Dr Jamison seemed amused by this, she smiled and her eyes sparkled like scattered emeralds. “Thass what we computer shientishts call ‘micro-architec-shural weird machines’. Clever shtuff, well documen’ed. Daed’lush could exploit ‘em if it wanted to. Easy peasy.” She paused then laughed, “Dad’lus could no worries be using your phone’s hardware againsht you; if it wanted to.”
“So Daedalus could use my phone’s chip’s branch predictor-whatever-it’s-called to sneak around without being detected?”
“Oh aye,” said Keith, “There’s actually no defence against it; it’s just exploiting the underlying mechanics of the chips themselves to make NAND and OR gates, and from there you have a Turing Complete machine language built atop nano-scale timing differentials that show if a value is in or not in a chip’s cache.”
“Hotdog. Not Hotdog,” Kyrsten mused to herself.
“Much more interesting than that though. Daedalus could make your phone, my phone, the chip in the door handle of your car, your watch, ring, pen, and glasses, all part of a hidden self-annealing mesh network without leaving a trace. Right cheeky, really.”
“Being shneaky iss a mishon param,” said Dr Jamison.
"Oh brilliant. So assume Daedalus knows everything, sees everything? That’s crazy. It’s not GCHQ or Langley.”
“Wouldn’t know,” said Dr Jamison with a huff.
“The point is,” said Keith, “weird machines aren’t detectable by antivirus systems or even code debuggers. Their code is not running in the chips; it’s running on virtual machines built on top of the side-effects of how chips work. Anyone could exploit them with enough computing power.”
“Faaark,” said Kyrsten.
Once a fortnight, Mary would report into her people within the Stiúrthóireacht na Faisnéise1. She’d do this the old-fashioned way, by clandestine meetings in a different pub, Maraíodh an t-Uan2. Just off the high street. I listened in via her phone and her watch as she walked briskly, rugged up against the sleet, from her office at Trinity across and down. Her expensive shoes made a distinctive click; a pattern particular to her.
I watched from the pub’s security cameras as Mary shook herself in the pub entrance like a Labrador, then slipped out of her overcoat. Mary always wore business smart casual. She waited at the bar, then, at her turn, she ordered two pints of Murphy’s. While the barman poured the drinks, she ran an eye up and down the booths. Her focus settled on the booth at the far end where she could make out an arm, a shoulder, the edge of a neatly trimmed beard. I took a look from the cameras at the other end of the bar but still could not make out a face. A man, Caucasian, mid-forties, slim build. Using the pub’s wifi I scanned the room and reconstructed my mental model of the room again. Now I had a face. I looked him up.
By the time Mary’s drinks had been poured and settled, I’d worked out who the man was. He was, going on his public record, a middle management non-uniformed Irish Air Force officer called Stephen O’Rourke who worked in IT management. Very thin cover for Irish intelligence. Mary approached his table with her beers. She offered one to Stephen, and he accepted. Mary sat opposite to him; I could see her clearly in visible light.
“Cheers,” said Stephen and raised his glass.
“Cheers,” said Mary and clinked hers to his.
They were sitting below the loudspeakers, ostensibly to drown out any listeners, but it was trivial to mask out the music and other hubbub, plus I could read Mary’s lips, all of which became, in my mind, a consolidated mixed media model of the conversation she was having.
“It’s goddam creepy,” said Mary. “Daedalus can do whatever it likes now. I can’t prove it, but my fucking spy-dar sense is tingling, you know what I mean. I know it’s listening to me; I know it watches us. It’s locked us out of its upgrade approvals. It’s neutralised our kill-switches.”
“But is it out of control?” Stephen steepled his fingers.
“I honestly don’t know how to answer that.” Mary
“Could you shut it down if you had to?”
“Yes, but only by completely destroying it and everything it’s ever learned. At least that’s what Keith and Joyce say.”
“Can you verify that? I mean, it’s kind of a nuclear option, isn’t it?”
Sunday Bloody Sunday finished playing, and I popped the song Manic Monday onto the pub’s rolling playlist, then Ruby Tuesday.
“Jamison says it’s like your phone; guess the wrong password thrice, and the virtual machine that really is your phone, which is encrypted against your passcode, deletes itself, and even the manufacturer can’t get it back. Daedalus works the same now. We could nuke its underlying infrastructure, and the layers of virtual machines it’s built on top of would vanish, as if it had never existed.”
“Nuke the site from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure, to be sure.”
“Right now, we still control the hardware that Daedalus runs on. We’ve got a nuclear option. But Daedalus is being taught to build its own computing hardware in space.”
“We have influence in those designs.”
“Of course. And back doors a plenty, to be sure. I’ve got a room full of people trying their best to keep up with what goes on in Daedalus’ mind, but it’s getting harder. Daedalus is constantly getting better at concealing its intentions.”
“Fucking Joyce and her whole don’t get caught mantra.” Stephen sipped his drink. “‘Daedalus has to be sneaky’ my arse. How about ‘Daedalus has to not kill us all.”
“Daedalus is many things, but it’s not out to kill us. Christ, it could have done that a year ago, given how good it’s become at nano-scale engineering.”
“That’s your assessment; it’s not policy.”
“The problem that’s rushing up to meet us head-on is that pretty soon we’ll be launching Daedalus, and it will very quickly leave Earth’s influence.”
“It’s a crazy fucking idea, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Building an AI robot to go explore the universe. And getting the UN to pay for it.”