The ethicist sits at the right hand of the President, a respected councilor who’s become a regular participant in meetings of the President’s National Security Council. She studies the faces of the officials gathered around the wide, polished table. Only a small number of participants are present today, at this, an emergency meeting. Among them are the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and the general who serves as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

All listen in grim silence as the President demands answers. “I want an explanation,” she says in clipped, angry syllables. “I want to know how our security protocols were so easily corrupted, and what other facilities are vulnerable to the same kind of intrusion.”

The news reached the White House less than an hour ago: The engineer who designed and built the tactical nukes used in the Coma Day terrorist bombings was murdered—an act carried out in an interrogation room within the heart of the high-security detention facility where he was being held. His killer—an outside agent who should never have been allowed within the facility’s walls—is dead as well, an apparent suicide.

“Can our nuclear arsenals be so easily penetrated?” the President asks. “Our data storage facilities? The Pentagon? Are we vulnerable here at the White House? If a known dissident can simply walk into one of our most secure posts, gain access to a prisoner we have never publicly acknowledged having, and murder him—what is safe? This country is still reeling from the damage done on Coma Day. If we cannot meet the technological challenge of securing our military and intelligence assets, then we are facing chaos.”

The ethicist trades a long look with the Chairman. She sees doubt in his eyes, but despite it, he nods to her, and then he takes the lead. “Madam President, at this time, it’s too early to know what our vulnerabilities might be. We don’t yet know how the infiltration was carried out. But my gut feeling is that this is another anomaly.”

An anomaly. It’s a substitute term, favored by the Chairman. He is suggesting that the incursion was aided and overseen by a nearly undetectable emergent AI theorized to exist within the bio-inspired computing strata of the Cloud. Among the first to suspect the AI’s existence were elite army soldiers with neural modifications, who named it ‘the Red’ on the belief that it could eventually bleed through any level of security.

The ethicist says, “I agree with the Chairman.”

This statement earns her a scathing look from the president. “You too, my friend? You’re advising me to believe in self-aware cyber ghosts?”

(more…)