admitted Marsh and Anne inside the facility. After several minutes, Marsh left Anne to her work and joined Fred for coffee. Now and then, he checked on her. He wasn’t really sure what he was checking, but he was checking.

  For her part, Anne was in her element. She really got into flow, doing her stock and trade. Many times Marsh had to demand she take a break, “Come on, it’s just healthy to get away from your work now and then. Your body needs to move as well.” He also had to encourage her to eat. He did not have to force coffee on her. Bringing her coffee allowed his subtle checks on her activities.

  At midnight, Marsh briefed the on-coming guard on what he and Anne were doing. He added, “Stan, I’m bushed. I’m going to bed down in the next room. Will you check on Anne at least ever' hour? Urge her to take a break and drink coffee. Wake me if you need me.”

  *****

  At the Denton Ranch, Julia was spending her second night with Milt.

  “Milt, once again, I really have to thank you for letting me huddle in here.”

  “Julia, I kind of got used to being cold before I got here. Anyway, I think women suffer more in the cold than men.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve got to come clean with you. I knew who you were from the moment I saw you. You prosecuted me for embezzlement in Hamilton. I wasn’t guilty. You seemed to revel in ruining me. I hated you for it …”

  “Now, I remember,” the redhead with a photographic memory lied. She had known from the get-go. “It was not personal. I get your hating me as a prosecutor. If you think I got any personal glee from your case, I did not. I had to compartmentalize to get through it — something I’m usually very bad at. I’m told I’m very smart but not very aggressive. The DA was very unhappy with my previous performance. She put me on notice that I had to win your case — or else. I was knee-deep in student loans and couldn’t afford to lose the job. I admit to being overzealous. I hope you can forgive me …”

  Milt put his hand on her shoulder. “It was easy to hate the aggressive prosecutor — not so much you, Julia Hawkins.”

  Julia hugged him. “You’re not so bad yourself! I liked you the first time I saw you in court. I should have somehow bowed out of your case, but I don’t know how I would have done that. Palace intrigue — I don’t do that well. Give me a law book or a coding text over office politics anytime.”

  January 26

  Before dawn in Hamilton, Marsh rose. His joints popped and cracked as he stood up from the air mattress. He relieved himself in the nearby woods and observed the momentary green flash phenomenon just before sunrise. Damn, he thought, no one believed him that there’s a daily magical instant of the sun appearing like a momentary distant green laser dot, then suddenly exploding in a burst through the cosmos. What a way to start the day!

  He got coffee and felt even better. He checked on Anne. She was just wrapping up her work. “Anne, let’s split an MRE and get the hell out of here! We’ve got the best menu items: chicken fajita and chili mac.” I’m not about to share the green-flash experience with soulless Anne, he thought. I can’t even convince Jenny it is real. Jenny just blinks too much, he explained to himself.

  *****

  Marsh and Anne arrived at the Denton Ranch several hours later. Zeke came out to greet them.

  Marsh: “Houston, everything was nominal. Zeke, that’s how it goes when you give the job to a professional.” He cracked a wry smile. He only shared his humor with those he trusted.

  Zeke immediately thought of a glib reply that was not worthy of his friend. He just smiled back. He was pleased with the good report on Anne’s work. “Sorry you can’t stay for lunch, Marsh.”

  At the kitchen table, Anne matter-of-factly described her mission, “Looking at the code, I found some legacy counter-type programs. The counters were in there during beta testing to see how many times a subprogram was accessed. That was no longer necessary, and they were occasionally creating loops … .” She saw eyes glazing over. “Anyway, I had to clean up a lot of unnecessary code.”

  Susan: “Any surprises?”

  Anne’s demeanor became very professional. “I suppose the incorporation of a formerly very popular social program really caught my eye.”

  Several voiced, “No kidding!”

  Jed shook his head in amazement. “It was the backbone of the Benefactor’s communication system?”

  “That’s the way it looks to me, Jed,” Anne said. “I’m guessing that the overall program runs in a distributed fashion. Very sophisticated — a level beyond anything I’ve ever worked on. From what I could tell, the Benefactor is networking mainframe and personal computers around the world. Think of it! More power than any supercomputer we’ve ever known.” She was clearly in awe of the concept.

  Jed: “I have to say I’m still uncomfortable being at the behest of the Benefactor. What does …”

  “I only got a small view of it. Figuratively, I only saw a wave of the program, so I can’t accurately describe the whole ocean. The portion I worked on had to do with all manner of sensors …”

  Wanting to get something off his chest, Zeke interrupted, “Folks, I need to tell you some things that I’d been asked to hold off on. Now is the time.”

  No one knew what was coming except Keala and Lee. The group's tension was palpable.

  “I apologize in advance for not being able to tell you sooner. I recently started getting messages from the Benefactor on my cell phone in the morning like Marsh. I was asked to delay telling you of this by the Benefactor. I, personally, wanted you to know more sooner. When I asked for a face-to-face, the Benefactor appeared to me as a female on my cell. She was very impressive. To make a long story short, I got enough clues to guess that the Benefactor was not a person …”

  Zeke had to repeat his words over the gasps, “Not a person, but an artificial intelligence. She wants to be called Isis, what her human creator named her.”

  Most were frozen in their chairs for the moment. Then reactions came like hot popcorn exploding in a lidded pot.

  Cody: “Wow, this is a new era all right!”

  Joan: “That explains a lot!”

  Karen: “I haven't said a lot about technology because I consider my knowledge to be dated after years away from NASA. I hate to say it, but maybe crazy Sondra was right …”

  Susan: “This makes me feel paranoid.”

  Milt: “Shades of being in prison …”

  Julia: “Gives me the shivers!”

  John: “This can’t stand!”

  Jed: “Cody, what’s that quote you like from Lord Somebody?”

  Cody dredged the
depths of his vast knowledge. “Lord Acton? ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Is that the one?”

  Jed nodded, “That’s it. I get cold chills up and down my spine applying it to this situation.”

  Keala stepped up, “I think we’re expressing our shock right now. What I think is important is that we don’t do anything rash. That’s what Sondra did, and it didn’t work out so well.”

  Zeke piggybacked, “Keala is right. There have been a lot of indications that we are monitored — at least occasionally, maybe more. Anne alluded to sensor input being part of what she was working on. With this in mind, I urge you to watch what you say and do.”

  Anne: “I can’t live this way!”

  Lee: “We’re just going to have to. It’s not a choice.”

  Joan: “This is very bad!”

  Susan: “So the Benefactor is the Bitch!”

  Lee: "It's not a person; it's an AI!"

  “I am struggling with the idea myself,” Zeke interjected. “Our forefathers threw off the yoke of a British king. Our heritage is one of personal freedom and independence. The idea of having a machine that controls our lives …”

  Anne: “How could you? Why have you been lying to us, Zeke?”

  Keala: “Didn’t you hear him. He didn’t have a choice!” Keala was ready to pounce on Anne.

  Cody: “At the very least, we would have lost our electricity if Zeke had defied her.”

  “Zeke,” Susan jumped back in, “did Isis cause the New Year’s Eve catastrophe? Well, did she?”

  Zeke took a deep breath, “First, I ask you to remember that I am not her spokesman. I am on your side. She said she shut down the grid and more, because she was going to be terminated by the government which had financed her. She claims it was self-defense.”

  Julia: “A machine doesn’t have rights.”

  Cody: “The Bitch is not a person. She can’t, er, it can’t …”

  Susan: “This is hard to process …”

  Keala: “Just because she is not our species doesn’t mean she’s more malevolent that the tyrants of history. While they have …”

  Cody: “Let’s face it. Tyrants have killed tens of millions. When all is said and done, Isis will have cold-heartedly exterminated billions of people. Not millions, billions!”

  Keala was crestfallen that her facts from the Northwestern professor had been trumped by Cody’s. She bit her tongue.

  Anne: “If you want to blame someone, blame it on the idiots at DARPA who let the AI project go too far.”

  Joan: “If it weren’t them, it would have been the Russians.”

  Karen: “Or the Chinese, or …”

  Julia: “Or some terrorist group.

  Susan: “These discussions usually end up blaming or.”

  Karen: “I wonder whether this is the Antichrist?”

  Lee:“Well, we haven’t heard any 666, but there are the binary ones and zeroes that drive the AI.”

  Milt: “The question is whether the machine has done or will do anything to us.”

  Cody: “You cut to the heart of the matter. Very perceptive, Milt!”

  Karen: “Doesn’t anyone else see the similarity to the Great Flood in the Bible and our situation? Man rejects the authority of God and is punished. If we dispute the authority of Isis, we will be destroyed, directly or indirectly.”

  Unusually passionate, Cody answered, “Karen, I do recognize a parallel. Many cultures — including Chinese, Greek, and Norse — have a similar theme. Humans have the hubris to disobey the gods, to seek what they think is better. Bam, tragedy for mankind. Voltaire summarized that lesson, ‘Better is the enemy of the good.’

  “That requires some explanation of my part. Humans think they can find better even though they have it good. They lose the good in the process of chasing better. In my words, we look to our past and see a rosy, perfect world. We forget that our political discourse had reached a crescendo of hate and divisiveness. We had anarchists in the street, a partisan media, hateful public rants by our leaders, and upcoming generations that lacked any perspective of reality. Indeed, I think we were about to self-destruct — perhaps bringing an endpoint to civilization.

  “If we myopically bow to our instincts to strike out now at the AI, my humble opinion is that we will lose — for what it’s worth. We need to appreciate the good we have, and not chase an imagined better.”

  Jed: “Cody, I’d add to your list of chinks in the armor of our past society: political correctness, fake news, biased reporting, judicial activism, legislative lies, high-level sexual misconduct, unprecedented influence peddling in the executive and legislative branches, and bought-and-paid-for demonstrations. It was no picnic. I’m on board with not cutting off my nose to spite my face.”

  Joan was eager to join in, “Not to mention voter fraud, porous borders, stolen elections, uneven application of the law, opioid abuse, multiple generations on welfare, chain immigration, preferential treatment of one religion over others, and terrorism. Back to our situation, after my encounter with the world outside our fence, I prefer warmth, food, and people I can trust.”

  Karen said, “I must add to that list you all started: destruction of our culture in the name of ‘multiculturalism,’ amoral billionaires bent on globalism, growing wealth disparity, class envy, and politicizing the judiciary. I noticed we didn’t even use the word hedonism because that was our new norm.”

  Cody interjected, “To piggyback on class envy. I think one of the most despicable developments was a growing shadenfreude. Many were taking pleasure in the suffering of others, a perversion of the perversion of envy. That and the other mentioned factors made me a prepper. I had enough food set aside for a year here …”

  Julia said, “The factor list is not complete without victimization, honoring criminals, disrespect for police, and the deep state.”

  “I noticed no one mentioned global warming,” Anne added.

  Jed looked at Cody. “You and I are a decade or so older than most here. I think everything is in a state of change, whether it’s slow or fast. Permanency is an illusion. Cody?”

  Cody sighed. “Global warming is a complex topic often exploited for political gain. Whether it’s real or not, well, I concluded long ago our cultural fabric was fraying far faster than our physical environment. We definitely knew we could control the first, the second not so much. Our laundry list of problems supports my conclusion.”

  A hush fell over the group. Half nodded yes; half were motionless.

  John was the first to speak, “Be that as it may, we need to fight back against our oppressor!”

  Cody calmly worked in a word, “John, I’m not picking on you. Your spirit is admirable. But let me ask you, did you join the chorus of otherwise brave Americans who declared that the Information Age had killed privacy forever without a fight? Did you tacitly consent to the tyrannical algorithms of biased social media?”

  After a thoughtful pause, John answered, “I’ll tell you, Cody, to be honest, I did. Loss of privacy — it seemed like a fait accompli, something that had already happened. I’m guilty of that. Similar for social media: I viewed them as too big to fight.” John shrugged.

  Cody spoke with empathy, “You’re an honest man, John. I hate to say it, but I’m in the same boat. I’ll bet you actually joined me in trying to think of how to fight the invasion of privacy and biased algorithms but couldn’t figure out how. It did always seem to me most strange that we surrendered our privacy and right to know without a fight.

  “Our current circumstance seems to me to be much the same. It’s a surrender to something inevitable, much as I hate to say it. It sickens me to the core. I hear the jeering laughs of my Marxist classmates at Oxford who constantly spouted words like historical inevitability …”

  Joan interjected, “Cody’s a Rhodes Scholar, if you don’t already know.” She paused to laugh at her previous words, “And he’s a Rhodes Scholar, if you do know. He doesn’t like to brag.”
r />   “Trade secret, Joan!” Cody laughed it off. “Lost my train of thought. Anyway, John, I wanted you to know you’re not alone. I like you and your fighting spirit. But for now, I’m afraid we may have to be a little flexible on our principles to survive.”

  Keala leaned forward in her chair, “As far as fighting, let’s remember that’s what Sondra thought she was doing: She thought she was fighting. Yes, I’m upset that my flight fell out of the sky New Year’s Day. I don’t like that my life has changed in many ways for the worse. But I am grateful that I have Zeke, that I have you as friends, and that I live inside the fence at Denton Ranch. We’re reminded every day that things could be so much worse. I think we should follow the old Hawaiian proverb: ‘Hana Ka Hoe, Pa'a Ka Waha — Don't talk, just paddle.’”

  The group looked at her in puzzlement. Where did that come from? Her message was lost in the group’s shock.

  Keala answered the unspoken question, “While I’m not Polynesian, I was born on Kauai and given a Hawaiian name. So I’ve always followed the culture. Keep calling me ‘KAY-la,’ but technically it’s ‘KEE-la.’”

  Ignoring the digression, Julia said, “I think it’s prudent not to act too quickly. I think that’s what Keala was trying to say.”

  Every soulful plea seemed to fall on deaf ears. Everyone seemed more interested in speaking than in listening. The tones sounded as if each speaker was trying to convince himself or herself of something.

  Cody thoughtfully mused, “Hello, Fermi paradox!”

  Jed reacted instinctively, “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a pretty elegant explanation of why we don’t have proof of extraterrestrial beings visiting our planet. Based on calculations by some astute astronomers, we should have had visits by ETs. Why haven’t we? One possibility is that by the time a civilization has the technological ability to travel intergalactically, it somehow is destroyed. That could be with nuclear weapons — or perhaps an artificial intelligence taking over.”