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Pace cocked his head. “You mean…software?”
“Yes. The most advanced AI platforms usually have means of interfacing with them through audio. Speech recognition, voice generation, that sort of thing.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Ever heard of Alexa?”
“Well…yes…but I really don’t think the little orb on my mom’s kitchen counter is causing all this trouble.”
“No. For something like this…you are looking at dozens and dozens of networked mainframes. Hundreds, perhaps. You would need an advanced neural network, machine learning, and you would need massive amounts of data. The agent would have to know everything about everything, and be able to learn, to take this level of autonomy to hire killers, make decisions about who needs to die to protect its secrets, to ensure its future. That takes a lot of data, and a lot of compute.”
“Compute?”
“Yes. That’s the term we use for the physical machines.”
“This all sounds like science fiction.”
“There are over a dozen AI and robotics futurists who would be very happy to disagree with you about that, except for the fact that someone murdered them in the past week.” She leaned closer to her camera. “You asked me the other day if there was some unity of knowledge connecting all the names on that sheet that Lars had. This is it. Every one of them was an expert at creating revolutionary AI or linking AI to groundbreaking robotic platforms or the advanced study of the jamming of electromagnetic signals.
“Cyrus is a machine, and it is protecting itself by killing those who can stop it, or those who know it exists.” She looked off into the distance a moment. “And whatever human has control of Cyrus, assuming someone still does have control at all, is letting it happen.”
Pace took a few measured breaths, then asked, “Could that person be Anton Hinton?”
She nodded, slowly at first, and then more adamantly. “Absolutely, it could be Anton. But the only place he could get that amount of data is from China, and according to everyone, his relationship with the Chinese government is not the best.”
“What if that’s a ruse?”
Ryder just raised her eyebrows. “Anton and the Chinese. It’s possible.”
Pace rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “Our conversation has been very enlightening.”
Ryder said, “But don’t mention it to anyone, right?”
“It could put lives in danger.”
“I understand. Go out there, find out what’s going on, and deal with it, and I will never say a word. I just buried Lars because of this. We had our differences, but he was the love of my life. I want you to get the bastard responsible.” She leaned closer to the screen. “If it’s Anton doing this…then God help us all.”
•••
Minutes later Court, Zoya, and Pace were back outside, on their way to the barn. The CIA operations officer had filled Court and Zoya in about what he’d learned from Dr. Ryder, but Zoya had a question of her own.
“Why would Cyrus kill you, Jim? Why send in Lancer? Why not just notify the Cuban authorities a CIA officer was in that apartment? That would have stopped you from completing your mission.”
Pace said, “I’m wondering the same thing. Contreras was watching me. Cyrus could have told the cops exactly where I was, and I’d be arrested on the spot.”
“There’s a lot of shit like that in this operation,” Court pointed out. “Cyrus targeted Zoya and me before we’d even agreed to work to save the Russian engineer, we think, because he…I mean it, thought she knew something. Maybe it thought it needed you dead so you couldn’t reveal what you knew.”
Pace said, “If Cyrus is making decisions, some of Cyrus’s decisions aren’t very good.”
Inside the barn, with the three of them standing in front of Contreras, Pace told the Mexican that he was now working under the suspicion that Cyrus was a bot.
The Mexican shook his head slowly. “No. I talked to him.”
“You talked to the program, which responded with a verbal interface.”
“Incredible,” he said softly, thinking over his exchanges with Cyrus. “That’s how he was able to switch into Spanish so quickly. The program must adjust to whoever is speaking to it, no matter the language.”
Court said, “But…there is you, and Lancer, and that operations center. It’s not just software.”
