Dunn was hopping out of the back seat even before Agent Jennings brought the car to a full stop. Nancy saw another nondescript Ford sedan pulling into the parking space behind them. This one held Roger Tango in its back seat. He was getting out at the same time as Nancy.

Roger: Nancy, is that you? Do you know what's going on here? These thugs won't tell me a thing. I told them I want an attorney. Don't say anything until we get a lawyer here. They haven't got. . .

Dunn: Tango, would you please shut-up and get inside. You're not under arrest and there aren't going to be any lawyers here.

Nancy: Do as he says, Roger. We've got trouble, but it's not what you're thinking.

Roger pulled in his claws and calmed down. He was starting to get interested in the situation. He noticed the forty or fifty cars in the lot and the size of the tiny building. More here than meets the eye.

They were escorted through the security check point. The metal scan picked up Nancy's cell phone in the gym bag. She surrendered it with a 'silly me' excuse. Roger went through cleanly. He didn't have anything.

Dunn led the way as Nancy, Roger, and Agent West followed in that order. Nancy kept a close eye on Dunn's every move as he used his ID badge to open a fortified door that held no knob. It was the entrance to a set of steel stairs that zigzagged thirty feet down into the ground. At the bottom of the stairs, another badge reader confirmed Dunn's ability to open the door and the group entered Boreskovich's laboratory complex. They went past corridors of small offices and workrooms before coming to the large control center that was the scene of the accident. Boreskovich and Warwick were waiting there seated at a conference table they had set up in front of the huge projection display screen.

Roger: Oh my God, we are in trouble. It's Pete Warwick.

Warwick: Roger Tango? I'm guilty, but I don't deserve this much punishment. Dunn, are we this desperate for help?

Dunn: I was afraid you two were going to know each other. The files showed two years of overlapping company time at Langely, but I was hoping it was camouflage for other assignments.

Warwick: Good to see you, Roger.

Roger: Hope I can bail you out again this time, Pete.

Warwick: Let's don't go into that now, okay?

The two old friends shook hands while Dunn made the rest of the introductions. With his all-business style in high gear, Dunn directed the group to their seats around the table. They formed a semi-circle open to the display screen. He then got the meeting started by giving Roger the same brief description of the situation as he had given Nancy at her apartment. He continued:

Dunn: Ms. McGill and Mr. Tango are here to help. My superiors at the Pentagon and their contacts at the FBI have recommended them for a very specific reason. Ms. McGill will be explaining that reason soon. But first, Mr. Warwick, why don't you start by explaining to the group exactly what we're dealing with.
Warwick: The briefing folders on the table in front of you are labeled MEMOREX 333. That's the code name we've adopted for the rogue program. 333 is a sophisticated agent program. He contains defensive heuristics and offensive attack methods. Let's look at each of these profiles.

333's primary method of defense is stealth. He can hide himself within the on-going operations of almost any host system while continuing to function. This is accomplished by subdividing his functions and attaching the components to a host's operating system core functions. In this mode, you might think of him as a parasite, leaching instruction processing resources from an unsuspecting host organism. The result, of course, is the masking of his presence. Logs and monitors see only native processes in execution. Careful inspection would show kernel programs slightly larger than they were before 333 cloaked himself. But since kernels vary widely with configuration parameter choices, there's no way to look at process size across systems to tell which one might be holding him.

Roger: So we've got a needle in a haystack and oh, by the way, it's invisible. Pete, you said stealth was his primary defense. What else has 333 got?

Warwick: He can also repair himself. Compressed copies of key routines are stored in multiple areas of the program's footprint. If 333 senses a corruption in one of these routines, he spawns an external process to regenerate the damaged area from one of the redundant locations. We spent a lot of time optimizing the repair logic and it is extremely fast. 333 can rebuild himself in memory faster than the operating system can delete him.

MEMOREX 333 also carries a sensor array. He maps systems around him and updates those maps continuously. The sensors give him OS, application, and data-oriented details. He evaluates sensory information for two primary reasons: host selection and target acquisition. 333 will classify each system's function, compare it to his target profile, and if he were armed, he would attack any system matching a priority definition.

Nancy: We're getting into the offensive capabilities now?

Warwick: That's correct. If you turn your page, you'll see a schematic of the offensive weapons. Now remember, 333 is only software so an attack doesn't involve missiles and bullets. In fact, hardware is not usually targeted. 333 attacks disk data by overwriting it and memory locations by inserting fraudulent pointers with laser-beam accuracy. He's equipped with a pre-trained, neural net that allows him to be selective. He looks for data that is mission critical to the operation of a target system.

Roger: Can you give us an example of what you mean, Pete?

Warwick: Let's take a telephone switch as an example of a simple target. 333 would look for the data that maps incoming circuits or switch controlled lines. He would find administrative passwords and network call routing tables. He'd overwrite everything with garbage data and then force a system reset to load it into memory. 333 can even inspect off-line storage and if an auto-recovery tape drive is found, he'll attempt to rewrite the tape with the bad data. Result, one useless phone switch. Any half-good technician will have another tape, but 333 can mess them up faster than the service guys can fix them.

Dunn: You can see the detailed attack methods in your folder. They follow from military strategy methods. Either sudden disruption or gradual corruption. Remember, from the Pentagon's point of view the software agent is a battle component. He's out there to confuse and hinder the enemy while conventional forces do their damage and win the war.

Roger: And I suppose he can be targeted on more than telephone switch computers.

Warwick: Oh yes, 333 has disruption methods for everything from network file server systems to mainframe complexes and even some curve balls it can throw at experimental, one-of-a-kind computers. He's very resourceful.

Roger: Mr. Dunn, I guess I may as well ask you the big question. What the hell do you expect Nancy and me to do about all this?

Nancy: Roger, Mr. Dunn and the FBI showed me a file they've been building on Spike for over a year. They know quite a bit about him. There's no point in playing dumb.

Roger: Oh yeah?. Well in that case, we better get Spike out here.

Warwick: Excuse me, who are we talking about?

Dunn: As I said earlier, Ms. McGill will explain why we've asked them here. Why don't you do that now, Nancy.

Nancy began by asking Roger to contact Spike. She reminded Roger to include the coded phrase that would signal safety to Spike. Pete Warwick telephoned one his technicians to come assist Roger. The two went to a console in the distant corner of the control room to open a temporary Internet connection.

In the space of about ten minutes, Nancy gave the research team an overview of Spike Webb and his origin. Folded arms around the table said that the men would believe it when they saw it. As Nancy described it, Spike's almost human nature far exceeded any personality capabilities the scientists had been able to create. Naturally, they were challenged by the fact that something might exist which surpassed their achievements. With his task complete, Roger returned to the table.

Boreskovich: I'm sure, Ms. McGill, you feel this Spike Webb program is quite animated, shall we say. But you're lack of experience with the software technologies of artificial life make your opinions . . . questionable.

Roger: You'll be able to assess for yourself in a minute Dr. Borsht. We're cutting over the projection display now. Spike is already here.

Boreskovich: That's Bor-es-KO-vich, young man. Dr. Boreskovich.

Roger: Yeah, that's what I said. Anyway, here he is.

Uh, hi Spike. Gee, I've never introduced you to anyone before. This is a little strange. These are the people I was telling you about. Agent West, FBI; Mr. Dunn, Pentagon or D.O.D. I should say; Pete Warwick, my old friend from the glory days at Central Intelligence; and Dr. Borshtovich, head scientist type around here, I guess.

Spike: Thank you, Roger. Dr. Boreskovich, it's an honor to meet you. I've read your publications and proceedings papers. Your theories are fascinating to me. It will be quite a break-through if greater computing capacities bear them out in practice.

Boreskovich: If? Did you say, if? There is no doubt that they will be proven to be correct.

Spike: My apologies, sir. I didn't mean any offense. . .

Boreskovich: Young people today! No respect for elders! No . . .

The others around the table were looking at Dr. Boreskovich as he realized that he had been drawn into a personal conversation with Spike before he could catch himself. They wondered how he would react now that he too had noticed.

Boreskovich: Amazing! Would you mind if I looked into your supervisory functions? I've had some ideas. . .

Dunn: Unfortunately, we don't have time for that right now, doctor. Mr. Webb, let me. . .

Spike: No need for explanations, Mr. Dunn, I've already accessed the report files describing your situation and gone over the MEMOREX 333 log and design data.

Dunn: Excellent, we're on our way. Now as I see it, the problem is that MEMOREX 333 may be unstable. Even though he's not targeted, there is a chance that he may accidentally cause some damage. The second point is that we don't want this technology falling into anyone else's hands.

Nancy: Excuse me Malcolm, Spike you've got that puzzled look. Is there something that doesn't fit right?

Spike: I'm afraid there may be, Nancy. Dr. Boreskovich, I noticed a small section of the design matrix labeled: BioDyn. Does that refer to your biological dynamics theory?

Boreskovich: You have read my work, haven't you?

Wareick: The BioDyn vectors are in 333!? Doctor, they can't be. We haven't even run a stand-alone simulation on them. Why didn't you tell me?

Roger: Hold everything. Spike, can you explain to the rest of us what BioDyn is?

Spike: In 1968, Dr. Boreskovich published an article describing his theory that artificial life would require simulated biological dynamics in order to reach many researchers' definition of life itself. His theory states that Bio-dynamics give the life form motivations for behavior that then appear life-like to humans. His most basic example is the biological energy dynamic. An organism's requirement for external nutrition creates a need to act. These actions are intended to find food and remove the unobservable construct known as hunger. Dr. Boreskovich stated that unless primary motivations such as hunger are included in the design, humans will attribute behavior to superimposed rules and conclude that the life form is not, in fact, alive. If however, the entire profile of motivations can be traced back to biologically-oriented dynamics, humans will accept even an inorganic construct as having life.

Boreskovich: And, Bio-dynamics give people normal ways to interact with artificial life. Training through associations and reinforcements, for example.

Dunn: Warwick, translate this theoretical discourse for me and do it fast.

Warwick: As Spike Webb said, Dr. Boreskovich's basic example is hunger, so that's where we started. MEMOREX 333 has been programmed to get hungry. It won't just sit still or play hide-and-seek with us. 333 is going to feed itself.

Dunn: Feed? Feed on what?

Warwick: That's the bad news. It had to be something that exists in the agent's natural environment. We wanted something we could readily create for tests. We wanted to simulate different levels of nutritional value. The guys really got into it. It was like designing the point scoring rules of a game. . .

Roger: It feeds on data, doesn't it Pete?

Dunn: Data? You mean that thing is going to start devouring computer files?

Warwick: Well, of course it doesn't really devour anything. It only has to erase a file to pick up it's nutritional value. Value is based on the size and type of the file. Plain ASCII files have no value, graphic format files are low, executable application programs medium, and relational database files have the highest nutritional value.

Dunn: That's just great. Anybody know how long before it starts looking for a snack?

Spike: It won't be long, Mr. Dunn. From the build parameters, I'd estimate two or three hours at the outside.

Warwick: I would agree. The more active 333 is the faster he gets hungry, just like real life. Running around the Internet counts as a pretty high activity level.

Pete Warwick's lead engineer knocked on the door and leaned into the control room.

Tony: Pete, we just got a message from 333. You better look at this.



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