Exit Protocol (Hal Shepard Sci-Fi Thrillers Book 1) by Nick Stephenson

Author:Nick Stephenson [Stephenson, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WJ Books Ltd
Published: 2020-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

17

Two hours later I found myself back at my desk, my mind spinning. Goswami had given me a temporary reprieve — a way to buy myself a few hours — but if the audit flagged me before I could get underground, the chances of getting Meredith to safety dropped to pretty much zero. It would be difficult enough to stay ahead of Triss, but with Im-Sec out for my blood I wouldn’t last five minutes. So I’d need to move fast, have everything ready.

For this to work I’d need to load up the synapse drive with dummy data, and hope Triss took enough precautions to delay checking it until later. To get the dummy data onto the drive in the first place, I’d need to convince SAI to work with me — and keep quiet about it long enough for me to get away. If SAI decided to alert anyone to what was going on, it would be game over. I’d be arrested before I’d even left the building. At which point, Triss would come for Meredith and there would be precisely nothing I could do about it.

Gos had given me a last-resort measure, but it was just that — a last resort. If SAI wouldn’t play ball, or if Triss’s program prevented him from protecting his files, my only option would be to take full command and shut him down. And that meant overriding his core directives, using a brute force termination signal to render SAI basically inoperable, wiping the synapse drive of any usable data in the process. The drive would still be full, but the files would be corrupted beyond use.

Best case scenario, SAI would be crippled. A shadow of his former self, his core personality ripped to shreds. More likely, Gos said, it would kill him (whatever that meant, for a computer) and set off just about every alarm system in the building. I’d have prevented the data breach, sure, but SAI would be destroyed and I’d have a battalion of armed Im-Sec agents to deal with. Hardly the ideal outcome.

Was destroying a sentient AI the same as killing? I wasn’t sure. But I felt uneasy about the moral implications enough to assume it probably was. Besides, he was starting to grow on me.

Here’s how I saw it going down: Triss would arrange for Armstrong to change the security shift at SAI’s server bunker at a specific time tomorrow morning. There’d be some kind of delay, and that would be my window. I’d hook up to SAI via the synapse drive, but use Goswami’s interface patch to alert SAI to what was going on, and get him to fill the drive with scrambled data. Assuming SAI didn’t trip the alarm, I’d deliver the drive to Triss (or, more likely, one of her buddies) and then I’d have a few hours to get me and Meredith underground and out of sight.

It all sounded feasible in my head, but I knew making this work meant eliminating the variables. Making sure nothing was left to chance.

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