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  “Yes. Without the source code and Tom, it would take a long time, even with Jeffrey’s help, for someone to duplicate the coding.” They went through the front door and sat in the living room. Ecaterina had decorated the house very nicely. The two story windows which had a view of the water behind the house were draped in light gold see-through curtains which were presently pulled back. Nathan considered that the windows could be used for listening if someone used a laser mic against them. Something to deal with soon enough.

  “Ok, so we have two issues, one is Adam, the other is a team to research the acquisition. It would be cleaner if we had the same team, but we will need extra people anyway.” Lance thought about it, “We have propulsion, engineering, metallurgy, advanced power… shit, I could put ‘advanced’ in front of everything. The team has to stay small, but how do we get the right talent with a small group?”

  “Well, the only way to confirm anything is to control communication and access. The SEA AXE is too small for a very large group. Plus, if we aren’t really under the protection of a countries Navy to speak of and if we are in open sea any of the big countries could grab us easily. This is going to be a challenge. We need our own place where we can dig defenses or some way to protect ourselves.”

  “Mutually assured destruction.” Lance leaned his head back on the couch.

  “Pretty much.”

  “The problem is we need to be able to prove the destructive capability without permanent harm.”

  Nathan looked at Lance, “Well, that means digital efforts, right? So, there are a lot of ways to accomplish that easily enough. The problem is ramping it up high enough and fast enough to call off a strike, or we have to preemptively accomplish the warning which puts us on the radar as a threat.”

  “Don’t want to start the relationship rattling our sabers. We are in no way ready to have a military response.” Lance rubbed his eyes.

  Nathan looked out the window at a boater going down the waterway. “Hide our efforts in plain sight.”

  “Aren’t we doing that already? Hoping that no one figures out what is going on?” Lance looked over at Nathan.

  “Well, it’s something that Bethany Anne was talking about. We go ahead and open new companies based on the research of existing companies in the portfolio plus new results with TOM and pretend our efforts are due to research that we’ve been doing for a while. We slipstream some of the more effective solutions for the world into production and use the attacks we will receive from competition as an excuse to do the buildup of our digital and physical defense.”

  “So, you’re talking about just keeping it here in the States?”

  “Might as well, anywhere else in the world the U.S. might decide to do a covert op. Here, we could try to get the media on our side.”

  “Maybe, I don’t like having all of our eggs in one basket. Let’s look for locations in Europe, Australia, the States and … Well, shit. Can’t go down to South or Central America until we take care of Anton and his cronies, nor Africa I understand. Not that either of those places have governments I’m too wild about being around. Great Britain I suppose, but land is a minor fortune over there.”

  Nathan snorted, “And your point?”

  “Ok, that’s fair. Bethany Anne has a fair amount of money. I haven’t seen any of the existing businesses have corporate grounds or buildings that we would want to use, and while the boats are ok for the time being, I would feel a lot better under a ton of rock.”

  “That’s because you’ve been under a ton of rock at the military base for a long time.”

  “And I liked it!” Lance smiled. His base was a good place. It had lots of room under ground, some above ground buildings and an existing airfield. “I wonder if there are some old bases we could get cheap. They were bellyaching last year with the budget cuts over closing Fort Campbell.”

  “I haven’t heard of anything going on the market with the wars going on over seas on tv. Have you heard anything?”

  “No, just a bunch of bellyaching about the cost of the wars. With the Iraq war ‘officially’ over and Afghanistan shutting down the military is shrinking. With the terrorists threats hitting the major countries, it has become a more surgical strike situation than feet on the ground. The politicians want safety, they don’t want to pay the bill to have that safety.”

  “We could always go to the war areas. We could probably take care of anything that could attack us first.”

  “You know, if it wasn’t my daughter we would be sending out, I could get behind that idea. But then an attack on us could easily be labeled a ‘mistake’ in the media. Easy to cover up.”

  “You sure are bent on us getting attacked.” Nathan was a little frustrated.

  “Always be prepared.” Lance smiled at him. He had been in so many of these meetings, some lasting for days, that this little discussion was just getting him warmed up. “Patience grasshopper.”

  Nathan glared over at the seemingly older man, “You do realize I’m older than you, right?”

  “Sure, but have you war-gamed more than me?”

  “Point.”

  “C’mon, let’s get a six pack and attack this the proper way.”

  Nathan got up, “Libations to lubricate the mind?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Time tested.”

  “Time honored. It is the most likely reason we can’t figure this out.” Lance opened the huge double wide stainless steel refrigerator to look inside. There were indeed multiple six-packs of beer. Two domestic and one foreign. Lance grabbed a ‘Bud’. Nathan asked for the green one so he pulled one of those to handed it to Nathan over the bar. The door opened in the front hall. Nathan put down his drink and turned on the balls of his feet. William called out from the front area, “Hello the home!”

  Lance called back, “The same to you, we’re drinking in the kitchen.” Nathan sniffed the air and seemed reassured, so he turned back around and sat at the bar, popping the top of his Heineken.

  William came around through the living room into the kitchen and dining area. “U.S. for me, don’t need any of that Dutch stuff.” Lance handed over the beer he hadn’t opened yet, and then got himself another.

  William took his first swig, “Damn good. What are we discussing?”

  “We need a new location,” said Nathan.

  Lance grumped, “We want a base, know of any for lease or purchase?”

  William grabbed his back pocket, “Yeah, I have the deed right here. Wait, nope. Sorry, that’s my receipt for aviation fuel.” He took another swallow of his beer. “If congress would pass the BRAC rule the military wants, you might get your base. But that will take years. With everybody in the communities shouting about lost jobs, no one in congress wants to vote to close a base. The last time BRAC was introduced, the over run costs were in the billions and so far the studies are showing the cost savings weren’t that much anyway.”

  Nathan squinted at the bigger guy, “BRAC?”

  Lance took this one, “Base Realignment and Closure.”

  “You know, if you’re willing to travel, the DOD is closing Air Force bases in Europe.”

  Lance looked over his beer at William, “Damn, I forgot about that.”

  Nathan looked between the two of them, “How would that help?”

  Lance answered, “Some of the bases were borrowed from Great Britain. When you have a base, you have all of the infrastructure we would want, plus enough external infrastructure to support families. That little comment about Jeffrey earlier and his family comes to mind. If we could get them to move, then we have the schools all set up in the local community and we could be seen as a provider of jobs.”

  Nathan’s brows came together, “How does that help OpSec?”

  “You don’t think Jeffrey has good OpSec right now? Might I remind you the reason I had to go see him?”

  Nathan thought back to how hard it had been to try and hack the company. “Damn fine point. Ok, say we find a base that we can
buy or rent, then what?”

  “If we can find one close to a sheltered bay, we have a place for the boats and an airfield. I would prefer it a little warmer.”

  William snorted, “Unless you’re building, I don’t know of anything available right now.”

  Nathan added, “Still, Great Britain is a close ally of the States, what if they become suspicious?”

  Lance thought about it. “The more we talk, the more I think we need to find a base and make plans. We release something pretty positive from the research we are going to do and then either respond, or fabricate and respond, to a threat to our intellectual capital and ‘move our corporate offices’ to something we feel we can protect a little better. Until then, we need to have the best defense on the digital side we can. Do you think we can handle Adam?”

  Nathan drained his beer and set it aside. “I’ll need another to answer that question.”

  William looked at the two of them, “Adam?”

  Lance pulled another Heineken from the fridge and handed it to Nathan. “Yeah, one of Bethany Anne’s companies has a very strong Heuristic Internet Defense program we are calling ‘Adam’. It might come with some challenges if you turn it back on again…”

  William put his hand up, “If you would be so kind as to stop there. The most programming I like to deal with works in planes, trains and automobiles.”

  Nathan looked over at him, “Trains?”

  “It rhymes better than ‘planes, helicopters and automobiles’. Either way. If you would provide me another of the non-green variety over here, I’ll see about taking my shower and heading back out. I’ve a date with Cindy McWilliams tonight and she is going to be amazed with me.”

  Lance looked him over, “Oh, why is that?”

  “Because I’m spending $200 to get a guy to chauffeur the two of us around in the latest SUV I just received back from Texas Armoring. They jumped Bethany Anne’s ride to the front when I authorized the bonus. They are keeping up with their commitments by working on our stuff in the evening. Makes for a very happy Christmas for everyone.”

  Nathan looked at the big guy, “So, you’re going to check out the ride from the back to make sure it is good before Bethany Anne uses the vehicle?”

  “Two birds, one stone my friend. That and the mistletoe I’m going to hang in the back before we go says I at least get a kiss.” William winked at the guys and left to go next door to get ready.

  After the door closed, Nathan started again. “Ok, back to Adam. My company has a pretty good internet defense program already, so we can implement that right away on everything. However; if what Tom was talking about is true, then Adam is a complete leapfrog over anything else available including my stuff. Well, except maybe something Google is planning, they’ve got a strong AI research team. Hell, they have Ray Kurzweil on their payroll, you can’t get much higher than him for futuristic thinking.”

  “What advantage would we have if it turns out to be a strong AI?”

  “You mean one that works for us?”

  “Or at least with us.”

  Nathan stood up and walked the the wall of windows, looking out but not seeing. “Well, we could probably run through the calculations and research at a speed that would rival corporations hundreds of times our size. Well, hundreds of the amount of people we might put on this project due to secrecy concerns. The ability to attack any country electronically will certainly rival those of major world powers and the time to be ready will be reduced down to months, perhaps weeks instead of years.”

  “So the risk might be worth the rewards.” Lance watched Nathan Lowell as he contemplated what a strong AI would bring to the team.

  “If we think we can contain the system, then yes I certainly believe so.”

  “How would you contain something like this?”

  Nathan turned around, “With no external connectivity and no ability to make wireless connections.”

  “Jeffrey explained how the system needs to learn, how it acquires new information. How would you get the information into the system if it has no external connection?”

  Nathan turned back around, his eyes seeing both now, and the future. What is, what was, and what yet could be. “Hard drives, lots and lots of hard drives. We would have to download petabytes of data and use hot-swap removable hard-drives to continuously feed more and more information into the system. We would need an interface of requested data which we download in a different physical location and keep a secured method to confirm what we allow into the data stream. Therefore, the system would need zettabytes of storage capability. If we create a blade-server design we can easily ramp up the computing capacity and pull it off line as well.”

  “And what happens if one of you egg-heads mutter ‘Oh Shit’?”

  Nathan frowned, “Besides the ability to cut the power? I would suggest a small EMP under the ‘in case of emergency’ glass. Push that button and everything gets fried. It’s the final button that will kill the test.”

  “However; if it isn’t connected to the internet, we don’t gain any of the tactical defense or offensive ability, either.”

  “True, it is no better than a great research tool, which would be a plus in its own right. However; if you want the ability to truly be a jump ahead of the competition, we have to connect to the Internet at some point.” Nathan shrugged.

  “How do you test a machine for sociopathic disorders?” Lance was stuck on the malevolent AI scenario.

  “I don’t think I’ve drunk enough to answer that question. I’m not sure you've drunk enough to be allowed to ask such a dark question.”

  “Good point, let’s get another.” Lance got off of the couch and went back into the kitchen, this time he grabbed the rest of his six pack, which was two bottles, and Nathan grabbed the remaining four Heineken.

  Lance looked at Nathan, “Do beers affect you nearly as much as they would a regular human?”

  Nathan ignored the ‘regular’ comment, “No, not really. I could down these four and the buzz wouldn’t last long at all.”

  “That had to be useful in college.”

  Nathan smiled, “It sure was.” They moved back to the living room. “I have no idea how to test the computer, and this is assuming that we actually acquire an intellect behind the programming. Which presupposes that the program starts writing its own code base. Eventually, it would rewrite everything we started it on. It makes you want to confirm the system had Asimov’s three laws of robotics.”

  “What, protect humans, obey humans and protect itself?” Lance took a swig of his beer.

  “Well, they are longer than that. The first law was ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ The second law was ‘A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.’ The final law was, ‘A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.’ If we could inject some sort of value system into the AI…”

  Lance looked over at Nathan who had trailed off. “Inject a value system?”

  Nathan stopped looking into nowhere and focused back on Lance, “No, that wouldn’t work. You have to have a conversation which allows the AI to conceive of their own value system and then you make a judgement call if that will work for your purposes.”

  Lance snorted, “And who exactly is qualified to have that conversation?”

  Nathan smiled, “There would be only one who could have the conversation because she will have to give the approval to fund this project, and make the decision whether to keep it alive or pull the literal plug.”

  Lance just pursed his lips, “Well, she only has the fate of the world on her shoulders, what’s adding the homicide of the world's first artificial intelligence entity going to do, break her?” He took a really long swallow from his beer after that pronouncement. He couldn’t protect Bethany Anne from all of the decisions. She was the most qualified to d
ecide if the new entity, if it happened, would be a benefit or not based on her own knowledge of what she would need in the future.

  “That would be potential homicide and I’m not sure I would phrase it that way if we want her to do this.”

  Lance just raised his beer in Nathan’s direction.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Frankfurt, Germany

  Ivan and Stephen got off the train at Frankfurt's Main Train Station. There were people congested all over it’s twenty five platforms. Over 350,000 travelers use the station every day and Ivan could believe it. They had reservations at the Steigenberger Frankfurter Hof for the next week, well that was what Ivan thought.