"Any conclusions yet?"

"Too early times, Ben. I'll take another cup if you're pouring. They seemed to be getting into financial trouble a while back, but they went public and raised more than they needed."

"I'll want to know who owns the stock."

"Will do. Do you think these are the people we are looking for?"

"We'll know pretty soon. If they are selling a commercial AI they had better have plenty of records of whoever did the research and how it was developed. If they don't have that-then we are in luck and they are in trouble."

When Brian hadn't called by five o'clock Ben walked over to the lab. The front door was almost hidden behind a jungle of small plants and trees in tubs; he had to climb over them to get to the door. It looked like all of the local nurseries had been cleaned out. He reached up and snapped his fingers in front of the pickup lens above the door.

"Anyone there?"

"Hi, Ben. I was just going to call you. Interesting things happening in here. Just a second."

There were plants inside and around the workbench. The first thing Ben saw was that Bug-Off and the AI were apparently locked in tender embrace. The AI was standing close to the partially dismembered machine with its multibranching digits closely entwined in its innards.

"Love at first sight?" Ben asked.

"Hardly! We're just tracing input and feedback. If you look at all those finger extensions under a glass you will see they are clustered in regular bundles. Each bundle contains a tripartite subbundle made up of two optical pickups and a single light source. The pickups are mounted at fixed distances from each other. Does that give you any ideas?"

"Yes-binocular vision."

"Bang on. In addition to what you might call the eyes in every bundle there are four mechanical manipulators.

Three blunt-ended ones for grabbing, the fourth with a knife edge for dismembering. This carves off the insect's head just before the thing is dropped into the hopper. The bundles work independently-almost."

"What do you mean?"

"Let me run a film for you and you'll see for yourself."

Brian put a cassette into the video, ran it forward to the right spot. "We shot this at very high speed, then slowed it down. Take a look."

The image was sharp and clear and magnified many times. Rounded metal bars reached out slowly to embrace a foot-long fly. Its wings flapped slowly and ineffectively as it was drawn out of sight off the screen. The same process was happening to an aphid located off to one side.

"I'll run it again," Brian said. "This time keep your eye on the second bug. Watch. See the bundle above it?

First it's motionless-there, now it is operating. But the fly didn't move until it had been grabbed. Do you see what that means?"

"I saw it-but I'm being dumb today. What's the significance?"

"The hand didn't try to use brute force and speed to try to catch the fly in flight. Instead, this robot uses real knowledge to anticipate the behavior of each particular kind of insect! When it goes for the housefly, Bug-Off contracts its grasping-bundle as it approaches the fly, making it look to the housefly as though it were moving away from it-until it's too late for the insect to escape. And we're sure that was no accident. Bug-Off seems to know the behavior of every insect described in this book."

Brian handed Ben a large volume entitled Handbook of Insect Ethology, 2018 Edition.

"But how can Bug-Off tell which insect it is dealing with? They all look the same to me."

"A good question-since pattern recognition has been the bane of AI from the very first day that research began. Industrial robots were never very good at recognizing and assembling parts if they weren't presented in a certain way. There are thousands of different signals involved in seeing a human face, then recognizing who it is. If you wrote a program for picking bugs off bushes you would have to program in every bug in the world, and size and rotation position and everything else. A very big and difficult program-"

"And hard to debug?"

"Funny-but too true! But you or I-or a really humanlike AI would be very good at bug grabbing. All the identification and reaching out and grabbing operations are hideously complex-but invisible to us. They are one of the attributes, one of the functions of intelligence. Just reach out and grab. Without putting in any complex program. And that's what is happening here-we think. If there is an AI in there it is reaching out one bundle at a time and grabbing a bug. As soon as the insect is held it turns the grabbing bundle over to a subprogram that plucks it off, brings it to the container, chops it dead and dumps it, then returns to operating position ready to be controlled again. Meanwhile the AI has controlled another bundle to make a grab, another and then another, changing control faster than we can see at normal speeds. You or I could do that just as well."

"Speak for yourself, Brian. Sounds pretty boring to me."

"Machines don't get bored-at least not yet. But so far this is all inferred evidence. Now I'm going to show you something a good deal better. Do you see how Sven is plugged into Bug-Off's operating system? It is reading every bit of input from the detectors as well as getting all the return control messages.

I am sure that you know that the society of the mind, human or artificial, is made of very small subunits, none of them intelligent in themselves. The aggregate of their operat ion is what we call intelligence. If we could pull out one of the subunits and look at it we might be able to understand just how it operates."

"In a human brain?"

"Pretty impossible. But in an AI, at an early stage of construction, these subunits can be identified. After analyzing some of the feedback loops in Bug-Off we found a pattern, a bit of a program that could be identified. Here it is-let me show it to you."

Brian punched up the program on the screen, a series of instructions. Brian rubbed his hands together and smiled happily.

"Next I want to show you another bit of programming. This was retrieved from the data bank in Mexico.

A chunk of instructions that I don't even remember-but I was the only one who could have possibly written it. Here, let me split the screen and put this one up there as well."

The two programs were side by side on the screen. Brian scrolled them slowly forward together. Ben looked from one to the other-then gasped.

"My God-they're exactly the same."

"They are. One I wrote over two years ago. The other is inside this machine here. Identical."

Ben was suddenly very grim. "Do you mean that there are no other records of this bit of programming anywhere in the world? That it doesn't have any commercial use in another program?"

"I mean just that. I wrote it and backed it up in Mexico. The original was stolen. The thieves probably didn't understand it enough to rewrite it so just used it as is. And whoever stole it-built it into this bug-plucker. We have them!"

"Yes," Ben said, very quietly. "I think that we do."

30

September 12, 2024

"Do you realize that it has been all of a week?" Brian said. "An entire bloody week has gone by since I proved to everyone's satisfaction that the bug-plucking metal bastard was built by the same people who stole my AI.

And, perhaps not important to you, but damn important to me, also the same people who shot half my head away at the time. And in that week absolutely nothing has been done."

"That's not quite true," Ben said, as quietly and gently as he could. "The investigation is continuing. There must be over eighty agents working on this one way or another-"

"I don't care if the entire FBI and CIA put together is on the job. When will something be done?"

Ben sat in silence, sipping at his beer. They had been in Brian's quarters for over an hour, waiting for the promised call. Everyone was on edge over the delay. Ben had explained this slowly and carefully more than once.

But Brian's patience was gone-and that was understandable. The tension had been building ever since the discovery that DigitTech was manufacturing AIs using his design. He kept waiting for something to happen, some breakthrough to occur. No work was being done in his lab-and he wasn't helping the situation either by mixing himself a third lethal-looking margarita. Since one of the corporals in the club had shown him how to make these he had never looked back. He raised the glass and was taking a good-sized gulp when his phone rang. He swallowed too fast, slammed the glass down and groped the phone from his belt. Coughing and gasping as he answered.

"Yes-" He coughed heavily. "Would you say that again? -Right." He dabbed his eyes and lips with his handkerchief, finally got his breath back. "Conference call in ten minutes, I have that."

"Let's go," Ben said with great relief, putting down his glass and climbing to his feet. When they went out of the front door of the barracks they found that Major Wood and a squad were waiting for them.

"I don't like this public exposure," the Major said sharply.

"It's not as if we were going very far," Ben said. "Just to the administration building, which as you can see is right down the drive."

"And damn close to the front gate and almost in sight of the public road."

"Major, I've explained this before. There is no other way that this can be done. We need to use the conference room. Everyone is cooperating. Following your instructions, all the Megalobe employees were sent home at noon.

The techs have swept the room and the entire building. What more could you possibly ask for? An antiaircraft battery?"

"We've got that already. SAMs on four buildings. Come on."

There were heavily armed soldiers everywhere-even the cooks had been pulled out of the kitchen for this operation and formed part of the guard. Although it was only a few hundred yards to the building the Major insisted that they drive there in an armored personnel carrier.

Brian had never been in the Megalobe conference room before and looked around with interest. It was decorated with quiet luxury; the Van Gogh on the wall might possibly be real. Subdued lighting, thick carpeting, mahogany conference table with chairs along one side of it. The table itself was drawn up against the picture window that stretched the length of the wall. Here on the fifth floor they had a perfect view across the desert to the mountains beyond.

"Just about time," Ben said, looking at his watch. Even as he spoke the desert view vanished and was replaced by another conference room. Only then did Brian realize that the entire wall was a high-resolution TV screen scanned by 3-D eye tracking cameras, just now coming into production.

Although everyone was apparently in the same room, the conference was taking place across the entire width of the country from the nation's Capital. The table that the others were sitting behind was also placed flush with the screen, the two tables apparently forming a single table for all of them to sit around. There was obviously a standard height and length for all tables used in teleconferencing, Brian thought. They sat down.

"Brian, I don't think you've met Agent Manias, who has been heading the FBI end of this investigation from the first day."

"Pleased to meet you at last, Brian."

"Hello," was all that Brian could think of to say. They weren't really meeting-or were they? The agent was obviously more used to this kind of thing than he was.

"Going to bring us up to date, Dave?" Ben asked.

"That's what this is all about. You have received copies of all our information as it was processed. Are there any quest ions?"

"There certainly are," Brian snapped, still angry. "Isn't the time long past to take some action, pull in these criminals?"

"Yes, sir, the time has certainly come. That is what this meeting is about."

"Good," Brian said, sinking back into his chair as some of the tension of the past days drained away.

"Let me bring you up to date where we stand at this moment. We now have in our possession the complete company records of DigitTech, as well as up-to-date files on every employee. The time has now come when we can't get anything more from public-or private-records. We also feel that it is counterproductive to continue the surveillance much longer. Our people are very good and very professional, but with each day that passes the chance of accidental discovery grows. Therefore it was decided that four P.M. mountain time today would be optimum, to conduct this operation." Brian looked at his watch-forty- five minutes to go. "Agent Vorsky will explain what will be taking place."

Vorsky nodded at them, a lean man with an upright military bearing. He glanced at the notes on the table before him.

"At the present moment there are four agents employed inside the plant."

"That many?" Ben said. "There are sure to be suspicions."

"Yes, sir, there would be if there were any delay. That's one of the reasons that we are going in today. There is the one agent in the office that you know about. Two days ago there were three cases of mild food poisoning, inadequate refrigeration in one of the roach-coaches that service the plant. The employment agency that is used by DigitTech already had our agents on their books."

No one else wanted to ask how these fortuitous cases of food poisoning had happened, so Brian kept his mouth shut as well.

"The plan is a very simple one that has proven effective in the past. Precisely at four the fire alarm will sound and everyone will be asked to evacuate the buildings. As soon as that happens two agents will secure the office, allowing no access to any files or records, while the other two agents will occupy the research premises. The team that goes in will be wearing these helmets so we will all be able to watch every phase of the operation."

Agent Vorsky reached down and picked up a helmet that he placed on the table. It looked like a black-plastic baseball cap with a light mounted on top.

"This is made of very tough plastic and protects the wearer's head. More important to us is this omnidirectional pickup on top. This device works completely independent of the wearer. The image is stabilized by a laser-gyroscope and is controlled by our operators here. No matter which way the wearer walks-or turns his head-we will pick up the image that we choose."

He twisted the helmet up and down, turned it around quickly-but the lens always remained facing at the screen.

"There are six separate hit teams and these units will be worn by one man on each team. These six images will all appear on our screens. Our mixers here will enlarge the most relevant one and you will hear the sound from that one. All of the images will of course be recorded for later study. What we will be doing now is letting you follow the operat ion in real time."

"Any questions?" Manias asked. "There is just enough time left for me to tell you what we will do. Firstly we secure all equipment and records so that nothing can be sabotaged. Then everyone working there-as well as the four employees off sick today-will be taken into custody and interrogated. We have a lot of questions to ask and I know that we will get answers to all of them. Countdown has now begun at minus ten minutes."

The other conference room vanished and was replaced by six very uninterest ing pictures. Two must have been located inside darkened trucks because the harsh black-and-white pictures were obviously being taken with infrared light. The picture on the upper right was of shrubbery and tree leaves; the other three were black. Brain pointed.

"Burned out?"

"Probably turned off. Agents in cars or visible to the public. Don't want to attract attention yet by putting on those Mickey Mouse hats. Six minutes to go."

At zero minus two things got busier. All the screens were on now, two of them showing the view through the windshields of moving cars. All of the hit teams were now converging on the plant.

When the countdown hit zero things began to happen very fast. The hooting of fire alarms sounded. The images on the screen stayed pointed straight ahead under the operators' remote control, but some of them bobbed up and down as the agents wearing the devices ran forward. Doors were forced open, there were shouts of surprise, firm orders to remain calm.

Then one of the images enlarged suddenly to show an armed agent forcing open a door. Inside was a group of men standing against the wall, hands raised. A man with a gun faced them, obviously an agent since the others hurried past him.

"That's an electronic lab," Brian said.

As the lab scene shrank to its original size a scene of men hurrying through an office door expanded to take its place. A shocked woman just going out tried to stop them.

"What's this? You can't go in there-who are you?"

"FBI. Stand aside, please."

A hand reached out and opened the inner door. Which must have been soundproof because the gray- haired man sitting at the large desk was punching a number into his phone and did not even look up. The scene moved into the room before he heard something and looked their way, putting the phone down.

"Where is the fire? And what are you doing in my office?"

"There is no fire, Mr. Thomsen."

"Then get out of here-now!"

"Are you Mr. Thomsen, Managing Director of DigitTech?"

"I'm calling the police," Thomsen said, grabbing up the telephone.